Sarah Longwell, Jonathan V. Last, and Jonathan Martin: A Disaster

Speaker 1 Even though severe cases can be rare, respiratory syncytial virus or RSV is still the leading cause of hospitalization in babies under one.

Speaker 1 RSV often begins like a cold or the flu, but can quickly spread to your baby's lungs. Ask your doctor about preventative antibodies for your baby this season and visit protectagainstrsv.com.

Speaker 1 The information presented is for general educational purposes only. Please ask your healthcare provider about any questions regarding your health or your baby's health.

Speaker 2 Even when you're playing music,

Speaker 2 you're always listening to your baby, especially when RSV is on your mind.

Speaker 2 Bifortis, nercevimab ALIP, is the first and only long-acting preventative antibody that gives babies the RSV antibodies they lack.

Speaker 2 Bifortis is a prescription medicine used to help prevent serious lung disease caused by RSV or respiratory syncytial virus in babies under age one born during or entering their first RSV season and children up to 24 months who remain at risk of severe RSV RSV disease through their second RSV season.

Speaker 2 Your baby shouldn't receive Baportis if they have a history of serious allergic reactions to Baphortis, nursevimab ALIP, or any of its ingredients.

Speaker 2 Tell your baby's doctor about any medicines they're taking and all their medical conditions, including bleeding or bruising problems. Serious allergic reactions have happened.

Speaker 2 Get medical help right away if your child has any of the following signs or symptoms of a serious allergic reaction, such as swelling of the face, mouth, or tongue, difficulty swallowing or breathing, unresponsiveness, bluish color of skin, lips, or underfingernails, muscle weakness, severe rash, hives, or itching.

Speaker 2 Most common side effects include rash and pain, swelling, or hardness at their injection site. Individual results may vary.
Ask your baby's doctor about Bayfortis.

Speaker 2 Visit Bayfortis.com or call 1-855-BEFORTIS.

Speaker 1 Even though severe cases can be rare, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is still the leading cause of hospitalization in babies under one.

Speaker 1 RSV often begins like a cold or the flu, but can quickly spread to your baby's lungs. Ask your doctor about preventative antibodies for your baby this season and visit protectagainstrsv.com.

Speaker 1 The information presented is for general educational purposes only. Please ask your healthcare provider about any questions regarding your health or your baby's health.

Speaker 4 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake. Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.

Speaker 9 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage.

Speaker 12 The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days.

Speaker 13 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.

Speaker 14 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.

Speaker 9 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.

Speaker 15 Hey guys, usually on Fridays, I'm doing a big weekend interview for you, and we have a secret podcast for Bulwark Plus subscribers that is JVL and Sarah.

Speaker 15 But because you might have heard we have a very big news day and a lot of important things to discuss, I pulled the secret podcast over onto the main feed. So it's me and JVL and Sarah.

Speaker 15 But if you want to support the Bulwark and you want to get pure, uncut JVL and Sarah and you have not done so yet, join the Bulwark.thebulwark.com. All right.

Speaker 15 Up next, we've got me, JVL, and Sarah, and then Jonathan Martin of Flood Cup.

Speaker 15 Hello, and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
It's Friday, June 28th. And, you know, we had a little change of lineup this morning.

Speaker 15 We've got the next level crew here to respond to what was the worst presidential debate in American history last night. I've got JVL and Sarah.
Hey, guys.

Speaker 3 Hey, buddy. Hey, buddy.

Speaker 15 Okay. So we have a lot of, I did the Sarah there.
Okay.

Speaker 15 We have a lot of takes on the Bulwark.com this morning, which range from Joe Biden should absolutely drop out to Joe Biden should seriously consider dropping out. So we will get to that.

Speaker 15 But I think it's important context before we talk about the Joe Biden machinations to talk first about Donald Trump.

Speaker 15 Donald Trump last night, in my opinion, gave the worst debate performance on substance of any presidential candidate ever, non-Donald Trump category.

Speaker 15 Maybe Admiral James Stockdale would be the only other one in the game. He defended a riot at the Capitol.
He talked about immigrants taking black jobs. He

Speaker 15 weirdly attacked his opponent's son for no good reason. He bragged about his golf game.

Speaker 15 And it was a performance that, like, on a scale of normal politicians, it was like a two on a scale from one to ten. And it was deeply, he promised retribution against his opponent on stage.

Speaker 15 It was a deeply scary and bad substantive performance, in my opinion. Do you guys agree with that? What do you think about Donald Trump's performance, Sarah?

Speaker 3 All he did was lie. And you know, I just, I just got out of a focus group.
So obviously we're trying to focus group this right now.

Speaker 3 And it was not lost on, and these were all Trump voters who are kind of out on Trump. And so this is a category of people that we always talk to because we view them as persuadable.

Speaker 3 And so they were very aware that the performance last night by Donald Trump was filled with lies. And in fact, many of them sort of said that

Speaker 3 he was lying the whole time and that he was saying crazy things. So I last night, as I was watching it, was like, you know, sometimes people say insane things, but like in a normal tone.

Speaker 3 And for Donald Trump's saying things in a normal tone allows him to be winning, you know, the expectations game already.

Speaker 3 And so I was pleased to hear these voters have it not be lost on them that the substance of what Trump was saying was problematic. Like he wasn't doing anything last night.

Speaker 3 that made these guys be like, wow, this guy's really changed. Like this is a, you know, so, so that is not where the voters were, and so I think that's good, right?

Speaker 15 Another thing I should have mentioned: like, he's asked about child care costs, and he's like, The migrants are attacking Wisconsin. You know, he did not engage on the substance, like, multiple times.

Speaker 15 Jake had to be like, The question was about child care costs, you know, and like you started talking about immigration.

Speaker 3 So, like, to me, this was where Trump was being effective, though, right? Like, he's asked about January 6th.

Speaker 3 He's anything he's asked about, he turns it back to his great economy, the problems with immigration. Like his prep

Speaker 3 was on how to deflect and pivot away from what are massive liabilities. Um, and I think from a

Speaker 3 just you and I both know when you are sort of training people for debates, there's often the like satisfy and steer as a as a tool, right?

Speaker 3 You're like, kind of answer the question only the way a little bit that you want to, and then quickly go to the things that are your strengths.

Speaker 3 And like he was doing that last night, and he was doing it effectively. But it's it's a question of can people identify the mendacity in there?

Speaker 3 But to do that, you have to be sort of read in on some of the substance.

Speaker 15 JVL.

Speaker 15 Am I overstating it? No. I mean, Trump was, he does this thing where he is incoherent or he says things that are non-sequiturs or he just makes things up.

Speaker 15 Like, for instance, illegal immigrants are taking black jobs.

Speaker 15 Black unemployment is at the lowest rate it's been over a sustained period of time in American history right now.

Speaker 15 So, what does that even mean? Right. I mean, forget

Speaker 15 a black job. What's a black job? But like, take the most charitable reading of that, which is just he means any job currently held.
Don't answer that question.

Speaker 15 No, but like, maybe he means any job currently held by a black person. Right.
Maybe he's not referring, like, oh, that's a black job. He's just saying that job is held by a black person.

Speaker 15 Let's just pretend that.

Speaker 15 Even under the most charitable reading, it's just nonsense. Right.

Speaker 15 And then, you know, talking about NATO, the parts were actually where he was the weakest and Biden was the best were talking about Ukraine and Russia. And

Speaker 15 Trump talked about, he said, they, they in this context being NATO, were going out of business before he became president. What does that mean?

Speaker 3 It's a fire sale at NATO, selling off the things that aren't nailed down.

Speaker 15 So it betrays a person who has been president, who doesn't actually understand anything about how the world works.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 I

Speaker 15 but as Sarah said, he was reasonable Trump last night. He wasn't I wrote about this early this week.
There are two modes of Trump.

Speaker 15 There is like the Trump who yells about the sharks and the batteries and stuff. And then there's the reasonable Trump.
And he did his reasonable Trump.

Speaker 15 So because he did it in a calm voice and he didn't shout.

Speaker 15 And because he was confined enough that he didn't take digressions that were too long because he only had two minutes at a time.

Speaker 3 It was a substantively terrible debate performance.

Speaker 15 But yes, it was a terrible debate performance. But here's the thing.
I don't,

Speaker 15 this is not me attempting to defend Joe Biden. I don't know how anybody

Speaker 15 counters that. Look, let's pretend Pete Buttigieg is up there, right? I mean, it just, oh my God,

Speaker 15 it's just Trump doing his Trump thing and people are okay, right? Like people are just, people are basically okay with the Trump thing

Speaker 15 because he just gets graded on a different curve than any other other figure in politics.

Speaker 15 That's what I'm what I'm getting at there. Sure, he gets great on a different curve, but I mean there was softball after softball he put out there.

Speaker 15 For somebody that was doing the set, this is how we get to the Joe Biden of this. I wanted to talk about Trump first for this reason.
So you've transitioned to SJBL. I would reject to that.

Speaker 15 I thought Donald Trump, he was only good on performance if you're saying that good is like he didn't like try to bite Joe Biden or like lash out at him.

Speaker 15 The only time he actually emotionally lashed out was when his golf game was criticized, which in itself, I think, is something you might have been able to observe if you were a deft counterparty.

Speaker 15 You know, he gave opportunity after opportunity. Andrew Egger brought this up in the

Speaker 15 morning shots this morning. Like the Joe Biden answer on abortion compared to Kamala Harris's on CNN later.
Like there were plenty of ways to counter it.

Speaker 15 It doesn't mean that Trump is going to go down to zero or that he wasn't going to get graded on a curve or that wasn't unfair.

Speaker 15 You know, as David Frum wrote in The Atlantic very aptly, like it was a total indictment on this whole system that Donald Trump is allowed to stand up there and get treated like, granted, all that.

Speaker 15 Like, yeah, he gets great on a curve. Yeah.

Speaker 15 But he still, even on the curve, was horrific substantively last night. And his counterparty, Joe Biden, was utterly incapable of making a single coherent point against him, a single one.
Agree.

Speaker 15 And people are like, the Barack Obama debate was bad. Like on a scale of all, zero to 100.
Like Mitt Romney got a 92, Barack Obama got a 71.

Speaker 15 Donald Trump got a 35. Joe Biden got a zero like last night on like debate skill performance.
Like

Speaker 15 he went up against somebody that offered him plenty of opportunities and like he can't do it. He couldn't do it.
Do you disagree with that, JVL?

Speaker 15 Is that an incorrect assessment of Joe Biden's performance last night?

Speaker 15 I agree with it completely.

Speaker 15 Nobody has been, I said this in the Post show last night. I've been very high on Joe Biden from like the minute he declared his candidacy in 2019.

Speaker 15 I thought he was a very good candidate in 2020. I think he's generally been an exceptionally good president since then.
And he has

Speaker 15 given a bunch of good speeches as recently as the State of the Union.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 last night was the single worst performance ever on a presidential debate stage, maybe including primaries.

Speaker 15 I think it was the single worst public performance, politics or non-politics in the mass media era. People who want to wave aside this and be like, you know, look, but I'm still voting for Joe Biden.

Speaker 15 Sure, I'm still voting for Joe Biden, too.

Speaker 15 To blind yourself to how catastrophically bad last night was is unwise, I think.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 now maybe,

Speaker 15 maybe it doesn't matter. Like maybe two weeks from now, the polling hasn't moved and everything is basically the same.
And maybe,

Speaker 15 you know, maybe in the long run, Joe Biden's able to roll a couple double sixes and he wins the, you know, he stays in the race and he said those things are all possible, right?

Speaker 15 But just evaluating what we saw last night, if you're not troubled by that, then I don't know what to say.

Speaker 15 I just don't know what to say. Because if you look at that and we're like, yeah, no, it was okay.
Like, was he sick? Sure. Yeah.
Great. I'm sick too.
I get it. Was CNN terrible? Yes.
CNN was terrible.

Speaker 15 Right. Well, did Trump just lie? Yes.
All Trump did was lie. Right.
Biden's performance was the sum of all all fears it was what everybody has always

Speaker 15 on on the pro-democracy side has all you know all the the grabbing onto the arms of the chair every time he right

Speaker 15 and up to this point right we've always grabbed onto the arms of chair and then like he's done it and we've all been

Speaker 15 okay

Speaker 15 last night was was the nightmare

Speaker 15 and If you're not prepared to grapple with that, then I don't know. Again, I don't know what to say because I don't understand.
I don't understand.

Speaker 15 Yeah. Sarah, so I want both your take on this and what you heard from the focus groups.
I will

Speaker 15 offer a one-person focus group. My very best friend in the world does not like politics, doesn't watch politics.
We don't talk about politics. He never talks to me about politics.

Speaker 15 He watched for five minutes last night. He was horrified.
It was like, you know, somebody coming in clean, your non-paying attention voter, looks at that and is like, what is happening?

Speaker 15 How is this real? I'm curious your take on it, Sarah, and then whether there are any green shoots from the voters you've talked to.

Speaker 3 Well, let me back up for a second. So, last night, I watched the debate at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
So, I'm out here in Aspen. So, it's on stage.

Speaker 15 It was average people. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 It's a bunch of Democrats, right? A bunch of, I mean, as the best I could tell, these are Joe Biden's people.

Speaker 3 These are wealthy people who came to Aspen, who wanted to hear about ideas and talk politics. And we all watched the debate together.
And look, they were

Speaker 3 jeering at Trump when Trump would lie, like the, you know, and scoffing and things like that. But also, like, people were in pain in the room.

Speaker 3 And I'll tell you what, so was I, because I knew we did like a pre thing. And in my pre, we had 30 minutes, you know, the panel.

Speaker 3 And it was me and Celinda Lake, who's a dump pollster, Mike Madrid, who's one of the early Lincoln Project guys who then does like.

Speaker 15 He was on the pod a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, so he does the spin. Yeah.
Okay. And then Eddie Gloud Jr.
He's on Morning Joe all the time. Okay.
So, so, and Jonathan Capart was moderating. So we, we did our upfront.

Speaker 3 What are we looking for? And I said the thing that I've been saying on these pods the whole time. Biden needs to look alive.
Right. Like Biden needs to go on offense.

Speaker 3 Biden needs to be able to go on offense. If he can do that, then these double haters, like the main thing people are worried about is his age.
He's got to, he's got to absolve them of that fear. And

Speaker 3 he didn't. And I watched the opening of the debate.
and saw how he looked from the jump, his voice, how his voice sounded.

Speaker 3 And pretty, pretty early on, I thought, it doesn't matter what he says because I can't understand it. And neither can anybody else.
Like, he was talking too fast.

Speaker 3 He was clearly jammed with facts as though he was debating somebody else on the merits and substance of policy and not a madman who's going to lie the whole time.

Speaker 3 That early part where he was trailed off and then just said, Medicare. And so I watched this.

Speaker 3 I knew pretty quickly, like,

Speaker 3 okay, this is, this is it. This is really, really bad.

Speaker 3 And I knew I was going to have to get back up on stage after I had just made this big bull case, the bull case for Biden and what he needed to do and how he was going to do it and how it was going to turn this race around.

Speaker 3 And I got up and I basically said to people, like, I can't, I have a job. I have a job that I want to do.
My job is to beat Donald Trump. I'm not in the electing Joe Biden business.

Speaker 3 I'm in the beating Donald Trump business. And

Speaker 3 we can't solve a problem without being honest about the problem that is in front of us. And we all just watched.
And I was like, we all watched the same thing.

Speaker 3 Then Cinda Linda Lake and Mike Madrid both kind of tried to spin it. Like, yep, wasn't good, but like, this is about Trump.
You make it about Trump.

Speaker 3 And I was just, I mean, we argued about it on stage. I was like, absolutely not.
Like, here's the thing. I have been gaslit by the Republican Party now for a long time about Trump.

Speaker 3 I am not going to let people gaslight me into saying that what I just saw last night isn't what I saw. Because that debate performance didn't just open up questions about, can we elect Joe Biden?

Speaker 3 It's opening up a lot of questions about like, can Joe Biden do this job?

Speaker 15 Especially in five years. Yeah.

Speaker 3 No, and nobody thinks that. And listen, I was in this room of Democrats and I was saying my, I was saying what I thought was true.
I told them I owed them my best analysis and not spin.

Speaker 3 And my best analysis was that I have not wanted to play fantasy politics. I have not been in the Joe Biden needs to step aside.
Once it was him, I was like, what are you going to do?

Speaker 3 And look, I wanted him not to run again. I was very clear on that for a really long time.
But once it was him, I said, Okay, we're all just going to have to get there. But you know what?

Speaker 3 Last night, we have to figure something out.

Speaker 15 Where was the room on it? How'd the room? They were with me.

Speaker 3 They were with me. Yeah.
I mean, like, Mike Madrid kind of did a little bit of like a cre de corps. Like, there's nothing to do but grab our swords and like be on offense.

Speaker 3 And like, people were like, Yeah, like, I need that. You know, I need some hope here.
But, like, people were also like, What can we do something?

Speaker 3 Like, there was a lot of people who are just like panicked at it.

Speaker 15 You talked to some actual voters, though, this morning. Because I do want to get back to what Joe Biden should do, but I'm curious.

Speaker 15 I'm open to the possibility that every single person texting me and messaging me on Instagram and calling me and DMing me is wrong. And that

Speaker 15 people

Speaker 15 who didn't go to college or whatever saw a different thing than I did. Did you see any hope of that in your focus group this morning?

Speaker 3 I said this before.

Speaker 3 My green shoots are this, that listening to those voters, they didn't be like, oh, because again, Trump voters who were kind of out on Trump after January 6th, you know, don't like him.

Speaker 3 And they weren't like, oh, I thought Trump was great. Now I feel great voting for him.
I'll tell you what it did do, though. The people who had been leaning Biden over Trump were off of him.

Speaker 3 They were talking about being embarrassed. I mean, there was words like embarrassed.
It was words like, you know, sick to my stomach. You know, I can't believe this is the best we can do.

Speaker 3 And look, they weren't mean to Biden. They were just like, Biden's cognitively can't do it.
Biden's cognitively not there. And that was it.
That was all they were saying.

Speaker 3 And look, they don't think Trump's fit. They were clear that Trump was lying.
Trump was BSing. Trump wasn't answering the questions.

Speaker 3 Like even more so than maybe I thought, they were on to Trump, but they did not think Joe Biden could do it.

Speaker 3 And they were all more third-party curious, or a bunch of them were saying they just might leave it blank or not vote. Like they're just like, can't do it.

Speaker 15 I mean, it was embarrassing. I don't know.
I mean, JVL is a teenager, so I don't know.

Speaker 15 Maybe you have some thoughts on how to teen, like, how do you, how do you show that to a teenager and be like, America is really great.

Speaker 15 This is, these are the guys that we have that are going to be the president. And it was embarrassing.
And it wasn't just the performative.

Speaker 15 There's almost no point in talking about Joe Biden's performance, like on the figure skating side of things, because it was literally just like falling down.

Speaker 15 like on the ice. I mean, like there was no, there's no even point in discussing the performative part.
The substantive part was bad.

Speaker 15 He did not make coherent, substantive cases. He would get stuck into mental cul-de-sacs.
He got asked about abortion. He starts talking about migrant death, but not even in a way that makes sense.

Speaker 15 You know, occasionally he would make, he'd have like three good sentences and you'd be like, okay. All right.

Speaker 15 Like he's making some good points here on NATO or January 6th, but then he'd start talking about something else. And then I mean, you're right, Jack.

Speaker 15 It's like the transcript is as bad as watching it was.

Speaker 15 and so like this is what crystal wrote about this morning it's like i i don't think that joe biden has dementia but i also like how do you look at that person and say that if there is a crisis in this country if there is some sort of crisis in the year 2028

Speaker 15 Like let's say there's a somebody threatens to nuke us.

Speaker 15 There's a Cuba missile crisis in the year 2028 That that guy is up for it and if the response is well good people around him Trump won't Kamala will be there it's like well then let's just have kamala or one of the people around him run let's have tony blinken run for president you know that is the reality and this is why i'm frustrated with some of the wagon circling that we're seeing this morning and part of it is like i think that

Speaker 3 going into last night i was deeply rooting for Joe Biden, right? He needed to have a great performance and I wanted him to show the country he could do it.

Speaker 3 And if he had done that, that's what we'd be talking about today. But what we saw last night, the idea that we can just run away from it, I think is malpractice.
And

Speaker 3 I've been fighting with Bill about this, or Bill Crystal. But like, here's one of the things the focus group members were saying that I think is exactly right.
They were like, it's not about age.

Speaker 3 They were like, I don't know. I know 82-year-olds who are super with it.
And that's fine. They were like, they're both old, but like,

Speaker 3 Joe Biden doesn't seem like he can do it. And that's what they all said.
They were, they weren't even being mean. They were just like, it's not really about age.

Speaker 3 It's about what you can do and he can't do it. The wagon circling is a disservice to everybody.
Like Joe Biden has to, I honest, I think he has to do what is best for this country.

Speaker 3 And what is best for this country is that he steps aside, releases the delegates. I don't know all the legal machinations, but like, I think he can,

Speaker 3 there are ways to get around Kamala, and I think they should.

Speaker 15 JVL, I just want your take take because the response to this is,

Speaker 15 okay, Tim, yeah, it was horrible. He was terrible, but like, he's been a good president for four years.

Speaker 15 There isn't any reason to have concern about a crisis to four years from now because Joe Biden's done a good job.

Speaker 15 That's cope, right?

Speaker 15 Is there something to that? I am slightly different from...

Speaker 15 Bill and I think you on this. I don't have much of concern about Biden's ability to govern over the next four years.
At age 86? At age 86. I mean, I think it's likely to be fine.

Speaker 15 My concerns are strictly political.

Speaker 15 Here's the problem.

Speaker 15 We can be concerned, but ultimately we have no agency here because it's his decision. And if he decides not to step aside,

Speaker 15 like then I'll go, well, so what do we do? You know, and the answer is, I think

Speaker 15 you make the case for Biden as

Speaker 15 truthfully as possible. And I say, yeah,

Speaker 15 I honestly do think, and this is the first time

Speaker 15 ever that I have looked at it and thought, all right, maybe he should step aside.

Speaker 15 Because Sarah and I have had this discussion three dozen times over the course of the last two years.

Speaker 15 And Sarah would say, gotta step aside so that, you know, Big Gretsch or Warnock or, you know, Josh Shapiro, right?

Speaker 15 And I would say there is no evidence that any of these people would be faring any better.

Speaker 15 And I am open to the possibility that if Biden took your advice, our advice, and stepped aside this afternoon, I am open to the possibility that whoever winds up replacing him on the ticket would wind up doing worse come November 3rd than Biden would have come November 3rd.

Speaker 15 I think it's that is possible. But at the same time, this is the first time I've looked at this and thought,

Speaker 15 no, maybe the better percentage play here is for Biden to step aside. And if I'm saying that, like, again,

Speaker 15 I don't understand people who

Speaker 15 looked at last night and wouldn't say that. Right.

Speaker 15 Like, the people have to talk to him. Like, people around him.

Speaker 15 And this is what I wrote in the article this morning about Jill and Joe need to have a family talk, but Mike Donald needs to have a talk with him and Ron Klain.

Speaker 15 And I'm deeply concerned that everything that I've heard is that that inner circle won't do it. And what I am saying to those people is that you have a patriotic duty to at least talk it through.

Speaker 15 Like, and to at least be honest with us about what he's capable of and what a path forward is.

Speaker 15 Because like

Speaker 15 just saying like, oh, you guys are bedwedding and oh, you have to vote for Joe Biden anyway. Yeah, sure.
Yeah. I'll vote for Joe Biden anyway.
If Joe Biden is nominated next month in Chicago.

Speaker 15 This podcast will be three months talking about how we need to elect him anyway and he will have good people around him and Trump will have crazy people around him, and it's an existential threat, and it's not a great choice, but it's the choice we have to make, obviously.

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 15 there's a choice now, and these guys have to at least talk.

Speaker 15 I'm going to be very fucking pissed at Ron Klein and Mike Donnelly and Anita Dunn and all these people if they don't at least have a serious talk about this.

Speaker 15 Right? Of course. That's crazy.
Yeah,

Speaker 15 this is a moment where, and again, I think the Democratic Party in general, not universally, but in general, the Democratic Party's response to Trump and Trumpism and Trump's authoritarian attempt

Speaker 15 has been very good. They haven't played perfect baseball, but in general, they've been very good.
Their response was to move towards the center, not towards the left.

Speaker 15 Nancy Pelosi, I think, conducted herself very well as speaker during the Trump years. Biden adopted a path of looking forward to be bipartisan and all that.

Speaker 15 The Democratic Party needs to continue to be good and responsible in this moment.

Speaker 15 And part of that means the party leaders need to have very serious conversations about this and can't just do the fall in line. Look, I mean, again, it's not up to them.

Speaker 15 If Biden decides not to, and as Sarah says, he's nominated, then at that point, they got to grab the sword and go out or whatever. But

Speaker 15 there is still time. Yes.

Speaker 3 You're watching everybody do this thing. I'm watching everyone do this thing.
Even the folks last night were kind of doing it. They were like, Biden needs to say this.

Speaker 3 And they were all like, you know, putting their words in.

Speaker 3 And they're basically being, and Trump has all these liabilities. And they're ticking off Trump's liabilities.
And I'm like, yes, Donald Trump is an extremely flawed candidate.

Speaker 3 The fact that anybody's not beating him by 20 points is a deep mystery. He's convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, an all-around bad person with terrible policies and a terrible character.

Speaker 3 You have to have a candidate who can prosecute that case.

Speaker 3 Like the fact that last night with all of Trump's many liabilities, like Democrats seem to be coping by attacking, you know, Trump and listing all the vulnerabilities he has. Fine.

Speaker 3 You need a candidate who can make the case of those vulnerabilities. And last night, I'm not going to give the moderators any shit because they moderated a perfectly clean debate.

Speaker 3 It is on Joe Biden to fact check Trump. It's on Joe Biden to push back.
Like that's what the debate is.

Speaker 3 The moderators, look, do I wish that we had had a quick fact-check function that, but, like, that's not what's going to happen.

Speaker 3 You say there's no mechanism for someone like Trump, like, that's not true. There is.

Speaker 3 The mechanism is that there is an opposing candidate who can call him a liar and can effectively adjudicate that case publicly. And I think Pikachu Buddha Judge would have done that.

Speaker 3 And I think Josh Shapiro could have done that. And I think Richard Whitmer could have done that.
I think the idea that with his immense vulnerabilities,

Speaker 3 people can make the case against him. We will continue to make the case against him.
That's all we're going to do, right?

Speaker 3 I'm in the business of making sure people understand Trump's liabilities, but like, you got to have a candidate who can make that case a little bit.

Speaker 15 From like the subhab of From's piece in The Atlantic, which I'll put in the show notes I've referenced, is the whole, you know, the debate was a travesty because the whole premise was to treat a failed coup leader as a legitimate candidate for the presidency again.

Speaker 15 I agree with that. Like, there have been a million failure points before last night, right? Every responsible Republican in the news media, the fucking justice, Merrick Garland,

Speaker 15 we could go down a whole list of people that like, how are we here? Well, we're treating this guy like a normal candidate. He should be in jail.
Yes, agree. But okay, now we're here.

Speaker 15 Like there was not a single,

Speaker 15 maybe I'm wrong. If you're even on a Biden stand TikTok account, he did not do a single sentence that was good.

Speaker 15 Like there was not a single attack on Donald Trump across, like his most vigorous attack on Trump was on the golf scores.

Speaker 3 It doesn't matter, but like Biden was also wrong about that. Like they, like, Biden had to like retract his handicap.

Speaker 15 Sorry, JVL, do you have anything on the CNN side of it?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I would just say, I would just say, go back and look at the Trump-Biden debates in 2020. And Biden cleaned the floor with him.

Speaker 15 And Biden did this very effective stuff where he would sort of look straight to camera and talk to people. And it was folks, folks.
Well, you know,

Speaker 15 and

Speaker 15 what we saw last night was categorically different.

Speaker 15 It was categorically different. It was, again, I just, you can't polish this.

Speaker 4 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake. Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.

Speaker 9 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage.

Speaker 12 The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days.

Speaker 13 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.

Speaker 14 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.

Speaker 9 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.

Speaker 18 Dude, this new bacon, egg, and chicken biscuit from AMPM, total winner, winner chicken breakfast. Chicken breakfast? Come on.
I think you mean chicken dinner, bro.

Speaker 15 Nah, brother.

Speaker 18 Crispy bacon, fluffy eggs, juicy chicken, and a buttery biscuit?

Speaker 15 That's the perfect breakfast. All right, let me try it.
Hmm, okay. Yeah.

Speaker 18 Totally winner-winner chicken breakfast. I'm gonna have to keep this right here.

Speaker 19 Make sure every breakfast is a winner with the delicious new bacon, egg, and chicken biscuit from AMPM. AMPM, too much good stuff.

Speaker 15 All right, so let's go. So there's the process of how it would work to get rid of him, and then there's the question of what he could do if we end up with Biden.
So let's do the first one first.

Speaker 15 There are ways around Kamala, but not really,

Speaker 15 is really the short of it. You know, it is about the convention delegates now.
Joe Biden has all the 90% of the convention delegates. They're not bound.
So there could be some sort of floor effort.

Speaker 15 I lived through that in 2016. If Joe Biden is, it's really hard to imagine how you get 50% of delegates in a hostile attack on Joe Biden on the floor if he's in there.
So Joe Biden has to step aside.

Speaker 15 I assume he runs out his presidency. There are a lot of awkward conversations there.
If you can't run, why are you still, you know, do you resign the presidency?

Speaker 15 But there's not time to nominate a vice president. So he probably stays in the presidency.
And he could endorse somebody. It would be very challenging not to endorse Kamala Harris.
And then

Speaker 15 if not, then you go to a convention floor fight like it's the 1970s. And other people could put their hat in the ring.

Speaker 15 But it becomes very, I think just as a practical matter, you don't really have time for a real campaign. I mean, maybe the DNC could host a debate.

Speaker 15 Maybe you have a DNC debate the day before in Chicago or something. But I think it becomes very challenging to pass on a vice president that's the first black woman vice president at that point.

Speaker 15 I mean, that like something would have to be,

Speaker 15 it's hard for me to even imagine the scenario, but go ahead and try to paint it.

Speaker 3 Okay, so here, here's what has to happen: people have to understand that Joe Biden can't do it, and Kamala Harris can't be the person.

Speaker 15 Both of them have to do it. I reject the second point, but go ahead, but continue.

Speaker 3 You think Kamala can do it?

Speaker 15 I mean, Kamala would not, if Joe Biden had dropped out in 2022, would Kamala have been the horse I would have ridden? No. Okay, like, probably not.
But, like, Kamala is capable of

Speaker 15 doing a campaign against Donald Trump. Like, Kamala can criticize Donald Trump.
Kamala can give a speech. Kamala can, you know, go in hostile interviews.

Speaker 15 I reject that she's totally unacceptable, but I don't think that she's the strongest. And to J.Ville's point, maybe she ends up doing weaker than Biden.

Speaker 15 We're in a really bad situation right now, but I think that she would performatively be like a million times better than Joe Biden.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I could potentially get there on that particular point. My best case scenario is this.

Speaker 3 Joe Biden steps aside and releases his delegates that Whitmer and Shapiro, some combination thereof, like the governors all get together, all the Democratic governors, and they say, we're going to back, and including Westmore, we're going to back Whitmer and Shapiro.

Speaker 3 Because here's the thing about one of the main reasons that it's really tough to switch people out, one of the reasons that JVL kind of always put forward as an issue is like, these people don't have name ID.

Speaker 3 And that is true. Like, they don't have name ID.
The average person across the country doesn't know who Josh Shapiro is or who Gretchen Whitmer is or who Westmore is or whatever.

Speaker 3 But you know who does know who Gretchen Whitmer is? The voters of Michigan, one of the key swing states. You know who does know who Josh Shapiro is?

Speaker 3 The people of Pennsylvania who voted for him by a 14-point margin. Gretchen Whitmer won Michigan by a 10-point margin.

Speaker 3 Two of the key swing states already have really high name ID for those two people. And they are Midwestern governors and they are young.

Speaker 3 And I think that if all the governors came out and said, this is who we think should do it, these are excellent candidates. They backed them hard, like the Democratic Party would have to be unified.

Speaker 3 And Kamala and Biden would both have to say,

Speaker 3 okay. Like it would have to be a democratic family decision for the good of the country.
and for the best case scenario to beat Trump.

Speaker 3 And I'll tell you, this is a moment where people have to make a decision that is not about their own ego.

Speaker 3 I would be very disappointed in Joe Biden after that and Joe Biden and everybody else to decide that the best thing for him to do is to continue on. It would be a deeply selfish proposition.

Speaker 3 And of course I'll back him and of course I'll do everything I can if he does it, but I think it is wrong.

Speaker 3 And I think that there is a world in which consensus can be reached behind closed doors and then people can go out strong with a consensus candidate that people say they're going to back.

Speaker 3 That's what parties are for. It's the one thing political parties are for.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 And also, just by the way, like we're the only fucking system, not the only, but in most advanced democracies, the parties just choose to choose who the prime minister is. Like, you know what I mean?

Speaker 15 Like, this is how things work in other countries. It's not like a crazy system, an anti-democratic system, right? But again,

Speaker 15 Joe Biden has the delegates, right? So he has to

Speaker 15 release them. A challenge to him, I guess, is possible.
I mean, you know, who the hell knows? JVL, do you have anything on the convention question?

Speaker 15 I think there are only two

Speaker 15 realistic scenarios for Biden stepping down

Speaker 15 in terms of who the nominee is.

Speaker 15 And in one of those, the nominee is Kamala Harris. I think that's the 90% scenario.
And the other, it's Gavin Newsome,

Speaker 15 because Gavin Newsom has already been thinking about this. Right.

Speaker 15 I mean, Gavin Newsome, it is not true that he could plug and play a campaign in the way that Kamala Harris could, but the guy has clearly had this on his brain.

Speaker 15 If Joe Biden were to step aside, I think we should be realistic that the alternative is unlikely to be Whitmer or Shapiro

Speaker 15 or any of those people. Unlikely, but we're an uncharted charter to sure.
I'll say I saw Gavin last night.

Speaker 15 I don't want to betray any confidences, but Gavin, despite the fact that Sarah's mean to him all the time, Gavin is apparently a fan because he recognized me across the room.

Speaker 15 He gave a very full-throated defense of Joe Biden last time. I think it's kind of hard to get to Gavin, really.

Speaker 15 To me, it's like if you're getting rid of Kamala, well, who knows? Again, it would be up to the delegates.

Speaker 15 Joe Biden would not be able to give his delegates to Kamala, but it's very hard for me in a party that's core base is black women that like they're going to pass over a black woman for a white guy who is her in-state rival.

Speaker 15 Like that's just not going to happen.

Speaker 3 This idea that you can't bypass Kamala Harris, I don't know. I've been listening to voters for years about Kamala Harris.
Black, white, Latino. I think she probably does better with young people.

Speaker 3 But like, I've not heard black voters be like, oh, yeah, I would be furious if they, like, people are just like, I don't really see her. I had high hopes, but she's not doing much.

Speaker 3 I don't think anybody would care. I think people over-index on this identity stuff in a way that I don't think is real.

Speaker 15 Maybe. I also think that, though, the low bar for Kamala is like, isn't that how the narrative of this stuff goes? It's like somebody steps up to the plate.

Speaker 15 Somebody steps up to the moment and does it. But also, I mean, so she starts with the name ID, right? I mean, it isn't just that, right?

Speaker 15 It isn't just identity politics. She is the sitting vice president.
She has stature and gravitas simply because of that. She has been through national spotlight.
She has been vetted fully.

Speaker 15 I'm so happy. So there's any, so if there's any doubt, we've got people being like, misogyny.
It's like, this is woman on woman crime. It's like Sarah's one.
that's like ridiculous.

Speaker 3 I've been listening to voters.

Speaker 15 Yeah, no, I know. I'm just teasing.
I'm not convinced 100%

Speaker 15 that if we could run like the two timelines, one with Josh Shapiro at the head of the ticket, one with Kamala Harris, the head of the ticket, I'm not convinced that Shapiro does better every single time.

Speaker 15 That's all. That's all I'm trying to say.
The subtext of a lot of this, the whole time that Bill has been out there being like, we should replace Joe. We should replace Joe.

Speaker 15 We're going to get Whitmer Warnock.

Speaker 15 A lot of the subtext of why some of us have been like, no, I don't think that that's going to happen is because we've believed that it is overwhelmingly likely to be combo. Maybe not.

Speaker 15 Maybe it won't be, but it's overwhelmingly likely. And up until 14 hours ago, I was like, that's a worse choice.
This morning, I judge it to be a significantly better choice.

Speaker 15 Not guaranteed to be better choice. Not guaranteed to be a better choice,

Speaker 15 but probably a better choice. I'm exactly where you are, Tim.
Anything else on that, Sarah, before we move on to Joe?

Speaker 3 I'd be very worried about it being Kamala.

Speaker 3 I think that what we have seen of her, again, using my eyes, what I have seen of a person performing the job and doing the work publicly, it's been deeply unimpressive.

Speaker 3 And the voters don't care for her. And this is the thing right now.

Speaker 3 You might be listening to me right now, listener, and saying, but misogyny, but racism, but, you know, the moderators, but whatever. And I just, all of that can be true.

Speaker 3 I can stipulate every point of it. And the only thing that matters to me is beating Donald Trump and who can beat Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 And I would just be very concerned that Kamala can't beat Donald Trump in a way that I think other people can. And you can not like the way that voters judge Kamala, but the fact is that they do.

Speaker 3 Now, I will say, I think I agree with you guys, though, that because she hasn't been seen a ton, right? If she came out and she did perform, right, she just goes on offense against Trump all day long.

Speaker 3 Like, I'm for that. If that's the option, I think I'm for that over just letting this thing go.
I think I'm willing to roll the dice on it.

Speaker 3 But I just think if you're going to make a change, there are better options.

Speaker 15 Let's say Joe Biden stays. What can be done? Our new colleague, Sam Stein, and I sent in my hastily written, Joe Biden and Jill need to have a conversation last night.

Speaker 15 He said to me, it was a good piece, but you should use your expertise. You used to be a a comms person.
Like, if Biden stays, what would he do?

Speaker 15 And my answer to that is basically: he needs to demonstrate that he's a human and not a robot. And, like, he needs to demonstrate, he needs to demonstrate that he's up for this.

Speaker 15 The reason why this debate was in June was because his team thought it would allow him to show the American people that he's up for it. That didn't work.
So, he's got to go on Fox.

Speaker 15 He's got to go out among real people. If Donald Trump's not going to debate him again, he's got to find other ways to be in high-stakes environments.
He's got to be off-prompter.

Speaker 15 Is he capable of doing all that? Like, maybe the answer is, the counter to that is he's not capable of doing all that. And so the best thing to do is hide him and hope Donald Trump implodes.

Speaker 15 I don't fucking know. But to me, it's like if he's capable and he had a bad night, he had a cold or whatever, then that's what he should do.
Go out among people.

Speaker 15 be with people, let them touch him, and go on Fox and fight with people. Maybe that's wrong.
Sarah, if Anita called you tomorrow, what did you tell her?

Speaker 3 You know, I do think that there's basically nothing to do but,

Speaker 3 and I'll go back to like my fundamentals. The biggest coalition in American politics is not a pro-Joe Biden coalition.
It is an anti-Trump coalition.

Speaker 3 And so I would flood the zone with surrogates who are ready to go on offense against Trump.

Speaker 3 And I would basically, like, you need to make the race so that it basically doesn't matter who the candidate on the Democratic side is.

Speaker 3 Now, I don't believe that to be true because I do think it matters. I think you have to give people something.
But I would just say our only position is offense. Our only position is offense.

Speaker 3 And so we go hard with every person at our disposal. Everyone goes out and just says, Donald Trump is too dangerous.
We will all be there to help. There is a great team around him.

Speaker 3 You got to get Blinken out. You got to get the cabinet out.
You got to get everybody be on a first-name basis with them. You need people to understand that a president doesn't do it all themselves.

Speaker 3 So you have to make the American people aware of and confident in the team around him.

Speaker 3 That's tough because I think their confidence isn't there on Commonwealth, but you got to get her out there a ton. Like you got to let her do the job you think she could do as president.

Speaker 3 If she was running, she has to do that as the vice president. She has to become a top effective surrogate.
And, you know, full-blown offense against Donald Trump. That's it.

Speaker 3 And look, that's what I'll continue to do, like, no matter what, right? Like, I just think about it as a strategist: I will continue to pound Trump's unfitness for that job.

Speaker 3 But I look through the eyes of the voters last night and they don't think either person's fit. And that's where I just think there's a ton of opportunity.
Like, give them someone they think is fit.

Speaker 3 Like, the bar is actually not so, so high.

Speaker 15 Give them someone they think is fit.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Jonathan?

Speaker 15 Yeah. I mean, so if we're in a world where Biden stays as the nominee,

Speaker 15 if he is still able to do it,

Speaker 15 so last night was a bad bad night, right? If last night was just a bad night, then

Speaker 15 you just got to push him out there, right? And

Speaker 15 he's got to go hard on it. Exactly what Sarah said.
Unless he doesn't have it.

Speaker 15 There will be more cameras and more eyeballs on Joe Biden's next three appearances than there will have been on anything that he has done this year besides the State of the Union and the debate.

Speaker 15 So there is an opportunity to do that, I guess. And it shouldn't be on a fucking teleprompter.
But if he doesn't have it,

Speaker 15 then the answer is that it has to become the Democratic Party

Speaker 15 versus Donald Trump. And as Sarah says with the surgery, I mean, it really does.

Speaker 15 And I don't know how you do that. You know, I don't know how you have every single high-profile Democrat from Budajej to...

Speaker 15 to Whitmer to Newsome, how you tell all these people, like your job for the next five months is to get Joe Biden elected. Forget whatever, drop whatever you're doing right now.

Speaker 15 Go out and get on the campaign trail. And

Speaker 15 we're going to use you as

Speaker 15 a candidate. I just don't know how

Speaker 15 that works. Because the other thing is a lot of these people,

Speaker 15 if they feel like the ship is going down, why are they going to lash themselves to the mast? Right.

Speaker 15 And that's hard. Look, can I just say one thing? It breaks my heart.
None of the, I think a lot of people listening are going to be like, don't you guys understand how unfair this is?

Speaker 15 Joe Biden has done everything we asked for. And absolutely true.

Speaker 15 It is deeply unfair that, as you said, Tim, we've had all of these other failures of institutions, failures of people, failures of the American public, which have gotten us to this point.

Speaker 15 It is wildly unfair that like Joe Biden is the one who has to be perfect every single time. But that's also just where we are right now.

Speaker 15 My friends that worked for Joe Biden, if they see this clip, are going to be mad. But that's not true.
Joe Biden had to be a fucking C minus.

Speaker 15 That's what Joe Biden had to be. A C fucking minus, not perfect.
Okay.

Speaker 15 And he was an F.

Speaker 15 He was a disaster.

Speaker 15 And like,

Speaker 15 I'm sorry, guys, but it's unfair to all of us. There are 330 million people in America.
70 million of them vote for Donald Trump, so fuck them.

Speaker 15 But there are 260 other million people in this country, and it is unfair to them

Speaker 15 to like continue in a hopeless hubristic campaign that might end the fucking country. So if he can do it, then show us that he can fucking do it.

Speaker 15 But if he can't do it, he has to quit because it's unfair to everybody else for him to stay. All right.
Like this isn't about Joe Biden.

Speaker 3 It's not about Joe Biden. That's right.
That's right. And this is where I just, I think the patriotic thing to do is to think about what's best for the country.

Speaker 3 And I'll say again, nobody could have beaten Donald Trump in 2020 from that field other than Joe Biden. God bless Joe Biden.

Speaker 15 God bless Joe Biden. God bless him.

Speaker 3 Now he has got to do the right thing for everybody else. And he could step away and he could bless other candidates.
He could, right? A ticket can emerge of governors. Joe Biden can bless it.

Speaker 3 And like, he could do a great thing. That's a legacy.
And it would be unprecedented, but he could do it. and they would beat Donald Trump.

Speaker 15 One other thing, if you're the closest advisor to somebody,

Speaker 15 I won't name any names, but like some governor and Joe Biden doesn't do it,

Speaker 15 do you go to Chicago?

Speaker 3 I don't think so. I mean, I don't think this can be a hostile takeover.
Yeah, me neither. I think it has to be a Democratic Party decision.
where everybody gets together.

Speaker 3 And listen, you need catalyzing events for things like this. Like, and I think this is a catalyzing event.

Speaker 3 And I think that there, if the governors were willing to step up and everybody was willing to throw their weight behind them and Joe Biden was willing to step down, I don't think it's insane.

Speaker 3 And I think Kamala endorses them too. Everybody has to do the right thing here.
And we should, I think it's our responsibility as

Speaker 3 whatever it is that we do. People who do the analysis to say,

Speaker 3 come on, guys, you can do this, right? It's not impossible. I think we deal too much in saying, like, this couldn't happen.
Why couldn't it?

Speaker 15 Here's Hakeem Jeffries just now. President Biden is scheduled to speak today around noon, as I understand it, in North Carolina.
I'm looking forward to hearing from President Biden.

Speaker 15 And until he articulates a way forward in terms of his vision for America at this moment, I'm going to reserve comment about anything relative to where we are at this moment, other than to say I stand behind the ticket.

Speaker 15 I stand behind the Senate Democratic majority. And of course, we're going to do everything that we need to as a House Democrats to win.

Speaker 15 That's pretty good. I mean,

Speaker 15 like, that's the speaker of the house. And by the way, Hakeem Jeffries would be fucking Donald Trump.

Speaker 15 Maybe it should be Hakeem Jeffries, who's third in line to the fucking presidency. Maybe it should be Jeffries Harris.

Speaker 15 That's pretty interesting because I've been frustrated by the wagon. Like, that's not a wagon circle.

Speaker 3 No, it's being honest about what we just saw and what just happened and leaving the door open for people to have honest conversations. And you know what, guys? This is what I just want to say.

Speaker 3 Of course, that's happening. Everybody saw it with their eyes last night.

Speaker 3 Yeah, like this wagon circling, but like there's no way that people aren't having some honest conversations behind closed doors.

Speaker 3 And like, and that was pretty, that's a pretty public leaving the door open to the conversation.

Speaker 15 My last thing, just so you guys know how terrible my night was, the MSNBC set was right next to the Fox business set. So at the end of the night, I had to stand there as fucking all of these assholes.

Speaker 15 I can't even say their names. The worst people in the world walked past me with a smug grin on their face.
And I was a big boy and I didn't say anything.

Speaker 15 And like the fact that I'm not in jail right now is a miracle. And then I came home and stayed up till 3.30 in the morning writing that thing.

Speaker 15 And I was supposed to be on Morning Joe at 6 in the morning and I slept through it. So I had an alarm panic and I had to deal with the smug smile.
of the worst people in the world last night.

Speaker 15 So I'm not letting any of that affect my judgment, which was clear-eyed before all of that happened, which was clear-eyed at about 9.07 p.m. last night.

Speaker 15 As a matter of fact, it wasn't a great night for Timbo. Okay, we're going to do our best to get this up.
Maybe we'll put this up in two parts.

Speaker 15 And that way we can turn things around quicker. Sarah, any final words?

Speaker 3 Listen, guys, tell the truth. Everybody should just tell the truth.
Okay. And like,

Speaker 3 let's not pretend things.

Speaker 16 Okay.

Speaker 3 We can still beat this fucking guy. We can still beat him.
And the only job is to beat Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 That's the job.

Speaker 15 All right. Thanks, JBL, and Sarah.
Up next, Jonathan Martin.

Speaker 4 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake. Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.

Speaker 9 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage.

Speaker 12 The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days.

Speaker 13 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.

Speaker 14 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.

Speaker 9 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.

Speaker 20 There's nothing like sinking into luxury. Anibay sofas combine ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

Speaker 20 Anibay has designed the only fully machine washable sofa from top to bottom. The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Speaker 20 Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Speaker 20 Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anibay has you covered. Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.
Sofas start at just $699.

Speaker 20 And right now, get early access to Black Friday savings, up to 60% off store-wide, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Speaker 15 Add a little

Speaker 20 to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 15 And we are back with my buddy, my fellow New Orlean, my fellow New Orleans transplant, Jonathan Martin, Politics Bureau Chief and senior political columnist at Politico, co-author of This Will Not Pass, ominous, Trump Biden and the battle for America's future.

Speaker 15 JMA, as they call you. How you doing, bro?

Speaker 17 The title holds up pretty well three years later here, huh?

Speaker 15 It does. It does.

Speaker 15 I was thinking, I was talking to my husband, and I was like, who can I have, this is earlier in the week, I was like, who can I have on on Friday that no matter what happens, we'll give real talk, we'll be authoritative, you know, we'll be able to

Speaker 15 explain to the listener what the stakes were of the debate, what the impact is going to be. I was like, we need to have J Mart.
And then the debate happened last night. And I was like, oh,

Speaker 15 I wish I would have booked a happy talk person. But, Jonathan, you got a new article out this morning talking about how Democrats, Democratic poo-bas are responding to what we saw last night.

Speaker 15 Give us a rundown.

Speaker 17 Well, first, I've always thought Tyler was a discerning, shrewd judge of of character. So thanks for having me, Tim.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I mean, it's sort of last night was sort of a condensed version of what I've heard, you probably heard for the last couple of years, which is Democratic lawmakers, strategists,

Speaker 17 wise men and women grumble about Biden on background, believe he's too old to run, and don't want to put their names on the record saying it. Now, the difference is

Speaker 17 the critical mass of it, obviously, is substantial. But look, the bottom line is as long as the people who are saying that Biden should drop out are

Speaker 17 not with a first name of representative, senator, or governor, Biden ain't moving. All the pundits in the world who think Biden should do the right thing don't cut any ice.

Speaker 17 This has to be elected officials. Joe Biden cares about folks who have been on a ballot before.
And if nobody's going to go public and say it, then

Speaker 17 they're going to nominate Biden again.

Speaker 17 So that's the question, Tim. Do Democrats really want Biden to consider dropping out of the race? And if they do, they'll step up and they'll say it on the record.

Speaker 15 I thought that was a pretty dispiriting part of your piece about halfway through about how folks are still kind of saying the same thing on background and not wanting to speak out.

Speaker 15 I don't even need people to say Joe Biden should definitely step aside, but at least being honest about what we saw and talking about whether or not there could be some reflection, I think is important.

Speaker 15 And, you know, we saw some of that. Claire McCaskill, who I was with last night,

Speaker 17 late night. Her first name is former.
Her first name is former. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Yeah. Former senator.
Yeah. So it's got to be a sitting senator.
Can we, Chris Dodd? Doesn't matter.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I just think that it's got to be somebody from the current leadership structure of the party that's in office today. And I think the McCaskill thing got a lot of attention.

Speaker 17 I think she has real influence, especially with her fellow senators. But I think it's got to come from Democratic electeds.

Speaker 17 And I think the easiest way that this could happen, and I'm skeptical that it will happen, but if it was to happen, it would be vulnerable Democrats on the ballot this year who speak publicly.

Speaker 17 And that would obviously give cover to their leadership, who would then at least pretend like they were deferring to the wishes of their most vulnerable members. That's what it would have to be.

Speaker 17 It would have to be a collective action from the imperiled Democrats and the House that on the ballot this year.

Speaker 15 Well, you talked to everybody at the highest level. You're the national political colonist from Politico, so you had to send the text last night.

Speaker 15 I didn't send the text to my friends in the Biden White House because I don't have to, and, you know, I wanted to give them some time to breathe. But forget the senators and congressmen.

Speaker 15 Like, what do they say? Like, what, you know, and Biden keeps a tight circle. You know, there's the Ron Clains and the Richettis and the Mike Donald.

Speaker 15 Like, do we have any sense today, this morning, like, what the reaction was from the people that he listens to that don't have senator before their name?

Speaker 17 They bet big and lost, and that now they have to try to earn back, you know, what they lost, and that they've got months to do it.

Speaker 17 Hopefully, Trump will agree to a September debate and they can get back in this thing. And that voters still don't like Donald Trump.
That's kind of the best case scenario, right?

Speaker 17 They're not going to entertain the possibility of dropping out. Certainly, they're not going to confront Biden about dropping out.

Speaker 17 That would have to be, I think, a combination of pressure from Democratic electeds and then eventually Joe Biden or his family. I just, I'm skeptical that's going to happen.
Tim, like, you know this.

Speaker 17 I mean, the bet was we're losing this race. We got to show the electorate that Biden still can throw a fastball.
And we got to remind the electorate that like Trump is a lunatic.

Speaker 17 That's the two-front war here to mix metaphors. And obviously they come out of the debate last night with the race that's even more of a referenda on Biden than it is a choice.

Speaker 17 So there's no good way for them to spin this.

Speaker 15 Why did we have the earliest debate in American history? Right. The earliest debate ever before last night was September 23rd.
So it's a full three months before the earliest debate we've ever had.

Speaker 15 Why? Because Joe Biden wanted it to be early. Joe Biden's team wanted it to be early.
Why did they want it to be early?

Speaker 15 Not because, as Bill Crystal might think, that it was some deep machination that they knew he was going to face plant and that they wanted to have an out before the convention.

Speaker 15 They wanted to do it early because like you're saying they thought that joe biden could assuage concerns and focus the minds of the voters on donald trump and say okay he's up for it now we have to get serious this other person we're running against is a criminal lunatic and like he failed epically on both counts right like the race is not focused on trump now and he did not assuage concerns he exacerbated them yeah no no that's precisely it and um they put all the chips in the middle middle of the table and the house walked away with a whole lot of them.

Speaker 17 But your point is right. I mean, the best possible news for Biden coming out of this is the calendar does say June, right? It doesn't say October.
So they at least have a chance at recovery.

Speaker 17 And, you know, you hear a lot of this. You know, maybe the January 6th case can move ahead this fall.
Maybe you can get a guilty verdict on Trump on that case before election.

Speaker 17 I think that's unlikely, but obviously that's also kind of a kind of a long shot hope.

Speaker 17 Look, I think, Tim, the actual best case scenario is that Donald Trump is Donald Trump, and he obviously says and does things that are outlandish and that are

Speaker 17 self-sabotaging of his own prospects. So, like, I'm not sure that Biden can recover, but it's possible that Trump can lose it.

Speaker 15 So, that's what you're hoping for right now, that Donald Trump self-implodes, which is possible.

Speaker 15 But for all of Donald Trump's personal flaws and weaknesses and failures and et cetera, like, what is he going to do the next four months that's worse than what he's done already?

Speaker 15 He has some impulse control, as we saw last night. Like, he is not an idiot.
And I, so, why would he debate again? What is the thing that would turn it around? I, I mean, I, you know, who knows?

Speaker 15 Maybe Biden has a good convention and the polls stay close, and Trump does feel like he has to debate again because he won so easily the first time he thinks it'll help him.

Speaker 15 If I'm squinting, like, that's the best case scenario, right? That, like, we're so polarized, the polls stay close, Trump feels like he does need to debate again.

Speaker 17 Yeah, that's the best case scenario: is that Trump impulsively says, I can wipe him out once more. Give me another shot.
And that he, you know, gives in against the judgment of his staff and then

Speaker 17 shows why the country turned him out four years ago. I just don't think that that's very likely.

Speaker 17 And Tim, I think you make a central point here, which is the best thing Trump has going for him is that the country is desensitized to so much of his conduct, right? People know who Trump is.

Speaker 17 It's so priced in.

Speaker 17 And the hard truth for a lot of people to, you know, grasp, Democrats and Never Trumpers, is a lot of voters don't give a shit that he's a bad guy and says and does outrageous things, right?

Speaker 17 It's, they just don't care that much. And that's the hard part to swallow is this is more about the American voter than about Donald Trump.
And that's why he's poised to win right now.

Speaker 15 I want to go back to something you talked about earlier about how you don't think that the inner sanctum of Biden's advisors are going to talk to him about this. I just don't accept that.

Speaker 15 I don't understand. I mean, you know, it's what I wrote about this morning.
Like, given the stakes, I'm not even saying I'm definitely for Biden, you know, quitting.

Speaker 15 I think that there are bad options in front of us. But like, the idea that they wouldn't talk to him about it is crazy to me.
And, like, this is the job of being a consultant.

Speaker 15 I mean, I understand that the, maybe the intensity of the Klieg light here is a little higher than it was, but I had to sit in a room with Jeb Bush and a bunch of of fucking family members of a former president and with a bunch of family members saying, we can still do this, we can still come back.

Speaker 15 And I had to sit there as like a 32-year-old and say, I'm sorry, sir. I think it's over.
Like, I think we need to talk about the concession speech. Like, I, that was no hero.

Speaker 15 I'm not looking for a medal. Like, that's just, that is your job.
You don't think these people are going to do that?

Speaker 17 I don't think that the kind of folks Biden wants around him are the people who are going to convey that message. And

Speaker 17 especially because of

Speaker 17 the response, what they would get, which is, oh, yeah, so what's the alternative? What are we going to do? Are we just going to wave a wand and nominate somebody else?

Speaker 15 Kamala is the alternative. Andrew Edgar wrote about this in the newsletter this morning.
I don't know how you can look at last night and not think Kamala, Kamala has a lot of problems.

Speaker 15 Maybe the decision is, oh, the country is too racist and misogynist to nominate her. And we already tried this with Hillary.
We shouldn't. I don't know.
Okay.

Speaker 15 We have bad options, but like, Kamala would have done way better than Joe Biden last night. Way better.

Speaker 17 Shameless plug for our book that Alex Burns and I wrote, This Will Not Pass, available on Amazon.com if you want a good July 4th beach read, Mountain Read, Lake Read, whatever.

Speaker 17 But I'll tell you why that the Kamala question wouldn't be taken seriously in the West Wing.

Speaker 17 Just look at our book because that'll tell you what the view of Kamala Harris is in the West Wing, the actual view of her, you know?

Speaker 17 And so that's why I don't think that they're going to seriously entertain that question in Biden's inner circle.

Speaker 15 All right. So he stays in.

Speaker 15 I feel like I'm pressing you like you're fucking Corinne Jean-Pierre right now. Like, J-Mart, explain this to me.

Speaker 15 Like, what do they do this week? They're going to go on 4th of July vacation now? Like, what does he do? Like, what does he do

Speaker 15 to demonstrate that he is up for this?

Speaker 17 There's an old saying of hang a lantern on your problem in politics. Biden's got to have fun with it.
Biden's got to try to diffuse it the best he can. It's like, look, it wasn't my best night.

Speaker 17 You know, poke fun at Trump and poke fun at himself and then try to move on and say, I had one bad night. This guy gave us four awful years and will give us at least four more terrible years.

Speaker 17 I don't know if that's going to be enough, but that's obviously what he's going to have to do in the great pivot.

Speaker 17 But yeah, this is the other issue, Tim, is that he's not somebody who's 47 years old who can go out and campaign 16 hours a day.

Speaker 17 He's not going to spend like the next three days barnstorming the country pushing back, right?

Speaker 17 So yeah he's going to the hamptons tomorrow i understand for a fundraiser what do you think those old rich folks are going to be saying to him he does a retail stop in north carolina friday and then he'll raise money yeah can you imagine the kind of dem panic in those circles uh the big money circles i mean these folks were already alarmed and now it's going to be off the charts Here's the issue, though.

Speaker 17 I'm not sure what he can say that's going to change it because so much of this was his appearance and his demeanor and not anything that he said or didn't say it's just the look from the moment he walks out onto that stage with that gait he has now and to the side-by-side shot of him yeah he said some things that got him into verbal cul-de-sacs that were a bit rough Tim, I think the bigger issue is just the appearance.

Speaker 17 And most American voters see the appearance and say, no, not happening.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean, look, I agree the appearance is bad, but I reject that the substance was okay.

Speaker 15 I've had people saying this to me on Twitter, like, look at at the transcripts. I'm like, yeah, look at the transcripts.

Speaker 15 I mean, again, in morning shots this morning, Andrew Egger put out a transcript of what Kamala Harris said about the abortion question versus what Biden said. What Biden said is incoherent.

Speaker 15 Kamala Harris, was it, you know, the greatest oratory since Daniel Webster? No. But like, she can prosecute a case against Donald Trump, at least on the topic of abortion.
On the subject.

Speaker 17 Yeah, yeah. Look, I'm not making the case on.

Speaker 15 I know you're not.

Speaker 17 I'm just saying

Speaker 17 to use a real estate metaphor that when the buyer got to the house to check it out they didn't even get inside to look at the rooms because they were so stuck on the outward appearance of the house and the termites crawling out of the woodwork before their very eyes yeah you know and that is true and the tick tock videos are going to be just unimaginably horrible.

Speaker 15 And I have texts from some mutual friends of ours who don't even like politics, don't watch politics, turned it on for three minutes. They're like, what is happening? It was shocking.

Speaker 17 That's the thing.

Speaker 15 The visuals were shocking to people that are not paying attention, to the people that are not listening to the boulder podcast, who only get this stuff

Speaker 15 remediated through social media.

Speaker 15 It was shocking for some of those people.

Speaker 17 And people who don't like Trump.

Speaker 17 Trump has no business in public life, but take a 30-second look at that and say, oh, come on, of course not.

Speaker 15 All right.

Speaker 15 I don't want you to out any sources or anything.

Speaker 15 So this is not about any internal info you you have, but I just want to play a little parlor game with you. If there was going to be somebody that was going to talk

Speaker 15 in the Democratic elected class, like, who is it going to be? Who would it even be?

Speaker 17 Well, here's somebody. Here's somebody who I would put in the top five of House Democrats who would speak out because

Speaker 17 she has got

Speaker 17 a knack for speaking her mind. And she comes from a really competitive district in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania.

Speaker 17 And that's Susan Wilde, who's had a couple of tough races and is in a very competitive district.

Speaker 17 And I saw that she told Max Cohen over at Punch Bowl News this morning that she would only talk about Trump's performance last night.

Speaker 17 And boy, if somebody like that isn't willing to go on the record about Biden, then I'm not sure who is.

Speaker 15 That's a very Jaymardian deep cut of a mid-bench house person. How about somebody the listeners know? Is there anybody the listeners know that will speak out? Absolutely.

Speaker 15 Obama Haley.

Speaker 17 The flat top nine-finger farmer from Big Sandy, Montana. John Tester.
Everybody knows who John Tester is, right?

Speaker 17 Yeah. So John Tester running in a state in which Donald Trump is poised to carry between 17 and 20 points.
You know, like, will John Tester say, look, Joe's been a friend of mine.

Speaker 17 He's been a good president, but like, this is not responsible. He'd be the obvious guy to do it.

Speaker 17 Maybe Sherrod Brown running in Ohio, which is similarly bad, not quite as bad as Montana for Democrats, but Tim Doze would be the two Democrats I'd look to in the Senate who are up this year.

Speaker 15 Just looking at raw political considerations, I don't know how John Tester or Sherrod Brown, like, what else would you do? They're just going to go down with the ship.

Speaker 17 And as you know from, you know, the Republicans and obviously Democrats that you know so well, politicians act in their own self-interest.

Speaker 17 It's all about self-preservation, and that's what gets them to move. That's why Republicans rally to Trump because their voters like Trump and they defer to their voters.

Speaker 17 And it's the same issue now with Democrats in the sense that they're going to do what they think helps them survive politically.

Speaker 17 And in this context, in a general election. And that would be the only reason why Democrats would speak out.
And that's why the John Testers of the War Law would be the ones who would do it.

Speaker 15 We have had this question. on this podcast for a few months now.
Why is Bob Casey and Tammy Baldwin and Ruben Gallego running so much ahead of Joe Biden? We got the answer.

Speaker 15 We know what the real answer is to that question last night. And so maybe this

Speaker 15 frees some of these guys up a little bit, right? Because they don't, they were already winning, right? I mean, it doesn't seem like there's a reverse coattails issue, or maybe I'm wrong.

Speaker 15 Or do you think that they're at risk now of having a coattails issue?

Speaker 17 Here will be the great timestamp check for Bulwark readers and listeners. Who is the first Democrat on the ballot to air an ad vowing to be a check on President Donald Trump, right?

Speaker 17 Because that'll that'll be the reveal that they're conceding Trump's likelihood to win and they're cutting bait.

Speaker 17 You would think that would be the case, given the polling that consistently shows that this is not necessarily a bad year for Democrats, but it could be a bad year for Joe Biden.

Speaker 17 And Tim, it kind of reminds me of like the last presidential election, except for the other guys. Like 2020 was a pretty good year for the Republicans.

Speaker 17 Like Susan Collins won while Joe Biden was winning her state pretty convincingly.

Speaker 17 It was always the great preposterous joke of the lie that Biden stole the election and that he didn't win fair and square. It's like, it was a good cycle for Republicans down the ballot, right?

Speaker 17 It was the craziest, weirdest conspiracy of all time. Like, Joe Biden wired it so he won, but like, it wasn't a great night for his party.
Okay.

Speaker 15 You know. Right.
Yeah. Joe Biden didn't want to have a big majority in the Senate.
It was all part of a secret deep state Joe Manchin, Joe Biden plot to keep the party in check.

Speaker 17 Sorry, Sarah Gideon. You're going to have to eat this one.
We're bringing back Susan Collins to keep the big lie, exactly.

Speaker 17 Keep my deep pots there. Sarah Gideon.
Come on, Bullwork listener.

Speaker 15 You know who that is. Joe, Joe and Susan just love each other so much.
It's an old Senate insiders game. You just wanted to have Susan around.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 15 The Trump VP pick, which is kind of meaningless, but just as an insight into Trump's mindset right now, you got to feel like if you're Doug Bergham, you know, or I don't know, maybe not. I don't know.

Speaker 15 Do you think that a confident Trump,

Speaker 17 how do you think that impacts Volt's VP and how he behaves in the next few weeks who's the best person that has a personal dynamic with Trump if he is stripped of any political considerations he just wants somebody to ride with as the kids would say like who is that right if if Trump could just pick somebody that he likes who doesn't annoy him who looks the part

Speaker 17 and who he thinks is gonna like not track mud in the club Who is that? You know, that's the question. And I will tease here for bulwark listeners.

Speaker 17 I'm working on something, sort of a bigger picture piece about this general topic. So keep your eyes peeled on Politico.com here about that.

Speaker 15 Can you have a family member? I guess he probably doesn't, he doesn't really like his kids. Is Ivanka back in play as VP? Maybe a little too risky.

Speaker 17 Well, she's a Florida resident now, Tim, so that she would have the Rubio problem as well.

Speaker 15 That's true. Though the Trumps have many golf clubs that I've had to learn.

Speaker 15 Okay, Jmart, I wish I could have had you on a more fun day where we could have had a couple of pops, but I appreciate getting some mud on your face today on the Bulwark podcast.

Speaker 15 And I hope to see you in Louisiana soon.

Speaker 17 Happy to serve my country and stand in solidarity with my fellow 504 resident. And also happy to introduce Bulwark listeners to Susan Wilde and the deep cut of the gentlelady from the Lehigh Valley.

Speaker 17 But thanks for having me, Tim. Go Tigers.

Speaker 15 I bet listeners will like her quite a bit. Go Tigers indeed.
And hopefully, we can turn this thing around next week. We'll see you all back here on Monday.
Peace.

Speaker 16 You wanted it to be blessed,

Speaker 16 and in your heart,

Speaker 16 you know it to be true.

Speaker 16 You know what you gotta do.

Speaker 16 They all depend on you

Speaker 16 and

Speaker 16 you

Speaker 16 know,

Speaker 16 you

Speaker 16 know

Speaker 16 You already know all

Speaker 16 ready.

Speaker 16 You already know already.

Speaker 16 You're all

Speaker 16 running through

Speaker 16 the world.

Speaker 15 The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 21 Gun violence isn't just a policy issue.

Speaker 3 It's personal.

Speaker 21 Every day in America, 125 people are shot and killed. For too many, it's left a mark.
And for all of us, it's a crisis we can do something about.

Speaker 21 Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund is the largest gun violence prevention organization in the U.S. We've helped pass life-saving laws and built a nationwide grassroots movement.

Speaker 21 You believe in progress. So do we.
This is your moment to act. Go to everytown.org and donate today.
Together, let's build a future free from gun violence. Everytown.org.

Speaker 4 California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake. Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours.

Speaker 9 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage.

Speaker 12 The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days.

Speaker 13 Strengthen your home and help protect your family.

Speaker 14 Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow.

Speaker 9 Visit strengthenyourhouse.com.

Speaker 22 Master distiller Jimmy Russell knew Wild Turkey Bourbon got it right the first time. Mellowed an American oak with the darkest char.

Speaker 22 Our pre-prohibition style bourbons are aged longer and never watered down. So you know it's right too for whatever you do with it.

Speaker 22 Wild Turkey 101 Bourbon makes an old fashion or bold fashion for bold nights out or at home. Wild Turkey bourbon aged longer, never watered down to create one bold flavor.

Speaker 22 Copyright 2025 Copari America, the orbit, or never compromised, drink responsibly.