Kate Bedingfield and Marc Caputo: Debate Day

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Speaker 8 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 11 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 14 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 15 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 10 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 15 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 6 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 17 Some moments in your life stay with you forever.

Speaker 20 In a special segment of On Purpose, I share a story story about a book that changed my life early in my journey and how I was able to find the exact same edition on eBay years later.

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Speaker 1 eBay, things people love.

Speaker 22 Listen to on purpose on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 5 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 8 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 11 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 14 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 15 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 10 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 15 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 6 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 1 Hey, y'all, I'm in Atlanta. I'm doing an MSNBC mega marathon around the debate.
And so we got a double header for you on this podcast. Up first, Kate Bettingfield, longtime advisor to Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 And then after that, my colleague Mark Caputo with a view from Trump World, a view from Magavelle.

Speaker 1 In both of these interviews, I wanted to focus a little bit on the debate for those of you that are listening to today, Thursday.

Speaker 1 And we wanted to focus also a little bit big picture on how both campaigns are seeing the race. And so I think you'll enjoy it, even if you've already seen the debate tonight.

Speaker 1 Fingers crossed, we're all just a little bit anxious, but hopefully it's going to be a good night. Oh, and one more thing.

Speaker 1 If you want to do a watch-along with the debate tonight, join the Bulwark Plus JVL and your favorites will be there on Zoom.

Speaker 1 I'm going to try to pop in during commercial breaks, and then we will have a live reaction on YouTube. To join the Bulwark Plus, go to plus.thebullwark.com to subscribe.
We'd love to have you.

Speaker 1 We'll be seeing you tonight. Up next, Kate Bettingfield.

Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
It is debate day. Everybody's excited.
Nobody's at all anxious or nervous. You know, nobody is at all panicked.

Speaker 1 Nobody's mentoring. They're ultraware.
I Kate.

Speaker 29 We're all vibes, Tim.

Speaker 1 We're all vibes.

Speaker 1 I used to, well, hold on. Let me, I'll tell you what I used to do after I introduced my guest, Kate Bettingfield.
I want to have somebody that knows Joe Biden, knows debate prep.

Speaker 1 She was White House Communications Director for Joe Biden until she left for the finer pastures of CNN. She was also deputy campaign manager in 2020.
Kate, what's going on, Go?

Speaker 29 Hi. Thanks for having me.
We love a big day.

Speaker 1 I used to vomit on debate day.

Speaker 1 Did you ever dry heave or puke before a candidate debate?

Speaker 29 I cannot say that I actively puked, although I think there were some instances where I came very close. Yes.

Speaker 29 The whole debate day situation, you're like, you know, you've been through the prep, you're like anxious for the candidate. Is he going to land this great thing? God, we have this great thing teed up.

Speaker 29 Is he going to crush the thing? Then there's the spin room after and all of that insanity.

Speaker 29 And if you're a comm staffer out, you know, making your way through the spin room, it's, you know, its own level of misery. So, yeah, debate days are, you know, they're intense.
They're intense. Okay.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, so my tradition seems like it would be a little different for you.

Speaker 1 My tradition was about two hours out when I was finished with the last prep session, I would go, I'd change, close your ears, mom.

Speaker 1 I'd change smoke two parliament-like cigarettes, and then I would try to pull the trigger and I'd like dry heave in the bathroom.

Speaker 1 And then I would and then I would drink a Coca-Cola and put some mints in my mouth. And then I would be kind of ready to go from there.

Speaker 29 You know, I wish we'd had this conversation earlier when I was still doing debate prep because that seems like a hell of a routine.

Speaker 1 And I think I might have benefited from it.

Speaker 1 So we have to start, obviously, with the most serious topic related to your former boss. And that question is, what drug regimen is he on? Is it the Khalifa Kush, would you say?

Speaker 1 The Magic Mushroom Bon Bon, the two CMC pills?

Speaker 29 I mean, if I told you, I'd be giving up the game. So, I mean, I can't do that.

Speaker 29 It's a special cocktail, you know, that is calibrated for him, you know, and I think America's going to see it on display tonight. It's going to be great.

Speaker 1 The one thing, obviously, Joe Biden is a teetotaler, and we're joking. Yes.
It is interesting, though. The debate is at 9 Eastern.
It ends at 10:30. That's past Papa's bedtime.
That's a little late.

Speaker 1 Is there?

Speaker 1 Does he do a non-narcotics? Is he a coffee drinker or any like that? Okay, here's the thing.

Speaker 29 Here's the thing. He loves late nights.
Like he, when we used to come home from like domestic trips too, but foreign trips, especially.

Speaker 29 And this was like even back in VP days when it's sort of like easier for him to like move about the cabin in the plane, you know, you would be flying home, you're tired, you're asleep.

Speaker 29 And like, here comes Vice President Biden to say, you know what, we didn't get to that I really want to focus on on the next trip. And what did you think about this thing that I said?

Speaker 29 Do you think that that was, did that was that effective, or would you say that wasn't effective? And can we go in depth on how effective you think that was?

Speaker 29 And it's like, you know, you're at the end of a long day, you're tired, and he's just raring to go. So he actually is a night person.
So, I'm not as worried about the late start time for him.

Speaker 29 He'll get some good rest today, and I think he'll be he'll be ready to go.

Speaker 1 That explains the Morning Joe viewership that has been reported on. You know, it's like he's out late, you know, he's brainstorming in the morning.

Speaker 1 Honestly, me, me and me and the president, I guess, are maybe more on the same schedule. I kind of want to lay around the bed a little bit in the morning, you know, flip through the channels.

Speaker 29 You know, he gets he gets into the gym. It's like eight o'clock hour.
It's like he's in the gym. He's watching Morning Joe.

Speaker 29 so you know but he does some he does good thinking at night so we'll see there are elements of the debate that make me anxious that is actually not one of them because it actually like aligns with his his natural rhythm

Speaker 1 before we get to this debate let's just kind of do a little bit of memory lane and just you know talk about his process we've all worked for a bunch of different candidates we both have and you know some of them want some zingers you know you practice some zingers yeah some of my candidates wanted to spend hours discussing policy matters that would never actually come up during the debate.

Speaker 1 We won't name them, John Huntsman. Some other candidates

Speaker 1 want to do live, you know, kind of. Yeah, so how did you guys do it in the primary? And I guess you were there also in the general last time.
Yeah, I was.

Speaker 29 I was. So he has a very methodical process.
He likes to spend a lot of time going through all of the issues that he thinks are going to come up.

Speaker 29 And so there's before you get to the mock debates, which he does and kind of understands the value of having to, you know, stand behind the podium and go through the whole

Speaker 29 format and do it with no stops. And he gets the value of that.
He doesn't like that as much as he likes sitting down with the team, going through QA,

Speaker 29 workshopping answers. He views it as certainly like brushing up on policy, yes.

Speaker 29 But for him, it's less about like memorizing facts and figures that may or may not come up or be relevant during the debate and more just about kind of talking through with his his team, talking out loud, thinking out loud.

Speaker 29 Like he's a really, he thinks, as the country, I think, has learned a little bit. Like, he thinks out loud, you know, as he's working through things, he likes to talk and get feedback.

Speaker 29 So I would say probably like 75 to 80 percent of the debate prep process with him is sitting around a table, going through answers, you know, people taking his feedback, recrafting the answer.

Speaker 29 You come back for another session. He tries it out.
He says, like, nah, no, actually, I don't think that's right, or that's not the way I want it. And then the last kind of, you know, 25%

Speaker 29 is doing some of those mock run-throughs, which is about standing behind the podium and going through the answers, yes, but also practicing, you know, kind of for the camera and, you know, what's your body language going to be like and, you know, mimicking what that's going to look like and recognizing that ultimately the debate is for a TV audience and making sure that he's kind of ready to present to a TV audience.

Speaker 1 Yeah. What about the, you know, bad orange man side side of things?

Speaker 1 I mean, you didn't have as many practice runs. And the primary with Jeb, I mean, there must have been, if there were two debates, there were 3,070.

Speaker 1 I don't remember how many there actually were, but there were a lot of, a lot of, and it took us a while to like

Speaker 1 just help Jeb like process like that he's dealing with a different animal here, right? And like he is just going to spout a fire hose of nonsense. And like it is not like debating Watt and Childs.

Speaker 1 You can't like, you can't rebut every point that he has, right? You You got to pick one and lean in on it. You got to counter punch.
How did you guys think about dealing with Trump in 2020?

Speaker 29 Well, I mean, I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that a big piece of the prep for Trump in 2020 was going through the personal attacks, the family stuff, the things that essentially no other candidate or person of any level of decency would say or raise on a debate stage, but knowing full well that Donald Trump would.

Speaker 29 So it creates an interesting environment. And I give Joe Biden a lot of credit for this in the process in 2020.

Speaker 29 He was always very open to and willing to let people come at him with the horrible things that Donald Trump might say. You know, and it, you know, it can create a weird dynamic, right?

Speaker 29 Here's the president of the United States, somebody you work for.

Speaker 1 Oh, man, definitely.

Speaker 1 I definitely have had candidates get mad at me for bringing up personal things. Yeah.

Speaker 29 Yes, I had the distinct honor in the primary debate process in 2019 when I was playing a candidate of having Joe Biden accuse me me of enjoying it too much. So,

Speaker 29 you know, it can create a weird dynamic, but, you know, he recognized that he needed to absorb what that was going to feel like and not have, you know, the first time Donald Trump said something horrific about his son, you know, be on the debate stage in front of millions, tens of millions of people.

Speaker 29 So that was a big piece of the process, a depressingly big piece of the process, considering, you know, you're preparing for debate for, you know, president of the United States, and that's what you have to focus on.

Speaker 29 But that was a big piece of it.

Speaker 29 And then the other kind of bizarre piece of it, which you know well too, I'm sure, is you also, you know, you also have to account for like the 16 different versions of Donald Trump's position on an issue and trying to, you know, anticipate which lie he's going to tell, which way he's going to present himself.

Speaker 29 I mean, there's very little consistency, you know, in the way he talks about himself.

Speaker 29 So preparing for a debate against somebody who, you know, baseline, you don't even, you're not even really certain like which, you know, version of their take on an issue is going to show up on the stage.

Speaker 29 It's a very, it's a weird process. So we tried to apply some method to the madness and

Speaker 29 kind of get things organized for Biden in his head so that he had

Speaker 29 a clear sense of home base on the big issues. But

Speaker 29 it was a unique process. And I can't even imagine what it's like for them this go around.

Speaker 1 So this challenge of dealing with Trump, right? Like is he, you know, takes every side of everything and, you know, there are a lot of angles.

Speaker 1 There's one side of this that it seems like the campaign has really settled in on, as far as a message standpoint, that I'm interested in your take on, which is this idea that something broke in Donald Trump at the end of 2020, that he's gone even crazier, you know, and that he's totally lost it.

Speaker 1 And at one point, he might have cared about other people, but now he cares about himself. Something to that effect.
I assume you'll hear something like that tonight.

Speaker 1 You've been hearing it more and more from the president and from his campaign. Like, that is a strategic choice to do that, right? I mean, it might not be true, like just

Speaker 1 as a fact. I mean, I'm like of the view that like Trump's been kind of crazy and racist his whole life, but it's interesting.
So I'm curious what you think about that choice and what the rationale is.

Speaker 29 To me, it seems like it's twofold. I mean, one, just as a message choice for the campaign, I think it's a way of trying to jolt people out of their kind of light nostalgia for the Trump years.

Speaker 29 Like if you're somebody who says like, well, you know, there were things I didn't like about Trump, but, you know,

Speaker 29 the economy was okay. And I don't know, was he really that dangerous?

Speaker 29 I think their campaign brings some urgency by saying like, look, this isn't even the guy that you saw in, you know, 2018, 2019. He's so, you know, we've since seen January 6th.

Speaker 29 We've seen him go crazy trying to defend himself from, you know, criminal wrongdoing. I mean, he's like, he's worse than you remember.
I mean, I think that's from a message perspective.

Speaker 29 One of the things they're trying to do is kind of, you know, knock the edges off of people's nostalgia about him.

Speaker 29 From a debate strategy standpoint, you could imagine how that's a tactic to try to irritate Trump, try to get under Trump's skin, try to get him, you know, fired up, try to get him defending himself.

Speaker 29 I mean, really, like anything that Joe Biden can do to get Donald Trump going, it almost doesn't matter what direction you get him going in. You just got to get him going.

Speaker 29 And so, you know, you can imagine that

Speaker 29 calling him unhinged, saying he's completely lost it, especially as Trump has spent the last, you know, three years, four years trying to argue that Joe Biden's lost a step, you know, you could see the way that could get under Trump's skin.

Speaker 29 But I guess, I guess we'll all find out.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So to that point, and I think that many people will be listening to this before the debate, but some after.

Speaker 1 So both tonight at the debate and the biggest picture for the campaign, like there are just so many places to attack Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 It's like you see these advice things from pundits like, he should get him on the suckers and losers comment.

Speaker 1 Like, he should get get him on officer sicknik he should get him on abortion he should get him on medica like okay so there's there's plenty of material there if you were sitting in the debate prep room or if you're thinking about the campaign towards the end like what are you honing in on well i think you got to funnel all of these attacks through two or three of the lenses that have shown themselves to be his biggest vulnerabilities Abortion is one.

Speaker 29 It just is. I mean, it's, we've seen it turn voters out to the polls.

Speaker 29 We've, you know, so we've actually seen people in elections in this country go out and vote because they feel motivated by the fact that Roe fell.

Speaker 29 So, I think that has got to be a huge piece of his line of attack because it's also an issue where you can draw a through line between Donald Trump being president of the United States and us being in the state we're in now with

Speaker 29 women no longer having a right to reproductive freedom. I mean, it's one of the easiest cases to make.

Speaker 29 And obviously, Trump has spent a lot of time trying to kind of weasel his way out of his position because he knows he's politically vulnerable on it, but you got a hammer.

Speaker 29 I think that the other lens that the campaign needs to apply to every line of attack against Trump is,

Speaker 29 is this an attack that goes at how Donald Trump makes life worse for people across this country?

Speaker 29 Like there's a lot you can attack Trump for that's about you know, what an awful person he is, what how he's,

Speaker 29 you know, how he's like shouldn't be representing the United States of America, that he represents a break from everything that we we love and care about in this country.

Speaker 29 But I think that ultimately for a message to land with voters, it has to feel like it has resonance in your day-to-day life.

Speaker 29 And so, you know, there are some attacks that may feel like great to the chattering class and may feel like an absolute slam dunk that just don't, you know, that don't connect in the same way.

Speaker 29 So it's like you got to make the chaos argument, but then you got to take it down to the next level of, you know, this is how this is going to make your life worse.

Speaker 29 It's how it's going to to make life more expensive for you, you know, how it's going to take away your right to vote and feel like your vote matters and will be counted safely.

Speaker 29 I just think the campaign cannot lose and Biden can't lose that last step, right?

Speaker 29 There's like the satisfaction of punching Trump in the face because he represents a threat to everything that we love and care about.

Speaker 29 But then you gotta like, you know, you can't just stop there. It's gotta, you gotta connect it to people's lives.

Speaker 29 And that means that sometimes the attack that might feel the most satisfying ultimately winds up not landing in the right way.

Speaker 1 And so you don't think the zinger I sent Ben the Bolt about the Raffensburger call in Georgia is what that's not what we're talking about.

Speaker 29 You know what? I'm not saying that that's not, that isn't in and of itself should not be disqualifying for Donald Trump to be president of the United States.

Speaker 29 But I think, you know, we also have to accept that not everybody in the country is thinking about these things in the same way that we are.

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Speaker 22 Years later, I found myself thinking about that book again.

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Speaker 1 eBay, things people love.

Speaker 22 Listen to on purpose on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 5 Get ready for Malice, a twisted new drama starring Jack Whitehall, David DeCovney, and Carice Van Houten.

Speaker 8 Jack Whitehall plays Adam, a charming manny infiltrates the wealthy Tanner family with a hidden motive to destroy them.

Speaker 11 This edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller unravels a deliciously dark mystery in a world full of wealth, secrets, and betrayal.

Speaker 14 Malice will constantly keep you on your toes.

Speaker 15 Why is Adam after the Tanner family?

Speaker 10 What lengths will he go to?

Speaker 15 One thing's for sure, the past never stays buried, so keep your enemies close.

Speaker 6 Watch Malice, all episodes now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

Speaker 1 There's this conundrum that I've been working over in my brain and talking to people about on the podcast when you look at the data.

Speaker 1 It's the fact that the president is running behind Democratic senators in all of these swing states, Casey, Baldwin, Gallago.

Speaker 1 And it's like, okay, why? Like, on the one hand, you could look at that as a very big negative, right? It's like, uh-oh, something must be really wrong if these people are switching overs.

Speaker 1 On the other hand, it might be a positive, right?

Speaker 1 Where it's like, man, if Joe Biden shows them tonight that he cares about, you know, the things they care about, that he's not, you know, dementia-riddled, then maybe you can win some of those people back.

Speaker 1 Like, what's your sense for what the disconnect is? And what do you think they need to do to try to consolidate that demo?

Speaker 29 I think they have such a difficult and just frustrating challenge here because I think the message, for the most part, is right.

Speaker 29 And I think if you look at a lot of the testing, you see that, you know, he's talking about corporations having too much power.

Speaker 29 He's, you know, he's talking about prices are too high at the grocery store and I'm working, doing everything I can to bring him down. He's talking about choice.

Speaker 29 And, you know, if you look at, if you look at message testing, you see that that's what people, you know, want to hear from Democrats. So is there a disconnect between message and messenger?

Speaker 29 And then if so, how do you solve for if people are hearing what they want to hear, but they have concerns about or qualms about or just can't get there for whatever reason on the messenger?

Speaker 29 You know, I think they, over the next four months after this debate, I think they have to really think about how

Speaker 29 they put Biden out in front of audiences who can connect with him. I think there has to be less standing behind the podium and there has to be more.

Speaker 29 you know, more Howard Stern. And I think that the team knows that, by the way, this is not me like, you know, it's so great, right?

Speaker 29 It's so great to be in the pundit role where you're like, you're welcome.

Speaker 1 Isn't it lovely?

Speaker 1 I cringed when

Speaker 1 I sent a thought to somebody on the campaign the other day, and I was like, I'm that guy now. Yeah.
I'm like, I'm that guy that I hated.

Speaker 1 You know, anyway.

Speaker 29 Exactly. I'm grappling.
I'm grappling with becoming the person I hated, but like, damn, the lack of responsibility is terrific. That is nice.

Speaker 29 You know, and I do think the campaign knows that, but I think that it matters because

Speaker 29 I think there's so much potential for Biden as a person to assuage these concerns that people are holding on to about him.

Speaker 29 And I think it's putting him in venues like Stern and doing more digital where he can connect directly with people and not relying so much on the podium remarks that can be really powerful, but that just because of the state of our media landscape, just don't reach people the way they used to.

Speaker 29 But I also think this point about Senate candidates running ahead, I mean, I also think at the end of the day, split ticket voting is a rarer occurrence than it even used to be.

Speaker 29 And I just have a hard time believing that when push comes to shove, there are going to be a significant number of Democrats who are going to vote for the Senate candidate, but not for Biden.

Speaker 29 I mean, it's a challenge. Campaign has to focus on it.

Speaker 1 What about the age part of it? I mean, can people have real talk with him? I mean, it could just be that, right?

Speaker 1 It could just be that he's going to show up tonight and demonstrate that he has the vigor for this.

Speaker 1 I mean, obviously, it's not like he doesn't know that he's old, but like, what do you think about that?

Speaker 29 Yeah, and I think he will. Look, he is very much a game day player.
Okay. Like, he's somebody who knows when the big moment is coming.

Speaker 29 I mean, I think the whole country saw it around the State of the Union, but, you know, he knows when a big moment is in front of him and he, you know, focuses and prepares.

Speaker 29 And he knows that his task here, at least in part, is to show energy and vigor. And so, you know, I don't have any concerns.

Speaker 1 Can we stomp with the whisper talk? Can we tell him the whisper talk?

Speaker 29 I mean,

Speaker 29 that's been, you know, that's been a trademark for 50 years.

Speaker 1 I know, I know. I loved it.
It was good when it was good. Sometimes it's hard to move away from something that was, you know, part of your brand.

Speaker 1 One of these days I'm going to have to take off the pearls. You know, people are going to be like, Tim, it's looking cringe.
It's starting to look cringe.

Speaker 29 Where's the coterie of advisors around you who can be honest with you, Tim, about the pearls?

Speaker 1 You know, where are those people? Okay.

Speaker 1 That's my tip, the whisper talk. All right.
I want to, I'm lobbing a softball at you here. But on the Bulwark Reddit page, which I'd love, people should join the Bulwark Reddit page if they haven't.

Speaker 1 It feels like it might be our more lefty listeners that go to the Reddit page, but that's okay. I like hearing from the lefty listeners.

Speaker 1 We do a decent amount of complaining around here about the urgency from Biden world.

Speaker 1 And I think maybe it's just that, like, as the Never Trumpers, as like the near enemy of Trump, we might feel just a different level of panic

Speaker 1 and sheer hatred and panic that's on a different level. And one thing we say is like, everybody should be out there.
Like, where is everybody? Like, we had a good J.B.

Speaker 1 Pritzker thing the other day, and there are little glimmers of people getting out there. It's like, where's the cabinet? Where's Kamala prosecuting it? And where are all the Republican endorsers?

Speaker 1 And somebody wrote on the board page that goes, hear me out. Is it possible that the Biden campaign knows what it's doing?

Speaker 1 Could the lack of forceful surrogates be that they know that trotting them out this early isn't as effective? So what do you think? Could we see more urgency? Do they know what they're doing?

Speaker 1 Is it somewhere in between?

Speaker 29 So, okay, yes, they know what they're doing.

Speaker 29 I'm just going to put myself out there and say yes.

Speaker 1 I'm shocked that that was your response. I know.

Speaker 1 It was was really a hard one.

Speaker 29 I know you're stunned. That's my answer.

Speaker 29 But I worked very closely with a lot of these people, was in the trenches with them through a very hard primary campaign, through a very hard general election campaign.

Speaker 29 Like they know what they're doing. So I have faith.
I have faith in them.

Speaker 29 I also think it is true that people are not as tuned in to this election right now and that they will be as we get closer and closer.

Speaker 29 I think this debate will mark a turning point. I think we've seen a lot of data that suggests a lot of people are going to watch tonight.
But even those who don't watch are going to hear about it.

Speaker 29 They're going to see clips. It's going to feel, I think, in a lot of ways, like the kind of unofficial starting gun for the final sprint here.

Speaker 29 So, yes, I imagine we're going to see more and more of these surrogates. And I would argue you've seen VP Harris out there, like really, you know, pushing the case on abortion.

Speaker 29 She's been a terrific messenger for the administration and the Biden campaign on abortion.

Speaker 29 And I have no doubt that you will see more and more of these folks out as we get closer into the fall when people are paying attention.

Speaker 1 I hope so.

Speaker 1 I get it. It might just be me.
It could be me. I would still like to see a little bit more urgency.
One more thing on the VP question, though.

Speaker 1 I asked Simone about this, Simone Sanders-Townsend, earlier this week. I hear you on the abortion thing.
She's been good on it. Abortion is important.

Speaker 1 I really like, by the way, as somebody that has mixed views, is I think in the big middle of this country where a lot of people are, that there should be some restrictions on abortion, but not

Speaker 1 the crazy shit that they're doing in some of these red states.

Speaker 1 I'd like that the Biden campaign's ads on this have focused a lot on women who wanted to have a child, but had a health issue that they were denied. Okay, so I like all that.

Speaker 1 VP Aristo also was a prosecutor, and she became a star in those Senate hearings when she was prosecuting witnesses and Kavanaugh, et cetera.

Speaker 1 Shouldn't we have a little bit more of that, like prosecutor, you know, cop Kamala out there, you know, doing the traditional VP attack dog thing?

Speaker 29 So, one, I guess I would like dispute the premise a little bit that she's not like carrying a pretty significant heavy message against Trump.

Speaker 29 I think she is, but I also think there's, I'm going to knock you over with a feather here, but people have different perceptions of women than men on the campaign trail. And, you know, you have to.

Speaker 1 Simone gave that answer, too. I know.
It's just, this is my male privilege. I'm just like, maybe that's true, but I want to see her with Trump's bloody shirt in her mouth.

Speaker 30 I want to see her kill him.

Speaker 29 I mean, you know, so do I, but that's like a lot of the country doesn't receive women that way. Simone's totally right about that.
And so it doesn't mean that V.P.

Speaker 29 Harris can't carry an effective negative message. I would argue she's been doing it.
And I imagine as we get closer to November, you'll see her do it more.

Speaker 29 But these are the things that you have to be aware of when you're you know, when you're thinking about the image of a woman in public office and a female candidate.

Speaker 29 It's just a slightly different ballgame than it is for men. Someday, Tim, I hope it won't be.

Speaker 29 And someday, you know, you will have women candidates accepted when when they're out there like shredding their opponent with a bloody shirt in their mouth but right now it's not quite that simple yeah when my daughter's running for mayor of new orleans so i'm gonna be feeding her punch lines you know i hope she crushes her male opponent you know

Speaker 1 all right last question last question give us something cute give us a cute biden story does you have a favorite favorite ice cream flavor you know if we wanted to send them some jennies like is there uh did you have a fun little behind the scenes laugh moment like give me something Give me a little, oh, man.

Speaker 1 Give me a little, something to make,

Speaker 1 something cuddly. A hand hold.
Like, I always, I'm going to tell a Jeb story to give you a minute to think about it.

Speaker 1 I just thought the cutest thing I ever saw with Jeb was we were leaving a debate and we were in one of those suburbans or whatever, and I'm in the last row, and he's in the second row with Kalumba, and they're like holding hands, like in the second row from the, from the debate to the FBO.

Speaker 1 And I was like, oh, my God, they've been together 50 years. That's so cute.
So, anyway, cute story.

Speaker 29 So sweet. Oh, I mean, my God, if you want to talk about like him and Jill, I mean, he's constantly calling her.
Like, he wants to know her opinion on everything.

Speaker 29 It's like, they don't go like hours without talking to each other, which is, I think, is amazing. But he's also like, okay, like, for example, during the primaries, we were on a plane.

Speaker 29 We were landing in Iowa and it was super turbulent. And I don't love flying generally.
And I definitely don't love flying on a small plane.

Speaker 29 And I definitely don't love flying on a small plane in turbulence. And so, you know, we're, it's turbulent.

Speaker 29 We're landing and my many male colleagues who I love dearly, you know, were kind of making fun of me for being a wimp. And I'm like gripping the, you know, arm of my chair.

Speaker 29 And Biden just reaches over and puts his hand on top of mine. And he's like, it's going to be okay.
We're going to be fine. It's all right.
There's an element of like pop, grandpop.

Speaker 29 You know, he just, he brings a genuine humanity and kindness to all of his interactions. So, you know, he just, what you see is what you get.
Like, there's no artifice with Joe Biden.

Speaker 29 He is a genuinely kind person,

Speaker 29 and he loves chocolate chip ice cream. That's his favorite.
And he will like direct the motorcade off route to get to chocolate chip ice cream. I can't tell you how many times that happened.

Speaker 1 Chocolate chip is a good flavor.

Speaker 1 I wish he'd put his hand on my hand right now because we're in turbulent times. That was a metaphor.
That was a metaphor for our life.

Speaker 1 Thank you, Kate.

Speaker 1 I will be seeing you in the spin room. We're both in Atlanta together.
So I'll see you in the spin room in 3D in a little bit. We can do a squeeze.
Thank you so much for coming on the Borg podcast.

Speaker 1 Anytime. Come back again soon.

Speaker 29 Would love to. Thank you.

Speaker 1 All right. Up next, we got Mark Caputo with a view from Magaville.
Buckle up.

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Speaker 1 And we're back with my colleague Mark Caputo. Mark has been suffering through MAGA World for us.
He lives in MAGA World. He talks to MAGA World.
Megaville, I guess what the newsletter is called.

Speaker 1 You should get the newsletter if you want to know what's happening in MAGAVille. What's going on, bro?

Speaker 30 Nothing much. How are you?

Speaker 1 I'm doing well. I'm in in Atlanta.
I was already at the debate site this morning. I kind of want to throw up.
You know, I used to throw up on debate nights before it was my candidates.

Speaker 1 I didn't do that in 2020, but I'm back to wanting to throw up a little bit. I want to talk first.
You know, some of these folks be listening to this when the debate is done.

Speaker 1 So I want to talk a little bit big picture also about what Trump World is thinking.

Speaker 1 But before we get to that, Mike Kevin has gone on the saddest run of any post-defenestration politician I think I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 And let's listen to him together on the Jesse Waters show, because that's what he's doing with his time now.

Speaker 31 There were different moments. Every time I met with him, you got a different Joe Biden.
And there's times that he was really engaging.

Speaker 31 I remember talking to him when he was Air Force One coming back from a G7 meeting, and he could tell me all the different meetings he had.

Speaker 1 He was fully engaged.

Speaker 31 And the next day I met with him, and it was a totally different Joe Biden talking off cards. So let's not lower expectations.
He's going to be prepared. The best he's ever going to be prepared.

Speaker 1 Let's not lower expectations, says the guy who was in a front page Wall Street Journal story about how Joe Biden is crippled with dementia. Why is he doing this?

Speaker 1 Couldn't he just go be a respectable post-speaker like John Boehner and lobby for the marijuana industry or something? Like, why is he doing this groveling nonsense? What's happening here?

Speaker 30 Well, Kevin McCarthy always

Speaker 30 had the quality of being sort of the test tube product of a mad scientist who wanted to create a dishonest, slimy, two-faced, double-talking politician.

Speaker 30 So the idea that he is continuing to be true to form doesn't really shock me that much.

Speaker 1 I think this stuff is pathetic. The fact that the Wall Street Journal published his sourcing about Joe Biden's mental acuity was, I think, a really poor editorial choice.

Speaker 30 Yeah, as a reporter, what surprised me is that, generally speaking, if you write a story that's attacking a Democrat, you usually want an admission against interest and have your first quote be Democrats.

Speaker 30 Same thing

Speaker 1 be a Democrat. Well, there you go.
One Democrat.

Speaker 30 Or anecdotes. Or if you have a story attacking a Republican, you again, you want that admission against interest.
You want a Republican saying something critical about a Republican.

Speaker 30 Otherwise, it's just people are going to say, oh, of course, a Republican's going to attack a Democrat. Of course, a Democrat's going to attack.

Speaker 1 And McCarthy's effort out there, you know, he's primaring Matt Gates. He's trying to primary Nancy Mace.
It's just like, it's just failure. It's just like it's like rake after rake he's stepping on.

Speaker 30 He can handle the fact that Gates totally outmaneuvered him and booted him out of the house. And all he has left with Gates is he's run this poor sad sack of a guy.

Speaker 30 I can't even remember his name running against Gates. It's going to look like cannon fodder when it's over.

Speaker 30 And then he's got his pals on the Ethics Commission who are continuing with this sort of Kafka-esque investigation where they continually say, we're investigating Matt Gates for sex crimes.

Speaker 30 It's like, okay, well, let's see the evidence after two years.

Speaker 1 Again, plenty to criticize Matt Gates on, but I do kind of agree with this. It's like, okay, we've been doing the whisper campaign on this for a while now.

Speaker 30 Whisper campaign, hell, has been through a bullhorn.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, yeah, good point. There's plenty of public things that Matt Gaetz have done worth criticizing.
So maybe let's focus on those for starters and, you know, wait for the evidence.

Speaker 1 The takedown of his opponent, whose name I also forget, by Kevin Williamson over the Dispatch was one of the most delicious pieces of writing that I've read in quite some time.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to put it in the show notes for people. Okay, enough of my Kevin.
So it's the debate. It seems a little half-hearted, the whole drugs thing this time.

Speaker 1 I mean, they tried this against Clinton. They tried it against Biden last time.
But they kind of feel like they had to do something because they were worried that Dementia Joe had set the bar too low.

Speaker 1 What's your take on the whole, you know? I think it's that.

Speaker 30 And the other thing is it's just, this is just what they do, right?

Speaker 30 One of the things that characterizes the Trump world style of attacks is they will use any possible attack, even a contradictory one, even from one that are opponents of theirs, as long as it hits another opponent.

Speaker 30 So that's in keeping with that. If you're looking for consistency and a certain amount of logic behind it, you're not really going to find it.

Speaker 30 One minute, one second, one sentence in a paragraph, Joe Biden is a dementia patient. The other one, he is the evil Dr.
Moriarty, right?

Speaker 30 And by the way, if the serum exists that makes Joe Biden suddenly spry and everything, like, A, why is Joe Biden not taking every day? And B, where can I get it?

Speaker 1 Yeah. It is funny.
My buddy Peter Hamby was making this point. It's like, it's not like this is Barry Bonds like juicing and they're messing with the integrity of the home run records.

Speaker 1 Like if there is some serum that makes our president's acuity a little sharper, wouldn't we want that?

Speaker 30 Well, I think there is that liquid microchip that's been invented by Microsoft. I'm just kidding.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The whole thing.
Oh, boom. Oh, no.
Watch out. Maugaville, my friend.
Yeah, watch out. You've been in Maugaville too long.
Your story on the Trump debate prep was pretty delicious. I enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 My favorite part of it was

Speaker 1 somebody, one of your sources, said that he was working on policy refreshers. What a euphemism that is.
Policy refresher. It's a two-part euphemism.

Speaker 1 One, it implies that he cares about policy and that he needs to be refreshed about that. But two, it implies he's not really doing debate prep, right? Like, isn't that there's something there?

Speaker 1 Like, he doesn't want to admit the weakness.

Speaker 30 They literally will not call it debate prep.

Speaker 1 Is it an alpha thing? Is that why they're saying that? Like, what's the point of not calling it that?

Speaker 30 His position, by the way, this was Trump's position in 2020, is that he's already prepared. He doesn't need preparation.

Speaker 30 You know, all he needs is a refresher to remind him of the things that he's done and his successes and the like.

Speaker 1 But again, it wasn't true in 2020. Famously, he almost killed Chris Christie during the policy refresher with COVID.

Speaker 30 He did.

Speaker 30 And in that one, Chris Christie, while he didn't play the part of Biden and in these debate preps, quote-unquote debate preps or policy refreshes, what makes it different with Donald Trump, both then and now, is he doesn't have someone who is playing the part of Joe Biden.

Speaker 30 But in 2020, Chris Christie was trying to push Trump behind the scenes. He would argue with him.
He would yell at him. And he would try to get him used to being under pressure.

Speaker 30 That didn't work because Trump just shit the bed. That's actually a direct quote from one of his top policy advisors or debate advisors back then.

Speaker 30 And now it's a different situation.

Speaker 30 And according to Trump's campaign, he's more relaxed and sort of more able to do it and has had four years to think about how he made mistakes in 2020 and how he actually gets a second chance to have a first debate against Joe Biden again.

Speaker 1 No reason not to be relaxed. He's been golfing a lot lately.
Seen a lot of good pictures on his social media.

Speaker 1 The learning from 2020 is interesting because you sent a tweet earlier that was not about Donald Trump at all, but I thought paralleled this situation.

Speaker 1 You were referencing AOC's comments after the Jamal Bowman loss, which seemed to indicate that the squad has not really learned a lot from the Jamal Bowman loss, which is kind of crazy because they're like all these squad candidates that won primaries handily and then one lost.

Speaker 1 And so you think you might like to learn a lesson. Like, what happened that was different in this one? It wasn't like APAC liked the other candidates.
Anywho, that's an aside.

Speaker 30 my question for you is do you think donald trump has learned from his losses at all in in this debate and do you think we'll see something different i think in some ways he has from what i gather and from what he's told others and what they told me he said is this is not like last time this isn't 2020.

Speaker 30 So the Donald Trump who showed up at that first 2020 debate and was just angry, had absolutely no sense of humor left in him or wit or ability to kind of manage Joe Biden, who he thought he was going to push over.

Speaker 30 From what I have been told, he has been, to the degree Trump is, chastened by that.

Speaker 30 But to your broader point, yeah, Trump is the one guy who sort of breaks the rule if you learn more from your losses and from your wins. He's just like, I didn't lose, I didn't lose, I didn't lose.

Speaker 1 And well, here we are.

Speaker 30 And right now, nominally, marginally, he's sort of, sort of leading Joe Biden in the polls, again, within the march of era, but here we are.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and we're going to learn a lot more about that, I think, in the next couple of weeks. I'm interested in in when it comes to that side of this debate thing.

Speaker 1 Like, if the lesson for 2020 was that crazy Trump hurt Trump,

Speaker 1 Stuart Stevens and I talked about this on yesterday's podcast. Do we know whether it was the Trump campaign or the Biden campaign that wanted the muted mics?

Speaker 1 Does Trump World have a view on the muted mics? Because it seems like that helps Trump.

Speaker 30 Trump's campaign says it does help him, but.

Speaker 30 Trump's campaign says they didn't make that insistence. They didn't make the insistence on having no audience.
They didn't make the insistence on not having RFK there.

Speaker 30 A lot of the wins here as far as the structure of the debate have actually been on the Biden side of what they wanted. Now,

Speaker 30 Trump's people are saying, one of them told me, like, look, I'd never tell Trump this to his face, but it's good that his mic is muted because it sets up a guardrail and keeps him from sort of crashing off the road or driving off the road.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I bet Susie Wiles wishes she had the mute button sometimes, you know, down there having to to listen to him talk.

Speaker 1 Okay, I want to back up a little bit and talk more broadly about this, about the campaign and like the view from MAGA Worlds. There's a new ad that the Trump campaign put out this morning.

Speaker 1 I want to listen to that together and just see if what that tells us about where they're going message-wise.

Speaker 1 When you think about the Joe Biden you saw in the debate, ask yourself a question.

Speaker 1 Do you think the guy who was defeated by the stairs, got taken down by his bike, lost a fight with his jacket, and regularly gets lost, makes it four more years in the White House?

Speaker 1 And you know who's waiting behind him, right?

Speaker 1 Vote Joe Biden today and Kamala Harris tomorrow.

Speaker 1 I'm Donald Trump, and I approve this message.

Speaker 1 So there are two interesting parts to this. I'm going to get to the Kamala part second.

Speaker 1 I don't know if this leaked by accident or if they put it out, but if you listen to the language, it's an ad to air after the debate. So it's the Joe Biden you saw at the debate.

Speaker 1 Like they are basically calling their shot that he's going to seem whatever, not up for it, feeble, dementia. What do you think is going on there?

Speaker 1 Is that just showing that they're going to, no matter what happens with Joe Biden tonight, they're just going to keep running with the Joe Biden old thing?

Speaker 30 Yeah, because they believe that there are two things that have enabled. Trump to be in this kind of nominal leadership, leader position that he's in.
One, the economy, and two, Joe Biden's frailty.

Speaker 30 So this is what they're going to keep hitting and keep hitting and keep hitting. I think what's notable here is the use of humor or the attempted use of humor, depending on your sense of humor.

Speaker 30 Generally, a campaign that starts making fun of an opponent is following

Speaker 30 one of the rules for radicals of Saul Alinsky about how there is no defense against ridicule. It's your most potent weapon.

Speaker 30 Very often, campaigns that are in front and feel like they're frontrunners do this sort of stuff. So it gives you an idea of where they're coming from.

Speaker 30 What surprised me about the Trump campaign and specifically Tony Fabrizio, the lead pollster and top advisor to Trump or one of them, is he is generally a pretty pessimistic guy, and he has been very optimistic for many months.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it seems to show a level of optimism, I guess, about the debate. I mean, you can always pull the ad down.

Speaker 1 You can always pull the ad down if Joe Biden dominates Donald Trump tonight and if Donald Trump

Speaker 1 charts himself on stage or something. I don't know.
Sorry, you got me.

Speaker 1 But no, I don't think that would be a good thing. Ridiculous.
You said ridicule is important. So, you know,

Speaker 1 I can also employ it. It's a two-way street.

Speaker 30 But remember, there's that sort of Thanos reality stone issue with Donald Trump where he just comes up with a message and sticks to it.

Speaker 30 They are going to stick with this idea that Biden is mentally diminished no matter what.

Speaker 30 And so, yeah, I think even if even if there was a repeat of the 2020 debate where Trump falls apart and goes nuts and Biden holds his own and looks okay,

Speaker 30 I think

Speaker 1 you're still going to see the Trump campaign hit that and it's notable that kamala harris is they're finally bringing her out as the kind of boogie woman or boogeyman or whatever you call her or it or the dynamic yeah what do you think the dynamic is with that because so nikki haley you know before you know her brief period as a as an attempted trump slayer you know her six weeks in the light prior to that and now post that like that was her big argument right was that she's not even running against biden she's running against kamala i found that a whiff gross for a variety of reasons but that's different than, you know, I think that was a different situation, especially because I mean, she's like losing by 50 points to the primary.

Speaker 1 Anyway, the Trump thing now, it feels a little bit like a weird time to bring it out. I don't know.

Speaker 1 On the one hand, I agree with you that like a ridicule ad gives the air of a team that thinks that they're leading.

Speaker 1 A bank shot, oh, you might get Kamala, I think maybe betrays a little bit of weakness, though. I don't know.
What say you?

Speaker 1 Why now do you think on this Kamala might be president line, which we haven't really heard?

Speaker 30 Well, for my part, and again, this is as someone who kind of covers the campaign and talks to them and

Speaker 1 dig into it. We're just looking for your perspective on what they're thinking.

Speaker 30 What surprises me is that it's this late. Yeah, right.

Speaker 30 I'm surprised they haven't been hitting this the entire time because generally polling has shown generally that her favorability ratings are lower than Biden's and Biden's by like maybe a point or two, and this depends on polls and they fluctuate, have generally been worse or about as bad as Trump's.

Speaker 30 So

Speaker 30 in the view of the Trump world and of Republicans generally, Kamala is an easier opponent.

Speaker 30 I'm not sure that's necessarily going to wind up being true, but that's just generally been their point of view. So, as I said, I just think it's surprising it's this late, not that it's this early.

Speaker 1 I guess I agree with that. I do wonder if

Speaker 1 there's maybe some reticence around

Speaker 1 black voters.

Speaker 1 I do think that Trump thinks that the Trump world thinks that they could potentially be gaining with black men, right? Right. Really, not black women.
Right.

Speaker 30 It's men, right? Hispanic men, black men, white men. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's kind of like, okay, well, you know, we don't want to jeopardize that, but maybe at this point, you're at a judgment of like, I don't know, the types of black men that might be gettable for Trump are probably not going to be the types to be offended by like swipes at Kamala.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, we're speaking very broadly here, but maybe that was part of the reticence because you continue to see this offensive from them.

Speaker 1 Trump called into a barber shop yesterday with Byron Donalds. It was a very weird campaign event.
It's one of these campaign events. Cavito, you tell me if you think about this.

Speaker 30 It's the second one they did like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like Byron Donalds is in a barber shop with four other black guys and Trump's on a speakerphone. And like, Trump's talking about tax cuts.
It's kind of on regulation cuts.

Speaker 1 It's like, I don't know if that's the prime issue. And then he's talking about like how cool his mug shot is.

Speaker 1 Who the hell knows? I don't know.

Speaker 1 It seems like this is the kind of thing that if this was the Jeb campaign and we were doing this and it was like, if we had our one black surrogate in a barbershop and Jeb was calling in on speakerphone, I feel like we would have been just ridiculed by everybody.

Speaker 1 But like people are inured to this a little bit with Trump. They definitely are, however ham-handed, are like really focused on this, no?

Speaker 30 Well, they are. And remember, this is the second event like this.
They did one in Philly. It was Byron Donald's and Wesley Hunt, the Texas congressman.

Speaker 30 And at that one, that's where Byron Donald decided. apropos of almost nothing, like, you know what, families, black families more intact during Jim Crow.
It's like, why did you say that?

Speaker 30 And that created its own uh stir but compared to that event this was tame right this did not produce that sort of we didn't praise jim crow the jim crow

Speaker 30 congratulations you've cleared the bar right and also i i really wonder if donald trump didn't want to go to this event because he doesn't smoke he hates cigar smoke and the stink of it and he doesn't drink what has he been doing besides the policy refreshers just golfing he hasn't had a very

Speaker 30 golfing and fundraising like they have been doing boatloads of fundraising that's true they were in new blew the doors off of it in May. Blew the doors off of fundraising.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he was in New Orleans at this rich guy's house. Like, a third Romney cousin was there, so I was very disappointed in.
I was test-tisking her, and Boise Bollinger. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 It was a little too close to my home for comfort.

Speaker 30 Garden District action, I would assume.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was all the way up by Ottoman Park, actually. I want to do a little beepstakes.
So, your last article, I think, rightly had

Speaker 1 caveats that are like, who the hell knows what Donald Trump is going to do? Like, he's going to do what he wants to do. But the conventional wisdom is congealed around Bergham, Rubio, and Vance.

Speaker 1 Conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. And so I'm wondering what you think about where we sit right now.

Speaker 30 You know, once in a while, when you write a story, you discover things from your own presentation of the facts. And while the insiders generally favor the idea of J.D.

Speaker 30 Vance, the more I type the pros and cons from the perspective of Trump in picking these guys, it was difficult for me to find enough cons to have Bergham match Vance and Rubio.

Speaker 1 Meaning, I think Bergham has fewer cons.

Speaker 30 Bergham has fewer cons for Trump, and while the insiders think it's Vance, I'm starting to think it might be Bergham out of those three. But then again, who knows?

Speaker 30 He could pick someone off a park bench, right? It's just Donald Trump.

Speaker 1 Yeah, are there any other names that have emerged lately or anything else floating in the ether?

Speaker 30 Not that I have heard recently. Trump played one of his games and got the media and the NBC to write this piece about like could be today or could be tomorrow, and then the campaign mocked it.

Speaker 30 So I wouldn't be surprised if Trump either holds it for whether he gets jailed or not, the announcement.

Speaker 30 And if he gets through that, like maybe there's going to be a rose ceremony at the RNC at the Republican National Convention.

Speaker 1 To me, the con on the list is, and by the time this podcast airs, I might, there's a chance I might be on TV with a Bergham surrogate today.

Speaker 1 So, you know, I might be able to get the chance to ask them myself. That could be interesting television, daytime cable.
It just depends of it all, the pence element.

Speaker 1 I don't look at Doug Bergham and think that, like, that guy is, you know, like, let's say it's, it's fall of 2028 and Trump doesn't run again, and Bergham doesn't, because he's a VP, and, you know, the nominee is some Republican that is not as popular as Trump, and they're getting schlonged by Jash Shapiro or something, and Trump is staring down the barrel of a post-presidency, second presidency, where he's going to be in court again, maybe in jail.

Speaker 1 And the next president, he doesn't think, is going to pardon him. And he looks at the VP and he's like, I need to create some trouble here.
Are you going to stand with me on whatever I come up with?

Speaker 1 I don't think you look at Doug Bergum and think that guy's going to be solid. Right?

Speaker 1 I mean, he seems a little bit like a milk drinker, a little too much milk drinking from Doug Bergum to me, for Trump. Doesn't Trump want somebody with a little bit of a bad boy streak?

Speaker 30 Well, I'll admit I never considered that specific scenario.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 You've never considered my fantasy? You know, I spend a lot of time in the evenings compared to

Speaker 1 the milk drinker one. I was like, how do I do that? Figure through what 2028 fall looks like.

Speaker 30 I think whoever Donald Trump is going to pick is going to make sure to stick with him through thick and thin to make sure that after he leaves the White House, he doesn't wind up in the big house, right?

Speaker 30 If he can do that. Or, you know, to try to make sure that he winds up in the White House and not the big house.
So I think on that count, all three are kind of equal.

Speaker 30 I do do think, and not to be too literary, the problem with Vance and Rubio is the quote from Caesar in

Speaker 30 Shakespeare's play where he says, Let me have men about me who are fat, sleek-headed men and such as sleep of nights. Jan Cassius has a lean and hungry look.
He thinks too much.

Speaker 30 Such men are dangerous.

Speaker 30 And I think Vance and I think Rubio, in the regard of ambition, and another quote from the play, Ambition's Made of Sterner Stuff, they, when they get in the naval observatory, human nature is going to take over and their

Speaker 30 ability to not

Speaker 30 run for president four years hence is going to be greatly diminished. I think Bergham will still run for president as well, but he,

Speaker 30 partly to your point, he doesn't seem to have the same sort of like hunger and ambition for it that I think Vance and Rubio do.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Cassius.
I have nothing to add to that. Cassius thing is right.
Okay. I got to run.
I'm going to do your Miami buddy Dan Lebetard's podcast.

Speaker 1 If you want some sports debate takes, listeners, you can go check out Dan Lebetard's show. I'm going to be on with Pablo Torre, my buddy, today,

Speaker 1 and then I'm on MSNBC all day. So I have 30 seconds left for you, Mark.
The jail. The jail? I mean, he might go to jail.
Do they think he might?

Speaker 30 What do they think about it? They think he won't. And I asked, like, hey, if he's in jail and he's not at the RNC, does he have a video made ahead of time?

Speaker 30 And one of them told me, why don't you come up to Mar-a-Lago and tell Donald Trump to film a video for his RNC address because he's going to be in jail and see how that works out for you.

Speaker 1 So nobody's got the balls to do that around him.

Speaker 30 No.

Speaker 1 Guess not. A bunch of shoeshiners.
All right. All right.
I said it. You did it.
Okay. Mark Caputo.
Always appreciate the candid report from Magaville. We'll be seeing you soon, Amigo.
Thanks, man.

Speaker 1 Sometimes existential trip comes ringing through loud and clear.

Speaker 1 I am not sure of what's called me next,

Speaker 1 but I'll be alright

Speaker 1 as long as I keep breathing. I know I'll be alright.

Speaker 1 I know I'll be alright.

Speaker 1 The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 30 Gas, groceries, eating out?

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Speaker 1 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culture Eastas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Lost Culture East with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
Hey, Bowen, it's gift season.

Speaker 1 Ugh, stressing me out. Why are the people I love so hard to shop for? Probably because they only make boring gift guides that are totally uninspired.
Except for the guide we made.

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Speaker 33 Even though severe cases can be rare, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is still the leading cause of hospitalization in babies under one.

Speaker 33 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 33 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.