How to p*ss off Trump, with The Lincoln Project — plus, Nikki Haley loves Don, Biden gets nasty and more court drama
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Hello and welcome to American Friction, the new weekly US politics podcast out every Friday from the makers of Oh God What Now, The Bunker and Papercuts. Each week in the run up to November's US presidential election, we'll be unpacking everything you need to know about the vote in plain English, speaking to leading experts about the bizarre twists and turns US politics has to offer. And I promise you,

They really are a lot. I'm Jacob Jarvis. And I'm Chris Jones. And joining us every week up until November's vote is Rolling Stone magazine politics reporter Nikki McCann-Ramirez. Hello, Nikki. Hello, gents. It's such a classy intro. I love that. Gents. We're going to stick with that all the way. So in this episode, we're going to be discussing another Nikki, Nikki Haley, jumping on the Trump bandwagon. The former president finally taking an opportunity to just shut up. Plus the trouble some of Trump's former allies faced.

find themselves in. Yeah, I wish you'd shut up sometimes. Anyway, plus we'll be discussing how Biden is doing. We'll just be checking in on him. Supreme Court drama and special guest Reid Gallen from The Lincoln Project and Major Thorne in Trump's side speaks to Jarvan Nicky. It's 23 weeks until the US election. You're listening to American Friction.

First up, Nikki Haley, who was running to be the GOP presidential candidate, has now said that she plans to vote for Trump in November's election. She spoke publicly for the first time since she pulled out of the race and said that although Trump is not perfect, very, very generous from her there, Biden has been a catastrophe. So, Nikki, talk to me. Why has she done this? You know, why has she decided to just...

and say, hey, I'm just going to go along with Trump now. It's Nikki on Nikki today. Yeah, so I think it just goes to how completely Trump has taken over the Republican Party. I think these days to publicly oppose Trump and his politics is to condemn yourselves to ostracization from the party, from conservative politics as a whole. None of these people are really capable of looking beyond Trump. And...

The majority of Republicans who ran against Trump pretty immediately folded and said that they were going to support Trump because he was the nominee. I think a lot of them are vying for positions within his administration, which we talked a little bit about last week.

Nikki Haley is in this really bizarre position where she was once considered a contender herself for the presidency. She was seen as sort of the future of conservative politics of the modern Republican Party. Trump wins in 2016. She attaches her public image to him, becomes UN ambassador under his administration. And really the fallout has kind of tanked her prospects operating as a Republican within the Republican Party. She is...

widely been characterized by Trump supporters as sort of like an undercover Democratic operative or RINO, which stands for Republican in Name Only.

So really, the thing that I question is, what the hell is Nikki Haley trying to do here? Because frankly, it's very unlikely that she gets a position in Trump's administration. It's very unlikely that his base would support her in a future run. Obviously, she still has a coalition of voters, which she was kind of growing throughout the primaries. And as we talked about last week in Indiana, she still got 20% of the primary vote despite not actively campaigning. So...

So it just doesn't make sense in terms of an exchange. Like, why give an endorsement when you're not really going to get anything back from the former president? She's not currently running for any sort of other office.

And I think, frankly, it's just the fear that if she doesn't endorse the former president, she'll continue to be ousted from the party. She will continue to suffer long term in any political goals she may have. And it's like a little bit of cowardice in my point. Like, don't run an entire campaign based off, like, how dangerous Trump is, how bad he is for the party, and then bend the knee. But then again, what else can we expect from most Republicans these days?

With Trump then moving on to the trial, which we constantly have to talk about at the moment because it just seems to be going on for a really long time. But I guess when you're prosecuting a former president, due diligence, you've got to take your time. He chose not to testify in court, which surprised me because he likes to take any opportunity he can to speak. This can't really be used against him legally. The prosecution can't say, hey, look at this guy, he won't even speak. But the court of public opinion when it comes to the presidential race

it does make him look a little bit cowardly. And it makes him, I don't know, it feels like it makes him look a little bit more guilty not talking. I don't know. Do you agree? Or what do you make of it? I think it's like a pretty...

predictable split. The people who like Trump think it's a good idea. The people who don't like Trump accuse him of cowardice. As you said, not testifying in your own defense isn't an admission of guilt, but it's actually pretty rare for defendants in like super prominent cases to take the stand in their own defense.

Because as a defendant, you don't want to expose yourself to the possibility of perjury. Sitting on the witness stand doesn't just mean that your lawyers get to ask you questions. It means that the prosecution gets to cross-examine you, and they can ask you really directly about the alleged crimes. And if you lie, you perjure yourself. If you speak the truth, you could risk incriminating yourself or be forced to plead the fifth, which the

which theoretically also isn't like an admission of guilt if you plead the fifth and decline to answer a question. But...

it could influence how the jury perceives you. One of the factors here is I think that Trump, throughout this entire trial, has been incredibly vocal about how he's being "silenced" by the court. Yeah, he's been such a crybaby saying that he's not getting to have his say, and then the chance that he would get to have it, he goes, "Nah, I'm good." Well, at one point he falsely accused the judge of unlawfully barring him from testifying, which did not happen.

But I think the reality is, is that we've seen Trump take the witness stand before. We saw it when he gave testimony before the court in his like civil fraud trial that took place a couple months ago in New York. That testimony was a disaster.

He clashed with the judge. The judge reprimanded his attorneys and basically said, like, get your client under control or I'm going to strike this entire testimony. We saw something similar in the E. Jean Carroll trial. Trump is very combative on the witness stand. He tries to turn his testimony into a political speech, and judges do not like that. It is a trial. It is not a place to make political statements. It is a place to examine evidence. So I think the predecessor to this was that

the prosecution rested and the defense called one witness robert costello robert costello's testimony was a disaster he was very combative with the judge very hostile on the witness stand and this was a guy who was supposed to be testifying in trump's defense and at one point

Costello kept like muttering under his breath and reacting to objections that the judge would sustain. And at one point, the judge literally cleared the courtroom to reprimand him, to just give him like a talking to about behavior in court. And,

I don't think the defense wanted to risk putting Trump on the stand, antagonizing the judge or presenting an image to the jury of Trump being this really combative, defensive, hostile witness, which he historically has been. So they just kind of elected to keep him off the stand and not risk it at all. Yeah, I suppose outside of a courtroom, he can look like this kind of angry chauvinist.

GOP figurehead, but put him in the courtroom scenario and he just looks like a stroppy teenager, which isn't exactly a very good look for him. Well, yeah, because the important thing here is that the jury, under the rules of a jury, they're not supposed to be consuming news related to the trial. They're not supposed to be looking up statements by Trump. So theoretically, the jury has been insulated from a lot of the public statements that Trump has been making. So if he were to then directly translate that into the courtroom, then

That could really taint the juror's perception of him. I think it's been really interesting how this is played out. I know you said he kind of looks like a stroppy teenager, but in some ways, I think he's actually played it quite well. I don't think he's come out of... Unless he's convicted. I don't think he'll come out of this...

Too badly, really. I mean, especially if you look at the polls, he's leading. I know it's very early on. Anyway, in other legal situations, Rudy Giuliani has been arraigned in Arizona after he was served papers at his 80th birthday. Can you imagine that? 80th birthday? Awful. You've been served.

And it's not cake. Well, he pleaded not guilty to election conspiracy. Nikki, can you explain what he's being charged with here and why it's important to know ahead of this next election? Absolutely. So Giuliani, along with 17 other Republican operatives and Trump allies, have been charged with participating in a fraudulent scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Arizona.

A fun little tidbit is that they managed to track him down at his birthday party because he posted his location and a photo of himself in a, like, it was literally him taunting Arizona prosecutors. What did he write?

I love that, like, Rudy Giuliani's be real got him caught out. Yeah, I mean, you know, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. But to explain this case, I'm going to give people a little bit of a crash course on how the American election works.

Much like in the UK, in terms of like your prime minister, American presidents are not directly elected by a popular vote. They are elected by what we call the electoral college. Every state in the United States is assigned a certain number of electoral college votes. They get two based on the two Senate seats that every state has, and then the number equivalent to how many representatives they have in the House.

This is partially the reason why American elections are so focused on winning like key states, battleground states, swing states. Those states often have a lot of electoral college votes. It's also why you can win the popular vote in an American election and still lose the election overall. Yeah, that's why we don't have President Hillary Clinton. That's exactly why we don't have President Hillary Clinton. She won the popular vote, but she lost the electoral college vote.

A candidate needs to win 270 electoral college votes or more than half of the total available in order to win. So states will hold their popular elections on election day. And then usually the candidate who wins the state gets all of that state's electoral college votes. There's a couple of states where they'll split it proportionally based on like how many people voted for each candidate. But the majority winner takes all.

A few, that's like on election night when they declare a winner, that's usually a projection of the electoral college vote. When the media says so-and-so won the election, they haven't officially won yet because a few weeks after election day, there is a joint session of Congress where the electoral college, the sort of delegates that have been elected to represent each state, present the votes to Congress and the votes are certified, officially electing the president.

That is what happened on January 6th. It was an attempt to prevent the certification of the Electoral College vote. Aside from the riot, which we all remember,

In several battleground states, there was a plot orchestrated by close allies of Trump to introduce slates of fake pro-Trump electoral college ballots into the certification. On January 6th, while people were rioting outside of the Capitol and inside of the Capitol, Trump's allies were attempting to get those fake votes into the hands of Mike Pence.

Because they had this idea that if they gave the pro-Trump electoral college certificates to Pence, he could overturn the election in the certification. Pence notoriously refused. And that led to the, like, hang Mike Pence chants. Arizona is one of the states where this happened. And there's been several other states who've brought prosecutions against people involved in these plots, including Michigan, Nevada, and Georgia, right?

Giuliani is charged in Arizona. He's also charged in Georgia alongside Trump as part of the Georgia fake elector scheme. So basically what states have done in the aftermath of 2020 is launch these investigations into those fake elector schemes, I think sort of as a preemptive attempt to be like, if you try this shit again, we will come after you. In Arizona, Trump is not indicted, but he is listed in the indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator. So...

We'll see. These cases, of course, take a long time to play out. But in all of these states, it's been allies of the president, prominent state-level Republican officials who've been charged. And I think states are really moving to try and show that, like, we take election security incredibly seriously. And if you try this shit, we will come after you.

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I know it's hard to imagine, but there actually are quite a few Republicans who took issue with Donald Trump. The Lincoln Project, launched in 2019, made up of former Republican strategists who saw Trump and Trumpism as a grave threat to US democracy. And I would say, all things considered, they've been proved emphatically right on that point. The group had two key objectives. First up, to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box in 2020. And secondly, to ensure Trumpism failed alongside him, a task not quite completed yet.

Reid-Gallon was a founding member of the group and has a mammoth CV from decades of working in Republican politics.

Deep breath here. So where to begin? He was deputy campaign manager for John McCain's presidential campaign and deputy campaign manager for Arnold Schwarzenegger's successful 2006 re-election campaign. He also worked on both the 2000 and 2004 campaigns of President George W. Bush. Between campaigns, he served the Bush administration in both the US Department of the Treasury and the Department of Homeland Security. Reid, thank you for being here. Did I miss anything there in that CV?

No, but just reminded me how old I am. Well, you still look great, so don't worry about it. Oh, you're very sweet to say so. First question then, the Lincoln Project. You were a massive feature last time out. I remember writing lots about you when I was at Newsweek magazine, and you were one of the first people I spoke to when I started there, in fact. Can you describe for a UK audience what...

what your plan of action was then and what you're up to in this cycle. Sure. You need to go back a little bit, probably to 2015 or 2016, when it became clear that Donald Trump was going to be the Republican nominee. There were people like me, not very many, but there were people like me and others who said, you know, we spent our life in Republican politics. We spent our lives in as Republicans. I grew up in Republican politics in Washington, D.C., and said, if Donald Trump is what the Republican Party wants, you can count me out.

I didn't want anything to do with the ugliness, the sort of, you know, nationalistic, you

anti-immigrant stuff, and just the lack of decency. And for me, too, as someone who has been lucky enough to, again, see politics up close, both on Capitol Hill and at the White House, knowing that this guy had no idea what it is he was going to do when he got to office, but none of it was going to be good. And so 2016 comes and goes, 2017, 2018, and we're all sort of speaking up. It didn't really know what to do.

There are meetings of very earnest Republicans like myself in beautiful homes in Washington, D.C., saying we have to make Trump look like a loser. And there was this misunderstanding by a lot of the, I would say, more of the East Coast Republican elite that you could separate Donald Trump from the Republican Party. And we had a very different view of it and still do, which was,

He had won the party. He had won its nomination. He had won the presidency. And defeating him was not going to be easy. It wasn't going to be clean. It wasn't going to be genteel.

that you were going to have to fight Trump, whether you liked it or not, on his terms. You see that now, which is if Donald Trump says something crazy and you say, but let me tell you about my economic policy or why Donald Trump is bad for this thing or that thing, like those things are true, but he doesn't care. And the people that love him don't care either. And I, you know, what we tried to say is

You can't call him a jerk because the people that believe he's a jerk think that, and the people that love him love him because he's a jerk, if that makes sense.

You mentioned TV is Trump's domain. He obviously is obsessed with watching particularly cable TV. So a massive thing you do at the Lincoln Project is these attack ads. Could you talk me through a little bit some of your favorites, some of your highlights and how you come up with those? I mean, I watched your Trump diapers ad recently, which was, yeah, felt like something he could launch seeing as I've seen Trump brand knives.

Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting. I think in almost five years, you know, the pack has put out like six or 700 videos, I think. Right. So it, it's a high, it's a high volume operation. So, you know,

To think about each and every one is hard. I mean, for me, you know, some of the older the oldies are goodies. We did one back in 2020 called Flag of Treason, where we asked, you know, Donald Trump whether or not he would stand with the Confederate flag, the Confederate batter flag, which is, you know, the orange field with the with the blue bars and stars on it. Or would he stand with the American flag? We knew exactly what he would say and what he would do. But, you know, that ad, I think, helped spur a conversation about that symbol in

in the United States of America. I mean, if you think about it, by the end of the year, the state of Mississippi, one of the bastions of the Confederacy in the 1860s, took that symbol off its flag. And even something like NASCAR, which is sort of our down-home auto series, decided that they weren't going to allow the Confederate flag to be flown at any of their events or anything like that. And so I think that there have been social things that have come from this

But I think at the bottom of it is when the ads work, it's because they speak to some greater truth about what's really going on in the country and what voters who are tired, annoyed, frustrated, angry need to be reminded of.

I think you might find this quite a naive question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. On MSNBC earlier this year, you said that Trump is electoral poison. Are you at all surprised that you're having to do this again when it seems so abundantly obvious who he is, how he would behave? Are you perhaps saddened, I don't know, that more Republicans haven't sort of followed your way of realising this?

who he is and that an alternative of some kind, whether that be Biden or eventually a different type of Republican who maybe is an old school type of Republican in some way has to be found. Does it surprise you that you're doing this again or that you have to be doing it again? No, unfortunately not. I mean, in December of 2021, right, a year or so after he left office, we said publicly like, oh, he'll be back.

He's going to run again. Like you should, everybody should just expect that. And we were roundly criticized. Oh, you know, like as if we had spoken the name Voldemort right out loud, like, you know, if, and, you know, some people were, you know, in American politics and, you know, on social media over here where, you know, they didn't want to say his name, like they would call him the former guy and all this stuff is if like you, if you named him, he would reappear. And he was always going to reappear for a couple of reasons. One, because he,

He has. He did then, and he has internalized the idea that he actually really did win in 2020. Now, he didn't.

Right. But he believes it. And now some somewhere around like 25 percent of the country might believe it, too. Right. So that's that's very scary. After January 6th, 2021, after the Republican Party absolved him of his sins against the country, we knew he'd come back and there was never going to be anybody who had the ability to.

you know, move money, move media. And remember, he controlled up to this moment, he controls the apparatus of the Republican Party, not only nationally, but down in each state. And so, no, I'm not surprised. Do I wish more people understood what was going on? I do. But we are in a very, you know, we're in this transitionary transitional period in American history and American political life and American social life, economic life that you all in the UK have been through numerous times.

Right. For us, we're I mean, we're going to have our 250th anniversary in a couple of years. You guys are like thousands of years old. Right. So we're children comparatively and spoiled ones at that. And so anything that we don't like upsets everything else. And so and we should also understand that this doesn't occur in a vacuum. You know, the majority of the country and I can't blame them objectively is unhappy about the idea that they're, you know, frivolous.

facing a reelection between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

And Trump owns the Republican Party. That's not again, that's not a surprise. But he has been to go back to the beginning of your question. He has been electoral poison. Twenty eighteen. He was a disaster for Republicans in twenty twenty. Again, he was on the ballot, but it was still not a great year for him in twenty twenty two. Again, another what should have been banner year for Republicans wasn't because so many of the candidates he chose were so crazy that even a lot of moderate Republican voters wouldn't go for it.

And now, again, you know, he's got a coalition that's older, whiter, more male, more extreme than it was in 2020. But now the Democrats, because again, as I said, this doesn't occur in a vacuum, President Biden and the Democrats have to figure out, okay, how are they going to make the case to their people, not to soft Republicans, not to independents, but to their people, because they have more voters.

And if they have more voters available to them and those voters show up in the numbers they will, frankly, Trump can't win. But again, none of this is easy and none of it, we can't take any of it for granted. Since you mentioned coalitions, I'm...

Really curious because I've been aware of the Lincoln Project pretty much since its inception. And I think one of the criticisms that often gets thrown at you guys is that you're not necessarily speaking to sort of middle of the road, more traditional Republicans, people who are like disaffected with Trump.

but that your content and your advertising tends to speak more to liberal voters who already dislike Trump. And I'm curious sort of this time around what strategies you guys are implementing to more directly target disaffected Republicans and independents. That is a great question. And one that, that is, I think 100% legitimate. And I'll tell you this is, so I think there was a time in 2020 where,

when, you know, I got asked that question and I would say, why can't we do both? That there were enough Republicans looking for something else that, and we provided them a place to go, if that makes sense. And then I also believe this in my bones, which is unhappy Democrats stay home and happy Democrats vote. So if you can make Democrats happy and that gets them to show up, like I'm fine with it. I think that

over the, you know, the last couple of years, I think that you're right. I think that

On any given day, we are probably the Lincoln Project is probably making more Democrats happy and giving them the will to fight than necessarily moving Republican voters. Now, we also have a sister organization, which I'm more involved with this year called the Lincoln Democracy Institute. And I won't bore you guys with the with the legal and IRS niceties. But that's where we're doing our targeting and our research in those Republican places to those Republican voters you're talking about.

And what we're seeing is that there are a lot of Republicans who are just sort of unhappy with everybody. Right. And not surprising. So we have really it's a two step process with these people. One is convince them to stay away from Trump. OK, taking a vote away from Trump is one vote in the right direction. Remember, in places like Wisconsin in 2020, there were 50,000 Republican ballots cast that left President Blank.

And why does that matter? Because Biden wins by, well, like 22,000 votes. The same thing happened in Georgia. So the two things that we found with these voters that they're most interested in are national security and what we're calling Dobbs dads. If you'll indulge me for a second, here's why these things matter. Because Republicans and Democrats in America fight political campaigns very differently.

Republicans fight in terms of values. It's a value statement. The vote you cast is a statement of your values. Democrats want to earn your head. They want to tell you about policy. They want to tell you what they're going to do for you, right? It's almost transactional in nature. And so for us, what we're seeing, and this is, you know, being vestigial Republicans, what we're able to do here is say, okay, why does national security matter?

Why does NATO matter? Why does Ukraine matter? Why is it that like these voters, they don't they they've we all grew up in the Cold War. They don't like Russia. They've never liked Russia.

Right. They don't like Trump cozying up to a guy like Vladimir Putin. But what's the value proposition there? America's place in the world, America's place as a leader in the world and how those voters see themselves as Americans in that context. And the good news is, is that, yes, for every Nikki Haley, right, or these other goons who sort of kiss the ring, there are a bunch of Republicans who really have stepped out at their own political, professional and sometimes personal safety.

to say, I've been up close to this man and he should never be president again. And so your question, it's a very long and winding answer, is it is, I think, in some ways a legitimate criticism. But I think now we have two wings working, which is the Lincoln Project, which is the hammer, and then our C4, our research operation, which is more of the scalpel, if that makes sense. Yeah. And in the vein of that C4, I think...

Pass this election. Because, I mean, there's two outcomes here. Donald Trump wins. He serves his second term. If we don't have an absolute constitutional crisis, like, that's it for him. If he loses, he can theoretically run again. Like, going forward, what is sort of the long-term strategy of the Lincoln Project in terms of building a robust oppositional coalition of voters that could theoretically run

take on Trumpism electorally? Because I think that's the big question for a lot of voters, a lot of Republicans, a lot of undecided voters. It's what happens after Trump? Is the Republican Party just completely beholden to magna politics? Or is there a possibility of even a third party challenge, people like Liz Cheney actually developing a coalition that can electorally

challenge the people who have been operating under Trump? I think it's a brilliant question. If Biden wins, right? Biden's win isn't just a win for Democrats, right? Like it is, right? But Biden's win really presents that bridge to the future that he talked about when he ran in 2020, which is there is going to be, I believe, a political upheaval within both parties,

where you will have, Joe Biden will be done. He'll be in office, but he'll be a lame duck. And within the Democratic Party, you're going to have a very loud and dedicated progressive wing who's going to say, it's our turn. You neoliberal old white guys, you've been around for a million years, right? As far as we're concerned, you're just like Republicans, right? Like it's our time. Within the Republican Party, Nikki, to your question,

there's going to be a different argument, which is the moneyed establishment class, the DC class is going to say, we want our party back. The country clubbers are going to want their party back. To your question about MAGA is, we have 50 states in this country. The old Confederacy is the new Confederacy. I mean, it is MAGA, 100% from STEM to Stern. And so that

is going to take a while because, okay, Trump loses at the national level. Let's say that the Republicans lose the United States House. Let's say the United States Senate is still very divided, right? There are going to be a bunch of Republicans who say like, we need to do something different, but there's going to be a whole bunch who, you know, whether it like,

Ted Cruz from Texas, Tom Cotton from Arkansas, Josh Hawley from Missouri, Elise Stefanik from New York. Like they've made their beds with the MAGA people and they don't believe in anything other than their own power. But MAGA will still be the fastest way because it will still represent the largest block BLOC of voters in the Republican Party.

And so to your point about the third party idea here, now, look, I tried this back in 2017, 2018. It's very difficult. Look, I mean, the last major party we had in this country was the Republican Party and was started in 1854.

Right now, the parties, you know, have have sort of bounced back and forth, you know, conservative, liberal, northern, southern, eastern, western, whatever. But the truth is, is that the majority of Americans, I think, are now, you know, if you're a new voter and you're registering, more voters are registering as independents right now. That doesn't mean that they're not conservative or liberal or whatever, but we're at a different time. And I think that there is an opportunity in 2025 again with Biden winning.

for a wedge to be made. Now, I think the difference here is that, you know, in my experience with third parties, and I promise I'll shut up, is that they want to take a little bit of front, like politics from the American left and a little bit of politics from the American right and say, like, we have this beautiful coalition of, you know,

conservative on economics, social on, you know, or liberal on social issues. Like it's all bullshit. It's a bowl of vanilla ice cream, right? No labels. Exactly. No labels, forward, you name it, right? It's not interesting. It's not inspiring. You know why? Because it misses one thing that matters most, which is belief.

Why are you here? Because you believe. Why does something like the Lincoln Project take off? Not because we're former Republicans or not because we even talk about policy, but because we believe in something. Remember when the Republican Party started in 1854, it wasn't about smaller government or lower taxes. It was about abolition of slavery. That was it. The last two...

candidates in the United States to get electoral votes, real electoral votes were 1948 Strom Thurmond, the Dixie Crab ticket. In 1968, George Wallace, the segregation ticket again, guys, what do we keep coming back to the old Confederacy? Right? Yeah. So like, there will there is a political block in this country. And it's most of the the south and the southeast, and the mountain west where I live. But

10 minutes later, Nikki, yes, there's a lot of opportunity, but it's all predicated on Biden winning. On that, just a final question before you read about Biden.

I felt like when you launched, it seemed like you were rejecting the notion that the Biden campaign had, which was the sort of when they go low, we go high sort of stance and not playing Trump at his own game. Biden feels like he's being harsher this time out. There was the latest ad where he's criticizing how Trump has treated black Americans has been felt punchier than it has been before. And the things he's been saying have felt punchier.

Do you think he's doing enough? And do you think he's being kind of vicious enough back to Trump? And what flashpoints as well, be this geographically or thematically, are you going to be looking out for Biden really trying to capitalize on?

I think you're right. I mean, I think Democrats constitutionally, small C constitutionally, like they want this to be like tea time. They want this to be like a debating society. And that's frankly not what American politics has ever been. I mean, if you go back to the founding of this country or, you know, at least the modern founding, 1789, American politics has been brutal since the get-go. So like, this is not new. And having to fight for your beliefs is something that Americans expect. I think that

The difference between the Democratic Party and Joe Biden is that Biden's a boxer. He wants to go out and throw punches. That's his nature. And I think you saw that nature, one, with this debate that's going to take place a month or so from now.

Which is they baited Trump into something that Trump shouldn't have wanted to do. And if he hadn't been so on the trigger, right, they probably would have said no to. But now you're going to have a situation where Joe Biden and Donald Trump are going to be basically sitting at a desk in a studio.

in Atlanta with two moderators asking questions. And no audience. And no audience, right. So Trump's going to be, you know, going crazy, right? He's going to be the Tasmanian devil. And Biden's going to be like,

You really want four more years of this asshole? You want this? This is what you want? And he's just going to sit there and he's going to needle Trump. He understands. Just let me say this. In years past, for every modern American presidential campaign, debates were this huge thing. They overtook the entire campaign. Weeks of preparation before you even got the candidate in the room. Briefing books, smart people, all this other stuff. The Biden campaign is going to be like, okay,

yell at me, somebody's going to play Trump. I want you to yell at me and say the craziest things you can come up with. And then they're just going to find one liner after one liner after one liner and just drive Trump up a wall.

It's not going to be about policy, right? Because campaigns, when anybody says campaigns are about policy, they're literally selling something, right? Campaigns are about dominance. Who wants to win more? Because politics is ultimately about power and who gets to wield it. And I think Biden understands that in his bones. I think Democrats individually and, as I said, collectively, I think are uncomfortable with that. But

But that doesn't make it not true. And I think that the good thing that Biden has going for him is that he tends to rise to these occasions. He's really good when he's when he's you know, he's he's tan, rested and ready. And I think that they will be ready for that. And I think that you will see.

not only from the president's campaign, but I think from other groups, whether it's the Lincoln Project or anybody else, harsher contrasts between what the two candidates represent, not only individually, but for the future of the country. And I'll tell you this, like, you're never going to convince me Donald Trump is better for the country than Joe Biden. Now, look, I'm no Democrat and I'm not going to be, but a thousand times out of a thousand, I'd rather have Joe Biden sitting in that chair than Donald Trump. Now it's time to round up a few other stories that you might have missed. So

So Samuel Leto, who is on the Supreme Court, the justice there, he is said to have flown an upside down American flag outside his house after January 6th, which was a symbol for people who thought the election had been stolen. Chris, what happened here and why is it important in the context of the election?

Yeah. Well, as you say, Samuel Alito, he's a, is a huge part of the Supreme court. He's been there for quite a while. I think it's 2005 that he's basically been there. So we've got a huge amount of sway and power. There are two incidents actually here. So there's the one that was reported by the New York times. So the New York times published that he'd flown an upside down American flag, which is parts what we saw from January 6th rioters. Um, and, uh,

That's a symbol that's associated, as I say, with Stop the Steal. And he said that this was carried out by his wife. He blamed it on his wife, which we get on this podcast, don't we? Politicians blaming their wives. Republican politicians do like to just go, oh...

Well, the others were Democrats. So it's all over the shop. Just older men. So there was that case. But then there was also another case that was reported, I think by MSNBC, that said that Alito had also flown an appeal to heaven flag outside of one of his holiday homes. And this flag is also associated with Trump and the January 6th riots.

And this was around summer last year. And this is really controversial. It's causing a lot of issues within the media in the US. And essentially what's being argued here is that Alito is in breach of Supreme Court rules. Canon 3B, for example, says, I've done my research here, Javian Press. It says a justice should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the justice's impartiality might reasonably be questioned...

That is where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the justice could fairly discharge his or her duties. So we're starting to see that Democrats are coming out and talking about this. A lot of people are actually against this, basically saying it's impartial. One of the people we've seen is Congressman Steve Cohen, and he's launched a resolution against Alito, which says Justice Alito should be censored,

for flagrant breaches of the law, court rules, and he must recuse himself from all other 2020 election and January 6th related litigation. Whether he will or not, you know, really remains to be seen. But this is a huge talking point at the moment. And it's something that a lot of people obviously care about because the Supreme Court is extremely powerful. So I suppose, Nicky, this is going to have a big impact on those Jan 6th cases, which are still rolling on, which is...

I feel like they surely could have wrapped some of that up by now. Why is that important when it comes to looking at it? Because whether these people get convicted or not will impact how people will behave the next time out, say if Trump were to lose again.

And then also just talk me a little bit around the Supreme Court. Like why? I don't really it sounds like electoral college to me. I don't understand quite how it's so politically important. Yeah. So the reason this is such a big issue right now is because the Supreme Court is currently reviewing two cases directly related to January 6th.

The first one being a challenge brought by several defendants who were indicted after January 6th, contesting the Justice Department's ability to charge them with the crime of obstruction of an official proceeding. We talked about this in one of our earlier episodes. The second one is a challenge brought by Trump arguing that because of his views on presidential immunity,

he should not be criminally liable for the events of January 6th. He's basically arguing that he's immune from prosecution. And when the Supreme Court heard arguments on these cases, we expect a decision in June,

Alito and a lot of the other conservative justices were really receptive to some of the arguments made by the January 6th defendants' attorneys and Trump's attorneys. So those arguments happened. This news then broke about the flags and about Alito's potential sympathy for January 6th insurrectionists, the Stop the Steal movement. And now there's a lot of questions about can he rule impartially?

On the broader question of the Supreme Court in American politics, the Supreme Court has always been a political institution. Supreme Court justices aren't nominated by the sitting president. It's a lifelong appointment. The only way you can really vacate a Supreme Court justice is they retire, they die, or you impeach them. Only one Supreme Court justice has ever been impeached in the history of the United States. It happened in like the 1800s.

These appointments are so important because fundamentally, the Supreme Court rules on these huge constitutional questions, things like abortion, voting rights, same-sex marriage, the right to birth control, the right to privacy, election law. So rewind a little bit. In 2016...

Judge Antonin Scalia, who was an extremely conservative Supreme Court justice, died, I think it was like in February, months and months before the November election. A president nominates a Supreme Court justice and that justice has to be confirmed by the Senate in a majority vote.

At the time, the Senate was Republican-controlled, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hear any of the nominations brought forth by then-President Barack Obama and said that he was going to keep that Supreme Court seat open until after the election. He basically made this really convoluted argument that the American people should be able to decide what president they want to fill that seat. And if you look back,

on why so many independent Republicans, so many Republicans who were not super thrilled about Trump voted for him in 2016. It was because the Supreme Court is a driving issue for millions of voters in this country because the Supreme Court appointment can last decades. And Trump appointed three justices in his term. So...

Now you're coming up to the situation where the Supreme Court is conservative controlled. It's basically acting as a reactionary legislative body. They were the ones who ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump brags about it all the time, about how the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court were the ones responsible for getting rid of abortion rights in the United States. And the court...

probably next to the presidency, is one of the most salient electoral issues in this country because outside of the president's ability to enforce legislation that's passed by Congress, the executive powers, the Supreme Court approves and oftentimes influences legislation that has decades-long impacts.

So there are a lot of concerns that the Supreme Court has now fallen to ideological capture, that it's not unbiased, that these are judges who are basically acting as Republican legislators, as activists, rather than these sort of impartial magistrates who are supposed to oversee all of this with the scales of justice.

And it's a huge concern. There's been talks about expanding how many justices are on the Supreme Court to balance it out, which I don't think Biden would endorse. But there's also been conversations about really codifying the Supreme Court code of conduct to avoid situations like this and to give Congress more power to actually enforce the code of conduct in the Supreme Court, which right now is pretty voluntary for the justices. Yeah.

So is Biden going to use this to say, look how badly Trump messed up the Supreme Court? Look at what is going on there. Vote for me because I will protect it or restore some balance to it, or at least just make it, I don't know, feel like it works a little bit more and Trump will completely wreck it. Is that going to be his campaign pitch when it comes to this? Yeah, 100%. That's this kind of pitch every president makes when it comes to the Supreme Court.

But especially for Biden, so much of the legislation and so much of

The policy that Biden has tried to implement over his four years has been met by Republicans with Supreme Court challenges because Republicans know that they've captured the court, that it is critical for Biden to campaign on this issue, to let people know that if you elect me, I will make sure we nominate liberal justices who respect the rule of law, who respect individual rights and reverse the damage that is being done by this current court. Supreme Court then?

Not so cool. Not so supreme. I like that. That was really good. Not so supreme. Anyway, moving on to something else, which really doesn't make sense to us Brits, does it, Jav? And that's the wild amount of money in US politics. Yeah, so Trump is kind of out-raising Biden at the moment, isn't he, Chris? Biden has this big war chest. He's obviously got a lot of money. But what's going on? Where's Trump? In what time frame is Trump out-raising Biden? And could he catch up? Is he going to start raising more money than him?

I'm not really sure, to be honest. So basically, Trump has raised $76.2 million, and the Biden campaign said on Monday evening that it had raised $51 million in April, which is a bit of a loss. And I think I'm right in saying that that's the first time it's raised less than the Trump campaign, which I'm not really sure if that's a worry. Nick, is that a concern? Is this something that you really pay that much attention to in US politics? And also, just give us...

you know, a reasoning as to why all this matters. Oh, absolutely. It matters because in US elections, money wins. Like a majority of the time, the better funded candidate wins because you can buy campaign ads, you can hire more people to go

do grassroots door-to-door knocking, you can campaign more, you can organize more events. Money in politics is huge. And not only that, money in politics is really important in not only campaigning for yourself, but funding attacks against your opponent.

So Trump raised 76-ish million dollars in April. Biden raised 51 million in that same month. Overall, Biden is still far outpacing Trump in net fundraising. Biden has a lot more cash on hand. Trump is spending... I think the reason probably Trump had such a good fundraising month is...

He has been fundraising a ton off of the current criminal case. Well, he's constantly in the public eye, isn't he? I mean, it's no surprise. This is all good advertising for him, I guess. He's in front, even in the UK, he's in front of our eyes constantly. Wherever you look on the BBC, on The Guardian, there's always a story about Trump there. So it's really no surprise that he's appealing to so many people and also making people feel sorry for him as well, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's really what he does. Anytime anything happens in court within an hour, you can expect to see a fundraising email being like, the judge tried to silence me, donate to restore my freedom, blah, blah, blah. And he's also, there was a really big story earlier this month about a giant donor meeting he had with oil executives, which you and I talked about last week, Chris.

But the other thing I think people should remember is that a ton of the money that Trump is raising is going to legal fees. He, I think, spent $3 million in April alone. There is a ton of money he's going to have to pay off in terms of the settlements he owes E. Jean Carroll and the state of New York in the two civil fraud trials that he lost. So...

Biden still has more money. He's been banking up a ton. The closer we get to the election, the more spending you will see. But I think for Trump, the biggest crutch he has right now are all of these legal cases. It's making a huge dent in his ability to just spend outright on campaigning. He already has a massive campaign infrastructure, but...

We see it not only in his own campaign, but the way the Republican National Committee is restructuring to better serve his campaign. There was a really interesting report, I think probably last month, about how Republican candidates, if they want to use Trump's image, will now have to pay like a portion of their fundraising to the RNC. It's basically like they're trying to siphon money from wherever they can get it. And at the end of the day, these two figures are so big that

that they already have the national presence. Where we're really gonna see the effects of their fundraising is in their ability to campaign to independent voters, the phone banking, the door knocking, the like individual campaign events in small towns. And whoever can do the most of that is gonna have a really big leg up this year.

And well, that brings us to the end of this episode of American Friction. So, yeah, thank you to you, Nikki. Toodaloo. And thank you very much to you, Christopher. You're welcome, yeah.

Oh, yeah. And thank you, Jarv, as well. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for letting me podcast. And an even bigger thanks to you, listeners. If you want more from us, we're out with a new episode every Friday, early afternoon, if you're in the UK, and in the morning, if you're stateside. You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Our name on each platform is American Frick.

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