Donny From the Block, Plus the Ronny Revival
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- This episode is brought to you by Experian. I don't know if you've ever looked in your subscriptions on your phone and noticed that you had like four or five subscriptions. Maybe you didn't realize you were still paying for, or maybe you got some email for something and you're like, "I thought I canceled that." Well, this is what happens. These days anyone could be missing out on savings from subscriptions they've totally forgotten about. It's not just the ones you forgot to get rid of, it's the ones that they have better deals.

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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win.

It's a big day in the Trump trial universe. It is the closing argument. It's Tuesday, the day after Memorial Day. Jury's back in session. They're going to hear the final arguments from the defense and then the prosecution. And then they're going to get to go and deliberate and come back, hopefully, this week with a verdict. I'm sure they won't want to play this out over the long weekend. This trial has gone on longer than anyone expected. And I'm sure they're going to want to play this out over the long weekend.

And I think everyone's kind of ready to hear what this Manhattan jury is ready to do. But in the meantime, Trump has been all over the place, taking advantage of being in the tri-state area. I have on the show with me Meredith McGraw.

She is one of my longtime friends. We worked together at ABC News and I was a White House correspondent and she was the producer and reporter. And we spent a lot of time together in Palm Beach from Mar-a-Lago covering the wild west of the first Trump administration. She has remained on the beat.

smartly knowing, I'm sure, deep down that there was going to be a revival happening for Trump, that he was not dead after January 6th. And so Meredith is a very acute observer of Republican politics, and she seems to really understand the heartbeat of that movement. And so I've got her on the show. Thanks for coming on, Meredith. Thanks for having me, Tara. You didn't mention that we went to Japan and covered Trump there together.

and we've had ventures all over, I feel like, the country and the world covering this guy. I know. It kind of feels like, you know, I call her my mare bear, which I probably shouldn't say on the show, but I do love her. I'll try to keep it to your actual professional name since you are a serious...

White House correspondent for Politico. Well, a national political correspondent, but you were the White House correspondent for them. You moved on from ABC to do that job yourself. So I'm really proud of you as well. So, okay.

Trump, he is in the courtroom, right? And then he stops to talk to the Teamsters, union guys, generally labor Democrats, right? He goes to Minnesota during his day off, a blue state. He goes to the Bronx and he has a rally. You were there. I want to hear all about

that. And then he goes to the Libertarian Conference this weekend in D.C., which is really bizarre. They booed him. They were not into him at all. He barely won any votes. Not a hit. But what's he doing? He seems to be just like running into blue territory. I

I mean, some say he is trying to expand his base. Is this even possible? What do you think they're doing right now? Well, I think it's a few things. I think for one, the Trump campaign wants to distract from the trial and get people talking about anything other than what he's been in the New York courtroom about. Obviously,

It's all sort of feeding the narrative that Trump is a victim, blah, blah, blah. But they really want to get Trump out there talking to different constituencies. And I think it's also a bit of flexing some muscle in front of the Biden campaign. The Trump campaign, as you know, is feeling very confident right now, very bullish on their prospects.

And, you know, I think another, of course, key part of it is feeding this narrative, which actually is backed up by polling, that Trump is making some inroads with Hispanic voters, with Black voters, with some of the constituencies that he did not do well with in 2020. And I'll tell you what, being on the ground in the Bronx, that's not exactly a place where you would expect to find

Donald Trump, let alone a Republican candidate. But seeing him on the ground there was really interesting. And talking to some of the voters there, people from the Bronx about what they're feeling, how they feel about Trump and in 2024, and just their daily lives and how they feel about the economy and their kids' prospects, everything like that.

It really was a telling moment. And I do think it should be putting the Biden campaign a bit on their toes. Yeah, it's interesting. So obviously, I live in Brooklyn. What do I know about the world? Kidding. I do. I'm always out and about on the trail or my parents, I go to visit them. They live down south. And so they moved from New Jersey, obviously. But

I do talk to just like bartenders. I talk to taxi drivers. I'll talk to bouncers at like the bar, et cetera, just to poll test people.

What are they thinking? And first of all, like the thing I gather is people are still not really sure that they're actually going to get Trump and Biden on the ticket. Right. I think that's been shown across the polling. I've actually in my focus groups have seen that as well. But it's just like this weekend I was talking to this guy at this like Mexican restaurant. He was at the bar and I asked him, who are you going to vote for? And he's like, I don't know.

maybe Trump. And I keep hearing that over and over again. It's like, maybe Trump. It's not like they're enthusiastic about Trump. They're not out there knocking on doors for Trump, but they're also not out there knocking on doors for Biden. And they're just kind of like, maybe Trump. I think they're probably going to stay home. They might be couch sitters. I mean, it's New York.

Who knows? But then again, I just wrote about this. Biden is only up by 10 points in New York to Trump, according to a recent Siena poll, which is a problem because he won this state by more than 23 points. And that affects all the down ballot races. And, you know, the only reason the Republicans have the House right now is because they flipped those seats, these blue seats in New York. They flip them to be red. And so if they want to take back those seats, they need Biden to perform well.

on the ballot. And right now he's underwater in some of these frontline districts. So it does impact. And now, listen, I don't think New York will ever go red, although it's kind of weird to think that back in like the Reagan days it did. Isn't that weird? It is. And, you know, when I was in the Bronx, there were a lot of comparisons being made to this moment, you know, the,

Carter era, Reagan campaigning there, Trump being the first Republican presidential candidate to campaign there since then. There were a lot of comparisons being made with all of that. And look, I think the Trump campaign obviously knows they're not going to win the Bronx, right? 80% of Bronx voters went for Biden in 2020. But, you know, that's tens of thousands of

people who went for Trump. And if the Trump campaign can win an even bigger margin of that, that could make a big difference. And they know that. And so I think that's what they're trying to do, even if they know they are in deeply unfriendly territory with all of it.

Or it's just a messaging stop to talk to African-Americans in Georgia by way of going to the Bronx. They're kind of saying, we take the African-American vote seriously this time, right? Yeah, I mean, the big message for Trump when he was in the Bronx was obviously the economy, right? But also it was illegal immigration. And, you know, New York City has really...

born the brunt of a lot of migrants coming there. And so there are quite a few people that I talked to in that crowd who said they came here from the Dominican Republic or they came here from wherever and they came legally. And they are not making a lot of money. They're scraping by with their families and they feel really frustrated that taxpayer dollars are going towards people who...

didn't jump through all the hoops that they did. So you did feel a sense of resentment, especially among a lot of the working class. Well, that's because DeSantis and Governor Abbott in Texas, they shipped all these migrants up to New York and it was like,

overwhelmed last summer, even before that. And, you know, they need to house these migrants, they put them in hotels, and these people feel like, okay, why are they getting money towards, you know, food stamps? Why are they getting state assistance? Yeah, yeah. And yeah, there's definitely some like class resentment going on right now. And Trump was playing into that.

For sure. Oh, of course. I'm sure playing it like a fiddle. I did think the Wildwood stop was funny in New Jersey just because I'm a Jersey girl. You're a Jersey girl. Yeah. And but if I remember distinctly, like I didn't go to Wildwood much as a kid because that was where the Philly people went. I mean, it's like deep down south.

shoreline. Whereas like if you're from Northern New Jersey, like near New York, you would go to more Northern coastline of Jersey. So I actually think that was perhaps a play to Pennsylvania voters. Yeah. And to tap into that media market. It's so funny growing up in West Virginia, everybody went to Myrtle beach. That was like the wild equivalent. Exactly. I guess, you know, there's always the summer stop, but it definitely seemed like a play to get those Pennsylvania, uh,

the media market and some of those voters too. And again, I think to try to flex some muscle in front of the Biden campaign and say, oh, look at the crowd that we're drawing in your backyard. I wonder though, if these voters that say that these African-Americans, Hispanics and young people who say they're going to vote for Trump really are going to go out and vote for him or they're just going to stay home. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. That's sort of the X factor with all of it, but they're certainly trying to make a play for them. And like I said, polling has shown that

They are making incremental dents in it. Yeah. It just seems no one's really excited about either one. So... Yes, that continues to be the story. How many people showed up at this rally? Was it really a rally? Like truly like the ones we would see down south? We would go to rallies together. Big, big, big rallies. No, this was not... I try to forget those. I mean, they all start to blend together, honestly. You know, this...

was notable to me, obviously, and the demographics of it, the diversity of it. You don't go to many Trump rallies and see a large Black population or a huge... This was the most New York crowd, Tara. It was like

guys in yarmulkes and like, you know, a guy was smoking a cigar and another person was smoking weed and it was, people were speaking Spanish and there were like, you know, Latino families and of course a bunch of like

white Trump voters too, but just like the look and feel of it was so much different. It was not as big as any of those. Did it feel sparse? No, it wasn't as big as any of those rallies that we went to, like the type that you would see on like an Ohio fairground. But it was interesting. There were thousands of people outside of the security perimeter. They had a pretty small like mag set up. Okay.

The mags that you go through with Secret Service, they didn't have a lot. So it was really small process. It was really slow processing people through them. And so there was a frustration from some people in the crowd. They were running up the hill where Trump was speaking to try to catch him because they'd been waiting in line. But it wasn't nearly as big as any of those. But still to...

get thousands of people to show up in a Bronx park. It's still notable. Was it the same like music, proud to be an American, like all that stuff? Yes, there was all of that. You know, at one point Trump invited two rappers up on stage who can read about online. They have a whole rap sheet themselves that's pretty...

At the same time, Trump spent a lot of time talking about his time in New York. He was waxy and poetic being back in Manhattan talking about when he was building skyscrapers and what it was like in the 80s and everything was glamorous and New York City was the center of the world. He had a moment in the hip-hop culture. Totally. And he was just like, you could tell he was soaking it in, the fact that he was at a campaign stop in New York. He didn't talk about...

his trials as much as he normally does. He didn't talk about like the January 6th defendants and go on about that. It was interesting to me that he didn't start with the Jan 6th orchestra. No. And that he didn't close with that either. Those were two notable admissions with this crowd, this New York crowd, which I thought was interesting. And of course he did the snake poem when he was talking about migration, but he, he really stuck to like talking about the economy and,

and talking about immigration, which he knew was going to play with that crowd. Did he make any racist comments? Not that I can remember off the top of my head, to be honest with you. But I feel like it would have been picked up and we would have seen it out. Yeah, I don't recall off the top of my head, but... Yeah, because I remember that one time he went to that event for African-American Republicans and he made like some racist comments at it. I was there for that. So that was in South Carolina and in Columbia, they...

It was an event with, you know, black conservatives. And Trump was trying to make the case that black people, black voters are sympathetic to him because of all of his convictions. And so... And he didn't do that again, right?

Or did he? Honestly, I can't recall off the top of my head if he made that same sort of play. But he has done that in the past. He talked about the mugshot, which was really popular there. There were mugshot t-shirts everywhere. And signs. We were holding signs. I feel like I was there. You did it for me. I didn't have to go. Jeez, thank you. Can you smell the cigar smoke? Oh, God. The weed. You're doing the Lord's work. I feel like you go to one rally. You've been to them all. But this seems like a weird one. So I'm happy we spent some time on it. It was definitely... It was an outlier for sure. Yeah. Okay. Let's...

Let's talk about Nikki Haley. You were also at her event last week. You were really busy. This was when she finally had a public appearance for the first time since she stepped down, right? Yeah. She has kept such a low profile since she stepped down in March. And...

And she had that donor retreat, I guess it was a few weeks ago in Charleston, where she huddled with her richest and most loyal donors. And I talked to a bunch of them afterwards. And they said Trump was basically ignored. He really was a non-factor in their conversations. They were talking a lot about their operation, their fundraising, the movement that Nikki had built around her in the end.

So I was kind of wondering when she went to speak at Hudson, you know, is she going to step her toes into this? Is she going to say anything about Trump? She had to. I wasn't sure. There's no way you can have a conversation without... Was it a real journalist on the stage with her? It was somebody from the Hudson Institute. It was sort of her debut at the think tank. And, you know, her speech was like really going hard after Republican isolationist, sort of like...

veiled references to Trump and other people in the party in that way. But the news came in the Q&A after her speech where she was, you know, talking about having to stand by allies. And then it was in the Q&A. They asked her, when it comes to foreign policy,

would you be for Biden or for Trump? When it comes to foreign policy, okay, yeah. Yeah, and she said Trump hasn't been perfect, like his policies haven't been great, but between the two, she said Biden's been a catastrophe and so she would vote for Trump. It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement,

We did not characterize it as an endorsement. And I know the Biden campaign put out like a press release sort of saying the same thing. It was notable that she wasn't like, I'm gung ho for Trump. But the fact that she said that she's going to vote for him, it was a notable moment, especially when it's been so icy between the two campaigns. And it was like, so you remember ugly in the end. I don't think how you can say I'm going to vote for someone and not see that as an endorsement. I know, I know, I know.

But the way she said it... People are just playing baby games with endorsements nowadays. You know, I just... I also don't know if... Bill Barr, he did, like, sort of a similar thing, right? Yeah, and so did, like, Chris Sununu while he was, like, campaigning for Nikki. He was like, yeah, if he's the nominee, I'll vote for Trump. In a way. Did it on our show, actually. So...

I also am not so sure that just because Nikki Haley says she'll vote for Trump, that that convinces her voters to vote for Trump. I think she'd have to do like some work. I don't even know if they'd even listen to her, to be honest. Well, Nikki Haley's coalition of voters was...

unusual and they've also shown that they continue to have power and relevance, right? And all of these primaries where thousands of people have come out to vote for her, even after she's dropped out and like a serious protest vote. And she said in her comments, Trump is going to have to reach out to Haley voters. We haven't seen that happen yet. I think Trump's campaign thinks that they're all going to come home eventually. And the other ones were never Trumpers anyways. So they're sort of lost causes. Yeah.

And I am curious to see if they try to make a play because the Biden campaign obviously is. They've been trying to liaise with Haley donors and all of that. This episode is brought to you by Experian. I don't know if you've ever looked in your subscriptions on your phone and noticed that you had like four or five subscriptions. Maybe you didn't realize you were still paying for or maybe you got some email for something and you're like, I thought I canceled that. Well,

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All right. I want to talk about my recent reporting about Ron DeSantis. So, yeah, he's starting to make moves. He's also been in his turtle shell, although he came out with more of a ringing endorsement, maybe a bit of a hostage video when he said that he was going to support Trump. He's gone away for a little bit. Donors are like,

damn, we put a lot of money behind this guy, like $200 million, almost right. It was the most a primary candidate has ever raised. And these are like big billionaires. They just kind of believe this Yale Marine, Harvard educated guy was their guy. And he speaks MAGA and so he can win primaries. And then once he's in the White House, he's theirs. And he's his 40s. They

they didn't want to feel like there was no return on that investment. So Steve Witkoff, who's like this big real estate executive and friend of Trump, gets the two together last month and they talked. And I was told the talk was about, you know, Ron would fundraise for Trump. Trump would have to stop

Calling him DeSanctus and DeSanctimonious or whatever, Meatball Ron, Pudding Fingers, whatever, on the internet. And Trump needs the money, right? There's some donors who are pretty loyal to Sanders, at least in Florida. There's a lot of money in Florida because it's one of the largest economies, a huge budget. But also, they would be on the same side, which is useful. But for Ron, what does Ron get out of this?

Ron gets no more bullying from Trump, a possible primetime speaking slot at the RNC convention, the Republican National Convention. I've heard that was discussed. And also the chance to be the standard bearer or the presidential nominee in 2028, because obviously, as much as we think that Trump may try to run again, he's not going to.

Republicans are playing as if he won't run again. I don't think there's any world in which Ron DeSantis becomes his running mate. He doesn't offer anything. They're in the same state. I don't think they personally like each other. But I think he knows if he wants a future. But he needs to make nice with Trump. So that's just the beginning. And at the same time,

He's really out there trying to kill off this abortion ballot measure that would reverse his six-week abortion ban. He's putting a lot of political capital behind it. And, well, he hasn't done it yet, but he's going to raise like up to $50 million to try to kill this ban, which is, by the way, very popular in the state. 60% of people polled said they do not want a six-week ban and they will vote against this six-week ban.

And so it's risky, but he thinks that if he can show that Florida is redder than Texas or Kansas, he can roll up to Iowa just like he did last time when he actually instituted the six-week abortion law, saying, I'm the farthest to the right, I'm your MAGA warrior, and went over the evangelicals, even though it didn't really work for him last time. Then again, Trump might not be in the picture, so maybe that's another thing. The Trump factor doesn't work. I also think he just doesn't have a lot of charisma, so I don't know if it matters. I know I've just thrown a lot out there,

But I just wanted to recap the story, which you can read at pop.news. There was a lot of food for thought in that column about DeSantis. I mean, if you think back to mid-2023 and the player that we all thought DeSantis was going to be, and then the fact that, you know,

he was defeated so badly by Trump, just totally emasculated by him. And that we're in this position now where he's having to sort of reclaw his way up is a really interesting and remarkable story in and of itself. I'm so curious. And you mentioned it, um, in your column, uh, Casey DeSantis, um, she seems like such a shrewd, uh, and really masterful, uh, political operator in a lot of ways. And, um,

She's obviously really smart. She may have had more of the charisma than her husband had. And so sort of what's next for her? I don't think we've seen the last of DeSantis, but the fact that he met with Trump is interesting. Although it seemed like it was just a very cordial, lukewarm conversation.

meeting. Oh, I think we'll always be lukewarm between them. Although he did hold a fundraiser for Trump and Trump apparently called in and he was like, Ron, I'm so happy you're on our team. It just happened last week. Or it's so great to have you back. Trump can play nice. He can play nice. This is what I was...

assured, based on all my reporting, he's like, Trump will do anything for money at this point. He needs money. And that means making nice with DeSantis fine. Yeah. And, you know, he squashed him pretty thoroughly. I don't think Trump views him as a threat, maybe like the way he did in early 2023. Well, he kept going after, even after Ron DeSantis endorsed him, he kept attacking him. Casey, I've been told, is like very traumatized from the whole running for

Ron running for office and how she was attacked. Yeah, yeah. Political spouses are... They always sort of get the short end of the stick with stuff, right? So... Yeah, but the polling shows that in like a four-way race... I saw that in your column. Yeah, by double digits, she's ahead of Matt Gaetz, some other people we don't know very well. They're like the county commissioners, but she's super popular. I mean, she was a culture warrior herself. You know, I don't rule anybody out as...

the next standard bearer for the Republican Party in 2028, just because Republican politics continues to like confound and surprise me at every turn. But I do think, you know, DeSantis is once again going to be on the short list of people. But I guess my question with DeSantis still is like, how badly was he wounded on...

the national stage. We've seen other people who have lost come back and win the Republican nomination. Right, exactly. I think that's... Marco Rubio wounded, Ted Cruz wounded. Right, exactly. And that's going to be the question of this political faith. Well, he didn't really have a lot of charisma to balance it out. So I think that's... It's the personality, I think, partially. Yeah. That can save you. Right. All right. We've got a verdict coming. Let's assume we have it today, tomorrow. Probably won't come today. This is Tuesday recording.

What do you make of it, Merit? Does it matter? What do you think? You know, I am going to...

try to be pretty conservative when it comes to polling that comes out around the verdict. I think we're going to see a lot of really fast polling that comes out. And I think people should just wait a little bit and wait and see what some of the bigger national polls have to say, maybe like a week or two later, like the flash polls, I would be a little bit skeptical of at the moment. That being said, I...

I have always felt this way since the beginning of the trial. The public opinion around this, the cake seems pretty baked at this point. You know, I really doubt that there are going to be a lot of Republican voters who Trump gets a conviction and, you know,

you know, that really changes their mind in a serious way. I'm sure there will be some, but is it going to be a significant amount? You know, I'm not sure. But it's the independence. It's the people on the margins. It might change. Right, right. And that's where, you know, the whole race, of course, is like...

coming down to. Or maybe they already think of Trump as a convicted felon, but they're like, I'm not happy with the economy or I'm not happy with this or immigration. So that becomes fifth or sixth on their list of unhappiness. And it's not the priorities when they're voting might not

be the same. Right, exactly. Like what is actually going to be motivating people to come out? I'm going to be watching to see some of the coverage that comes out over the next few days of the closing arguments, what Trump's defense team tries to lay out, what the prosecutors try to lay out. I thought Josh Gerstein at Politico

did a really good job of wrapping up some of the five big questions that are surrounding this whole case when it comes to Michael Cohen, whether this is about business or personal records and all of the big questions that the jury is going to have to be thinking about and what

could eventually come from it. And he also raised sort of the interesting point that there's a lot of comparisons too to be made to John Edwards' 2012 campaign finance case. I covered that, yeah. So did Josh. We were there. Exactly. But actually the prosecution lost that case. Right. Right.

It was a hung jury, right? I think that's probably why they never... That's why the FEC probably never went after Trump on this one. You know what I mean? I don't know. Like, this seems like an election case more than even a business case in some sense. Was it election fraud? Right. Like, you wonder why the feds didn't prosecute him as, like, an election interference case. Right. And I wonder if it's the precedent of losing that John Edwards trial, where they're like, eh, you know...

That didn't work out. I just got an alert that the closing arguments from the defense, basically Trump's team, they painted Michael Cohen as a

quote, gloat, greatest liar of all time. So unsurprisingly, they based their entire defense on tearing down the prosecution's star witness, Michael Cohen, who has perjured himself in the past, who has lied, and they just kept trying to get him to admit times when he lied. And that is their defense. So basically, they want the jury to decide, do you believe the prosecution's star witness? And that's...

That is the question. I don't think the jury is going to deliberate after Friday. I think they're going to want to get this over with, but I could see them messing it up somehow. And like going back to the judge, maybe like deciding on half the counts, but maybe not the other. 34, it's a lot of counts. I mean, everybody's saying we might hear...

verdict by Thursday, Thursday night. But, you know, who knows? Who knows what can happen? Anything can happen. And you will continue to cover Trump. I will continue to cover Trump. It's going to be wild next few months. People are starting to really assume now that the campaign starts now, don't you think? Definitely. I mean, the first debate, CNN debate, is going to be at the

End of June, then we have the convention, and then it's like a full sprint to November. Buckle up. I'm going to have Meredith back on here, giving her very smart analysis.

Any last words? How is this different, though, than 2020 for you? I always ask you that all the time. I mean, 2020, I was covering the Trump White House, COVID. It was so strange and hard to make any comparisons in any serious way, to be honest with you. Like, you're covering a presidential incumbent from the White House. It was just...

There's a mass pandemic. I mean, it was very different. You didn't even go to rallies, right? Or did you go to the rallies? Trying to dust off the filing cabinets in my brain to remember which ones I went to and what I went to. Yeah, it was just all very different. What a mess. Crazy times. But the thing is, I think what's interesting is these older candidates still aren't truly campaigning like if they were in their 40s or 50s.

don't you think? Well, it's like we have almost like two incumbents in a way, right? Right. I mean, Trump has, you know, his own footprint and, you know,

Biden isn't doing the same amount of campaign events that you would expect. I mean, I really do think at this point in any sort of like quote unquote normal election year, there would be a lot more going on. And yet look at what's going on right now. There's like one of the candidates has been in trial for the past six weeks. And then we have the Hunter Biden trial coming up soon.

which will be another sort of soap opera. I'll be writing about that soon enough. Don't worry. Looking forward to reading your reporting on it. Well, thanks Meredith. We love your work over here and I will have you back on. Thanks for having me, Tara.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please rate it, subscribe, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, please go to puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest. You can use the discount code Tara20. I'll be back on Thursday.