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Oh, my God.
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Sign up and download for free at Grammarly.com slash podcast. That's Grammarly.com slash podcast. Grammarly. Easier said, done. Welcome back to Beyond the Polls. This week, we return to American politics. And boy, do we have a lot to talk about with Dana Perino, former White House press secretary and co-host of Fox News' The Five. Let's dive in.
Well, the last two weeks has been unprecedented in American politics. We have had presidents die in office. We have had presidents impeached in office. We have never had a president under fire to step aside as a candidate for reelection because of his health. But that's exactly where we are. And I can't say anything other than that. Boy, is this richly deserved.
There have been talks about the president's ability to do his job for at least the last couple of years. And while many times these were exaggerated in conservative media saying the president has dementia, when clearly the president didn't have
dementia in 2021 or early 2022. It was also clear that this was a man who was slowing down. This was a man who was increasingly having verbal hiccups, even in relatively scripted interviews. This was a person who could say things like asking for Jackie Walorski at a bill signing when Jackie Walorski was dead.
a congresswoman who died tragically in a car accident a couple of years ago. This is a person who was described by the special prosecutor as not being capable of being prosecuted for his holding of classified documents because a jury would likely see him as
Basically, a doddering old man with memory problems who couldn't necessarily form the criminal intent necessary for conviction. Remember that? That was just last year. Boy, were Democrats livid. And then Joe Biden has a press conference where he goes ballistic and
just reinforcing many of the concerns that people had. But yet it was kept under wraps and silent over the last few months. But that's the thing about live events. They show you in a way that you really are. And there was no escaping the fact that on the debate stage in Atlanta, Joe Biden was incapable.
of answering a two-minute question with a clear, defined, lucid answer. That was true with every question. Some of them were worse than others, but it's especially a problem when you come to your closing statement, which is usually the time when you've got things completely memorized because you've got that work, and he couldn't even deliver a closing statement without multiple hiccups, verbal stumbles, inability to finish sentences, and gaps.
So here we have it. It's clear that the president has a problem. It's clear that Democrats say increasingly this problem is our problem, meaning that it's not just a problem for the country that a person whose own aides say that he can only be trusted to be engaged a limited time during each day.
It's not just a problem for Biden's re-election. It's a problem for all of theirs. Why is it a problem for all of theirs? Well, because what we know in the modern age is that while there is some split ticket voting, there will be times when people will vote for person A for president and person B for the Senate or the House.
Those instances are much rarer than they were even 10 years ago and dramatically rarer than they were 30 years ago. So let's put yourself in the shoes of one of the Democratic incumbent senators running for reelection. Let's put yourself in the shoes of Jackie Rosen of Nevada, a state that's been trending red
that barely re-elected her colleague, Catherine Cortez Masto. Last time, I state that Donald Trump, among all of the swing states, Trump leads in all of them, but he's probably got the biggest swing from his 2020 performance in Nevada. And you take a look and you say, do I want to be on a ticket where anyone can say I've been a loyal supporter of this guy?
Put yourself in the shoes of John Tester or Sherrod Brown representing states that Trump carried by double digits, Montana, or high single digits, Ohio, ones that you're already running in close races against the Republican opponent. And do you want to be on a ticket with Joe Biden when you have to, as a matter of party loyalty, support Joe Biden?
And what about Bob Casey and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, closer states? Again,
You don't want this liability. You don't want to be dragged down. And then think about the even more anonymous House candidates, many incumbents in Trump-friendly or marginal districts, and then the places that they're challenging when all you have to do is say, this guy or this gal supports Joe Biden. So they want a map. Some of them are saying it publicly. Most of them are saying it privately. But that is unprecedented.
It's amazing that you have so many Democrats talking to people in the media saying the incumbent president of the United States needs to quit his reelection bid six weeks before the convention. So what's going on and where do I think it's going to go? Well,
Joe Biden's putting up a big fight. He doesn't want to go. Of course, you'd expect that. That's something that somebody who has spent their entire life reaching for this, or at least their entire adult life reaching for this,
got it on the third try has often been underestimated or looked down on. You don't want to go. And as he said in a letter yet on Monday, that look, if people wanted to run against him, they had a primary and nobody did it. And the people who did got wiped out, you know, let's respect the will of the voters.
Let's get on with this. And still, you look and the Democrats are not rallying around publicly the enthusiasm that you would normally have. And privately, they're trying to throw the guy under the bus. So the first thing you need to realize is they can't force him out.
that he's got the delegates pledged to him. There's arguably some wiggle room in the Democratic Party language, whereas the Republicans definitely say you must vote for the candidate.
The Democrats say that you should in all good conscience vote for the candidate to whom you're pledged. I doubt that the Democratic leadership is going to try and use those words to say, hey, Biden delegates who were elected telling the voters that they were going to support Joe Biden are legally able or morally able to say, no, we're not going to vote for Joe Biden. So what that means is Biden has to want to go.
And what I'd say here is don't believe the denials. Every person who holds high office fights like heck to stay in that office. Take a look at Richard Nixon, who overrode politics.
plummeting poll numbers and terrible news and leaks coming out about Watergate in the Watergate Senate hearings and otherwise, and still might have been able to survive but for the release of the smoking gun tape in early August of 1974. And that finally meant that every faction of the Republicans said, we're not going to support him in the Senate.
the Democrats had a massive majority in the House could easily impeach him, but conviction in the Senate was harder and sent a delegation and said, "You are going to go." So the question is, do you want to go on your own terms, resign, or do you want to go on the Senate's terms, impeachment and conviction? And he chose to go on his own terms. We don't have that here, but on the other hand, what you have is the slow erosion, steady erosion of his base. And when that happens,
Any small thing can send the final house of cards tumbling down. It can be the resignation of an aide. It can be a statement by Nancy Pelosi. It can be saying that Biden should go for the good of the country. When you're regularly losing support, it doesn't matter that you still have people in your corner. Richard Nixon still had people in his corner at the end. It wasn't enough. So
If Biden's going to go, there's only two ways for him to go before the convention or after the convention. Before the convention, the question is who succeeds him. The simplest thing would be for him to resign the presidency and
not just leave the re-election. And that would mean that Kamala Harris, the vice president, is the new president of the United States, and that would guarantee her nomination. No one's going to run against a sitting president of the United States, especially one who came in under these circumstances. The other thing would be is if he didn't resign the presidency, in which case there would be
some sort of fight. The question is how much people would want to go after Harris and whether somebody would be a strong candidate. Gretchen Whitmer, who I think would be their strongest nominee, says she will not run if Biden steps aside. Of course, just as with Biden saying he won't step aside, you should take that with a grain of salt. Candidates will turn
turn around on their public pronouncements on a dime if it looks like doing so can be advantageous. But it still shows an indication that I think if Biden did step aside, people would be very leery of challenging Harris unless there was a clear groundswell among Democratic elites to cut the cord completely with the administration. The other thing that he could do is wait till after the convention.
Why would he do that? Well, one, pride. Two, a belief that he can turn around poll numbers. But he can get out at any time. Remember that the Access Hollywood tape that rocked Donald Trump's
candidacy in 2016 came out in early October and people were saying then you should step aside and then what would happen is the Republican National Committee would have selected a replacement. Trump's name would have been on the ballot but what you would have told people is vote for Trump because you're voting for electors and that gets to the key. In America you don't vote for a person for president you vote for electors and the electors are usually party loyalists.
So if Biden, say, stays in the race and goes into the next scheduled debate in September and screws up, yeah, he could still get out. And then he would be
His replacement would be selected by the Democratic National Committee. Private meeting, quick meeting, no time for people to actively campaign. And I think you would then see the elevation of Vice President Harris to the nomination. It'd just be too weird to completely cut bait six weeks or five weeks out from a campaign when absentee ballots are going out. But he could do that.
To sum it all up, this is uncharted territory for American politics. It's uncharted territory in some ways for America. We've had ill presidents before, but we've never had somebody with this sort of rumor and substantiated facts swirling around them. Pay close attention
My friends and listeners, we're living through history, one of those moments that will reverberate for years to come. And while the press may play it out as some sort of television drama, the fact is when he goes, does he go, how he goes is going to matter a lot, not just for the outcome of the 2024 election, but for America's standing in the world and for the future course of American policy for years to come.
And live the Chumba life.
Well, it's a joy today to interview and chat with my guest. It's Dana Perino, Fox News Television co-anchor of America's Newsroom and co-host of The Five, some of the most popular shows on cable news. Dana, welcome to Beyond the Polls. It's great to be here. I've been a longtime fan of yours. I've been a big fan of yours.
a reader, a listener, and also a grateful recipient of some really good and wise counsel last year before I co-hosted the Republican debate in Los Angeles at the Reagan Library. You were really very helpful, and I will always be grateful for that.
Thank you. And a fellow admirer of yours as well. Thank you. Please enjoy listening to you and hearing what you have to say. And that's why you're here is to hear what you have to say about this
Joe Biden, you know, you and I have been following adult politics or, you know, adult politics as an adult. And yet this is unprecedented. You know, this is even stranger in some ways than the whole Watergate situation and Richard Nixon's resignation. What do you make of Joe Biden and can he survive?
I'm sort of enjoying living in the moment. I'm trying to. I'm trying not to think too far ahead because this story is really incredible. And I have a kind of a funny story about that. Before the debate on the Sunday night, I had to write a speech for something I was doing in Denver over the 4th of July holiday. And it was a political update type thing.
So I did some great research here. There's a guy that works in our, it's called our political unit brain room type thing. And I said, what do you think the headwinds and the tailwinds are for the Republicans going into this debate? I mean, sorry, into the election, because I was just going to do 2024. So then we have BD, which is before the debate, and then AD, which I say is after the debate.
Because during the debate, I put my pen down at 9.17, Henry, and I never took another note because I said, oh, this is over. I mean, I don't care what Trump does. And I'm not saying Trump had a great debate. It didn't matter. At that point, the only story was that what is going on with Joe Biden? Now, if you are somebody who reads a lot of different types of news, or maybe you just watch Fox News, or maybe you're on National Review online all the time,
as I am often, you wouldn't be surprised that there were people who said Joe Biden was in cognitive decline. Henry, it's shocking how many people are surprised that the president was that bad. And so now they're in this crisis of their own making because the president is stubborn, because the president is not well.
Now they're so far down the road that you actually have this congressional meeting today where the minority leader of the House Democrats leaves out the back door of the meeting so that he doesn't have to face the reporters because part of the caucus says, look, he's our guy. All these people voted for him in the primary. We got to stick with him. And the rest of the caucus is saying, guys, we stay with him. We're definitely going to lose. Like, why not try to live?
And I'm sitting here right now with you, Henry. I have no idea what's going to happen. I was earlier in the week. Well, wait, it's only Tuesday. So let me say Saturday. I felt like he's definitely going to have to go. And I don't just mean politically. I mean, for the good of the country, for the good of the world, because I
This is a 24-7 job, and you have people inside the White House saying he's only dependably engaged from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and we have too many problems for that right now. But, however, today, after that meeting, I would say now it's 50-50 that he stays. It's 50-50 that a man who everyone at best acknowledges is not capable of engaging
doing a 24/7, 365 job is shocking. I mean, if this were a Westminster parliamentary system, his colleagues would have pushed him out the door
No later than June 30th, but they probably would have been applying pressure months beforehand because, again, unless you were willfully blind, you could see that this was a man in his decline and that the only question was a debate over the seriousness and the rapidity of the decline. But yet, as you say, many people seem to have been blind to this. And then the question is if he stays blind.
What happens? I mean, if we're talking that it's six weeks from now and he's standing and he's giving a teleprompter speech because that seems to be how we can get through without making any sort of gaffes or mistakes. Did the American people just forget what they saw? Does this become yesterday's news and Biden is able to come back? Or is this really did he really sink himself? And is the SS Biden really?
going down regardless of what happens if he stays. Interestingly, most of the polls still have the country very split. Biden hasn't collapsed, but Trump is ahead in the national polls and in the swing states polls and on the questions of who do you think would be better on the economy, crime, immigration. Trump's running away with that. But the country is split and
In some ways, I think that I don't like referring to people who don't like either candidate as double haters because I feel that they're just doubly dismayed. I like this is yeah, this is this is just that they can't understand it. They're they're they're working hard every day. They don't want to have to think about politics all the time, but they are. So I think right now we are probably looking at Trump.
doing extremely well, exceedingly well. And if the Democrats actually believed that he was such a threat to democracy, they would have tried to fix this a year ago. And Biden could have said, I did what I came here to do. I said I would be a transitional president. I'm proud of the work we did. And it's time to pass a baton to a new, younger generation and either endorse Kamala Harris or not.
But now you're in this situation where you have NATO leaders meeting with the president this week who on the record will say, oh yeah, he's great, he's fine, no problem. And then on background, we'll say, wow, yeah, he is like not even there. Today, you had the national security spokesperson describe the president as lucid. Really? At the very least, I would hope.
Lucid. You were White House press secretary under George W. Bush during the 2008 financial crash and Lehman Brothers. Oh, yeah.
Lots of people were piling the hate on at that point. I doubt you ever had anyone say to you, is the president up to the job? They may have asked you a lot about is the president capable of making a good decision, but they never questioned what the president was capable of making a decision. Right. Or they would disagree with the decision. But because we could explain how we got to the decision that that was defensible yesterday, the White House press corps is furious at the press secretary.
And I understand why. I remember a lot of tense briefings. Not that bad for me, but like tense briefings. But I don't remember the reporters ever being mad at me because I would try to meet them where they were. I mean, she basically is saying you don't have the right to ask these questions. Oh, excuse me. You have a Parkinson's doctor coming eight times to the White House in the last six months. And I'm pretty sure, Henry, she didn't know that.
She's not necessarily in a position to know. I'll tell you exactly what happened. John Levine at the New York Post was going through the White House visitor logs, and he found that doctor's name, and he tracked it down, and he said that he visited in January of 2024, but dig a little deeper. Then there's another guy, his colleague. He's a neurologist. He's the one that's been there over and over again.
So, I mean, and as White House press secretary, I was not privy to the White House visitor logs. I guess I could have gone and looked, but I didn't have time. I didn't care to. So I assume that Corinne Jean-Pierre yesterday was backed into a corner of having then to go to the chief of staff and say, I'm going to get asked about a neurologist coming to the White House eight times in the last six months. What am I supposed to say? Mm-hmm.
And I think that the answer they gave her was bad. What I would have done if I were her, I would have said, I understand why you are asking these questions. If I were in your shoes, I would be asking them too. This is what I will tell you. The doctor here on the White House staff has checked him out. He said this.
He has this, and he did this. And then you explain what happened and say, but I understand why you're asking. That's the information I have for you today. And protect yourself, because they're not trying to protect her.
Before we get to the Republican convention, that's one of the things that's just striking about Karine Jean-Pierre is how many times she's either unprepared or has some sort of slap down comeback. How dare you ask? Yeah. I would understand a couple of days into the job or a couple of weeks. She's in year two.
Yeah. Is this a fault that they don't trust her? And so she's always blindsided or is this just she's not the best spokesperson for the president? I think one, I don't think she ever worked in politics before this. Right. OK. She never worked on Capitol Hill. So there's not a lot of respect there for that job. She's never a journalist.
You know, like look at Tony Snow. He was right. You know, like a lot of people that had the jobs before. That's fine. They can choose whoever they want. But remember, just about four months ago, there was an article that said Anita Dunn, one of the president's lead advisors, tried to push Corinne Jean-Pierre out and she dug her heels in. And it became one of the thing one of those things that.
Because they hired her to great fanfare for her diversity, which is great, then letting her go on her diversity was then impossible. So she dug in, said she's not going to leave. So what did they do? They layered over her or next to her John Kirby over at the National Security Council, who the president apparently really likes.
and relies on and trusts, and I can understand that. The way he communicates is very clear and understandable. And so there's chilliness between those two within the White House. But more than that, if you read some of these stories about how Dr. Jill Biden has been pretty much protecting and hiding the president from others...
and how her staffers have been protecting people from knowing what was really there. I got the sense even two years ago that Corinne Jean-Pierre didn't see the president a lot. And I think that's pretty much true. Now, they're pretty insular. Maybe we'll read books one day that says, oh, they were yucking it up in the Oval Office all the time. But I don't think so because there doesn't seem to be a lot of warmth there. No.
And that's one thing you had a lot of access to President Bush. Yeah, it was great. Yeah. And I presume that a good press, you know, the press secretary doesn't have to see the president every day before the daily brief. But the press secretary needs to have some idea how the president thinks and communicates in order to represent the president.
Yeah, sometimes I would just be a fly on the wall. It was very helpful to me, for example, every Wednesday morning at 7 a.m., I believe, President Bush had a secure video teleconference every Wednesday. One week with the Iraqi president, the next week with the Afghani president. Okay? So, and this is just an example. I sat in on those meetings, back row, you know, back bench, but I got to listen. And so...
Inevitably, the Iraqis or the Afghanis, they would leak the call and try to spin it one way. But all the reporters knew that I was in the room and they trusted me. So if they came to me and said, is it true that President Bush said this? I could say, you know, maybe if it was classified, I would have to say off the record, I wouldn't say you were wrong.
So, you know, something like that. Or I could say on the record that absolutely did not happen. So, you know, that proximity to access is very good. But the other thing is that there's a lot of focus on Corinne Jean-Pierre, whereas I think it really should be on Dr. Jill Biden and Joe Biden himself, maybe Hunter as well, if we want to pull him into the picture, because I am upset also about this. We are taught from when we were very little,
to respect your elders, to treat them with care, to be good to them, to thank them for all they've done, to make sure that the back half of their life or the back third of their life is enjoyable, that they get to have as much time with their grandkids or their hobbies, and that they are taken care of very well into this next chapter. And instead, what we've done is we've turned old age into a complete joke.
where we all get to make fun of Joe Biden all the time. And you know how many people I've heard from whose parents have had Parkinson's or dementia and how painful it is for them to see what's happening? And they know he doesn't get better from this. Senator John Fetterman is insistent that Biden just had a bad debate. It's no big deal. He had a bad debate too. I'm like, yes, sir, but you had a stroke yesterday.
And people can recover from strokes. And thank God you did. But people don't recover from old age. It's just the way the world is. And I wish that we could be more caring and loving in this moment. But our own national security is at stake. And that's what really bothers me.
NATO summit. All leaders are going to see him up close. Lots of diplomats, not just the leaders, will see the president up close over the next couple of days. What are you what would you be looking for? Nobody's going to come out. President Macron is not going to come out and say, hey, look at me. I'm a spry 46 diplomat.
I'm not this doddering old dementia patient in charge of a nuclear arsenal. You know, they'll all come out supportive of Biden. But on the background, what would you be looking for if they're really disturbed by what they're seeing? What would we be hearing Thursday, Friday and so forth of people pulling favored reporters aside and saying, I never said this, but. So the headline going into the NATO summit is everything about Joe Biden.
Is he lucid? And the headlines should be about Vladimir Putin feels emboldened enough to destroy a children's hospital in Kyiv and no one says anything. Nobody's mad. We're going to accept this? Or are we going to do something to help the Ukrainians fight? Or are we not? Or is Biden going to be able to tell Justin Trudeau, oh, yes, you will make your 2% commitment. Oh, yes, you will.
Because the Canadians came out today and they were like, yeah, no, we're not going to be able to do that, guys. Sorry. So the headlines to me are all wrong because we're not able to focus on the real problems. You have the president of Russia meeting with the president of China. You have a new leader in Iran. And you have the North Koreans. And all of these buddies are working together quite cooperatively, right?
So that should be what NATO's talking about. Another thing that I think NATO should talk about is what are we going to do when a $100 drone can take out a tank that costs tens of thousands of dollars to make? What are we going to do? There's so many things that are on the plates of these leaders that
But the only thing people are gonna be looking for is, did Biden know where to sit? Did he look the wrong way for the flag? Did the Prime Minister of Italy have to pull him back from wherever he was walking and get him back into the group? Now, I think that Joe Biden right now realizes that he is fighting for his political life and maybe even his life. So he has kind of kicked it into a little bit of a higher gear right now. So I just feel like all of us could rally for a minute if we really had to.
But it's inevitable that this is happening. The other thing is they're looking at this going, okay, so we're going to this NATO meeting with the commander in chief who wants to run for re-election to serve for another four years. And everybody knows that he won't. So the other eyes will be on Kamala Harris, the vice president.
And that gets to the question I want to ask. President Trump is having a rally. We're recording on Tuesday. He'll have a rally tonight. People expect that the vice president will be announced. So my listeners may know who the vice presidential pick is by the time this comes out. Yeah. But.
How important is the vice presidential pick now as opposed to in past campaigns? In past campaigns, we've always looked at, oh, can this person bring their state? Do they have a demographic balance? Or like with Clinton and Gore, do they double down on a message? Which is pretty much where we were two weeks ago or three weeks ago with President Trump.
What would you be looking for if you were President Trump, seeing that Biden wants to stay in the race, but everybody in their right mind knows it's only a matter of time that it becomes President Harris? I do think it's just a lot more intriguing and interesting. And if you think about Barack Obama chose Joe Biden for the opposite reason that Joe Biden chose Corinne Jean-Pierre and Kamala Harris.
Right. To reassure everybody, like I got this older white guy. Everybody knows him. He's going to be right there by my side. And with foreign policy experience, which I lack. Yeah. And then Trump said, I need to reassure the right wing of the conservative party and the evangelicals. And I chose Mike Pence. OK, everybody's good. And now, of course, Jim Clyburn says, I will help you get rid of Republicans.
Bernie Sanders, Mr. Biden, but only if you promise to pick a black woman as your vice president. He says, hot damn, let's go. Okay, I chose her. Kamala Harris gets it. So now we're in a situation where Kamala Harris, if you remember Nikki Haley, when she was running for president said, I'm not running against Joe Biden. I'd be running against Kamala Harris because Joe Biden will never make it. And that was astute on her part. So now we're at that point.
The vice presidential debate is going to be fascinating if it happens, when it happens. I think that President Trump, because he has been president before, knows what he wants in a vice president. I don't think he needs to shore up any part of his base. And I don't know if a vice presidential pick really gets him any of the double dismayed undecideds. I don't know. Probably not, really.
But he wants somebody, I think, that will help him be able to accomplish a lot of things that he's got on his agenda that he wants to do in the four years that he's allowed to run because he couldn't run again. The other thing is, whoever he picks, immediately some people will think, oh, that's the signal for whoever Trump thinks should run as a Republican candidate.
standard bearer in 2028. I don't know if Trump's really thinking that far ahead on that score. I think he's looking for somebody who would be the right person that he wants to see every Wednesday for lunch. What about communication skills? Is that if you're talking about a vice presidential debate, you're talking about somebody. Kamala Harris does not have Parkinson's. Kamala Harris does have ward saladitis.
Do you want somebody who is especially good at communicating clearly, succinctly in this moment, whereas maybe just an average communicator? Gosh, yes, of course. But I'm thinking of all the people on Trump's short list, if that is really the list. And all of them are good. Okay.
Yeah, all of them are good communicators and persuasive and have experience. Some have executive experience, meaning like a governor, like Doug Burgum, like executive experience. I always think that governors make for good presidents. I think Mike Pence was a good example of a good executive who could get things done.
Ron DeSantis, a great executive of his state. Nikki Haley, even great executive. Even if you go back and you think Romney from a business perspective and governor of Massachusetts, again, a great executive. It's kind of difficult to go from the Senate to being a great president.
Hence what we're dealing with right now. Well, what do you think a good Republican convention would look like for Trump? Clearly, this has been scripted well in advance and this guy's been the de facto nominee since March.
Everyone wants this on the Republican side to give him that bounce in the polls. We're talking two weeks from now and it's been a successful convention. What things are we pointing to that happened during the convention that made it that? You know, what is on my mind is this realignment and the
development of a coalition. And if President Trump after in two weeks, like so we do the RNC convention and the week after that, you're taking polls and he has held or increased his position with blacks and Latinos in this country as he already has been or Biden's been losing them, then I think that would be a real success. I believe that the new Republican platform, which is not getting a ton of attention in
It's interesting, as I said, to go through a political realignment. I'm pretty much a hard conservative on most issues. I would say pretty much all, really, especially on fiscal issues, for example. And I'm not personally where...
the new party is, the newly revised Republican Party, whatever we're calling it, on trade. I'm just not convinced that there's a better way to do free market economics rather than to just let the free market actually do the economics. I was very encouraged by the Chevron decision, and I think that President Trump will point to
The fact that the court, the Supreme Court, has been the backstop for Republicans and conservatives and remind them about that. So I think that would be a successful convention. And I think if the vice presidential choice can add a little vim and vigor to the campaign, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. But overshadowing all of this will be, is Biden fit to be president right now?
And there's this one reason why I thought for a little last week is that if I were Biden, not that he shows any indication of going, but I wouldn't do it until after the Republican convention. You know, is that if you do it in the middle of the Republican convention, then he becomes the story and it gives the Republicans something even easier to shoot at than his current state.
But yeah, I would expect more than a few jibes from the speakers at at least we know our man can walk, talk and make decisions and is in charge. Who's in charge in the White House? I think that would be. I actually I heard from a friend during the America's Newsroom that on her channel in North Carolina, an ad from the Trump campaign.
I don't know which pack it was, but it was a Trump pro Trump ad against Biden using that line from the debate where Biden says we beat Medicare. Yeah. And she said it was brutal.
So there's plenty of more where that came from. Oh, yeah. No, I've got a Democratic friend who wants Biden out after seeing the debate and is just saying, look, Biden's behind after he's been spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the air with no Trump response. Right. All ads can write themselves in their sleep. And we all know that that's what's coming. Yeah. Well, Dana, as a final question, I just want to ask you,
What would you think the odds are of the Republicans assuming Biden does stay in the race? It's not just the presidency. There's eight swing state Senate seats up this time. Obviously, Democrats are concerned about losing the House.
Could we be looking, if Biden stays in the race, at a Republican sweep of the—I'm talking about Nevada, Montana, Michigan, Wisconsin, all these places where Democrats are marginally ahead in the polls, but not in strong, strong, you know, not close to 50 percent. If the worst-case scenario for Democrats is Biden losing and Trump coming back in the White House,
What do you think the odds are of a double worst case scenario of them losing five, six, seven Senate seats on top of the one they're already going to lose in West Virginia? Very high. And
It's 119 days till the election, so that's a little bit of an eternity. But right now, I think that you are absolutely looking at that, and that is why you had some Democrats leaving that meeting today saying, we are dead men walking if we continue on this path. But they might be stuck. And if they're stuck, that means that President Trump...
can see if he can get everybody out. Now, one caveat to that is that, as I mentioned, the polls haven't changed that much yet. And the Democrats do unite in their hatred against Trump. And sometimes hatred is a good motivator to vote. So,
Again, I like to live in the moment a little bit more right now because it's hard to say exactly what's going to happen. One thing I would mention, especially for people who listen to this podcast, you might like this other one. Eli Lake did a podcast for Barry Weiss's show called Honestly, and it was a 30-minute discussion, kind of like a mini documentary about 1968 and the comparisons to today. Highly recommend. I was reminded...
of many things or even found out for the first time things that I had never heard about that 1968 timeframe. It's well, well worth everybody's time as we get ready to not only go to Milwaukee, but then on to Chicago at the end of August. And as we know from 1968, Chicago was not a good convention for the Democrats. Not at all. I highly recommend that podcast to everybody. Yeah. The one thing I've been thinking about with 68 is the,
What happens if Biden steps down, but he stays as president? That's the Humphrey LBJ situation. And what it meant was... Okay. Because I don't think that he should be president now. And I say that with great respect for the presidency and concern about us. When you have staff inside the White House telling Axios that the president is only dependably engaged for six hours a day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., that to me is not good enough. It's unacceptable.
And I expect Trump and the campaign will make that and similar points over. Although I think Trump wants Biden to be on the ticket. So they've been quiet.
Well, yeah. I mean, look, if you've got somebody with all of Biden's now out there weaknesses as opposed to rumored weaknesses, of course, you want the weakest possible candidate. And it means that for all of Kamala Harris's word salad nature and her liberal California background, it certainly seems that Biden is a much weaker candidate down the stretch than Kamala Harris.
Well, Dana, thank you very much for joining me. Thanks for having me. Is there any place besides your Fox shows where people can follow you? If you like dogs, I'm at Dana Perino on Instagram and my dog Percy makes a lot of appearances there and on X at Dana Perino as well. Well, that's fabulous. Well, thank you, Dana. And have a great convention in Milwaukee. OK, thank you. I'll be in touch. Cheers. Cheers.
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Well, we're back in America, which means we're back to 30-second ads. Well, wait a minute. Maybe we're not back to 30-second ads because the ad of the week this week is not a 30-second. It's a 60-second ad. I picked a longer ad this week, and I think you'll see why when you hear what the candidate has to say, why the extra time really helps the impact. Let's listen. I was born and raised right here in Nashua, my family's home for over 100 years.
This is where I learned to love our democracy and the freedoms it guarantees. But let's be real. Our democracy is under threat right now by an extreme movement in our politics.
I'm Maggie Goodlander. I've dedicated my career to taking on extremism and corruption. As an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, as counsel in the first impeachment of Donald Trump, as a professor of constitutional law here at UNH, at the Department of Justice where I took on corporate monopolies, and in the Biden White House. The day Roe v. Wade was overturned, I was right there helping to fight back.
I know how much Granite Staters care about these issues. I hear it everywhere I go. I've been on the front lines of these fights, and on day one, I will fight like hell for our democracy and the state we love. That's why I'm running for Congress, and that's why I approve this message.
Well, there you have it. Maggie Goodlander is the wife of the National Security Advisor, and she has gone back to her native New Hampshire to run for Congress. She is running in New Hampshire's second congressional district, which is the more rural, not Boston suburbs part of the state. It is pretty
safely Democrat. Republicans can win it in a landslide year, but it is the more Democratic of the two congressional districts in the state. So her real competition is the Democratic primary. Now, of course, what is Maggie's challenge? Well, Maggie's challenge is no one knows who the heck she is. She's never run for office before. She's never run in New Hampshire before.
I don't think she's been in New Hampshire all that long since she grew up there. You know, you listen to what she says in the ad where she's in the, you know, in the Biden White House. She's in Naval Intelligence. She came back to be a law professor at UNH, but then she went back in the Biden White House, which means she had to come back to D.C. So she has two challenges to overcome. One, name ID.
Two, ties to the area. So what does the ad do? Well, first of all, the ad is really good on the name ID front. She mentions her name a couple of times, but it has a device that I always love, which is keeping the candidate's name on the screen.
People listen, but they also look. And in the bottom left-hand corner throughout virtually the entire ad, it says Maggie Goodlander, Democrat for Congress. And at the beginning where she's talking, she has a rural farmstead in the background. It looks like it's snowy.
but it's a rural farmstead in the background. And underneath Maggie Goodlander, Democrat for Congress, it says Nashua, New Hampshire. And what that does for about 20 seconds or so, just drive home. This person is one of us. And that's the part of the ad where she's talking about her grew up here, comes from Nashua and stuff. And so that helps as much as she can help to
Let's say I'm one of you. I'm with you. Then we've got the experience section of the ad where she goes through what she's been doing to fight for Democratic Party values. And as she puts it in the ad, Democratic values, you know, lots of experience of public service. And she notes that she was a law professor at UNH, University of New Hampshire, and
in Durham, New Hampshire, and the Biden administration are showing that she's part of that team. She's trusted by the people that you trust. She's not running as a crazy progressive. Of course, she's not running as a crazy progressive. Her husband is the national security advisor.
But what adds, what does she talk about? She talks about key democratic values in this campaign. She talks about abortion a couple of times. She has pictures of the Roe versus Wade overturning in the Dobbs case. So she identifies herself as a champion of abortion rights. That's a big
issue, particularly for women in the Democratic Party. There's a couple of times where the pictures when she's talking about that are of her and all the people she's talking to are all women.
As I've said to you before nothing is an accident in an ad if they wanted men in the picture They would have had men in the picture This is meant to be a woman talking to Democratic women about an issue that motivates them. They also talk about Trump They don't use the phrase MAGA extremist, which is the favorite phrase of the Biden administration when they talk about extreme elements there goes
Trump up on the picture with a Make America Great Again hat and one of his signature rallies with the big sign Trump in the front. So
opposition to Trump. That is another huge issue for Democrats. She identifies herself with the opposition to Trump. Democracy, opposition to Trump, abortion, experience, one of us. This is about as perfect of an introductory ad that says, here's this person you've never heard of. You want to look at her because she will represent us and our values in Congress.
And that, as a virtual textbook example of how to introduce yourself to an unfamiliar electorate, is why this 60-second commercial is the ad of the week. That's it for this week. Join me next week as we talk with the president of the influential Pew Research Center, Michael Dima. Until then, let's reach for the stars together as we journey beyond the polls.
Ryan Seacrest here.
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