A Super Bowl Snub and Other Media Mysteries of the Biden Campaign With Jamal Simmons
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Here's the deal. Our listeners get 20% off their first purchase at Viori.com slash Simmons. Once again, V-U-O-R-I.com slash Simmons. Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. On this episode, I dig into the Biden campaign.

with Jamal Simmons, Kamala Harris's former communications director and now a CNN political analyst. He's a seasoned communications professional and a former neighbor. We used to live in the same building together for a short time. I wanted to know from Jamal, who I actually saw last week at CNN, what's going on with the Biden campaign?

It feels like they haven't turned up the volume yet, especially now that Trump is the nominee. Although, obviously, you hear Biden attacking Trump when he's on the stump. He's calling him out more frequently. He's even calling him a sick fuck behind the scenes. But, you know, it doesn't feel quite that they have turned it up all the way.

Jamal said, you know, it's still early days, but I still wanted to know when are we going to see the full unveiling of the Biden campaign, especially when you're seeing polling like the NBC poll that came out yesterday that shows him trailing Trump by five points. And then you see Biden deciding not to do a Super Bowl interview where he could speak to 20 million people.

who would be seated watching the Super Bowl, ready to take in his message about a great economy, a higher GDP, lower inflation, low unemployment numbers, a surging stock market. And yet they're passing on this opportunity. So I asked Jamal the thinking behind this.

I also want to know how does Biden get his messaging out when he's constantly faced with protesters everywhere he goes, typically young people who are protesting the war in Gaza. We talk about Black voters, and we also break down the border bill that was just announced today that's basically dead on arrival in the House ever since Donald Trump told the Republicans to kill it because it would be too much of a political win for Joe Biden. All right, let's get down to it.

So Jamal, the first thing I'm thinking about right now is the news that broke up over the weekend. Why would Joe Biden skip the opportunity to do a Super Bowl interview? It's 20 million people. They're seated. They're watching. It's so much free advertisement. It's not Bill O'Reilly, like what Barack Obama had to sit down with. It's the second year in a row that he's doing it. And it's just like you're going into a campaign year. And maybe you could say last year. No, but I...

All I hear from, you know, the Biden world, campaign, White House, is they don't get enough credit, right?

economy is doing well. They feel like consumers are feeling more confident. They're spending money again. Job numbers are great. Unemployment is low. And this would be the opportunity to do it and sit down with CBS News' Nora O'Donnell. I'm just sort of like, why not do it? It just seems like such a no-brainer.

Yeah, I'm sure they have a whole matrix about which media they're going to do and why and how it all makes sense. I do know that they are really focused on how do they get the president in front of people who are really

really consuming things online, right? Like, so who are these social media influencers? Who are the people on, you know, TikTok and Instagram and all the places where half the American public is getting their news information from? And so maybe that's the focus for the White House, not preparing for a network news interview with a bunch of people who may not really be voters.

20 million people, though. I feel like at the same time, the people who watch Super Bowl games, they're like...

like a perfect swath of the American public. Like it's everyone. If you're in it, like I don't really like the Super Bowl. I mean, not the Super Bowl. I'm not a sports fan, but I'll be there to watch the halftime show. You know what I mean? I'll be at the party. And even, you know, Barack Obama with Bill O'Reilly, I remember where I was watching that. And a lot of these, like you have those moments where you remember where you were when you were watching that interview. And I thought he came off great.

He seemed cool. Bill O'Reilly seemed aggressive. It was just like, it was, I think it was a positive, net positive. I mean, would you agree? Yeah. I mean, it's all about the strategy, right? There's a very, one of the first things you learn when you get into political advertising is everyone thinks, oh, we should advertise on the Superbowl, right? Or on football. But you don't do it because you figure it's really a crazy thing. It's like,

it's a broadcast at a time where you're probably trying to be a little bit more specific, right? So you're talking to people in a whole bunch of states that you probably don't matter, right? Like people in Alabama are watching lists just like people in Michigan or Wisconsin are. You're probably talking to

half the country that is Republican, right? So you figure 47% of people, 48% if it's football, maybe a little bit more than that, you know, are Republican. And so then you're like, and then some part of them are people who already support us. So you start like doing the math on who's watching and you can get to a place where you're like, okay, we're going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort to do an interview and

that maybe some really small percentage of the country that we're trying to communicate with is going to pay attention to. And so maybe we should spend that time doing something else. Again, I don't know if that's the advice that I would give, but I'm not looking at how it is they're making their decisions and choices anymore. So I don't know exactly what it is they're thinking, but that's the only thing that starts to make sense to me is they want to spend time talking specifically to voters that they think are swayable.

Okay, fine. I mean, I don't think it was a good idea. I mean, then they say that they're spending money on the Grammy Awards, which I understand there's a feeling that... Why spend all this money on the Grammy Awards? Is that to reach the youth? Is that to reach young voters? Is that what they're thinking? Yeah, that's probably... Look, it's... African-American voters? It's the Taylor Swift of America, right? Oh, okay. As much as if it was anything else, it was Taylor Swift...

night right and so um but so will be the super bowl the super bowl is taylor swift night too every day is taylor swift day it's travis kelsey it's travis kelsey no no she owns the world we're just living in it okay taylor is just a guest on that night um but no there's that's right like so the grammys is probably an audience listen you know what's different now than um even like

But that's paid media, too. He had to pay a ton of money, I'm sure, to get on the Grammys to pay. CBS is free. Even more than three or four years ago, the algorithms rule everything, right? And so people are taking a look at

who's doing what, who's more likely to do it, who are the people who are trying to be swayable. And they're associating all the data that we're all leaving, all the breadcrumbs we're leaving every time we visit a website. And then that's how they're figuring out how to spend their time and money. That's happening in political conversation just like it is in every corporate conversation.

You don't think it's because they're worried that he can't handle an interview with Nora O'Donnell. Like he'll have a gaffe because obviously he's gaffe prone or he'll look old next to her or, you know, it'll just be like he just won't perform well. It's not that. How can how can Americans not take that away from the fact that he's not doing it?

Well, I mean, he talks to other people. I think the question is not so much, would he make a mistake? The question is, every time you do one of these things, is there's so much staff time and principal time that goes into preparing for it. And you just have to figure out, of all the things we have to do, is this the thing that's worthwhile to get us to our goal? Knowing that it's going to cost us

you know, three, four hours of prep to get ready for it? Or should we spend three, four hours of prep to do something else? It just feels like a network interview is like the easiest thing. Like as a communication professional.

In the old American media landscape, that's true, right? But I think now... You know what they're going to ask you. Like, you can almost guess. And, like, I used to work in network news. Like, it's almost... You can predict every question. You know what I mean? It has to be foreign policy, economy, you know, Hunter, impeachment, Republicans, border. Like, you just know. So just... That doesn't seem that hard. Yeah, and the difference is that...

I was talking to a young woman who helps us out with our kids a little bit. And she was like, oh, you work on TV, right? And I said, yeah, you know, I just work on CNN. And she said, oh, yeah, a lot of older people watch that, don't they? Right. She's like 23 years old. Right. Yeah, but you still need those people to go out and vote. I mean, you know, my point is this. My point is like she literally has no interaction with CNN.

Like, zero interaction in her life, right? So, you know, I'm, so, I think when you're thinking about who you're talking to, if we're trying to reach that young woman, 23-year-old, African-American, college degree, you know, about to, you know, go back to school and get a master's degree, if we're talking to CNN, we will never speak to her. She'll never hear a word that he, that Joe Biden has said. But this is CBS. Yes.

This is huge. Oh, because CBS is so much more useful than this. No, it is. The numbers are insane. Like, I haven't worked in broadcasts. Like, it's crazy. Like, they get 12 million viewers. You know, you're getting 20 million that night. But on a morning show, you get 12 million viewers. You get 6 million viewers that night. This is not 100, 200,000. But who are those viewers? They're actually very politically engaged. How old are they? They're politically engaged.

They're older, fair, but you still need older voters. Like you can't just dismiss them is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I'm not saying you don't. I'm saying, but every campaign is talking to a certain segment of the population. And so you got to figure out where are the people who you want to talk to and where are they listening to news? And what you might find even is that if the president is doing an interview with,

on CBS News during the Super Bowl, all the people who you're talking to all have the sound down because that's when they're getting up to get their chips and get new beer because that old guy's on TV. And then we'll turn it back on when Usher comes out so that we can watch the halftime show.

Okay, so maybe that's the deal. It's like he looks like an old guy on TV that they're tuning out and they don't... And that's just kind of the way it feels right now in some ways. And in that venue, they're just not looking for political news, right? Like, they didn't come for that, right? Like, all the people who are mad about Taylor Swift, you know, being in the Super Bowl, were like, I didn't come for a Taylor Swift concert. I came to watch Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift's in the middle of my football game. It's kind of a tradition, though. Like, a pre...

A president's pre-interview is a tradition. He doesn't do a lot of press conferences. I don't know how many he's done, like none. It does feed into the right-wing conspiracy that's growing more popular that he's just not willing to face the press. And I say this as an advocate for the press too, as a person in the press, like it's time to come out and like do some more interviews. Like you're in election year now. Or you can sidestep, like which is what they're doing, going to TikTok stars, right? But that's unpredictable too. Yeah.

Sure it is. But I mean, look, the president did, you know, he talked to 60 Minutes a while back, right? And he talked to, he'll do interviews with people. The question is, how often do you want to- Scott Pelley, an older white man, you know, who looks like him when he's sitting across from him. There's not that much of an age difference. How often do you want to do it is really the question. And are there other things that you could do? The most valuable thing there is,

on the White House calendar. Well, I just don't want to hear from any of them complaining about us not touting the good job numbers or all of his good works if he's not going to go out there himself and tout it. Well, just remember this. The most valuable thing there is in a presidential calendar is his time, right? You can't make more of it.

So you can always go raise more money. You can always go hire more people. You can't make more hours in a day. And so when you're trying to figure out what to do with the president's time, it's a pretty high premium on how you want to spend his time. And maybe in the old days, it made sense to go to do the Super Bowl. But we don't live in a broadcast world anymore. We live in a narrowcast world, right? Everybody in media is narrowcasting and talking to niche audiences.

in very specific ways about the things that they care about and not about a bunch of things that maybe they don't really care about.

Okay. I'm going to disagree with you on this one, but that's fine. We'll move on. But we do, I do want to talk to you about the president getting his message out because you are communications, you know, professional. He keeps going out on the campaign trail. He's in South Carolina, right? He's talking about democracy. I mean, he's talking about freedoms, like not really going out to those Black churches to talk about abortion, obviously. But he's, and he's going to Michigan to talk to the union leaders. Like these are all like

comfortable places for Joe Biden to be on the trail, right? South Carolina handed him his first big victory in 2020, the primary, and Michigan. He's kind of... Like, he won Michigan. He's a... He's a... Like...

union workers. These are like Scranton Joe people. And everywhere he goes, where he should be received warmly, there are protesters everywhere. And they are protesting the war in Gaza. And they are those TikTok kids, right? Like I say kids, but they're students. They're young people who are watching on their phones,

children being torched, basically, in Israel and in Gaza. And it's really, it's in Gaza, and they're growing increasingly anti-Israel. They're becoming, they're angry at Joe Biden. And it's like, I know that he signed an executive order after he went to Dearborn, Michigan last week, or before. I can't recall exactly the timing of it dropped.

Yeah, as he landed. But it basically placed sanctions on Israeli settlers that attacked Palestinians. And this was obviously a sign of like trying to crack down on Bibi Netanyahu and this and that. But like, this is a problem going into an election year where you have like all of your campaigns, like he's being drowned out for four more years is like being drowned out by like blood on your hands. It's just like very like visceral. It feels like we're in a war ourselves. And these are the young people that,

Biden needs to be running his ground operations, you know, get out the vote. Kids in colleges that should be getting their friends out there. It's a big part of the coalition and it's African-American voters as well that feel aligned with Palestinians. So what do you make of all of this? Like, how can Biden get out and share his message? How does he win these people back? And like, where are they going? Are they going to Cornel West? Are they going to Jill Stein? Like, where do those voters go? Or do they just not go out and vote at all?

Yeah, listen, this is not a communications problem. This is what you call a real problem, right? Okay. This isn't skipping the Super Bowl. There are times when you're sitting in a meeting and people are like, oh, I think we have a communications problem. Like, we're trying to figure out, talk about the war in Gaza. Like, no, that's not a communications problem. That is just an actual real-life problem. So, listen, I think he's going to have to, the president's going to have to figure out how to talk to people about this.

Obviously, what happened on October 7th is a tragedy, and people who see it and hear about it believe that Hamas is an organization that Israel deserves to defend itself against.

That said, they also are watching over the last months so many people dying, tens of thousands of people, it seems like, who are dying in Gaza. And they say, wow, isn't there a way for us to do this that so many women and children don't have to die who are innocent in this process? And so I think the president's going to have to really answer for that. And one of the things that we have found, I think that we see is if you are consuming all your news on your phone, on Instagram and TikTok,

The what's happening in the middle East looks very different than it does. If you're reading newspapers and watching television, right. It looks like a very different situation. So they got to communicate again, not just on television and newspapers. They've got to communicate this message directly to people on the devices that they're getting all their news from. And so what do they tell them? Like we're, we're, we, we pass this executive order and do that on Tik TOK.

Yeah, I mean, look, you tell people like it's not a it's not an open book, right, to the government of Israel. But the president or not, there are going to be conditions here. The president is going to hold extreme violence accountable. And so he is. So doing that matters, right? Like saying like you can't this this settler violence is something that I think a lot of people have watched and said this seems terrible.

It's extrajudicial. It's not like people have done anything. It's a settler. It's what settlers are doing is violent. So he's going to have to communicate that. At the same time, a lot of these voters also care about other things, right? They care about student loan costs and student loan forgiveness. They care about what's happening with child care, because now you've got a lot of people who have kids and they're trying to go to work and they're trying to start businesses. They need like a, you know, they need child care in their lives now.

They care about what's happening with their parents and their drug costs. There are all sorts of things they care about. And so over the course of the year, you talk to them about all the things that it is they care about. And what you try to do is find a way to maybe make some changes in the policy, which we were starting to see, like the Secretary of State going back and forth.

to Israel and having these conversations and trying to get hostages free and trying to fight a ceasefire solution. You do that. And then you've got, look, it's February. The election is going to happen in November. The

A lot of time for facts on the ground to change and maybe for the United States to become part of the rebuilding effort and the humanitarian effort in a much more significant way. So by the time you get through the summer, it's not really thinking, you know, you're not seeing images, new images of people dying. You're seeing new images of the United States helping to rebuild Gaza.

I'm just thinking more about like students, you know what I mean? And like young people who are organizers for the Democratic Party, like these, there are obviously a lot of them are protesting now. And I'm just wondering, like, are you like, do you have any concerns that they're just not going to be there to like, be the be the on the ground boots on the ground, you know, advocates for Joe Biden if they're feeling this way?

Yeah, there's a lot of concern. I mean, but it's not all uniform, right? The vice president showed up at Claflin University in South Carolina last week. And, you know, she was at a room full of young people, right? And some of those young people talked to reporters right before the South Carolina primary.

And, you know, they were excited and they want to engage. And so while there are people who are legitimately out on the street protesting and they have concerns, there are also a lot of people who also care about Gaza and they care about their own issues about their lives. And so they want to they might be animated by more than just one set of issues.

I know, just like the polling right now is just not great for him. It shows that he's losing, you know, he's losing his grip on that constituency of young people, African-Americans, Hispanics. I don't know if the Hispanics necessarily have anything to do with Gaza. Oh, but don't forget.

Yeah, and don't forget, though, you know, all these choices, you know, elections are choices. And so at some point, they're going to be reminded a lot about Donald Trump and whether or not Donald Trump is the alternative that they want to choose, right? So if you say like, oh, what's happening in the Middle East is a disaster. It's chaos. It's horrific. You know what we need?

We need Donald Trump. He's the one who's going to calm things down. He's the one who's going to figure out how to make this all work. I don't think most people who would vote for a Democrat believe that Donald Trump is the solution to that. So then the question is, can you remind them enough about the choice that's before them

that they then will choose, you know, Trump. And don't forget also about abortion. And I think we've seen abortion is a great motivator for a lot of women and the men who care about them. Abortion is a great motivator for moving people to vote.

And you don't think like, I just, I just wonder if they think electorally and like think that they realize that like not going out to vote, voting for Cornel West or these third party candidates that probably will get 1% of the vote, but could have big impact on in swing states. Like if that, if they're aware that that helps Trump win.

I mean, how do you communicate that to them? I mean, they'll be aware because somebody's going to spend millions of dollars telling them that, right? Like somebody's going to spend, you know, they're going to spend, you know, probably a half a million dollars communicating over the course of the next seven months. And so there's going to be a lot of, there's going to be a lot of information on their hands to figure that out. And listen, and some things also are happening in the news, right? Like we saw for the first time, we saw a woman,

who was in Texas, who had a fetus, who was clearly not going to survive. And we saw the judges and the government in Texas say that she could not get health care that she needed to solve this problem, to protect her own ability to reproduce. Mind-blowing. We saw a woman in Ohio who had a miscarriage at home. 50% of people who have miscarriages have miscarriages at home. And so they thought about prosecuting her because of how this happened.

I just... Wow. I think when people see that stuff on the news and when they get reminded of it, the choice becomes clear. Do you want the person who picked the judges who made this possible and they do this to these states? Do you want these people in charge of your lives and to make this the reality in all of America? We shall see. That's why you fight it out. The numbers right now are not great. And every time I... I think last time I saw you, we were about to go on set on CNN about a week ago. And I was like...

Just kind of reflecting what I had been hearing from people like a general in D.C., just like a general concern that the campaign hasn't like kicked into high gear enough. Right. Like that the numbers aren't good. It's just Trump is beating him in all of these swing states and nationally now in his latest NBC poll by like seven points, I think it's said.

And I guess I think you said to me, oh, it's too early. It's too early. And I mean, can you kind of explain that to the listeners? Why is it too early to start a campaign? I don't want anything I'm saying to be construed to say I'm not worried. Right.

Right? I do think it's concerning. You're peeing in the bath. It's cool, right? Right, exactly. It's all very concerning. The question is, to me, is there something you could do about it? And I think the reason why you have campaigns and they go on for months and months and months and we're all annoyed by them by the end and we see all these ads we don't like is because you've got to communicate with people and that's a process of communicating. And sometimes, you know, people...

You don't necessarily want to have the entire conversation for eight months, right? When people get really emotionally invested in the conversation or mostly invested in the outcome,

to have that emotional investment go on for too long, they can start to lose its impact. So if you're a campaign, you want to think about when you start to have a conversation that's going to get them angry and worked up when they find out certain things or they're reminded of certain things. And you've got to just pace that the right way. It's weird because Trump has kept his...

his followers angry for a very long time. It's been like eight years now, right? It's because his followers angry, but everybody else, everybody else is kind of like that dude's weird. They're fatigued.

Right? Like everything about that dude is weird. Like, do we really want to sign back up for that? And are we going to sign up for the dude who said he wanted us to inject bleach to get rid of COVID? Right? But then again, you're seeing him leading in the polls. Like, what is that all about? Who's been talking about that? But the one group of people who have been is someone like a Nikki Haley or a couple in Chris Christie when he was in the Republican race.

And you are starting to see some softening among not the Trump MAGA people, but the other people, the kind of conservative, moderate conservatives or the like softened conservative independents. And they're saying like, oh, you know, I really wish he wasn't doing this. Now, Nikki Haley can't win. She didn't have the numbers. It doesn't look like. But yeah.

It also shows you that there are people out there, let's say it's three out of 10 Republicans, right, who don't like it. That's a big number. And either they don't vote for, they either vote for Joe Biden or they vote for a third party candidate. So it's not a static thing. It's not just the one or two out of 10 Democrats who are unhappy. It might be three or 10 out of Republicans who are unhappy too. Yeah.

Okay, I get that. But this has always been a phenomenon, like the anti-Trump voter, right? It's always been sort of a feeling. Although he really only lost last election by 40,000 votes. He's never won the majority of the American people. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, he never will. That's a fact. But can we just talk about the fact that he's making gains with African-Americans and Hispanics and young people? And I know that the African-American vote came up this weekend after South Carolina. Yeah.

I'm challenging you on that. Because I don't think that's true. I think what's happening is- I mean, I'm just talking about what the numbers I'm seeing. I'm not making it up. I think what's true is that Joe Biden is losing support, right? If you look at Donald Trump's numbers, Donald Trump's numbers are fairly static, right? And they kind of bounce around. And the average Republican, I think George Bush got like 8% or 9% of the African-American vote, George W. Bush. So-

There's always a percentage of the African-American community that's going to vote for a Republican. Trump's at 12 now, I saw in one poll. I saw Trump at 12%. Yeah, I'm sure there are people who are intrigued by him, right? Because he's intriguing. And so, like, especially African-American men, many of whom who may feel like, you know, the Democrats take us for granted and, you know, maybe we shouldn't always be beholden. But people do that a lot. They vote by their pocketbooks. They vote a lot by their pocketbooks as well, right? Yeah.

They fill out their pocketbooks. Trump looks like a guy who's going to help you make some money. You hear all these kind of things. But the truth is, Trump is really just making money for himself. I mean, this is the guy. Remember, he started having Air Force One fly near his hotel in Scotland so that they could spend money at his golf resort in Scotland when they flew to Europe?

or the guy who had the hotel in DC and foreign governments would buy blocks of hotel rooms and they wouldn't even stay at the hotel. They'd just buy the blocks and then spend the money because the hotels were like the presidential tip jar, right? People would just come in town, they'd spend money at the hotel, but they knew that the Trump people were paying attention to who was staying in the hotel rooms. And then who knows what they got for that kind of service.

So I just think, do we want to have a government that's kind of cash and carry like that? Like, those are the things that voters are going to be faced with by the time they get to Election Day in November. I don't know if that's actually like people have heard that from years. And I don't know if that's actually penetrating because I think they assume that everyone in politics is cash and carry.

You know what I mean? And like you hear the Hunter stuff and how much money he made while his father was vice president. And you're like, you sort of, it like almost cancels itself out in a weird way with voters, I'm sure. Maybe Hunter, you know, made a million or two dollars or something like that, right? 15 million, I thought I read.

Okay. Jared Kushner got $6 billion from the Saudis, right? Like $6 billion. And he was the guy who was in charge of the Middle East peace process who couldn't even get a security clearance. Like that's how bad his stuff was, that he was on a temporary security clearance for most of the time that he was in the White House. And then as soon as he left, he walked out the door and raised $6 billion from the people they were doing business with. These are the people who had...

the Republican National Convention on the South Lawn of the White House, unheard of, right, to do something like that. So it's not that... So I give you credit. People may say, like, oh, everybody doesn't. Everyone's corrupt. Yeah. But the magnitude, like, the scale of it, right? Like...

You know, and then what did everybody else get out of it? I just don't know that we, you know, what we got is a pandemic where so many people died and the economy was shut down and we had a president in charge who didn't seem to know what he was doing. Yeah. That's, although a lot of these polls do show people are like nostalgic for Trump's economy because it was like, just things were less expensive. You know what I mean? There are some factors that aren't necessarily the result of your work, but you get to celebrate them. Do you know what I mean?

You know, it's like, it's like you have a relationship, right? Like I have an ex-girlfriend every once in a while. You might be like, oh, I wonder what she's doing. Like, she was great. She was funny. And then like, you talk to your friends and like, do you remember like how miserable you were when you guys were dating? It was horrible. Yeah. Nostalgia is a bit of that. Yeah, exactly. Remember the good parts until you're faced with, you know, having to get, you know, all the bad parts thrown back into your face. And so I think as people get reminded of what

You know, being in this relationship with Donald Trump was like, they'll remember that they couldn't wait to get out of it. This intimate relationship. It was quite intimate. He was in your face all of the time. All the time. Over and over again. Yeah, it was a lot. And always in your DMs. Yeah, always. He was always on. He wasn't even in your DMs. He was on your feed blasting you like a crazy ex-girlfriend, right? Right.

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Can't wait for this one. Alien Romulus, rated R, now playing only in theaters. Get your tickets now. Do you think there are concerns, though, about African-American voters? I read somewhere this morning that Biden has lost support among African-American voters because of misinformation. Do you think it's because of the cause of war and what's on TikTok? Is that what it is? Or...

I don't think that the story we're seeing on social media is completely organic. I think that there are people who are goosing up. We saw this before in 2020. We saw that there were outside actors who were goosing up information, particularly for African-Americans, to try to sow discord and have us turn on each other in the country. So I don't think it's completely organic.

But I do think the concerns that people have are real. And so you've got to address the real concerns that people have in the way that they want to hear about it. But the numbers are concerning. There's no doubt the numbers are concerning. There's a lot of work to be done. I just think that people have not

People have not been reminded what it was really like under Donald Trump. And the White House has not really put forward its future agenda about what they want to do next. A lot of the communication is about what happened in the last three and a half years. And it's time for them to start talking about what they want to do for the next four years. The problem is, like, I don't even think people really realize what they did in the past few years, to be honest. Well, yeah, that's why they keep talking about it. But you know what?

At some point, you gotta just... They ditch that. It's like... You gotta just chalk it up. People feel it or they don't. Yeah, but then I'm like... And then you just pass up this big comms opportunity. It seems like... I don't know. It just... If there was one thing about Trump, he was on Twitter like a madman being like, look at the Dow! It's great! Look at the Dow! Jobs! Jobs! And you're just like...

It was in your face. But think about that. He did that all the time. And what was the result of that politically? He lost the Congress in 2018. He lost the White House in 2020. He didn't, couldn't win the Senate. In fact, he lost the Senate seat. That's the thing. Like he, it wasn't considering. Yeah, he still lost.

He lost. And in 2022, they were supposed to rout Democrats and they barely held, they barely got the House back and they lost an additional Senate seat. The Democrats increased the Senate majority. That's because he chose psychos. But I also think he wasn't on the ballot. You think he's going to get better? I don't know. I feel like people come out for Trump and not for the people he picks. That's why I think Trumpism will end with him in a weird way.

I don't, I think Republicans have become more rabid, but I don't think anyone will ever have this kind of grip on the party the way he does because no one that he's picked has really been able to carry the mantle in the same way that he has. Right. I pray that that's true. I hope that that's true. Some of the dynamics are still real and will matter, right? Like people still feel like, you know, the wealth disparity is, is too great. You know, um,

They still feel like the cultural change is happening around them. The people are freaked out about the fact that there are so many more Latinos and African Americans and Asian Americans everywhere and they're in charge. I think the cultural stuff is real and the economic questions of people feeling left behind by the elites is real. And that's something that Democrats have to address directly. And I think...

the Democrats really do have to find a message to people, and particularly, frankly, to white people about what the United States and the country looks like, and a country that's more diverse, and the opportunities that everybody gets to have and that everybody's kids are going to have going forward. And I think Trump has a message about it, which is it's going to be screwed up, and I'm trying to shut it down and stop it, right? I'm trying to take it back to, you know, like the America you remember from the 1950s TV shows,

But the Democrats kind of are, it's like the Democrats are treating the symptoms of the problem without talking directly about what's really the problem.

Right. I think you're right about that. I just don't like when I think about it, I know they're like, it's a choice. It's a choice between Trump and Biden. You pick. Right. And it's like chaos of Trump, Biden, abortion access, no access, democracy, dictatorship. Like it's a choice. Right. And they hope it's not really a referendum on Biden because Biden's numbers are approval rating so low. Right.

But then I'm like, what about people who just don't go out at all to vote? You know, they or they go out and protest and think I'll vote for Cornel West. I'll show them I'm angry. Maybe RFK Jr., maybe some no labels candidate. And the other thing is like it's just and the reason I think this is because I don't think that the Biden team has laid out the future. Like you said, they have it like, you know what Trump wants to do. He wants to go back in time. But like, that's still a future.

it's a future that goes backwards, but it's still a future. I just don't know what Biden is like four more years. And all the conversations are like four more years. It's like, what's he going to be like in four years? He's 81. Do you know what I mean? So it's like, I just don't sense. And maybe the State of the Union, which is coming up soon, will be an opportunity for him to lay that out, his mandate. But I just don't, I don't know. Maybe you can crystallize it for me because I haven't really been able to

Steady the ship four more years, that's what it is? Or more prosperity? I don't know. Look, I think it is chaos versus stability, and it is democracy versus autocracy. It's all the things you mentioned. But it's also going to be, what do we get for it? Because we all think in these big lofty terms. Those of us who, I don't know if you study political science in school or journalism or anything, but we think of these great big lofty terms. But

But the truth is, democracy is a means to an end, right? Capitalism is a means to an end. All these things that we enjoy and we have in our lives are a means to an end. And the end is, is my life going to be better? And if my life is not getting better, then I'm not tethered to the ideologies that everybody else is talking about. And I think that's what Trump has in his pocket. A bunch of people who feel like their lives aren't getting better or they won't get better. Yeah, democracy's not working for them. So...

It's not getting better, then why do I care about this democracy that the Democrats keep talking about? Well, it's, I totally, listen, my dad is a Trump voter. My mom is like liberal, but I think she has voted for Trump before. I'm not even sure. But point is like, she's not liberal. She's like a swing voter. She's North Carolina, like exactly that, you know, McHenry's district, Charlotte area, person that they should be targeting, frankly. And, you know, I talked to my dad and he's like,

disruptor. Like, just disrupt it. It's, everything's going wrong. Just disrupt it. The government is corrupt. Everything is wrong. And I don't think it comes, he doesn't come from like a racist point of view or anything like that. He just feels like this is not the America we were promised. And he's, he's like,

you know, we're, I'm a, I'm a first generation American on my mom's side. She's from USSR. So she knows the importance of democracy. You know what I mean? But this, this family has been in this country since like 1885. You know what I mean? And they know what it's like to be discriminated against Sicilian Americans, not in the same way as African Americans, but like they were not treated as first class. It wasn't great for them when they got here. I mean, it's not, it doesn't have to be like it was worse. It wasn't great for them when they got here.

No, they were not treated like they were... They weren't treated well. But the point is, their belief is like, this was supposed to be better for us. And there's this, I think, this deep-seated...

just sort of like, does it just, and I don't think he represents all the Trump voters, but I do think there is that anger and like, just burn it down, tear it down. Like we are so angry about the institutions, like those, like the bureaucrats, the institutions, like those are the targets. Those are the problem, right? The politicians that all sound the same, that wear the same, you know, suits that do the same things. It's like,

I don't know. I, like, I, I understand. I hear their rage and I, like, I can, I can understand. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not, I don't want to look at it from a tower and look down. There are those voters. No, it's a real sentiment. And it, and it doesn't just exist on the right. Right. There are a lot of liberals who feel the same way. Yeah. You know, we saw those protests in 2020, Black Lives Matter summer, the people who feel the same way.

The difference is, though, that it's easy. It's not easy. Burning things down is one thing. Building up and creating systems that matter and can sustain people is different. And I think there are a lot of voters...

who aren't that way. There are a lot of voters and people in America who just want to, you know, I just want to go home and not worry about crime. You know, I just want to like be able to put my kid through school and not have him go broke. You know, I just want my daughter to be able to like, you know, go get her health care and not have to worry about the fact there's no OBs here because the insurance rates for OBs is too high. And so, you know, people have stopped doing that and whatever. Gee,

guy. You're totally right. The difference is my dad's a baby boomer. That's the problem. It's the boomers. He's a baby boomer. He's like from the Trump era. You know what I mean? Right. But you know, there are a lot of people, I don't know if your mom's this way, but there are a lot of people like your dad who live in the household with somebody who doesn't know their politics.

There are a lot of women who don't talk to their husband about what they really, how they really vote. Never. Yeah, of course not. She's like, don't tell your father. You know, I voted for Hillary. Don't tell your father. It's like, okay. Because it's, it's interesting. They are, they feel overwhelmed by the, in like the,

ardent view of the husband. I don't know. It's a little old school to me. We can be a little chesty, you know? When the boys get together and start talking about our politics and our sports and our whatever, it can get a little chesty. Ah, these people, I don't understand. You know? Well, the good news is my dad... I can talk about my dad as much as I want in my podcast because I know he's not listening. He's like...

He's like, I don't want to hear it. I don't want it. No, I'm just not, I'm not interested in what, because he knows that we disagree on a lot of things. So not everything, but on some things. I challenge him. I don't necessarily disagree with him, but as a journalist, I challenge him. And, you know, it's like people don't want to be challenged.

This is the other thing about the algorithms, right? Like the algorithms keep feeding us information that they think that we want. And, you know, it was funny. I won't say the name of the news organization, but I subscribed to this one news organization's app. And I did it because...

it was like a dumb app. Right. And they kept trying to get me to move to the new app. And I refused to do it. I refused to do it because in the, in the old app, you could just see the news, like basically like how it came out. Right. I could choose the stories that I wanted, but then in the new app, it's all tailored to you. Right. It's all like curated news. And so, um,

One day they just changed everybody over to the new app. And so now I'm getting like all this curated news and I feel like it just makes you live in a silo. You know, I said this recently and probably shouldn't say this in public, but I'm not a big Taylor Swift fan. It's not that I don't like Taylor Swift. I just don't. I just don't. I don't have a Swift in me. Yeah, you're not obsessed.

And I'm a man of a certain age. I'm a black man of a certain age. What do you like, Jamal? Tell us. But wait, but like a lot of my friends like love Beyonce, right? So when Beyonce's concert tour was going on, my feed was filled with all these women going to Beyonce concerts and flying to Europe and wearing silver dresses and like doing all this stuff about Beyonce. So when everyone started talking about how Taylor Swift was like running the year, I was like, what are you talking about? Taylor Swift?

Beyonce is the one who's running the year. I lived in this information silo. I was in a little cultural silo. And so I didn't even understand why Taylor Swift was that big of a deal. And I just think people live in that world in politics. And they don't know that people like Joe Biden or they don't know why people like Donald Trump. They just know that they think he's horrible because in their silo, he's the worst person ever.

You pick to him. Right. It's like, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Choose your news. Okay, but let's hit on the news of the week. Obviously, a border bill was finally revealed after weeks and weeks of the Senate working on it. It's hitched to a bill that connects Ukraine aid, aid for Israel, and Israel

Obviously, it's dead on arrival in the House because the Republicans think it did not go far enough. It allows the president to stop asylum claims to close the border, essentially, after there are surges that reach 5,000 migrant crossings. So it's not happening. And now the talk is about decoupling the aid from the border security bill. And mainly Trump has said, I don't like this. It doesn't go far enough. And since he's the presumptive nominee and he controls the party, it's not happening.

et cetera, you know, he, he decides essentially what Republicans do. It's incredible to watch this iron grip and how all the dominoes fall. But this was an important bill for Joe Biden.

the, you know, White House Democrats, they realize immigration is a huge problem for them too, especially now that these Republican governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are, you know, they're actually shipping migrants from border states up north to their cities. New York had an influx of migrants, especially this summer, Chicago, and they don't have the capacity either. And,

Democratic voters are listing my immigration as an issue and border security up there with their economic issues, pocketbook issues, like crime and security. And so Joe Biden needs to address this before the election. I'm just curious, like, what are you thinking about? How important is it that something is passed or that Joe Biden does something about border security before the election?

well we're now in a remarkable period where the republicans have been beating their chests about immigration now for seven or eight years right um really didn't talk about it for longer than that yeah w bush tried to pass an immigration bill barack obama tried to pass immigration bills um uh even joe biden tried to pass comprehensive reform the first weekend first uh term in office first year in office

So nobody wants to do the comprehensive reform that would have a pathway to citizenship for dreamers and would, you know, deal with high skilled workers, H-1B visas, they call them, and the children of H-1B visas and all this sort of high stakes immigration work. So instead, we get left with a border bill that just focuses on security. And so the Democrats finally say, OK, we will do it. We will do the border bill with some tweaks. We'll do the border bill that you guys have been asking for.

And we just want to fund this war in Ukraine against Putin. And we want to support our ally Israel, which you also say is our ally. You want to support them. And we want to counter China, which you also say you're concerned about the rise of China. So we want to counter China. And we want to put money in there for stuff like submarine-based maintenance and stuff like that, which you also say you're for strong defense. And they all say no.

Right? It's like, it's just hard to understand. They said it didn't go far enough. They want no, zero crossings, which is impossible, obviously. What world do we live in where everybody gets everything they want every time they want it? I mean, other than my little, like, four-year-old daughter, who's weird that I'm supposed to give her everything it is she wants whenever she wants it. She deserves it.

And she does deserve it. And she probably gets more than she should, truth be told, because I'm kind of wrapped around her little finger. But no, in no other world is that really a thing when you're an adult. And so they ask for all these things. The Democrats are giving them all this that they say they want. We're angering the people on our left. We're angering some of our Hispanic and Latino constituents. We're angering people who care about some of these things.

And then the Republicans say no. Why? Because Donald Trump doesn't like it because he thinks it's going to help Joe Biden. So it's not actually about... It's not actually about solving the problem that it is Republicans have said they wanted to solve. It doesn't... I can understand... It's just about Donald Trump, again. And that's what we're signing ourselves up for. It is about Donald Trump. It's always going to be about what's best for Donald Trump. I totally agree with you on that, but I don't... I do... I can understand, though, too, why they would think it's still too many border crossings. You know, it's not like...

But again, it's not like the fix, but I think that they're killing something that would be a step in the right direction rather than accepting it. But I understand why they don't think it goes far enough, right? But I agree, it's politics. It's politics on both sides. It's the nature of politics. It's the nature of politics.

Yeah, but Democrats didn't want to touch immigration either when they realized when they thought it wasn't good for them, you know, but now they just didn't want to do all the restrictive border things without the positive things that actually set up a regime so that people who come into the country, you know, have like a pathway.

Right? Instead, what we're doing now is we're just doing all the hard stuff. We're not doing any of the stuff that's going to be... They're not even doing work permits, right? Yeah, we're not going to make the country more competitive. Right. We're not going to have more work permits. Or maybe like a few more work permits. But we're not going to like...

deal with the high school worker problem. Right? We're not going to take these people in from out of the shadows who've been living here their whole lives and don't have a country to go back to because they've never lived anywhere else except for the United States since they were like small children. We're not going to deal with any of that stuff. 11 million people. Yeah, yeah. That have been living there. We're not going to do that. I mean, both sides aren't getting what they want. Yeah, both sides.

No, no, I totally get it. It's, it's, it's a, but I think both sides are playing politics. Like I do, but I think it's worse, obviously. But the reason, but the reason why I'm sort of laugh about it is not that the politics isn't playing a case, right? Because it's clear that the Democrats have moved on this because it's really an issue for, for Americans in a way that it wasn't a couple years ago. But that's what you're supposed to do.

Right? Like what you're supposed to do is have the constituents in the country... But it's always been an issue for Americans who live on the border states. It's always been. Sure. But now it's an issue for people who live in Chicago and in New York and in Washington, D.C., right? Right. Yeah, like Eric Adams screaming at the president about this, the mayor of New York and the governor of New York. Right, so what you're supposed to do is listen to people when your constituents get upset and listen to them when they say, solve this problem. I need you to do it. And so the Democrats, sure, they play politics. They didn't do it before. They're doing it now.

But instead of listening to their constituents, the Republicans aren't listening to their constituents. The Republicans are just listening to Donald Trump. Right. And that's what we're signing up for. Four more years of doing what's best for Trump. No, I agree they're listening to Trump. I do think that they want more. And the truth is they don't even really, like, it's not like Mike Johnson has the numbers either with moderates to pass this. I guess he could pass it with Democrats. But he has the numbers with Democrats.

Right. Speaker of the House. He's not the speaker. He'll be done. He'll be out. He'll be done. Just like Kevin McCarthy. Head on a stick. Yeah. I don't know. It's broken. Nancy Pelosi. Let me say something. We all were there in Washington under the Nancy Pelosi era. That comes to a point where Nancy Pelosi was like and she had a she had a majority that was almost as thin as this one. Not quite as thin, but almost. Nancy Pelosi said that we were going to do something. It got done. Yeah. Well, Nancy Pelosi. Even if Democrats were mad about it.

She's been around for like 20 plus years, right? Maybe more than that. More than that. It's the 80s. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she's been around forever. This guy has been around for like, what? Six months, three months. Right. Has no idea what he's doing. Yeah, no, he's just hanging on for dear life right now. Not that I'm giving anyone a pass, but yeah. No, I don't think it's a pity because they spent a lot of time on it, right?

Yeah, we just can't have a government where one person's political interest is the marker for whether or not we get things done. Some things we have to do because we have to do them. You think Nancy Pelosi wanted to raise the debt limit or wanted to pass some of the big defense bills? She's a liberal from San Francisco. She's doing anti-war protests before she got to Congress.

You think she wants to do that? No, but she was the speaker of the House. She was the third, second in line to the presidency, right? She understood the responsibility that she had. She also didn't have like a gang of rivals screaming off at their head the whole time, like these MAGA, you know, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene types. And so do we want to be ruled by Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene? I say hard pass.

Yeah, well, that's what the voters can decide. They've got a few more months. Well, Matt Gaetz, I don't think he's going anywhere. Those Florida voters, those old ladies, they love him. I think he's here to stay until they give him a kiddie job. I don't know just the old ladies who love him. Gross.

All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. I really appreciated Jamal. It's always fun to chat with you. Yeah. Thanks for breaking it all down for the listeners. I'd love to have you back on. Anytime. Good to see you.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Devin Biroldi and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please share it with your friends, follow and rate it. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news and sign up for my newsletter, the best and the brightest. You can use the discount code Tara20. I'll see you on Thursday.