Sam Stein: Violence Is Not the Answer

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Speaker 1 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny, infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 1 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

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Speaker 3 Hello and welcome to a bonus edition of the Vorg podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
I got today my newest colleague, our managing editor, Sam Stein.

Speaker 3 We We needed a grown-up newsman around here for days like this, and thrilled Sam agreed to take it on. How are you doing, buddy?

Speaker 4 I'm good. It's been

Speaker 4 kind of a tumultuous first two weeks at the bulwark, but a good one. It has.

Speaker 3 This was not supposed to be our inaugural podcast together.

Speaker 3 We're cursed to live in interesting times. Lennon said that there are weeks where decades happen.
I'm kind of sick of those weeks. We've had a few of those lately.

Speaker 3 But I want to just start by getting the facts out of what we know about the shooting at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania yesterday. The rally was taking place about an hour north of Pittsburgh.

Speaker 3 A bullet grazed Trump's ear before he went down and was surrounded by Secret Service and then stood up.

Speaker 3 And I'm sure if you're listening, you've seen the pictures of him fist pumping and shouting, fight, fight, fight. One audience member is dead.
Two more critically injured.

Speaker 3 The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, age 20 of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. He was on a rooftop about 150 yards from the rally.
Not much is known about Crooks.

Speaker 3 As we tape, he seems to be a rare 20-year-old with not much social media presence.

Speaker 3 Voter records show that he made a single $15 donation to a liberal PAC on Biden's inauguration day, but then registered as a Republican that September.

Speaker 3 So more reporting is going to be coming, I assume, on what exactly was the motivations that inspired this would-be assassin. So, you know.

Speaker 3 The FBI is calling it an assassination attempt on Trump's life. So

Speaker 3 with those facts, Sam, initial reactions, thoughts?

Speaker 4 Well, I mean, my first thought was probably like everyone's when they saw it come over the transit, which was just, it's shocking. You sort of do a double take when you see the first news clips.

Speaker 4 And for me, it was

Speaker 4 some tweet. Someone said like, you know, Trump's being, you know.

Speaker 4 held down by Secret Service and then followed up when being rushed out. And I just couldn't really process what it actually meant.
And then I signed on and then found out.

Speaker 4 And my first reaction was just sort of like dumbfounded shock, right?

Speaker 4 And then you try to figure out what exactly is going on.

Speaker 4 And then when it sort of seeps in, and this happened for me, at least, you know, several minutes later, you begin to sort of think about, okay, if this is what

Speaker 4 we imagine it to be,

Speaker 4 what are the ripple effects of this? And simply put, there's just like nothing good comes of this, obviously. It's horrifying both the act itself and then to contemplate what follows the act.

Speaker 4 I was also mad, frankly, that something like this could happen. Mad that the Secret Service apparently had some sort of terribly, unbelievably tragic lapse of protocol.

Speaker 4 Mad that anyone could possess a gun at that age and use it in this type of,

Speaker 4 with this type of parent of motivation. I should use a parent run everything.

Speaker 4 And then sort of mad at the reaction to, I mean, not unexpected because I think our political system is kind of structured in a way that incentivizes pretty shitty reactions to these types of things.

Speaker 4 But like just watching it kind of transpire was a little bit disheartening too.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I want to get into the reactions, but there are other people to be mad at

Speaker 3 before we get to the reactions. Obviously mad at that at that kid.
I guess you can't call him a kid, that young man, who is creating a lot of A lot of problems. That doesn't help anything.

Speaker 3 Violence doesn't help anything. We've been living through a time of increased political violence.

Speaker 3 You know, we already had enough 1968 parallels with the convention conversation we've been having over the last two weeks. And it does feel like we've been hoarded back to 1968 in a lot of ways.

Speaker 3 And upset also, because it ties to the reactions post-Trump. But, you know, I also had a feeling of anger at all of the steps that have got us here.
And, you know, the lack of grown-ups in the room.

Speaker 3 And I think that there are a lot of people to blame on on that. But, you know, look, I mean, we've been living in a time of increased political violence for a while now.

Speaker 3 There was the Scalise shooting at the baseball field in 2017.

Speaker 3 Obviously, the attack at Speaker Pelosi's house January 6th. Kavanaugh-Whitmer failed plots against them.
I'm sure I'm forgetting out some Trump picks. Giffords.
Yeah, Giffords.

Speaker 3 I guess that's kind of before the Trump era, but yeah, Giffords.

Speaker 3 You know, Trump from the stage, you know, shouting at, you know, telling people, knock the hell out of people. And like, we've had a long period where uh this has been happening and where

Speaker 3 you know people have continued to kind of stoke the anger on this so i you know again was this guy radicalized by any specific thing like we don't know any of that yet but there have been a lot of opportunities for grown-ups to say okay like enough of this and those opportunities have been missed and and they've been missed you know from people that are critics of trump but also people around trump you know who have been stoking this sort of thing, too.

Speaker 4 Obviously, you know,

Speaker 4 we can only speak with like severe caution, right? We don't know the motivation. We just don't know enough to say why this is.

Speaker 3 Anybody that starts randomly shooting people has some level of mental health problems, right?

Speaker 3 Like literally, it's like the Reagan, the Reagan guy was trying to impress Jody Foster.

Speaker 3 You know, so like, you can, you can really get out over your skis on like what motivated this guy, and then you find out that it's something totally weird.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there, they're deranged psychopaths, right? Like, I think that's a, I think we could objectively say that. But I do agree with like everything you said.

Speaker 4 And it's not because you know, you invited me graciously onto the podcast, but I feel like you know, we, it's easy when you're in the moment to say, well, this is a really bad moment, right?

Speaker 4 Like, I'm sure, you know, if my, if your parents or my parents came on, they'd be like, you know, you know, the 60s were just like infinitely worse than this.

Speaker 4 And like, we actually had like serious assassinations in MLK and RFK and all that stuff. And yeah, granted.

Speaker 4 But for me, at least, I, you know, just sort of like living in the kind of instantaneous media bubbles that we exist in.

Speaker 4 It's like when you watch it all play out and you see sort of the incentive structure for politicians to like play up this kind of like

Speaker 4 violent rhetoric and machissimo stuff and like you know delegitimizing and stigmatizing their opponents in ways.

Speaker 4 It's like you can start to see the like the ingredients in real time for this type of climate.

Speaker 4 Now, I'm not saying the climate is directly associated with the shooting because we just don't know yet, but like the climate's bad. Like we can just objectively say the climate's not great.

Speaker 4 And I do think, frankly, like we can be equivocal about it. We can say, well, one side is just as bad as the other.
But like I do think this is a Trump era phenomenon. I really do.

Speaker 4 Like he, he has, you know, capitalized on this in a way that no recent politician, at least in my mind, has done it.

Speaker 4 And he's done it successfully and it's created a model for a lot of other people to replicate. And I think a lot of people have replicated it, frankly.

Speaker 4 And that I do think has happened somewhat on both sides.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Well, no, and I think that, again, like going back to the grown-ups, like this is the thing that I think about all this is just like

Speaker 3 this stuff wasn't happening during the Obama-Romney campaign. You know, the temperature of the water was just a lot lower.

Speaker 4 I remember the big Romney-Obama fight was over.

Speaker 4 Romney dabbled a tiny bit in birtherism and people freaked out. Like, birtherism these days seems like...
quaint, right? It's totally different.

Speaker 3 Well, the one ad that the one Obama super PAC ran, that was pretty bad. I kind of accused accused Romney of being responsible for the deaths.

Speaker 3 But even so, it's just like that kind of ad wouldn't even really stand out now. Like, the temperature has just gotten a lot hotter.
Totally.

Speaker 3 And there are very few people that have been in the arena that are saying, wait a minute,

Speaker 3 let's try to dial this down a little bit.

Speaker 3 And obviously, of course, as the incitements to violence have happened on the right,

Speaker 3 we had that after the January 6th moment, we had a period of time where that was being condemned. And now,

Speaker 3 the people that stormed the Capitol are hostages and and heroes right so like again like they're like the entire water in which we're swimming in is just a lot hotter and that's why when i look at these reactions i want to shout out a couple a couple good ones and bad ones there was some colorado state rep that uh so so that we can be fair here that like you said this the last thing we need is sympathy for the devil right now so oh god i saw that one

Speaker 3 my favorite was from andy kim i want to shout him out he's a democratic rep in new jersey running for senate it was very long so i'm only gonna read part of it but it's all good you we'll put the link to his thread in the show notes.

Speaker 3 But he started here. When Lincoln was shot, he wore a coat embroidered with one country, one destiny.
I've turned to those four words to help me process this moment.

Speaker 3 This assassination attempt was one of the worst events I've seen in our democracy. It feels like we're on a country unmoored.

Speaker 3 It's not just that our divisions have grown so wide, but our willingness to allow contempt to accompany us. It's not just a disrespect that we see towards one another.

Speaker 3 It's a deeper disregard and disgust of one another. We're losing touch with the understanding that we're all part of something bigger than us.

Speaker 3 As those four words of Lincoln, one country, one destiny, remind us the commonality we share runs deep and cannot be forgotten or dismissed.

Speaker 3 Choosing to unite instead of incite does not mean that we dismiss the magnitude of our differences, but it compels us to be cautious and precise about our next steps, our words, our actions in this unbelievably precarious moment.

Speaker 3 We can just sit on that one for a second. I don't know if there's much to add to it, but like for a politician, that's good.
I mean, that is

Speaker 3 thoughtful. And he's exactly right.
And I think that the precarious moment element of this is very important because we are in a very precarious moment and we've been warning here.

Speaker 3 And I've been, I kind of had a low level of ominous dread about this period between now and the fall and, you know, how people feel about this election. And I already had that sense of dread.

Speaker 3 And this has just exacerbated it to such a degree that we really need people to almost go overboard and kind of dialing it back for a bit.

Speaker 4 Andy Kim's an interesting guy, incredibly thoughtful congressman. I think think the reason we're focusing on Andy right now is because he's rare.

Speaker 3 And a lot of Democrats are saying the right thing. We should say that.
They're like saying that the bit of depth.

Speaker 4 No, no, no, that's fair.

Speaker 4 But Andy's, I think, the reason, I don't know why you picked it out, but my guess is the reason you picked it out is because there's a level of depth to it that I think you don't really often see with political reactions, or at least introspection too, right?

Speaker 4 I totally agree with you.

Speaker 4 Like, we need to sort of, you know, the clichés call our better angels, but like, what does that actually look like in this in this current climate like you know i saw someone propose that biden and trump do a joint press conference that's never gonna happen i mean like

Speaker 4 what do you do to like actually effectuate that and also like does the incentive structure actually exist for it because when i was thinking about this last night when i was trying to muster up some sort of story for the bulwark i kept coming back to this idea that like it's actually scarier now right like like the what happens the sort of unknowns of the next week or two are like what actually really do frighten me and and i guess the question for you, Tim, is like, okay, what can Andy Kim do to like achieve what he wants here?

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Speaker 1 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 1 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 1 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 3 The Democrats are going to have to figure out, and by the Democrats I mean the politicians, but also media that Democratic and left-wing consumers watch.

Speaker 3 I have to figure out how to talk about this in a way that

Speaker 3 does not exacerbate people's rage at the other side, right?

Speaker 3 Like, and talk about it in a way that says, hey, you know, what I liked about the Andy Kim statement is that you do not have to diminish the differences, right, between the two sides.

Speaker 3 You don't have to dismiss the magnitude of the differences. You don't have to all of a sudden say, oh, Donald Trump

Speaker 3 is not, you know, proposing,

Speaker 3 does not have soft authoritarian aspirations based on his proposals. You don't have to stop saying that.

Speaker 3 But it now has to be, you know, delivered within the context of, you know, kind of a more Obama-in spirit that's like out of date now.

Speaker 4 Just thinking that, yeah. Like it sounds Obama-ish.

Speaker 3 Yeah. You have to figure out how to do that.
It's complicated. It's hard

Speaker 3 to express disagreement with the other side without the disdain. And Democrats and left-wing media folks have to do that.
And that's, you know, that's going to be challenging, I think.

Speaker 4 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, that's the thing. I've been watching a lot of Democrats this morning and last night sort of grapple with

Speaker 4 this tension point that you're getting at, which bluntly is they do think Trump's a threat to democracy.

Speaker 3 Well, some of them do, I guess, according to Ezra Klein's report.

Speaker 4 Maybe putting aside Ezra's sources, some of them do think. And

Speaker 4 how do you properly portray that threat? How do you communicate around that threat while

Speaker 4 being very cognizant of the fact that

Speaker 4 people could, you know, take what you're saying and become sort of radicalized by it, for lack of a better word.

Speaker 4 And I guess the thing that was happening last night and this morning was like, you know, obviously a lot of Republicans were very angry at Democrats for portraying Trump this way and saying that that had been sort of the stew from which this guy, this 20-year-old kid, man, young man, acted.

Speaker 4 First of all, we don't know his motivation. So I thought that was wildly premature.
But like, secondly, I guess the question is like, okay, well,

Speaker 4 what are you supposed to do? Like, how do you talk about Trump and democracy if you legitimately believe he's a threat?

Speaker 3 People do need to legitimately, you know, some of the stuff like Scott Jennings was on CNN and being like, this is your fault for saying it's a threat to democracy.

Speaker 3 It's like, okay, well, he incited an attack on the Capitol, right? So like. You have to talk about that.
Like, that existed, that happened, and then the Republicans re-nominated him.

Speaker 3 Like on the list of people that I'm upset at includes the Republican senators that didn't convict him, you know, because that was an opportunity to turn down the temperature in this country when you convicted the guy for something that he was rightly impeached for, an insurrection against the country.

Speaker 3 So, I think that it wouldn't stop our problem with guns in this country. It wouldn't stop the problem with the randomly mentally ill people.

Speaker 3 Like, there still can be random assassination attempts, but the stew that we're in would be different if this was, you know, whatever, Ron DeSantis versus Kamala Harris.

Speaker 3 It just, like, it just would be. And like, that was the adult thing to do, and they didn't do it.
And this is how it ties.

Speaker 3 I think that what the Democrats have to do is figure out how to present as attempting to,

Speaker 3 which is like in the spirit of what Joe Biden actually did try to do most of the time when he's president, like attempting to take down the temperature, attempting to be grown-ups, attempting to work with the other side and saying, We're here to solve problems, like we're not here, you know, to incite a civil war.

Speaker 3 Like, that's not what we're doing.

Speaker 3 And I think that this Republican reaction to that, to the extent that there's a chance to, you know, once the dust settles, offer a little bit of contrast, like shows how that might be possible.

Speaker 3 You have Mike Collins from Georgia, Republican, saying Joe Biden sent the orders. Obviously,

Speaker 3 deeply irresponsible and based on nothing. J.D.
Vance, the leading candidate, presumed to be Trump's VP. You never know with Trump, but he wrote, Today is not just some isolated incident.

Speaker 3 The central premise of the Biden campaign is Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to Trump's attempted assassination.

Speaker 3 And now we head into a convention where, obviously, you know, the speakers are going to be doing some bloody shirt waving, I think.

Speaker 3 I wish that wasn't the case, but I think that that seems very likely. So, I don't think that there's a ton of hope that the Republican response to this is going to be to turn down the temperature.

Speaker 3 And so, I think that the question is whether there's a thermostatic response to that on the left or whether it's an opportunity to try to present something that's more in the

Speaker 3 broader tradition.

Speaker 4 You could tell by the way your voice intonation kind of trailed off there.

Speaker 3 My appetite is very low for that.

Speaker 3 Again, I once said, people would ask me on these stupid panels, saying I'll let you reply, but I'm going to now reply to your reply to my skeptical intonation.

Speaker 3 On these panels, people are always like, what's it going to take to chill this out? Like, it's a very popular question, I guess, on panels all the time.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And like, my answer before 2020 was, like, really, like, we need a serious

Speaker 3 outside event to shake everybody up and realize it's time to be grown-ups again. And that, like, this was all kind of frivolous, some of this partisan infighting.

Speaker 3 And then COVID happened and a million people died and like it got a million times worse.

Speaker 3 So I no longer have any hope that outside events are going to help, you know, kind of calm, you know, the increasing. Yeah.

Speaker 4 I get that question a lot on the panels. And I basically like, I don't think there's.

Speaker 4 I don't know. It's very hard to imagine a combination of factors that can give us the type of more utopian political system that we all hope for.

Speaker 4 This is why I was nervous last night because like the next week,

Speaker 4 you couldn't ask for like a worse set of like events to happen the week after this, right? Like the convention is not the place for dialing the rhetoric down. Dialing the rhetoric down.

Speaker 4 You're not going to get like a, you know, a convention that's like, you know, 2004 Barack Obama. It's just not going to happen.
And the Vance tweet specifically to me was like

Speaker 4 a huge, you know, warning sign. That guy's got, you know, whatever you think of J.D.
Vance, right? Like

Speaker 4 the guy has his thumb on the pulse of like the MAGA movement. He knows where they, where their it is.
He's he's playing to it all the time. He's smart.

Speaker 4 And for him to just jump to that, to me, was not just a signal of where everyone is, but like it was like a signal for everyone to get there. And I think next week's just going to be absolute,

Speaker 4 unfortunately, I worry it's going to be Bedlam. And like, I think that

Speaker 4 what's interesting here, and I don't have any real hope for it, it's like Trump could play a role. I mean, he could.

Speaker 4 In a normal universe, Trump could come out today and be like,

Speaker 4 say something that's Trumpian, but also like tries to get the rhetoric a little bit down. But I'm not hopeful for it.
Biden came out last night. I thought it was fine.

Speaker 4 Like, he's not going to say, he's not going to say too much because

Speaker 4 he never gets ahead of things. He doesn't want to speculate.

Speaker 4 But look, I think this is where the worry around Biden's capacities as a candidate and as a president, this is where they're manifested, right?

Speaker 4 Like, I feel like the old Joe Biden four or five years ago would have given us a real stemwinder of a speech that called to

Speaker 4 people to come together and made all those sort of rhetorical points. And he'll do it, but I just don't think, I think people think of him in a more diminished way now.

Speaker 4 And I don't think it's going to have as much resonance. And frankly, I just don't see any way this kind of gets toned down at all before the election.

Speaker 3 No, I mean, and you're in this environment. And I guess I will say Trump has sent a couple of bleats I don't have in front of me, and they were not as bad as they could have been.

Speaker 3 I totally agree with that.

Speaker 4 I read them very nervously, and I was like, oh, that's not so bad.

Speaker 3 And so, you know, we go to the convention, we see, see what happens. We shouldn't have lower expectations for Trump.

Speaker 3 Like any normal politician who went through this, if you just look at what Steve Scales said, what Gabby Gifford said, what, you know, other victims of political violence who survived, what Reagan said.

Speaker 3 And there's a great thing from Reagan's diary going around that he wrote about how he was praying for Hinckley. And so, you know, like there is a bar that you would expect for a responsibility bar.

Speaker 3 You know, it's hard to kind of see that happening at the RNC convention this week.

Speaker 3 I'd love to be surprised because to your point, if we end up in a situation where just like the reality of the situation is one side is saying they tried to kill our leader, like they tried to assassinate him because they hate you.

Speaker 3 And the other side is saying he is going to end the republic as we know it. I had Elizabeth Newman, my friend, the domestic extremism on about de-escalating a couple of months ago on this podcast.

Speaker 3 Like, it doesn't take Elizabeth Newman to know that that is an environment that is ripe for additional violence. And that's something we got to be really, I think, deeply concerned about.

Speaker 4 Oh, 100%.

Speaker 4 I'm going to Milwaukee. It's going to be...
Be safe. Yeah.
I mean,

Speaker 4 I don't want to be, I don't want to joke about it. Like, I'm nervous a little bit.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I'm going to Chicago. That's going to be incredibly chaotic, too, for the Democratic Convention.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And also, this is sort of a secondary point, but like, if you're like a smart, thoughtful human being who's thinking about like a career in public service and you like kind of just want to like, you know, be normal and like create normal friendships and working partnerships and shit, like,

Speaker 4 why the fuck would you want to go into this line of business at this point? This is nuts. Like, this is not fun.
People here are not normal. It's insane.

Speaker 3 I've said this for a while, particularly on the Republican side, but I think it's going to start happening on the Democratic side. There's a supply and demand to this.

Speaker 3 Like, if there's not a good supply of candidates, it's hard to have good leaders, right?

Speaker 4 And, like, well, you read Andy Kim.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Andy Kim's not in the good spot.

Speaker 5 Amazon has everything for everyone on your list. Like your Uncle Ricky, who ruined every single one of your wedding photos.

Speaker 6 because his fly was open.

Speaker 5 Get him a three-pack of new underpants. And with Amazon Black Friday week starting November 20th, you can save up to 40% on the gifts everyone wants, like the latest toys and housewares.

Speaker 7 And the gifts they need, like underpants.

Speaker 3 And Ricky, wear them, please.

Speaker 1 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 1 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive motive to destroy them.

Speaker 1 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal. Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 1 Why is Adam after the Tanner family? What lengths will he go to? One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 1 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 3 I want to do the political implications. I just want to just say at the beginning of this,

Speaker 3 this attempted assassination happened less than 24 hours ago. That's a weird sentence to say out loud.
And so, like, we don't know shit. All right.

Speaker 3 Like, there are certain things that we know, and I want to focus on the things that we know. And, you know, we'll take it from there.
So, there's new polling this morning.

Speaker 3 CBS had Trump winning by two points, essentially, in every swing state. NBC had Trump winning by two points nationally unchanged from April.
So, we have a static race race still.

Speaker 3 To me, I think the most obvious thing to think about, you know, again, who knows how this looks in November, but right now we're going to be looking at a period where the enthusiasm, they talk about enthusiasm gap sometimes between the two parties.

Speaker 3 There's going to be an enthusiasm chasm between a Republican Party that feels like they need to get righteous vengeance on behalf of Trump and a Democratic Party that is currently unsure if they have confidence in their candidate to even do the job.

Speaker 3 You know, I think that is something that we can talk about that we know is going to be is an issue as we head into the fall, like much more than a way than some people like last night.

Speaker 3 They're like, now Trump has won. And it's like,

Speaker 3 I don't know how many swing voters are changing their vote

Speaker 3 based on this. Like we'll learn from polls and focus groups in the next few weeks.
But the enthusiasm thing, I think we know is an outgrowth of this, at least for now.

Speaker 4 So like, look, I think... to like basically be like, oh, the election's over.

Speaker 4 First of all, I think you should hold off a little bit and kind of reassess how you view the world because not everything is strictly about electoral politics.

Speaker 4 That being said, I think you're right that

Speaker 4 the enthusiasm stuff has already been incredibly pronounced. You see it in every poll.
This is obviously both a byproduct of

Speaker 4 Trump rallying his people prior even to this, and then also of Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 Just, I mean, every single poll since the debate, but prior to the debate was Democratic enthusiasm was incredibly low, historically low.

Speaker 4 This just is going to

Speaker 4 feed into that. I think the post-convention bump will be pretty big.
I think it will spark another, it will be so reinforced.

Speaker 4 We're going to spark another wave of panic about Biden and his ability to win the election, which will then cause more Democratic infighting around whether Biden should be on the ticket.

Speaker 4 And then it's just going to go round and round and round. That said.

Speaker 4 I mean, you read the polls, like everything about this race has been static. I forget who it was.
Maybe it was Franklin's or something like that.

Speaker 4 It's like, you know, we'll just come back to this place where Trump's up to.

Speaker 3 I mean, this is one of those things where people after the debate were like expecting Biden to tank. And when he didn't, they're like, hey, see, you were wrong.

Speaker 3 And like, I never expected Biden to tank. We're in a very, we're a very polarized country.
And

Speaker 3 there are a lot of people out there. There already were before the debate.
And now there are more who say

Speaker 3 they don't approve of Joe Biden, but they're voting for him anyway. So, you know what I mean? Like, that's

Speaker 3 a common element. So, you know, like, this is why I also just want to caution trying to look into a crystal ball.
I said this a bunch in the last two weeks.

Speaker 3 It's almost, it's almost like eye-rolly to say, like, we're in unprecedented fucking times. Like, this is very unusual.

Speaker 3 Like, we, yeah, we do not have, there is no, you can't look back at past campaigns. And, you know, there's somebody online, I forget what it was, I was like,

Speaker 3 Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, when he was shot, and said, you can't kill a bull moose. And then somebody else replied, and they're like, Woodrow Wilson won that election.

Speaker 3 So, like, you you know, okay, like, we just don't, that we're in unprecedented times. Right.
And so we don't really know. And I can imagine a scenario where, in some ways, like

Speaker 3 having a very rabid convention. So I'm even skeptical of your bounce.

Speaker 3 I just, I'm just saying, we don't know. I'm just saying, we don't know.

Speaker 3 All I'm saying is that just like I could possibly see, again, I think the enthusiasm and people who maybe had been soft Trump supporters being thrust into his arms.

Speaker 3 I think that feels certainly that's happening. The response among

Speaker 3 the double haters, like these small groups, like they might see a really rabid MAGA base and be like, oh man, that's a little scary. You know what I mean? Like, we just don't exactly know.

Speaker 4 Tim, the more interesting question is not like, for me, and I'm curious what you think of this. More interesting question is not like what Trump and Republicans do with this.

Speaker 4 I think we sort of know how they're going to rally around him. We get that.
And we generally think that the convention is going to be more like, as you said, righteous vengeance for Trump, right?

Speaker 4 i think the more interesting question is like how if you're a democrat if you're in the biden campaign what you do about this right like first of all you got these persistent problems with your party right they're not going away maybe this dulls the conversation obviously dulls the conversation but like

Speaker 4 i don't know what do you do like do you try to play up the sort of like um obama circuit

Speaker 3 2004 rhetoric like is that is that the play like do you lay low like i don't know i mean if biden could do that yeah, I would say that this is the moment for the red states and blue state speech, but I don't think that's like in his bag of tricks at this point.

Speaker 3 Right. So, yeah, I mean, that's what I would like to see from the Democrats.
I think that you need to figure out a way to message that

Speaker 3 this election remains critically important. It remains passionate, but we need to have leaders that

Speaker 3 govern for the whole country. And that that's what Joe Biden tried to do.

Speaker 3 And that Joe Biden, there's a reason why there's a ton of new investment going into red states and go and campaign in those areas and like try to demonstrate that they're concerned about the policy proposals that are in Project 2025, but still want to be the ones that unite the country.

Speaker 3 And while the other side is probably, what we expect, doing a lot more of what J.D. Vance is doing and trying to stoke more tension.
That's really tough. It's tough to pull out.

Speaker 3 It was right in Obama's wheelhouse to do this. Is it in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's? I don't know.
We can see.

Speaker 3 Is it in some of the other speakers that speak at the convention, at the Dem convention in a month? Maybe.

Speaker 3 There'd be some people that think, no, the right thing to do is that the Democrats should fight fire with fire on this and like blame Trump for the rhetoric.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I don't know that victim blaming is the answer here. And I think that that

Speaker 3 is both politically and practically a dubious. path.
So I think that the trying to take the air out and be the grown-ups and be the ones that care.

Speaker 3 I mean, there was people told me at the beginning of this race that the Biden message was going to be, he cares about people like you while Trump cares about himself. They didn't execute that message.

Speaker 3 They haven't yet.

Speaker 4 They tried. They tried.
It just didn't, they didn't continue on. Yeah, yeah.
But that seems like the best one.

Speaker 3 Yeah. But trying to focus on the first part of that.

Speaker 4 That seems like the smart idea. It's just,

Speaker 4 again, to our point that we keep coming back to, it's like, one,

Speaker 4 it's not clear that Biden can do it.

Speaker 4 But two, like, maybe I'm letting him off the hook a little too much here, but like, does the incentive structure, does the immediate ecosystem exist for that to even matter materially?

Speaker 4 Like, you know, yeah, I just don't know.

Speaker 3 Me neither. I think the acting like that, it's not a very complicated question and a big challenge, you know, would be trying to pull the wool over people's eyes.

Speaker 3 Like, I just, I think that there's no doubt that this complicates the Democrats' already complicated messaging this fall.

Speaker 3 I don't think that that means that Trump definitely won, but like, I think that I think you just have to be clear-eyed about that.

Speaker 4 This is minor relative to the larger message, but like there is something that,

Speaker 4 and you, I know this is something to your heart, but like guns, right? Like, 20-year-old owning an AR is like, I don't know, maybe that could be part of the messaging here.

Speaker 4 So, like, you know, maybe these guns should not be in the hands of 20-year-olds.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think so, man. Like, I've been banging the drum on Democrats talking about this for a while.
I think it's a mostly a consensus issue.

Speaker 3 I don't think people want 20-year-olds, state 18-year-olds, high school and college kids to have ARs unless they are professional, you know, police or in the military or like out of gun range.

Speaker 3 And it's a locked gun. I don't think that's an extreme view.
I think that's a winning view. Once again, we have a 20-year-old that does this.

Speaker 3 20-year-old boys shouldn't be able to fire off fucking eight rounds in under a minute.

Speaker 3 It's not smart. It's not practical.
And I think the best part of what Biden said at the press conference the other day was talking about how the Republicans want to control girls, not guns.

Speaker 3 Is that the one message that's going to win them in the election or whatever? No, but I do think it's something that they should talk about and they can talk about it. And like,

Speaker 3 okay,

Speaker 3 you know, what are some practical things? Like, we want this to stop. What are some practical things that can happen? We said at the top, like, this was a secret service disaster.

Speaker 3 You know, Richie Torres, a Democrat, was tweeting about this. Like, it is, you know, I think that there should be a review what the system is.
We want our political opponents to be protected.

Speaker 3 There's no place for violence. We also don't think that teenagers should have, you know, assault rifles.
Like, I think that those are absolutely good things to talk about. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 they tried, I think, to have this as a component of the bill that they did end up passing. It's stripped from the bill.
But like,

Speaker 4 it's, it is crazy. It's just crazy.
I mean, I, and it's, you say you think it's a consensus issue. It is a consensus.
I mean, if you trust the polls, it's a huge consensus issue.

Speaker 4 Again, I'm with you again.

Speaker 4 I don't, I don't think it's like going to be the predominant message from this, nor probably should it be, because I think there's huge questions about discourse and how we're conducting our politics.

Speaker 4 But like,

Speaker 4 I think it has to be in the mix.

Speaker 4 Like, Like, you got to talk about, you know, the troubled 20-year-old, often white men, not always, often white men, having access, easy access to ARs is just, is nuts to me.

Speaker 4 And there's got to be at least an attempt to try to limit that.

Speaker 3 This isn't even happening in other places.

Speaker 3 I mean, when we have these gun debates after mass shootings, you know, a lot of times the pro-gun crowd will say, will be like, oh, the Democrats are exaggerating the amount of mass shootings there are, right?

Speaker 3 Like when every town puts out the list of mass shootings, because, for example, this assassination attempt like wouldn't even count on the mass shooting list, right?

Speaker 3 Because it's like only one person died, right? So, you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 Like, that's how crazy we are.

Speaker 3 We're in the situation where this is happening, where, you know, it is oftentimes these young men that have access to these weapons. And like, it is crazy.

Speaker 3 And I think the Democrats, that is one thing Democrats can talk about, I think, in good conscience and not feel like they're having to tiptoe around some of these other issues that are more complicated.

Speaker 3 I I do, I want to close with just one thing.

Speaker 3 I got to say it. People come to this podcast to hear what I'm really thinking about, and

Speaker 3 I just can't pretend like I'm not thinking about this. Bill Maher did a little riff on this last night, too, that he posted on social media.

Speaker 3 Like, Trump is like the luckiest son of a bitch in the world. Like, it's really unbelievable.
You can't say that.

Speaker 4 I can't.

Speaker 3 Isn't it unbelievable?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 4 Like, you know, it's not lucky to be almost assassinated.

Speaker 3 No. It's not lucky?

Speaker 3 No, it's not. I mean, I guess i don't know man it's just i think that the way that things

Speaker 4 have conspired in his favor a lot of times just does boggle the mind i will say up until up until the assassination up until 705 or whatever time it was um yeah no i mean like look i think

Speaker 4 up until this point because i don't think you can say that's lucky i mean i mean obviously it's fortunate that it that bullet was not one inch over. I mean, that would have been obviously horrifying.

Speaker 3 And just like, just really quick, I've wagged my finger at J.D. Vance.
And I've seen some fucking terrible posts from people on the left about that.

Speaker 3 Like, oh, if he had only been a better shooter or one inch more. Like, what would have happened in this country?

Speaker 3 Like, whatever you think about Donald Trump, what would have happened in this country had Donald Trump been assassinated? Like, A, it's horrible. Violence is never the answer.

Speaker 3 Like, it's horrible for Trump and his family.

Speaker 3 But then the fallout, like, anybody who says that is, like, has the vision of somebody that like cannot look more than one inch in front of their nose and like a moat.

Speaker 4 Yes, I think that that's disgusting.

Speaker 4 I feel like that reaction is both inhumane, like it's hard to describe it as anything other than that, but also like it would have set us in an incredibly dangerous path.

Speaker 4 We're already on a very, very dangerous path. It's hard to even comprehend the reaction to what would have happened if the assassin would-be assassin had succeeded.

Speaker 3 Now,

Speaker 4 look, I think to your earlier point about Trump's luck, like, yes, you know, he ⁇

Speaker 4 if we'd sat here on January 7th, 2021, and told you that, like, one, you know, he would have become the Republican nominee without basically lifting a finger. He didn't do anything.

Speaker 4 He didn't do any debates. The impeachment efforts would have fizzled.
The prosecution efforts would have fizzled. The Supreme Court would have given him immunity.

Speaker 4 He would have ended up with Joe Biden having, you know, incredibly problematic moments in a debate like that.

Speaker 3 And he'd be on the front page of the New York Times with a raised fist and an American flag and a bloody ear.

Speaker 4 And having gone through all this, it's like

Speaker 4 there's something surreal about it, obviously, and there's something weirdly cinematic about it, too, in a scary cinema.

Speaker 3 How is this our world?

Speaker 3 It feels unreal.

Speaker 4 It does feel a little unreal. And when you're covering it, too, it's like...

Speaker 4 I told someone this, who did I tell it? Someone at the bulwark when they were talking about it. I was like, look, when I started political reporting, it was the 2008 Democratic primary.

Speaker 4 It was Hillary versus Obama. And I remember commenting to someone on the trail: I was like, it will never get crazier than this.
Like, this is the craziest shit ever. And it's only gotten crazier.

Speaker 4 It's like, it just gets crazier and crazier and crazier, minus Romney Obama. That was very normal.
And I feel like we're not even at the top of the mountain yet, like of the craziness.

Speaker 3 Hopefully, not knocking on wood, praying if you pray, but we have an ugly few months ahead of us. Sam Stein, thanks thanks for doing this.

Speaker 3 I felt it was important to get our initial reactions out to folks. And, you know, these things are going to continue to develop.
And

Speaker 3 we'll be talking about it all week. I've got Bill Crystal on the podcast tomorrow.
Appreciate Sam, who is outside at his in-laws' house with children upstairs

Speaker 3 doing the podcast work. So I appreciate it, brother.

Speaker 4 Thanks, Kim.

Speaker 3 We'll see y'all tomorrow with Bill Crystal. Peace.
There's something happening here.

Speaker 3 What it is ain't exactly clear

Speaker 3 There's a man with a gun over there

Speaker 3 Telling me I got to beware

Speaker 3 I think it's time to stop children, watch that sound Everybody look what's going on

Speaker 3 This battle line's being wrong

Speaker 3 And nobody's right if everybody's wrong

Speaker 3 Young people speak in their minds

Speaker 3 Are getting

Speaker 3 so much resistance from behind Time we stopped here, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down

Speaker 3 What a field day for the heat.

Speaker 3 A thousand people in the street

Speaker 3 singing songs and a carrying signs.

Speaker 3 Mostly say, hooray for our side.

Speaker 3 It's time we stop. Hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.

Speaker 3 Paranoia strikes beat

Speaker 3 into

Speaker 3 your life it will creep

Speaker 3 starts when you're always afraid

Speaker 3 Step by the line the man comes and take you away

Speaker 3 We better stop hey, what's that sound?

Speaker 3 Everybody look what's going now

Speaker 3 what's that sound? Everybody look what's going to stop. Now, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going to stop.

Speaker 3 What's that sound?

Speaker 3 The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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