Debating the Debate: VP Edition (with David Frum)
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From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I'm Preet Bharara. Donald Trump, if returned to office, will be almost 80. He's not a man in great health. And J.D. Vance will be one cheeseburger away from the presidency, should they win. And so it matters what kind of person he is, what kind of vice president he'd be, what kind of president he'd be.

That's David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and a staff writer at The Atlantic. Frum joined me today to break down what happened at last night's much-anticipated vice presidential debate. Will the candidates' performances move the needle in what's shaping up to be a neck-and-neck election? That's all coming up. Stay tuned. Support for Stay Tuned comes from Washington Wise, an original podcast from Charles Schwab.

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Great news, folks. Stay tuned. It's going live. On October 15th at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, I'll be speaking with Ben Wickler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, in a live remote taping. We'll be discussing the upcoming presidential election, the importance of battleground states, and how the presidential candidates are trying to win over voters in Wisconsin. To learn more and to RSVP, head to cafe.com slash live.

I hope you'll join us for this important conversation on October 15th. Some are suggesting that last night's debate might be the most important vice presidential debate in U.S. history. Atlantic columnist David Frum joins me to discuss the debate and whether it will impact the election. David Frum, welcome back to the show. Thank you for having me return. So we have a lot to talk about, the race, politics, substantive issues. But of course, we're recording this.

on the morning of Wednesday, October 2nd, just hours after the debate, the one and only debate between the vice presidential nominees took place. So why don't we begin there? And before we talk about the particulars of the debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, I'm going to ask you the question that everyone has been talking about and asking about before the debate, and some people will like to talk about after the debate, depending on which side they're on, do vice presidential debates matter? And historically,

Have they mattered? And in this case, does it matter? Well, there was a saying during the 2016 election, LOL, nothing matters. I take the opposite view. I believe that everything matters. There's just a lot of everything.

And you never know in advance what will be the thing that matters and the thing that doesn't matter. But Donald Trump, if returned to office, will be almost 80. He's not a man in great health. And J.D. Vance will be one cheeseburger away from the presidency should they win. And so it matters what kind of person he is, what kind of vice president he'd be, what kind of president he'd be. Historically, can you point to any particular vice presidential debates that

Look, I mean, some people think that vice presidential picks don't matter a lot. It probably mattered a lot for Kennedy when he chose Johnson. Could have mattered, I guess, when the first Bush chose Dan Quayle, but he overcame that.

Historically, do you have a view on the significance and importance of vice presidents for purposes of the election of the president that year, not for purposes of catapulting that person into the public square for the future? And we'll talk about that with J.D. Vance in a moment, too. Okay. Well, political scientists propose various measures to argue that vice presidential picks don't matter. And if I believed in political science, I would repeat that. Definitely.

those claims as if true. David Frum, I just want to state for the record, David Frum does not believe in political science. Yeah, well, I want to make a little English point on this. Which, by the way, on Fox, we'd say you're anti-science. So I was trained as an historian.

And one of the things that historians believe is facts matter. And one of the things that political scientists believe is that facts can be massaged into models. How do you do a model when they're like three examples? So I've never believed in the whole enterprise of trying to build abstract rules based on, you know, how many elections under contemporary conditions have there been and what counts as contemporary conditions? I mean, I think the whole exercise is, I think we need history, not political science. Okay. So some history.

In 1940, when Franklin Roosevelt was getting ready to run for his third term, he tried to reinvent his government. He tried to bring in more Republicans. He made a Republican secretary of war. He made a Republican secretary of the Navy. And he invited Henry Wallace Jr., son of Henry Wallace Sr., who had served in the Coolidge and Harding cabinets, to be his vice president in 1940. This is a bit of a story, but it's going to be worth it, I promise.

Wallace quickly proves not only a crackpot and a spiritualist, just a weirdo, but also a complete believer in Soviet propaganda. And as Roosevelt gets ready to run for his fourth term in 1944, the Democratic Party rebels and says, we cannot have Henry Wallace be your running mate. And they force Harry Truman on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Did that make any difference?

to the outcome of the 1944 election? No. Did it make a difference to the history of the world? - Huge difference. - Yes, because we got-- - Yeah, that was totally correct. - Because we got, because of those, and it was six people, six men in the room who said no to Wallace, yes to Truman, and because of that, we got the Berlin Airlift, we got the Marshall Plan, we got NATO, we got the invention of the Western world, and we would have had a Soviet apologist in the White House otherwise. So yeah, it matters.

In the more immediate sense, I sort of take your point. I want to go back to it, that everything matters, in particular when races are so close and are won by a handful of votes in a handful of states, right? So one could argue that a particular rally or set of ads that Hillary Clinton did or did not run could have mattered and made the definitive difference in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or some other state. And if that's so...

then a particularly good performance or a bad performance, you know, could make the difference. I guess the only question I have is if you're, if you're trying to measure what difference a debate has by definition, you're talking about that subset of humans in our country that are undecided as to Trump versus Kamala Harris. And in the old days, you kind of thought those, those might be sort of independent minded, open-minded moderates. Who the hell are those people who,

at this moment, who are undecided? And what might a vice presidential debate, or a presidential debate for that matter,

Tell them about which way they should go if they're undecided at this late date on October 2nd of 2024. Well, the way I think about the people who are really making difficult choices in this election is it's like a revolving door in a big office building. So there are two, as the door moves, it's sections. So there are different sections of the door that are moving and are going to end up on different sides of the wall. So what you have on the one hand

young non-white men without college degrees who are on their way out from the Democratic coalition into the Republican coalition. Something that would probably happen

With or without Trump might even happen faster without Trump But I think it's going to be a real change in our politics based one of my big theories about American politics Is that race is becoming less important sex is becoming more important as a dividing between blocks of voters so that the non-white young men Without college they're moving out meanwhile moving into the Democratic coalition grudgingly kicking and screaming every which way

are a lot of historic Republican voters, people who voted for McCain, the younger Bush, McCain, Romney, people who have a little bit more security in life and who don't like a lot of the Democratic agenda but are terrified by this instability and threat to democracy and threat to alliances from Donald Trump.

So Liz Cheney is the brand name version of that person, but there are a lot. I had dinner just the other night with a friend of mine who served at like a sub-cabinet level in the Bush administration, who's now knocking on doors with his wife for Kamala Harris. So that you've got, and he doesn't agree with her about very, very much, but he agrees with her about not overthrowing the constitution and supporting NATO and protecting Israel and Ukraine and Taiwan.

So you have those two great movements, one pushed out of the Democratic coalition by just disaffection and alienation, and the other attracted to the Democratic coalition based on these mega issues, even if they don't like some of the economic program.

Let's get to the debate. We'll do both style and substance. But first, let's talk about expectations. What was your expectation for this debate? And what do you think the general public's expectation was? And in your answer, describe your prior relationship with J.D. Vance. Yeah. So I had an expectation and a hope. And the expectation is based on my assessment of the two men, which is I think of, I know J.D. Vance is a man of very powerful intellect and very poor character.

And Tim Waltz is a man of good character, but not a first-class intellect. And what I hoped was that Waltz would be able to use his strength of character to drive home the bad character of J.D. Vance.

There were some moments in the debate where that did happen, and those moments will be the viral clips that are already being aired, one that showed J.D. Vance refusing to acknowledge what happened in 2020 that Donald Trump lost and then tried to make a coup to overcome his loss.

Did he lose the 2020 election? Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation? That is a damning non-answer. But if you watch the debate in real time, that's not what happened. Waltz was just not equal to the occasion in real time, although he was able to generate some good clips.

Why do you think in the polls that I saw, and I don't know how scientific they were, but they're more scientific than a Donald Trump true social poll, that both J.D. Vance and Tim Walz increased their likability? In fact, Tim Walz by quite a bit, J.D. Vance also. And that the polls I've seen so far talk about Vance winning the debate, whatever that means, and however important that is or is not, very narrowly. CNN poll had him winning by two points.

A couple of other polls had it very narrow. Is that just because people see what they see and they already have a dog in the fight? - I think to a great extent, that's right. People decide what they wish happened. They believe that's what happened. I think Walt's benefited by human beings have over the centuries, over the millennia, evolved good ways to detect who's a trustworthy person and who's not perfect. That's why there are con artists. But con artists simulate certain kinds of behaviors that are trust inspiring.

And I think people looked at Waltz and saw a good man who means well, maybe in a little over his head, but a good man. And they saw in J.D. Vance a much more formidable brain. But if you were alert to that, you saw there were warnings there that this is someone you should not trust.

And I think people did pick up on that. And I think we're attuned to it and it's reinforced by all of our prejudices. But the reason it helped them both was because, and I think this is the central mistake that Walt's made,

Walt kept giving J.D. Vance these compliments. I'm sure you're just as upset about school shootings. I saw your Twitter feed. You didn't like that. You wanted more hardball. David Frum wanted more hardball. Anti-science David Frum. I wouldn't say more hardball. I would say, but look, obviously it cannot be true that J.D. Vance is as upset about school shootings as you are. Because if he were, he would want to do something about them. And he doesn't. So he's not.

So that doesn't mean you say you're not upset about school shootings, but you don't give them these unearned compliments. And in fact, what Waltz ended up being party to was a game of courtesies from which J.D. Vance had much more to gain than Waltz had to gain. He didn't have to be rude. He didn't have to be unpleasant. He didn't have to name call. At first, he couldn't. That's not his nature. And he shouldn't because that degrades the whole process. But here's the thing that really, I think, is the sort of problem. And so long as these Trump characters are on stage, it will remain the problem.

So this whole event is happening on CBS, the most famous name in television broadcast news in American history, still a network with a strong sense of itself as a prestige network. And they've got their two very smart women, career reporters, incisive interviewers,

They want to ask about the issues. They want to ask about healthcare. They want to ask about federal lands. They're not going to take time to ask about George Soros' plot to eliminate the white race. That's for the Steve Bannon show. But you know what? J.D. Vance goes on the Steve Bannon show and talks about the George Soros plan to eliminate the white race. And that's part of who he is. And if the rules of your network don't allow you to talk about the things that actually are the reason this person is on the Republican ticket in the first place –

You're missing something because J.D. Vance is not there because of his views on federal lands. He is there because there are a lot of people who think that George Soros has a plan to eliminate the white race and J.D. Vance was their guy.

Here's the tweet you sent at 10.19 p.m. last night, further to what you said a moment ago about the debate. Quote, Vance is going home tonight with Walls' wallet. Vance didn't even have to snatch it. Walls just handed it over, along with a bunch of unearned compliments, to Vance's fine character, end quote, obviously written with some sarcasm. And so my mild pushback is, isn't there some value, even if the character compliments are unearned,

in coming across in this modern day and age, given all the vitriol of the past, to come across as gracious and nice, Minnesota nice, to coin a phrase or not? Is that naive? No, I think that's, but it's a closer line that you have to walk.

And that's where Waltz's limits became important, is he could have been gracious. He could have shook hands. You know, Vice President Harris shook Donald Trump's hand, and that must have been, you know, a pretty gross experience. She didn't pay him any unearned compliments. But she didn't pay him the unearned compliments. She was not rude to him, and she wasn't unnice. But I don't think you need to go that last extra mile.

And I think it also means that when – on the occasions when you do, it loses its value. I mean that was an old Obama method that he would talk – he would pay tribute to the personalities of the people who were around him. And I think when Obama is talking to Paul Ryan, it's perfectly appropriate. As vigorously as those two agree – disagree that you could see that, well, they're both idealists. They both had a vision for America.

And they both were in politics for belief and the right kind of reasons. Both of them postponed their money-making activities until after they had left the political arena. Both of them lived on their salaries while they were in politics. And in ways they probably recognize, and they're both kind of intellectuals, egghead types, and good with, you know, probably more comfortable with numbers sometimes than with people, more comfortable with print than with in-person meetings. They both, they recognized each other and they could have a kind of mutual respect.

So there are occasions for it, but I think when the occasion is not there, you can end up validating what you need to warn people about. I want to go back to this question of the importance of debates and what they tell us about someone, either in the vice presidency or the presidency. There are these other areas in life, and you and I have shared some experiences, including law school, where the tests for advancement are

or for placement at an institution or in a job or in a clerkship are these tests that you take that I've, as I've grown older and met a lot of people who were actually successful in life, in leadership and in the practice of law, for example, that those tests are kind of bullshit.

You're testing a particular kind of test-taking skill that I'm not sure ultimately correlates to being good at the practice. And I think about these debates sort of that way as well, not just in terms of governing, but also in terms of just engaging in campaign activity. So, you know, you made the observation, others have shared it, that Tim Walz did not have the same dexterity as

as J.D. Vance. But then you see another aspect of campaigning that happens more often than a single debate. Retail campaigning, one guy goes into a store, tries to meet ordinary people. Tim Walz is normal, knows how to speak to people, knows how to identify with people, knows how to relate to people. J.D. Vance looks like a bot giving a speech from a podium. J.D. Vance's speech, I think a majority of regional people, I think would say that Tim Walz's convention speech

was much more formidable and well-received than J.D. Vance's. So those are two examples of other things that happen more often in a campaign than a single debate. How do you compare all those things in terms of what they tell you about leadership? Legal education, it seems to me, is about two fundamental things. The first is there is actually a body of content and information.

that you have to master to be a lawyer. And it's specialized. So what a great constitutional lawyer needs to know is very different from what a great tax lawyer needs to know, obviously. But in both cases, there's a body of content. There are a set of rules and sub-rules and exceptions to the rules that you need to master to be at the top of the field in whatever technical area of law you are involved in. The second thing that lawyers learn is how to separate their own ego

from the facts of the case. And it can be, I don't know if your spouse is a lawyer, but for people who are non-lawyers married to lawyers, this can be extremely- - Mine is. - Okay, well then she's inoculated, but mine is not. And it's extremely exasperating. Well, one could argue that, but one could also argue this. It's very exasperating. But the benefit of it is that you get very good at weighing the strength of arguments, independent of how you feel about the arguments.

And that is a really important skill for lawyers. It's not an unuseful skill in life. There is something about – there's something that can be kind of deforming about legal education, but there's also something that can be emancipatory because it teaches you how to weigh – you can say, look, I actually wish this argument were the correct one, but unfortunately, that argument is the stronger case.

- I don't know that the logic game section on the LSAT tests for who is able to take both sides of a matter. - And it's not take both sides, but that sounds amoral. I mean, to weigh both sides. That's the real thing. Now you may have to, you end up maybe, if you're in that kind of work, commissioned. But one of the things that a lawyer does advise the client is when to fight and when to settle. - I took you on a rabbit hole. Want to apologize to the listeners. But on this issue in politics,

What's the relative importance of being able to meet with a crowd and relate to them or give a speech from a podium versus perform well in one debate? They all matter. But the performance in the debate – look, I mentioned earlier that Vance is a man of strong intellect and bad character.

And we saw that displayed in the debate. And there were some revelations there, if you were paying attention. So, for example, when Vance has a very strong anti-abortion position that is rejected by probably close to two-thirds of American voters. You wouldn't know that from the debate, really. So how does he cope with that? Well, his answer is, I'm going to lie my way out of it.

And the way he lied his way out of it was by presenting himself as an advocate of maternal health and child welfare. And you think, okay, well, where is that in your record? Have you been an advocate for higher mother's allowances? Have you been an advocate for expanded access to free clinics for uninsured children? No, you haven't done any of those things.

And in other cases, you could learn a lot from his silence. His most famous answer in the debate is the answer about the 2020 election, where he declined to say what was true, that the election was- And Trump lost. And lost, not in a close love. He lost by 7 million popular votes. I mean, we have this, again, speaking of weird rules, we have these rules that say, yeah, you can lose by 7 million votes, but it's still quote unquote close because it only matters what people in Pennsylvania think.

Um, but he wasn't able to say that, but I was listening at the beginning of the debate where the very first question referenced the, um, Iranian missile barrage directed at Israel just a few hours before the debate began. And both were asked about the advice they would give the president if they were the second to last person in the situation room. Um,

And Vance had nothing to say, really nothing to say. - Well, he started, he did his bio. - Right, and here's why that is telling. Because Vance is the leading critic of the US-led alliance structure in the world. He's the leading force against helping Ukraine. He's been a leading force against helping Taiwan. He is scathing about the NATO allies. He is scathing about the Pacific allies.

But he's always, because the Republican Party is a pro-Israel party, he's always indicated to important Republican subgroups that Israel for him will be a special caravan. His animosity to Ukraine, his animosity to Taiwan, his animosity to Germany and South Korea notwithstanding, he will be a friend to Israel. And I

I've always thought that doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't find that credible. Partly because what Israel needs from the United States is not just the United States or the whole alliance structure, which the United States is the center. Israel's most important trading partner is the EU. It needs the EU to be safe. And what I think he revealed to me there was, you know, my intuition is right. He has no, that hours after this missile barrage, he doesn't have one warm word for the people who spent the night sheltering in bomb shelters. And that tells me,

Who he's not and who he's not tells me something about who he is. I'll be right back with more of my conversation with David Frum. Support for the show comes from Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice produced with Vox Creative. Former President Donald Trump has made voter fraud a key talking point in his 2024 presidential campaign, despite having no evidence of widespread fraud.

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Going back to this abortion issue and how J.D. Vance talked about it and dissembled about it, he said at some point some version of, well, the Republican Party needs to do a better job in talking about abortion. What the hell does that mean exactly? Yeah. As opposed to the substance of his party's position. By the way, we should point out, I believe it's the case that Donald Trump, the head of the ticket, tweeted out or posted on some social media site during the debate, did he not, that he would veto a national abortion ban? What do you make of all of that?

Well, when you say we need to do a better job, I mean – I love when politicians do that. Why are your polls in the toilet? I need to do a better job of communicating why they shouldn't be in the toilet. I spent a long time in Republican politics and like a lot of people, I have intermediate and probably muddled ideological views on the abortion question.

And the thing I have been saying in my writing about this question now for close to 20 years is that Republicans are giving, are answering the wrong question. And the way you answer the abortion question, if you're someone with the intermediate and muddled views that maybe a lot of us have, is to say, there used to be 1.2 million abortions a year in this country. Now they're about 800,000. They are never going to be zero.

How do you get from, if the goal is, if you are someone who views abortion with unhappiness, maybe you should figure, how do you get the number from 800,000 down to 600,000? What would be involved in that? Well, let's study the women who have abortions. And we discover that the typical woman seeking an abortion is in her 20s. She's not a teenager. She already has one child. And usually she reports having had some economically traumatic event in her life in the previous 12 months.

Okay, so she's not being, she's had a baby. She loves a child. She knows what's at stake here, but she's also in this state of shock. She's lost a job or a relationship has ended or she's lost a house or been foreclosed on or something. Maybe if she had $500 a month more, like cash on the first of the month, maybe that would influence her decision. If you want to reduce the abortions from 800,000 to 600,000, why don't you think about 500 a month cash per child? Why don't you think about, instead of opening clinics where the mother goes to the clinics, what if you were to put the

to put the clinic in a van and post it in a neighborhood and open it at seven in the morning and have it there on Saturdays? I don't know whether any of these particular things would make a difference, but what if you stop thinking about what do we ban and start thinking about what do we give to change people's behavior? And then you'd be answering the right question. I think that's the kind of person he was trying to be. But the problem is he has a long record of being a banner. And he

He has a long record of voicing this strange attitude, hostility. I mean, he's a devoted son. He's a devoted husband. He's got close relationships with women. And yet the abstract, impersonal woman is to him a creature whom he views with great suspicion and wants to control. Especially the ones who don't have children. And, you know, I listened to that, some iterations of that point, which he's made many times.

And look, I share some of his views that we do have across the developed world a birth rate crisis.

We're below replacement level in just about every country. And in some places like the Pacific Rim countries, catastrophically below replacement. So there's a way of talking. I mean, if you were to go on a podcast, okay, we're on a podcast. And I say, you know, we got a lot of survey data that shows that Americans under 40 are having fewer children, many fewer children than they say they want. When you ask them how many children that they say they want, it averages out near three. They're having...

barely a little over one, there's a gap there. Why? How do we help them? How do we help people? Children are this powerful source of meaning and love in life. They're the most important thing for most people that we'll ever do. How do we help them?

- Well, one way of going about it is to attack the moral character of the people who aren't having children. - Right. - That would be one way. - You can talk about this in a way that doesn't make you sound like a sociopath. So when you choose the way that does make you sound like a sociopath over and over and over again, that's a question about, you know, even if you're, so when he says we need to do a better job, I think he's right. He's talking about something real, but it's strange that the person who is the problem is talking about we need to do a better job of solving the problem.

My favorite line from J.D. Vance, as I looked through my notes as you were talking, was when Margaret Brennan said something about the Springfield situation.

that the migrants there were in the country legally. And I wonder if this was planned or this was an insight and a window into Vance in some way or his character. He says the rules were that you guys weren't going to fact check, which the hell do you make of that comment? Well, look, I get what he was driving at there.

It's a very odd thing to object to a fact check, even if that was the rule. Do you think that was intended or do you think that was a gas? No, I think that was a moment of exasperation. But here's what he was trying to communicate back of the quibbling about the fact checking. We've had this complete breakdown of the asylum system in the United States.

And that's what the people who are entering the United States in such large numbers today are not the illegal immigrants of the 1990s who had no status, who were crossing the border surreptitiously and seeking to avoid any contact with the authorities. The modern influx is driven by people dealing with this crisis and abuse of the asylum system. They are coming in with legal color and they are seeking to make contact with the authorities to get temporary permission to stay in the United States. Temporary permission that turns into years and decades.

So the Haitian population in Springfield are there under something called temporary protected status, which is a legal status for sure, but is a legal status that you get if you entered the country illegally in the first place. And that's the point he was trying to, so that because prestige media are very unwilling to talk about the immigration problem as it is, there's this haste to say, well, they have a legal status, therefore they're legal immigrants.

And those of us who are on the more skeptical of immigration side, as I am, say, yeah, but they entered illegally in the first place. And the status that is keeping them in the country is kind of an abuse of what was supposed to be a rare and exceptional situation that has become a blanket norm that benefits hundreds of thousands of people who entered illegally and are clearly never returning home. Well, what did you make of how Governor Walz handled the border and migration issue? I thought that was pretty good.

- I'm gonna succumb to the Washington disease of quoting oneself. But the first article I wrote, and I've been banging on about the Trump drum since 2015, but the first article I wrote after Joe Biden was at last safely in the presidency, we had restored the principle of constitutional government, peaceful, well, not the peaceful alternation of power, but the legal alternation of power. It wasn't peaceful, there was a violent riot that was incited by the former president.

was Biden began canceling many of the Trump era controls on the border. And I said, this is the first and biggest mistake of the Biden presidency. And I think the core problem here is that the very liberal people on immigration, and Biden was taking advice from them, imagine that the reason we're having the tens of millions of people on the move through the planet is because we live in a world of misery and they are being pushed by misery.

from their homes. And therefore, what is the decent thing? The developed world must take the most miserable people and eventually the world will run out of miserable people and the problem will adjust. But my view of it has always been that these are people who are paying 10, 20, $30,000 to a trafficker to bring them to the United States or to Europe. This is driven not by the world's misery, but by the world's rising prosperity.

And when you study the problem, when you interview the people and go to the, whether it's Serbia or the border in this country, what you see are people who are more prosperous than the typical person from the place they've come from, who have made a rational investment in trying to better themselves even further. And these are the most ambitious, the most capable, and also some of the most well-resourced people in their original place.

And there is no limit because as the world gets more prosperous, there'll be more and more people on the move. So when you dismantle the controls that Trump imposed, not at the beginning of his presidency, but in the last months, you are going to have an endless problem of unregulated, self-selected migration with no limit to it. And the Biden people did not understand that. And they are dearly, and the whole- But they understand, I mean, notwithstanding, people might have some quarrels with some of the things that you're saying, but-

Don't you think that the Biden administration and Kamala Harris, who will potentially inherit it, understand that now in how they talk about the border? They do understand it now, and they have begun in the past few months to do some necessary things. But they bought themselves a lot of trouble. And look, if we ultimately lose American – if the man who made a coup in 2021 is restored in 2024 –

and this time in a legal way, it will be because of this one mistake. And the United States will pay very dearly for it. I hope that doesn't happen. I think they have learned from experience and they have some better approaches now. But immigration, there is no limit to how much immigration there would be in a world without rules. I'm going to go back to J.D. Vance for a moment. And you have now on a number of occasions said he has bad character. And I put this question to other people

And I've gotten different answers. So J.D. Vance, very famously, we all know, was deeply critical of Donald Trump, used really pointed language to criticize him, his character, what he means for the country, drew very nasty comparisons between Donald Trump and some other people, but managed to at least present himself as a convert. Is he just a cynical opportunist or has he been converted? Ezra Klein, who I had on the podcast some weeks ago, believes that he's actually a convert. What do you think?

I think consistent hypocrisy is a very difficult thing to sustain. So he's a convert, says David. Yeah. I think, look, the hypocrite is someone who thinks one thing and says another. I just don't think there are very many people who can carry that off. What we think and what we say come into alignment one way or the other.

Either we change our thoughts to our words or our words to our thoughts. And the honest person changes, thinks first, speaks second, and brings the words into alignment with the thoughts. But there are a lot of people who do it the other way around. So you say something often enough, you say something to meet certain needs. Yeah, I don't think he would be the first person to have come to believe what it's in his interest to say. That's not integrity, however, because the change of view is not driven by

new information or some kind of religious conversion experience. It was driven by necessity and opportunity. But at this point, yeah, I think you can give him a lie detector test and he'd pass it.

Well, is he the platonic ideal of the lawyer that you were talking about who is capable of taking either side? No, because I kept stressing, I mean, the lawyer is capable of taking either side, but the platonic ideal of the lawyer knows which is the better side. But in the civil system and in the criminal system,

lawyers do not go into court other than prosecutors, if I dare say that. You may know your client is guilty. You may know your client has the weaker argument, but you make as powerfully as you can the weak argument because that's your job. Right. But then you, outside the courtroom, you say to the client, you know, you have the weaker side here. You should settle. You should settle. You know, a lot of lawyers, I'm practicing law again. A lot of lawyers don't say that. A lot of lawyers to maintain their position with the client do in fact often the opposite.

and tell their client the government is full of crap. Yeah, you're thinking... Yeah. I'm thinking the civil case, not the criminal. In the civil case, a good lawyer tells you, look, just find out what they need, what they want, really, and let's pay them and let's settle this matter because let's not go to court. And that's the advice, by the way, that...

Fox News' lawyers should have been giving them all along, and maybe they were. But yeah, they got you. They just got you. The texts are all there. Let's find out what is the cheapest price we can pay to make this go away. So a lawyer who fights no matter what is not a good lawyer. Can I tell you what I thought was, and I don't mean this as a compliment, except as a matter of cynical strategy? I thought the most clever way that

Vance talked about his conversion. I was just dumbstruck by the strategy of this, and maybe I'm overreacting to it, but I wonder what you think. Vance said at one point when he was asked about his prior statements, he said, quote, I was wrong about Donald Trump. And then he goes on to say, I believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of his record. So if you're a skeptical Trump MAGA voter,

and you're like, "Who's this new guy?" He insinuates himself in that comment by saying, "Yeah, I was duped by the other people that you despise and hate and who you think are the enemy of the people, the mainstream media. And so I was a victim of the mainstream media." Like, what level of sort of cynical brilliance is that in explaining to the Trump base why he came along late? - Yeah, that is pretty good. I agree with you. That does make an impact.

it would raise the question in an attentive listener, what have you done to address your gullibility problem? - Well, we all know Yale law grads are very gullible. - Because when you are back in government, if you do become vice president, it will not be a once a year thing. It'll be a once an hour thing that somebody comes up and tells you things that aren't true. So if you're not good at discerning what you should rely on, maybe you should be in some other line of work.

Do you think if Trump's demeanor and attitude was as genial, and I think he was genial and cordial, as J.D. Vance was in the debate, and that was his posture, especially post-assassination attempt, and it's all the Trump stuff and it's all the same policies and it's all the same ideas and it's all the same attacks, but delivered in a more refined and polished, packaged form, would Trump's support go up or go down? You know, this is like when a young couple fall in love.

I don't know where you're going with this. There's a moment they'll stand over the waterfall or in the moonlight and they'll say, would you love me if? And that question means- The answer is always yes. Yeah, well, of course the correct answer is yes. But the actual factual answer is,

Would would things be the same if things were different? Yeah, and the answer is if things are different things would be different Yeah, if Donald Trump weren't a monster, he'd be a very different person Yeah, but but but is but is it the fact of his monster nests to use your word? Not my word is that would attract his base and if he if he became more genteel would they go away? I I do think his book the Romans put bums in the seats of the Coliseum for 500 years

on the theory that people enjoyed watching human beings ripped apart by wild beasts or hacked to pieces by swords. And I don't know, we don't have viewership statistics for the Colosseum, but it seems to have done a brisk business. So yeah, I think there is a part of the human spirit, just, I mean, there are magnificent parts of the human spirit that are horrified by cruelty and will risk our lives and give our lives to stop it. But there are other parts of our spirit which are excited by cruelty and find it fun and thrilling. Yeah.

I'll be right back with David Frum after this. This week on Profit Markets, we speak with Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. We discuss his take on the housing market, the recent jobs data, and how the U.S. can reduce the federal deficit. You allow immigrants into the country, let them do their thing, but

You do it in a rational way. We need to make sure we have a rational immigration policy and system. But you allow that to happen. We're going to get one to two tens percent more GDP growth every year. And I assure you that makes that deficit debt problem look a lot less daunting going forward. You can find that conversation and many others exclusively on the Prof G Markets podcast.

Noelle, the election is nigh. It sure is. Can you name all the swing states? Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and is it Virginia? It is not. It's North Carolina, but you got the others.

I mean, I think it's arguable. Let's just say I'm kind of right. Let's give me partial credit. Partial credit it is. And we are doing episodes about all seven of the real swing states. Oh, it sounds like I should listen. What are we doing? Like history lessons? No, the big issues. Abortion, the economy, election security, all of it.

Okay, so you're saying if you listen to Today Explains, seven episodes on the seven swing states between now and the election, you are going to be ready for whatever comes on November 5th. There you go. Today Explained, wherever you listen. We drop in the afternoons, Monday to Friday. I guess when I asked the earlier question, what I was really getting at is, you know, the next question after what we began this conversation with, the import of the selection process.

not just the import of the performance at the debate. Donald Trump goes away at some point, whether he's reelected or not, right? He's not going to live forever. Does J.D. Vance sort of become the embodiment of whatever Trumpism is? Is he trying to turn it into a rational or rationalized legal philosophy? Or is that an impossibility because there is no such thing as a coherent strategy for government and leadership anymore?

That is Donald Trump. Well, we will find out the answer to that question. Once assuming Donald Trump loses the 2024 election and assuming he agrees to go off the stage one way or the other, and he may not, he may still be around in 2028. But assuming he does or is compelled to go off the stage or the party turns on him, people will have different ideas about what comes next.

So there'll be Republicans who say, you know what? This whole thing has been a disaster. Actually, look back. We've lost every election since 2016. 2016 looks like a fluke. 2018, we lost the House. 2020, we lost the presidency by 7 million popular votes. 2021, we lose the Senate. We have a bad year in 22. We lose again in 24. Maybe we lost the House in 24. This whole thing was a mistake. And we need to get Glenn Young Kim or Brian Kemp or some normal person to bring back the party as it was. So that'll be one set of answers.

There'll be people like Ron DeSantis, maybe not literally him, but he'll say, you know what? Yes, Brian Kemp, Glenn Young Kim, you're right, but we need to take a little of the Trump meanness and mix it into the old message, but with a little bit of snarl. And then there'll be people like J.D. Vance who'll say, no, what we need to do is to treat Trumpism like a series of ideas.

and put a smile on it and make it a little bit more rational and coherent, just the way you said, and try that. And then there'll be people, I don't know, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, will say the essence of Trumpism is being crazy. And what this electorate wants is an authentic crazy person, not a pretend crazy person like J.D. Vance. And I think those four approaches will be tested and we'll see what the right answer is. And I'm going to be...

a little careful about guessing which is going to get the upper hand. But my own intuition for what it's worth is the Vance answer will not be the right answer. That trying to make Trumpism a series of like the people who say old policy with a snarl and the people who say authentic crazy are more likely to be right. But I don't know. We'll see. My increasing view of Trump is that it is much more a politics of attitude than anything else.

And obviously there are policy prescriptions within that attitude. And one of the reasons I think that is every once in a while people will ask me on social media, on Twitter, why do you follow this or that person? I follow a lot of conservatives. I follow a number of Trump supporters because I want to know how they're thinking about things because I want to know what they're saying. You know, I didn't watch the debate yesterday and mute it when JD Vance was talking. I didn't mute it when Donald Trump was talking. I don't, I don't mute all these people because it's sometimes very instructive to understand the

what the other side thinks and why they think that way. And there's this universally condemned series of statements that Donald Trump made in the last number of days, where he calls Kamala Harris stupid, so she has mental issues and problems. Joe Biden does also, but Joe Biden developed those later. But Kamala Harris was born, you know, in mental decline. I forget the exact words that he used, which even for Trump...

is a little bit beyond what normal political discourse is about. And you would think that everybody would hate that, and it's nasty, and it's terrible, and doesn't belong in our politics, and it's further polarizing, and all of those things. And then I see the reaction from people in the MAGA universe, and someone said, and I'm wondering your reaction to this, this is why people love Trump. Because like what he says or not, he says what he thinks. And the very fact that he says this stuff that is considered taboo and impolite in political circles...

And for generations, much more of what we see is the kind of cordiality we saw in the vice presidential debate. The very fact that he says stuff, even if it's nasty, is seen as a virtue. What do you make of that? That's interesting. You know, we're talking about old clips. We talked about Reagan. A clip, you can see it on YouTube, and I direct people if they haven't.

toward it if they haven't watched it before, although many have, is the clip of Richard Nixon presiding over the electoral college count in 1961. - Yeah, oh wow, yeah. - You may have seen this. So he's of course vice president, Eisenhower's vice president, he runs for president in 1960, he loses to John F. Kennedy, and he finds himself in the situation that Al Gore would later find himself in of having to preside over his own defeat.

read the count, you know, so many vote for John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas, so many for Richard Nixon of California. And he performs a ceremonial duty. And then he says, because there's no script for what you're supposed to say, he asks the room, this is such an unusual situation, may I have three minutes of your time? And everyone claps. And he says, I hope the men in the Kremlin just witnessed the scene that we have shown here to the world today.

And he talked about the majesty of this transition of power where he delivered the presidency to John F. Kennedy. Through World War II and the Cold War, we had a series of imperatives on the American government, which is we had to preserve a lot of unity at home because the dangers around the unity at home were so intimate, so overwhelming. I mean, nuclear holocaust, that everyone involved in politics understood the system is bigger than any one of us.

And when the Cold War ended, I think a lot of that feeling faded. And Donald Trump certainly doesn't think the system is bigger than him. And I think one of the questions for us as we enter the post-Trump era is can we get that feeling back that the system is more important, the game is more important than the winner, the rules are the thing that matters, and we all benefit so much from these rules that we all have a stake, even if the rules pronounce us, that turns loser. Maybe there'll be another turn. Can we get back to that?

What about this question of whether or not there is one lesson to be learned by all politicians, and that is to speak less robotically and to be more honest, even if it's sort of not polite and formerly political taboo? I mean, it seems to me the one thing that frustrates people, and it's not necessarily partisan, is that, at least when I was growing up, politicians are very robotic. You know, some people will say, and it's not true of everyone, that the least interesting guest you can have on a podcast is an elected official.

because they don't say anything or everything they say is utterly predictable. And sometimes, you know, interviewers try to engage in a game of gotcha and it's ultimately fake and it's ultimately boring and it's ultimately not true and not real. And I think that's actually, I don't think the solution to the answer is Donald Trump, certainly. But I think, I think there is some force to that critique. Now on the other side, as I've thought about it over the years,

A politician is somebody who's trying to gain a consensus and a majority of people who will support him or her. So you can't just cavalierly, before Trump came along, disparage, even if you think it's right to do so and you feel this way, elements of your constituency because you're trying to get as many votes as possible. So one of the reasons that you're anodyne and one of the reasons that you're uninteresting is that, put negatively, you're trying to be all things to all people. Put positively, you're trying to be a uniter, not a divider. But that leaves a lot of people...

feeling that it's all fakery. Is there any truth to that? - I think with the less good politicians, it's true. The first is how do you have a good conversation with a politician? And that is, you don't try the gotcha questions. Because there's this game where a politician goes on the air and says, "There's one thing I can't say.

There are a lot of things I can say, but ask me about one of those. And the interviewer says, no, no, no, I'm going to give you the hardball question, which is the thing we both know you can't say. What's the point of this exercise? You both know I can't say that. That's bad interviewing because there are a lot of things that would be worth asking about. And the late, or not late, but Brian Lamb, the former host of C-SPAN always understood, ask the right question. And you do get interesting answers from the people with the heaviest responsibilities.

I don't think the politicians of the past were always so robotic. You know, Bill Clinton wasn't robotic. George W. Bush wasn't robotic. They were careful. They could be sometimes evasive. I guess that's what I mean. Yeah. Look, Donald Trump had – I always talk about this as being a seminal moment in 2016. And you had the 16 Republicans lined up in front of Air Force One at the Reagan Library. I think this is where it was.

And Jeb Bush is saying, you know, Republicans are better on national security and on safety, and my brother kept us safe. And Donald Trump is like, basically like, what the f*** are you talking about? 9-11 happened on your brother's watch. And not another person, and again, I'm not praising Trump. I'm just trying to diagnose something.

None of the other 15 people or 14 people would have dared to say that, right? They would have been very careful about that. And at that moment when I didn't think Trump had any shot of winning, but it was more entertainment value in 2016, that was something different. Yeah. But that's a very specific Jeb Bush problem, which is if you're going to run as the brother of George W. Bush—

You'd better have a very clear answer on to what extent do you accept and to what extent do you reject your brother's presidency? And if you can't work that out, maybe you need to reconsider having a third Bush presidency. My point was not about Jeb. The point was about Trump, that he busts out of the straightjacket of orthodox politics.

And I can understand why that hasn't appealed. He goes too far and he has no character and all those other things. But to the extent he breaks out of that straitjacket, isn't that a lesson to other politicians too? Up to a point. Just remember, Donald Trump got 46% of the vote in 2016, a little higher in the 46s in 2020. He never had majority approval of his presidency on any single day of his presidency, according to any reputable poll. Rasmussen doesn't count. That...

Day in, day out. This is why I think he's going to lose the election in 2024. A majority of the American people have rejected him on every single day since he became a candidate and then a president. And the American political system is not perfectly representative. So even though a majority rejects you, it's still theoretically possible to become president and did happen in 2016. But it's not a lesson to emulate. And anyway, yes, of course,

politicians want to win, but most people take, undertake the enormous risks of starting before it's you, you, you in the last round of the game, it's you or one other person. So you have a 50, 50 chance of winning or thereabouts. But when you start, you don't, you're doing it for some reason that's bigger than yourself when you start. And, and,

"Well, maybe if I'm a monster, "I can gain a little competitive advantage." But well, what's the point of this? We all know why Donald Trump entered politics because he had these psychic needs and of course to steal. But most people enter politics under the extremely long odds enter for better reasons than that.

And this kind of self-indulgence is not the course to recommend. And it mostly doesn't work. And even now, Donald Trump today, Donald Trump in 2016 was interesting because shocking. He's not a shock. He's boring. That's the most devastating point that Kamala Harris made against him in their debate was people are leaving because they're tired of the show. Reality shows don't last usually 10 seasons. Can we talk about Kamala Harris's coalition such as it is?

I mean, they will say it's very impressive that we have people like Dick Cheney, AOC, and Taylor Swift. Now, I don't remember ever seeing anything like that before. I don't think even the Reagan coalition was quite like that. Is that a lasting thing or is this just a feature?

of anti-Trumpism at this moment? - Can I say both? - Sure. - Would that sound like one of those Weasley politicians you like having on your podcast? - No, you're the platonic ideal of a lawyer, sir. - Ouch, ouch. Smile when you say that. Okay, so it's both because first, Dick Cheney being in the coalition is a very specific response to the threat of Donald Trump. And Cheney is doing what a lot of my friends are doing, what I'm doing, saying, you know what?

But we are not going to like 80% of the domestic agenda of the Harris administration. We're going to swallow that with our eyes open that we're not going to like a lot of it because it's more important to preserve the Constitution and because we trust her to do a better job of maintaining American leadership in the world, which is for us issue number one. I think that's the chaining man. And just –

yeah, the spending's going to be crazy. There are going to be all these regulations and all kinds of irritating little things from social issues that we're not going to like. But you know what? We'll have a chance. All of that can be fixed later. You can always balance the budget later. But the things that can't be postponed-

she's better on. And so in that sense, it is an aberration. We're not gonna see a Sanders, AOC, Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney coalition again. But the part of it that is enduring is I do think we're living through a moment like 1968, 74, when the parties change who their voters are. And as I said to you, and we discussed at the beginning of this podcast, we are seeing a certain kind of voter with a lot to lose

migrating into the Democratic coalition because it offers stability and a certain kind of voter with less to lose and more alienation migrating out of the Democratic coalition because they don't feel attached enough to the society and are excited by the Republican promise to take more risks with America. So David, there's a lot going on. We talked about some of this before we began recording and it is a little perilous to talk about the Middle East because events are changing so rapidly.

So as I mentioned, we're recording this on the morning of Wednesday, October 2nd. This podcast won't be out for a number of hours, and who knows what other things will have happened in that time. But we have seen Israel take very serious and aggressive concerted action against Hezbollah, a targeted ground war beginning, whatever targeted means. Iran has retaliated with a series of missiles in the last day. Do you dare to say anything about how you think

This is going to go with respect to Lebanon, Iran, and Hamas? Or is it too fraught and difficult? I'm not going to make military predictions because I don't have the expertise. I don't have the prophetic gift. But I think there are two lessons I would invite people to take away from all the shocking events since October 7th of last year.

The first is how much the world needs American leadership. That's one of the questions on the ballot in 2024. Can the United States abdicate? Can it auction off its foreign policy to the highest bidder? We will support Ukraine if they fabricate dirt against a political opponent. We won't support Ukraine if they don't fabricate dirt against a political opponent. Or does the world need America to be there? And they're in all kinds of, not just the headline places like the Middle East, but in the places of transnationalism,

tragedy on page 832, like what is going on in Sudan, where the scale of human suffering is enormous, and where American leadership is, there's a special representative to the Sudan, and aid is being delivered, and negotiations are being done, and American power is a shaping fact that is the only hope anybody in that terrible situation has got for a better outcome. That American leadership has to be present. And when you have a candidate for president who says, my idea is we leave the world to run itself,

Your idea is to leave the world to catch on fire that will scorch America too. That's the first thing I hope people take away from these events. And the second thing I hope they will take away is authoritarian societies boast a lot about their strength.

The Iranians just did, you know, ring of fire, line of death. We'll fire all our missiles at you. But democratic systems don't like to talk that way. Problem is we'd always rather spend the money at home if we could. It's as President Eisenhower said when he said goodbye, every dollar spent on instruments of war is stolen from health and education and transportation and better needs at home. So we don't like to do it.

But the capabilities of democratic societies are very great. And that is something we all ought to keep in mind when we hear these people from far left and far right talking about the doom and decline of our way of life and all these, the wave of the future is somewhere else. The wave of the future is liberal democratic capitalism right here at home. It doesn't talk a big game, but it is capable of defending itself when it has to. How do you think these issues will be playing out

in the election. Could we be sitting here in mid-November saying that, as you said earlier, everything matters and you don't know what small thing or medium-sized thing or large thing will affect the election? Could we be sitting here seeing in November that Kamala Harris lost Michigan because a particular block of voters was disenchanted with the Kamala Harris and Joe Biden policy?

in the middle east or in some other state that needs to be won that's not impossible it's also very possible that kamala harris wins pennsylvania because the philadelphia suburbs are filled with hundreds of thousands of people not a small block of voters who understand that the world needs america and understands that what she and her ticket stand for is american leadership uh in defense of embattled democracies and

During the Cold War, the reason Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were such powerful figures and won such vast majorities was they were able to give voice to American leadership at its most inspiring. In the more peaceful world that followed the Cold War, we needed to talk about that less. And since 9-11 and America frustration with the way that the 9-11 war has played out, we don't like to talk about it because we're all embarrassed and chagrined and we've lost a lot of self-belief. But one of the things that...

I think this is, you know, perverse way. There are some gifts of Donald Trump. And one of the gifts he's given is he's reminded the liberal half of America that it does believe in the country and it hates dictators and wants to stand up to them and does believe that the world needs America and does believe in international markets and does believe in all of that. You know, they may not like the Reagan domestic agenda, but when Kamala Harris puts Reagan's face in ads and

She is saying he voiced something that is truly universal, that is shared by all Americans of democratic belief, democratic faith with a small d. And Donald Trump rejects that. So I think her best argument for being president is that she is the heir to that mighty tradition. And if she loses, people may say what you just said. If she wins, people are saying, you know what?

If you are as liberal a Democrat as Kamala Harris and can say something that touches a chord in Dick Cheney, you found the magic key of American politics. Last question. You mentioned Donald Trump gifts. So my last question is, do they pay you enough at the Atlantic that you can buy one of the $100,000 Trump watches? I know you want one, David Frum. I would say don't think of it as a watch.

Think of it as a way that a non-citizen who's not allowed to make a campaign contribution can deliver cash directly to Donald Trump's wallet. And maybe the watch arrives someday, and maybe it doesn't. Are you making an allegation, sir?

I'm making a suggestion that I think to me it looks like a scheme for organized bribery and intentional circumvention of the campaign finance laws. And I don't know that anyone will give $100,000, but I think if anyone does, that person will not be shocked if the watch never arrives and will not be shocked if the watch turns out to be made of plastic instead of gold. They won't care. That person already has a good watch. Words to the wise. I don't think we have a lot of listeners today.

Who are in the market for that. Yeah, they own a nice watch. They don't own a president. But that $100,000 allows you to own a little piece of an American president. They probably also own a bridge somewhere. On paper, at least. In any event, David Frum, thanks for spending time with us. It's always great. Thank you. Bye-bye.

My conversation with David Frum continues for members of the Cafe Insider community. In the bonus for insiders, we discuss the difference between today's Republican ticket and Ronald Reagan. However much I disagree with this person on foreign policy and domestic policy, there is a human being here who has something in him that I can respond to.

To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com slash insider. Again, that's cafe.com slash insider. I want to end the show this week by offering my best wishes to two great and consequential men on milestone birthdays. And they both also happen to be fellow Libras.

First, I want to join the whole world in celebrating the 100th birthday of former President Jimmy Carter. As long as he's lived, his legacy of decency and integrity and service will last forever. So happy birthday, Jimmy Carter, on your 100th. The second birthday boy is another great man who was not president but was much more consequential to me all my life, and that's my dad. He turns 85 this week.

He came to this country some 55 years ago with just dollars in his pocket and a hope in his heart that I might amount to something in America. He has very often told me and my brother how proud he is of us. But given the life he has led and the sacrifices he has made, he will never be prouder of us than we are of him. Here's to 100 years for you too, Dad. Happy birthday. I love you. ♪

Well, that's it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, David Frum.

Or you can send an email to letters at cafe.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tadishore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noah Azoulay and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernandez. And the Cafe team is Matthew Billy, Nat Wiener, and Leanna Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost.

I'm your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.