Trump's Shooting Upends 2024
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Tommy Vitor. Well, quite a bit has happened since Friday's show, and absolutely none of it has been good. Donald Trump was shot in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally.

his handpicked judge throughout his classified documents case. He picked MAGA heir J.D. Vance as his running mate on the opening day of the Republican convention. And new swing state polls give him an even larger lead over Joe Biden, who spent the last few days giving a number of high profile speeches and interviews as he tries to convince Democrats and all Americans that he's still the best chance to beat Trump. But let's start with the assassination attempt. We're

Words that still feel just awful and shocking to say out loud. The investigation is still underway. Here's some of the new details we've learned as of this recording, Monday night. Head of Secret Service did an interview with ABC News today where she said, quote, the buck stops with me, but she's not resigning. So far, the picture that's emerging of the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crook,

does not suggest he was a Trump hater, a Trump fan, or even that political. It looks like he once made a $15 donation to one of those scammy progressive groups that fucking emails you all the time. But after that, he registered as a Republican and neighbors just told a Pittsburgh news station they've seen Trump signs around the family's house.

Some classmates have said he was conservative. Others said he was bullied. Others said he liked guns. Meanwhile, the wife of Corey Comprator, the rally goer who died, told the New York Post that President Biden did reach out, but she didn't take the call because her husband was a Trump guy and wouldn't have wanted her to. But even though she's voting for Trump, she said that she doesn't blame Biden for her husband's death and that President Trump has not yet contacted her family. So before we get to all the politics,

Obviously, just terrifying, horrendous news for the country. I heard about it from you, Tommy. You texted. How did you hear it? How did you learn about this whole thing? Were you watching the rally? I was just sitting at home. I was with James, my two-month-old, and doing nothing, sitting on Twitter. All of a sudden, this is coming through. Shots fired at a Trump rally. I turned on the news, and I think watched it live like a lot of people did.

It's just wild that the footage was just there for everyone to see and play over and over again. Dan, you were not home, right? I was driving back from a trip with my daughter, and the last text before I got in the car was from time I had said, shots fired at a Trump rally, which I thought just there were shots at the rally, right? And not someone had shot at Trump. And then I didn't look at my phone for an hour and a half.

home to one million texts, mostly from you guys, about everything that happened. I couldn't believe that someone had shot at Trump. Trump had been hit, that he was fine. But then you saw the image of Trump with his fist in the air, the bloody image, some of the

the photos of the one from Doug Mills, who we used to, we know from the White House. Great guy. Where the incredible, great guy, incredible photographer of the bullet, like near, right at Trump's head. Just like almost an impossible thing to process, to learn all about, like in one fell swoop. Yeah. Yeah. I just sort of felt sick. I was like, what, what is going to happen now? Yeah. I felt sick. I really did. That was my instant reaction. I felt sick. I was instantly worried about,

Even after we knew that it was only an attempt about the implications, about the potential for retaliatory violence, about what we might learn about the shooter, I also just was instantly worried about what it would be like for this to be processed by social media. And the other strange... Good worry. Good concern. Because that was the right, yeah. And the other strange piece about it too was...

In the same way, you know, you see, oh, you see the shots fired at a Trump rally. My first instinct is, oh, this is some kind of false or overblown thing.

made-up story on because you want it to be you want it to be and you expect it to be because there's so much Misinformation there's so much sensationalism out there. So you've at first. Oh, it's just an airsoft gun Oh, it was it was shrapnel from a teleprompter. It wasn't actually a shooting right all that is circulating ever And then it's slowly becoming clear from real sources What's going on and I really did I had a pit in my stomach the whole day even after we knew that it was that it was only an attempt because of

And angry. And I was angry just because it takes control of our ability to talk about politics, about ability to talk about anything and just takes it away from us in favor of what a random mass shooter or assassin wants us to talk about, which is whatever their intention or or or act is. Tommy, just quickly.

What do you make of the Secret Service's lapse here in their response so far? I mean, it seems like having eyes on a shooter who was on top of an elevated building

Within sight of the president is like the most basic part of the job that Secret Service does to protect any event with either a president, next president or whoever they're assigned to protect. Yeah, the idea that an elevated position 140 yards away with a sight line, a direct sight line to the candidate.

was not covered by someone somehow is shocking to me. I mean, there might have been, so Secret Service, there's a bunch of different parts of it. There's PPD, who are the men and women around the president, the personal protective detail for the president. What you saw on TV was them reacting and dive on him pretty quickly. And those people are incredibly brave. You know, those individuals literally threw themselves in front of a bullet to protect the president and they, they did their job and they did it pretty quickly. But then there are, you know, they partner with local law enforcement. It's not at all clear if

local law enforcement was supposed to be securing this building. It's not clear to me why the sniper teams that were on other elevated positions didn't see the gunman sooner. So,

We'll figure it out. There will be an investigation. I think it's a massive fuck-up. I mean, obviously. Yeah. I'm surprised that the Secret Service director is not offering her resignation. If a candidate... If a president or candidate got shot on my watch and I was running Secret Service, I would feel like I'd fail to my job and resign. I'm sure there will be...

independent investigations. There will be internal investigations. Biden's in a weird place on this because he's standing by an agency that he is in charge of through Homeland Security. But I mean, I hope that, you know, Congress will get involved. Maybe there'll be some sort of slick committee set up to look into what happened because the Secret Service has had a bunch of near misses, you

and a bunch of bad scandals. And I think as an organization, they are not doing great. Yeah. And that's been true for a while. Yeah, I mean, it was true when we were in the Bible. I mean, even though we knew a lot of serious soldiers did an incredible job, but there were

I was at the White House when the guy made it into the White House, the guy who jumped the fence. Yeah, that's right. I was there when they found the bullet holes at the top of the White House that no one knew when they came from. So this has been a problem for a while. Biden did ask for an independent investigation of this, which I think it becomes the basis for making a decision on the future of the head of the Secret Service. Yeah.

So after the shock passed and it was clear Trump was OK, the first understandable reaction from a lot of folks in politics and media was that, you know, everyone needs to tone down the rhetoric and lower the temperature of the political debate in this country. Biden said as much a number of times over the weekend. Trump himself posted Unite America in all caps.

And he did a print interview with Selena Zito of the Washington Examiner where he said he tore up the draft of his convention speech that he said was the original draft was a humdinger. Um,

And was rewriting it about bringing the country together. Axios ran a piece Sunday evening about how Trump advisers are planning a more unifying convention. The piece quoted Tucker Carlson. They interviewed him. He said, quote, getting shot in the face changes a man. And an unnamed Trump adviser said that Trump's view is, quote, now Democrats can't come after me anymore as a fascist. So what are they going to do now?

So lots to unpack there. Let's start with the timeless classic. Can Trump pivot to become someone who's unrecognizable to those who've watched him for the last 77 years? Dan, what do you think? I'm going to go out on a limb and say no. No. I do not think he's become a uniter and not a divider. I do think that the press seems very thirsty to believe this narrative in a way in which they haven't with Trump in a very long time.

He's been very credulous. COVID. COVID was the last time. Remember the beginning of COVID? Even that lasted like six seconds, right? Yeah, the first six seconds of his first press conference. No, I think it was the moment when he went and got into the Secret Service vehicle with all the Secret Service agents infected with COVID for the driver on the block. Oh, yeah, there's that too. Well, that was later. That was when he had... I was saying when COVID...

Remember in March, the first couple of weeks, everyone was like, oh, he's a new president. He's great. Then he became crazy. Then he got COVID. The point being whether it was our collective near-death experience or his personal near-death experience. And we have yet to see a fucking change. I do think he can be just less divisive enough to get a disproportionate amount of undeserved credit in his speech on Thursday night.

Yeah, I mean, it's can you hang on for four months? And we before the shooting, we were saying this about his how he reacted to the trials. And like he the fear of potentially going to jail has really driven him in this campaign to be.

slightly more disciplined than usual, not because it's out of the goodness of his heart, but because he's like, this is how I'm going to win this thing. I've got to just be a little normal for a little while longer. Well, he already says, what does unity mean? It means dropping all the charges against me. Right. Of course. He's given up the game pretty quickly. But I think in 2016, was it Super Tuesday when he won the election and then did a giant product placement thing where he had all...

all the Trump products he'd ever made on a table before. Like, the stakes have gone up since that time, to your point. Very much so. Getting out of jail. Yeah. And, again, like you said, already in this campaign, he has said...

I mean, every day has said something that would sink any other candidate for office and it just completely makes him unfit to hold the office. Just want to put that out there. But relative to Trump and what people expect of Trump, it's been a little different. What do you guys think about the whole Democrats can't call him a threat to democracy anymore thing? Love it. Political violence is destructive in a democracy for a lot of obvious reasons. But one reason is that it gives control to

over our ability to make decisions to random bad actors. We should not give to a random person

person, whatever their motivations, whatever we discover, we should not voluntarily give up what that person wasn't able to successfully take by force, which is our ability to make a decision about the fate of the country. And that requires being honest about the threat Donald Trump poses that because that requires being honest about what it will take to win this election. That is, you know, the fact that this event took place does not remove Trump's menace or the challenge Biden faces. And the sooner we get back to having that debate, the more of a failure this assassination attempt will be.

Tommy, go ahead. No, that's a good point. I also think like politics is how we resolve differences without resorting to violence. And those debates are inevitably going to get emotional and heated at times. And they should because that's our release valve. That's how we settle differences. But that said, like there are limits. You can't encourage violence. You can't condone violence. That's why what Trump did on January 6th is...

unforgivable in my mind. But I do think people take cues from leaders and it's important not to take it too far because once political violence starts, it can be very, very hard to stop and it can just get out of control.

Donald Trump told his supporters to beat the shit out of protesters at his rallies. He has amplified calls for violence. Remember the video of one of his supporters? This was after George Floyd's murder. And one of his supporters said in a video, the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat. And then he posted that. That's one thing he did. He told...

and the military to shoot protesters in the legs, to shoot immigrants who cross the border, to shoot suspected shoplifters, suspected shoplifters. To rough up suspects when we're putting them in the car. Rough up suspects. He, of course, sent a mob of his armed supporters. He knew they were armed. We know this now. He sent them to the Capitol so they could intimidate our representatives into throwing out our votes. He refused to do anything to stop the violence. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican Speaker of the House, calls him. He says, they're trying to fucking kill me.

Do something. And Donald Trump said in response, well, Kevin, I guess they're more upset about the election than you. That's what he said. Like, and then now he wants to pardon them.

Has Joe Biden done any of those things? Has any Democratic official done any of those things anywhere close to those things? No. So, of course, you're going to talk about Donald Trump as a threat to democracy that you have to oppose through Democratic means, peaceful means at the ballot box by convincing other people to vote against him. It's just it's so stupid. Also, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. He's a threat to freedom for all those reasons. But also, don't you don't take my word for it. He says it himself. He's the one who said to be a dictator on day one of the last couple of weeks.

The media, people in politics, us have not been paying as much attention to Trump. He has been truthing about how he thinks that various people should have military tribunals. Yeah. Liz Cheney, military tribunal. Yes. He has talked about jailing his opponents. Is that how democracy works? Is that not a threat to democracy? I guess that's just democracy, right? Military tribunals for Liz Cheney. Yeah. And so the idea that after this horrible thing happened, and it would be wonderful that if we could lower the temperature on politics in this country, we could get back to sort of normal debates. But Donald Trump is an abnormal candidate.

He has offered dangerous, a dangerous policy agenda. He has been a danger to democracy. And the press cannot all of a sudden become the civility police and try to chastise Democrats into not saying what is true about Donald Trump. And by the way, one of the reasons that should that one of the reasons that's actually important is because it gives evidence.

To allow this act of violence to dictate what we can or cannot say, even when it is true, is to give power to this person and potentially to inspire people in the future to think they have the power at any moment to change the landscape of American politics. The reason, like, I am very... Look, if people want to say, oh, this is an opportunity for all of us to come together and turn down the rhetoric, great, that's fine. But the reason we talk about the danger posed by...

violent rhetoric is not because it creates some miasma of risk that it's because it can inspire people. It's because people will take it literally and act on it. We have seen that happen multiple times. We have seen right wing violence in multiple places and multiple times. We have seen mass shootings. We've seen what happened in Charlottesville. We've seen what happened at the insurrection. There is a trend. The reason you worry about the rhetoric is because you start to see it manifest in a trend of violence.

We don't know anything yet about this versus motive, but there is no evidence as of yet that they were motivated by some sort of political rhetoric. Right. Let's if if that evidence comes back and shows that we should talk about that. But as of right now, everyone is jumping to the conclusion, especially people in the media who love this conversation and jumping to the conclusion they want.

But also, yeah, right. Even if it even if for some reason it did, like there are going to be people who are inspired by political rhetoric, whether it's on the right or left to commit violence. And what you can do about that as a political leader is to condemn that unequivocally and to do everything in your power to avoid inciting or condoning that kind of violence, which I think most leaders in this country.

And and previously, the Republican Party before Donald Trump, a lot of elected officials would take care to do that. Donald Trump has not taken care to do that at all. And even worse, he's joked about and and mocked when there has been violence like the attack on Paul Pelosi. Right. Or the attempted kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer. Right. All of that was something they either they didn't they they.

claim as some sort of false flag or make fun of or mock. It was a lover's quarrel, right, when this guy was, when Paul Pelosi was nearly beaten to death. Or when his VP was almost hung. He was cool with that, too. Very, very cool with that, apparently. So, swapped him out. We're not in the prediction business. We don't have a lot of polling numbers yet. It's only a couple days in, but I'm sure you guys were getting this message from friends. You saw it online, like when he, the picture of Donald Trump,

That's now the cover of time magazine fist up in the air cover of time. Oh yeah. Well, I mean both candidates did lengthy interviews with time. I know, I know. Even though, even though you're shitting all over the magazine, the polls in the 1986 election just shifted six points. Anyway, we all know the picture now. We all know the picture. Everyone who's listening to this and a lot of people are good. That's it. It's over. It's over. He's won. This is, this is like a show of strength. And so that was some of the more extreme than there's other people like, well, this is going to help him. Um,

There was a quote from Axios on Sunday that immediately was everywhere on the Internet. It was about Democrats feeling worried that Biden's going to stay in the race and then lose. And then it also combined with the assassination attempt and Trump, you know, looking strong and surviving an assassination attempt. And the senior House Democrat said anonymously to Axios, we've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.

Thoughts on the political implications, Tommy? I mean, that person is a defeatist idiot. And I, please just don't talk to the press. If you have those thoughts, keep them inside your head. Like Donald Trump's instinct, he has some political genius in him. We have to be honest. Like his instinct to stand up and pump his fist after getting shot in the ear, it's incredible because it created this iconic image. And if you want to run an entire election where you're arguing, I'm strong and my opponent is weak,

It's pretty powerful. You know, that said, I think what will likely happen is it will make the people who support Donald Trump even more certain to turn out for him. Right. They seems to have inspired the base. It's certainly possible.

And it's it's the image is traveling in U.S. culture in ways that Donald Trump doesn't usually go like 50 Cent put up a photo of his Get Rich or Die Try and album cover at his concert a couple nights ago with Donald Trump's head on it.

It's probably the first time that's happened. So you're seeing people talk about Trump, calling him a badass. There was, you know, the Barstool Sports affiliates were selling t-shirts with the image on it right away. So I'm sure it will appeal to a subset of people. But four months is a lifetime in politics. That's just what everyone has to remember. We have no idea what could happen between now and then. So giving up and giving up in a background quote to Axios on July 14th is ridiculous. Yeah, go to Politico, you know. Dan, what do you think? I think...

We have had major events in this race already, right? Donald Trump was convicted of a crime like 60 days ago. Amazing. The polls move like about a point and a half. In front of 50 million people, Joe Biden had the worst debate performance of any presidential candidate in modern history. The polls move two and a half points. The idea that this will dramatically shift the race is absurd. It belies everything we have seen to date. And there's no real...

obvious historical precedents here. Like Reagan went up in the polls after he was shot in 1981. He was a freshly elected president at the time. And he was seriously wounded. Yes. And it was a different era where you would get, with much less polarization, where you would get Democrats and independents who did not like Reagan to approve of him in a moment like that, right? You saw that up until just a few presidents ago. It does matter, I think, that this happened in Pennsylvania, the single most important state

in both Biden and Trump's electoral college calculus. But the race is basically where it was before this, is Trump has an advantage nationally and the battleground states. That advantage is slight but steady. And I would be shocked if this were to dramatically change the equation. We're never really going to know because this happened

And basically, no poll can really go into the field that won't include the Republican convention as well. It's very hard to untangle this. Because you're going to have a convention bounce, which is usually two to three points. I would be surprised if it was that big this time around because the race is so steady. But happening at the same time, those are usually very temporary. So we're never... Trump may go up in the polls in the next week. Whether that'll stay or not, I'm not sure. But we're not going to know if it's from the shooting of the convention or something else. Yeah, there's polling and then there's just trying to think about...

the person who was like, I think I'm going to vote for Joe Biden. But then Donald Trump, you know, survived an assassination attempt and put his fist up in the air. Like, I have a hard time imagining that person saying, I'm going to vote for Donald Trump now. I have an easier time imagining someone who's like leaning Trump. And then this gives them like a permission structure to be like, yeah, it's OK. He's like a badass. I'm going to do it. Like if I think they're going after young men, they're going after men like 18 to 29. It's like you see that image. You're like, oh, this guy's a badass. Maybe I'll vote for the first time.

I think you had to have, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. But I think you had to have leanings that way anyway. And I wonder if those people were already like sort of priced into that. I think that is you're moving someone from undecided to Trump, not from Biden to Trump. That's what I was going to say. And that's really how most of the movement is going to happen in this race is there is this small movement.

but still significant pool of undecided voters. And Trump may pick some up from that. Will those people stay with him? Will they actually vote? Open question. What happens over the next four months? We'll decide that, but he may get some of those votes. Also, by the way, it's an open...

this is why it is so important that this debate not be about Trump as a person versus Joe Biden as a person that has to be at the stakes. Because if someone's going thinking about abortion and taxes, I don't think Trump's fist pump is going to matter. The other, you know, I add the same reaction to the photo that Tommy did. But I also like there's been reporting over the years about how much Donald Trump has actually thought about this, that he has thought that he is he's afraid of this kind of thing. He has thought about it. And about

about assassination, about, about being in crowds. He has, he has thought about this in the past. And I have no doubt that Donald Trump, who is a creature of the eighties is very aware of how Ronald Reagan, uh, said, honey, I forgot to duck that there's this video, uh,

I think it's years after, but, uh, Ronald Reagan is at an event and a balloon pops and he goes, they miss me. And the whole crowd goes wild. I, he was, he was a showman in the same way Reagan was a showman. And I, I think he, in that moment, that part of him that's been worried and thinking about this moment, his whole life, uh,

was there and he made the most of it. And he's like, I'm okay now. Yeah. I would have been thinking about a second gunman myself before I got up there and Jersey shorted. But, you know, I guess what do what works for you, Don? Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but yeah, resigning ourselves. Come on, people. It's like we're not resigning ourselves. Just like it.

Yeah, if you do that, you're definitely going to get another Trump presidency. I'm guaranteed. If you try, at least, to avoid that by going and talking to voters who are undecided or who haven't made up their mind whether they're going to vote yet, then we have a chance to avoid a second Trump presidency. So let's do that. Is there a place that people who would take you up on your call to action could go to undertake such activities? You could go to Vote Save America. And what we will do is make sure that your time and money is spent on the most efficient candidates and organizations and places to make sure that you have the biggest impact on politics.

How's that? That was pretty. I thought it was pretty good. It was unclear. Was that quote saying we should resign ourselves to Trump winning because of the assassination attempt or resign ourselves to Trump winning because the assassination attempt means we can't have an honest conversation about Joe Biden. And therefore, because we can't have that conversation, Joe Biden is going to. It was unclear from the quote. It was a story about both. So it was sort of all mixed up.

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Hi, I'm Stacey Abrams, host of the brand new Crooked podcast, Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams. Each week, we'll work together to better understand one of those big issues that seems insurmountable. Whether it's the Electoral College, America's loneliness epidemic, or the future of Hollywood post-strikes, I'll challenge you to dig in and ask, how do we get here? What obstacles lie ahead? And what can we do to get good done? Are you in?

episodes of assembly required with stacy abrams are available starting august 15th head to your favorite audio platform and subscribe now so you never miss an episode one of the weirder strains of post-shooting we need to tone down our politics reactions came from people like senator mike lee who wrote right afterward that the justice department now needs to drop all charges against trump that's that's unity that's how we come together

Sure enough, after Mike Lee tweeted that on Monday morning, Judge Eileen Cannon did just that. She dismissed classified documents case entirely, basically out of nowhere, saying that the appointment of a special counsel violates the Constitution, which also Clarence Thomas had said in the immunity case. He was like the one justice that said that in one of his concurring opinions. Jack Smith is appealing. Experts think the dismissal is almost certain to be overturned on appeal.

particularly because none of the other justices signed on to Thomas's concurrence, not even Alito. But who knows? Trump seized on Cannon's ruling, writing on Truth Social that all the other judges should now do the same thing, framed, of course, as a way, again, to unite the nation. Here's what I can't figure out. Cannon had already made sure there was no chance that this case was going to trial before the election. It was not going to happen. She succeeded in delaying.

Why did she do this? Was she just like feeling emboldened? Is she just, as some legal scholars have said, not that bright? Well, it's a...

It seems like Clarence Thomas gave her an idea. I don't think it has to be more complicated than that. She had not thought of that before. Clarence Thomas gave her a roadmap for what she could do to get out of this. She's like, well, I better copy his work. He's a smart guy. I'm just some schmuck who got confirmed during a lame duck. In his dissent in the immunity case that came out, what, two weeks ago? So she saw that, read it, and was like, ooh. Yeah. I think she wanted to get rid of this case. Not just for Trump. As you said, she'd already delayed it past the election. She'd already done him the favor, but...

Also, this is a way to not have to deal with this every single day. Yeah. She's also, though, been... She's been playing this game where she didn't want to give Jack Smith anything to appeal to the 11th Circuit and then ask that she be removed from the case, which, like, it really has to be pretty extreme. He can now...

So a lot of the legal nerds think this is getting overturned for sure, like that she's not able to throw it out. But they think it's now possible for her to get booted from the case for doing this. Not not probable, but possible. So it's a little risky. You see Matt Gaetz's tweet said future Supreme Court justice cannon.

Good troll. Good troll and possibly a solid prediction. Yeah. Yeah. And also a future middle judge decider. She's the swing vote. She's the swing vote. I like Joe Biden. I couldn't think of the term. Swing vote. Swing vote. Anyway. I shouldn't go on.

Speaking of way too young MAGA leaders, the other huge news on Monday was Trump's announcement that his running mate will be J.D. Vance of Ohio, the 39-year-old senator, author of Hillbilly Elegy, and former CNN contributor who went from calling Trump America's Hitler to becoming the MAGA heir apparent and one of Project 2025's best friends.

Here he is talking to Sean Hannity at the convention on Monday night, giving us a preview of what his potential debate with current Vice President Kamala Harris might sound like. First of all, the Democrats want to try to run from this. And they're saying that, you know, Joe Biden has to step down or Joe Biden can't run for president. That's not public spiritedness. That's political cynicism, because they should have been saying it three years ago. Kamala Harris has allowed America to be saddled.

with a president who clearly doesn't have the mental capacity to do the job. It is not public spiritedness to call for him to step down when he's about to lose an election. They should have been doing it years ago. And it's not just Kamala Harris. It's Nancy Pelosi. The entire Democratic apparatus lied about this guy. I just want you guys to know we did add that music.

Every time we would play a J.D. Vance clip, we will be playing that music behind it. That's Tommy's weekend dad band. That's a cover band called Six Wire. And they're just shredding at the RNC. He's always doing the research. I did do a Google just now. Okay. What do you guys think about the Vance pick? What's your take on why Trump took a pass on our boy Doug Burgum, little Marco Rubio, and dozens of others in favor of J.D.? Dan?

Well, I think in the interview that Trump did that you and I talked about on the pod last week, Trump kind of answered these questions. Doug Burgum, it was the abortion legislation in North Dakota. They have gone to great lengths to try to essentially lie about what their abortion plans are and their abortion policy is. So that takes Doug Burgum off. Marco Rubio, one, the Florida residency thing, I think was probably a little bit complicated. Also, he doesn't like Marco Rubio. He

He doesn't trust him. He thinks he's a huge wuss and not that bright. So that probably takes him off. You talk Marco Rubio talks to Gabe now, but a couple years from now, you're going to have to hang him. That's what he's thinking. Really? Right? Yeah.

Is he a good hang? He's not a good hang. He's a good hang. JD Vance is a good hang. Pod title. JD Vance is a good hang. Rubio is going to be someone you're going to hang good. Can we put in the civility alert, please? Guys, guys, can we please lower the temperature? What have you done to lower the temperature?

So you think it was process of elimination then? It was process of elimination because there's no good political argument for JD Vance. He adds almost nothing to the ticket. There is no, he doesn't bring it. He doesn't, has no geographic appeal. Yeah. He doesn't moderate the ticket ideologically. He doesn't address a specific weakness, right? If you go through people's picks in the past, they either bring a state into play,

That's a little more pre-pollination, but that was a typical reason. They appeal to a group that the nominee is weak with, like the reason Trump picked Pence with the evangelicals, or they address a weakness, right? Bill Clinton picked Al Gore because Bill Clinton was scandal plagued and Al Gore had a reputation as the most ethical and frankly boring member of the Senate. And so he picked him.

And, but what is Vance offers nothing in that way, right? He just, he's doubling down. The only group that Vance has appeal with are the voters that Trump already has, which are hardcore MAGA voters. He doesn't even like Rubio at least would have given some signal to like normie Republicans that there's like an establishment person there. Vance doesn't do that either. I was like, I was like two things. I think one, I think, I think one, one thing he does do is he signals to a certain set of rich Republicans.

Republicans or libertarian types that Trump's fully on board with their program and then I think the second thing is JD Vance can articulate he does it with Sean Hannity he can articulate a version of Trumpism that is more sophisticated and rational sounding than it then it sounds when it comes out of Donald Trump's mouth and I think that is of some utility

My thought on the political aspect, I don't think it's about necessarily winning a state or even winning the election. First of all, I think J.D. Vance is a pick Trump made because he is confident that he is ahead. And so he felt like he could take a little bit more of a risk. We'll see whether that's right. But if you read Tim Alberta's interview in The Atlantic with Susie Wiles and Chris, let's

Lasavita, very long interview, spent a lot of time with them about their strategy, they're running the Trump campaign. And they basically say in that interview that they don't care that much about losing suburban women to either Dobbs or Trump's character, things like that, and that they are going after younger voters, particularly younger working class men, white, black, Latino.

Latino. And when you talk to these younger working class men, when you listen to them, and I just thought about this because we did our wilderness focus groups with a whole bunch of young people a couple weeks ago all over the place. And

What do they talk about? They talk about they're struggling financially. They blame corporate greed, but they also blame government. They talk about spending too much money on foreign aid and foreign wars. They're more isolationist. They talk about some of them talk about immigrants taking their jobs. So there's this weird sort of populist anti-establishment. It sounds like J.D. Vance's version of MAGA and Trumpism. And Trump doesn't really articulate. Trump has like a sort of gut instinct about it.

J.D. Vance actually, whether he believes it or not, it's a whole conversation for another time, but he articulates it, right? And I do think that if you are the Trump campaign, they're thinking, we're going to go, we're not trying to bridge the gap with the Nikki Haley old establishment part of the Republican Party. We're changing the party. This is a new party and we want to go after younger, a new generation. This is now the first millennial on a ticket, right? J.D. Vance is 39 years old and

Obviously, Ohio is not going to matter as much because Donald Trump will win Ohio. But maybe they think Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, those that's those three states are Joe Biden's last chance. And maybe whatever appeals to Ohio voters about J.D. Vance could similarly appeal to him in those Midwestern states.

Yeah, I also wonder, I mean, Donald Trump Jr. is extremely close to J.D. Vance. And it's interesting, look, we kind of, we make fun of the Trump relationship with his children because he's a narcissist and only cares about himself. But I do think having your son constantly in your ear about this one person and his charisma and his political abilities is probably powerful. And look, Doug Burgum, he's not necessarily lighting up a room. He's got a lot of money and I assumed that Trump would like the old rich guy, but he didn't land there. Also, he put all that time in with Tiffany. That was stupid.

I do think also the Don Jr. piece of it too is what Don Jr. is loyal and he's saying this is our guy. Yeah. Burgum maybe but Rubio's never going to be your good hang. But the Vance did this long interview with Ross Daffod in which he lays out

close listeners of the pod would know that I already brought up this long interview and everyone made fun of me for it. Oh yeah, I remember that. Love and I specifically made fun of you. Well, first of all... And Tommy brought it up literally three minutes ago. Like...

Did you bring it up on the pod? You said do the... Joe Biden over here. I didn't say that. First of all, I think we should embrace Republican politics in which hypocrisy is a sign of strength. But anyway, you go through that interview and he is...

articulating a populist economic message. And as a reminder, too, that when Donald Trump wins in 2017, the biggest worry was that he would pursue a more economically populist agenda. And instead, he embraced repealing Obamacare and tax cuts for corporations and the kind of Paul Ryan style of governance. And it was to our benefit. And so I think it is very this is a kind of

It's a scary version of Trumpism because I think it is a far more sophisticated version. Look, just in simple terms, he's got a compelling personal story. Like Hillbilly Elegy was a good book. It just was. I enjoyed reading it. He's a veteran. And I think J.D. Vance can be can talk about how, look, liberals love me.

You know, they, Rob Ryan, was it Rob Ryan or someone? Ron Howard. Ron Howard made my book into a film. Gone close in a muumuu. Holly would love me until I came out for Trump. And then Trump can point to how J.D. Vance used to criticize him, but he came to love him and now he bent the knee. So I think there's a compelling story there. The one thing that's just worth pointing out is that the Washington Post had a good analysis of...

J.D. Vance's political weakness in Ohio. In 2022, Vance won by six points, but he underperformed every other statewide official. Mike DeWine won by 26 points. The attorney general won by 20 points. The secretary of state won by 19. Even the Supreme Court nominees won by double digits. J.D. Rance had the closest race in part because he had extreme views on a lot of policy areas. So there could be some risk here. And Tim Ryan. Yeah.

Yeah, and Tim Ryan. And a lot of credit to Tim Ryan there. Well, you know, he was Ohio. I mean, he basically ran, J.D. ran even with Trump. He ran behind him. I think, John, you are right that this is a pick that is made from a confident view of the Trump standing in the race. I just think it is more about

what J.D. Vance does after they win, not what J.D. Vance can do to help them win. Because if they were really trying to go for the kill shot here, you really would pick Rubio or Tim Scott or Byron Dollins. Because if you can make real inroads, or even the inroads the polls suggest right now with black and Latino men, that's the difference between a narrow victory and a landslide, right? That's the kind of thing that could be a formative realignment. I think their view is probably, again,

no idea if it's right or wrong, their view is just because he picks a black or Latino candidate does not mean that's going to make it easier to get younger black and Latino men. Like that it's very, that it's just as possible with a younger white man like J.D. Vance. Again, who knows, but I'm sure that's their view. Yeah, I just think J.D. Vance is the pick

you make if you want to turn the MAGA agenda into an actual policy agenda. Which is why he's so scary. Right. I think I said this. I never know what we say on Mike and off Mike, but at some point in the last week, around the time you and I recorded a podcast together. Have you heard this Ross Douthat call me? Oh, he writes for the Times, right? Yes.

Did you talk to Jamie Vance recently? By the way, shame on us. None of us know how to say the guy's fucking name. I don't care. No one does. That's his fault. I didn't name him. I think it's Douthat. Yeah, I think that's correct. That's right. You're right.

I thought that J.D. Vance was the best case scenario in terms of the election because he has less upside than the other ones and some risk because he's so extreme, but the worst case scenario if Trump wins. And I think that's correct. So the Biden campaign statement about J.D. Vance, uh,

said that Trump picked him because he'll, quote, do what Mike Pence wouldn't do on January 6th, bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, enact Trump's Project 2025 agenda. And then they also said this is someone who supports banning abortion nationwide while criticizing exceptions for rape and incest survivors. And he has admitted he wouldn't have certified the free and fair election in 2020.

What do you guys think of that message? Is that the most effective message? Because you can do the hypocrisy thing. You know, he used to criticize Trump and now he doesn't. But then there's also he is for all of these extreme positions. If you do the hypocrisy thing, wherever you are, I'm going to come and find you.

Because it is the least effective message possible. Will you just threaten the audience? Yes. Turn the temperature down, Dan. Turn the temperature down, Dan. Get that alarm going. I'm going to go have a... I'm going to find you to give you a hug. Where's the red head alert? We already played it earlier. Dan's going to go... Dan's putting a bullseye on those kinds of talking points. I'm going to come to your house for a civil discussion of why your message is terrible. And it's because... We should say...

Every poll, every focus group, every time you talk to voters, here's the problem. Voters think all politicians are hypocrites. So when you go after a politician on hypocrisy grounds, it just doesn't land. It doesn't land with the voters that you need. They don't care about hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is about the person.

Policies are about the people they affect, right? Like hypocrisy is about the person's values, what they represent is about their story. And by the way, JD Vance is very happy to talk about this and how he evolved in Donald Trump and how it actually came to realize that Trump was the vehicle for taking on the villains that he talks about in Hillbilly Elegy. He has a story ready to go about how to turn that into a feature from a bug. So, yeah. We should at least say that JD Vance is absolutely more full of shit than anyone in American politics.

Yes. His position this week is prayers up for Hitler. So we should just be clear about that. That's where he's at. Well, I was just saying, I don't know how he squares, you know, calling Trump America's Hitler, even though he has evolved on that position, with what he tweeted last

To me, the reason he is completely unfit for office is hours after the assassination attempt, before we knew almost anything, he tweets that President Biden's rhetoric, quote, led directly to Trump's attempted assassination, which is just not true. Baseless. Didn't know that was true. Even if he suspected it, why would you say it without any other information? It's

And also, it doesn't quite fit with the convention's unity message. No, it doesn't. Ron Johnson apparently called democratic policies a clear and present danger to the nation. And then he was asked by a reporter, hey, what happened to the unity message? He goes, oh, that was actually the old pre-unity speech that was loaded into the prompter. They accidentally loaded the division speech. Yeah.

Not my unity speech. You know, they accidentally loaded in what we all believe, not what we think that we have to say now to win. We're doing this because we want to win. Of course they want unity. We want to give them unity. Until November, then no more unity. Then it'll only be unity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unity, yes, that's a scary kind of unity. But this is also, I think, why the post-assassination attempt turned down the temperature...

conversation is a little is kind of twisted because like that's a that's a good example of just right wing rhetoric has become completely divorced from reality, even when it's not inciting direct or even indirect violence. It is ascribing views, policies and outcomes to Democrats in ways that just are not true. They're just making it up. They're saying things. They say whatever they want to make the Democrats seem as evil and terrible as possible and Republicans as the as the saviors. And

That is part of why we are so divided. That polarization, right-wing propaganda, is why we are so divided. It is what is raising the temperature, even if you can't point to any specific example. I didn't get to see a lot of the convention. Did the unity thing work out? That was great. It was awesome. It was a good time. I was just sort of prepping for the show. No, it didn't. Let me put it this way. I saw that Marjorie Taylor Greene gave a speech that I was like, it was bad, but it wasn't bad because it was...

as extreme as she usually is, but she wasn't softening it. It was just sort of lame. It was like Marjorie Taylor Greene Madness. Well, they cut her big finish, which was burning Nancy Pelosi and effigies for her unity. I thought she was just going to be like CrossFit. Yeah.

nothing really stuck out at me as is either super unifying or like really mean i mean some pretty gross disgusting attacks on trans people that i didn't see from march marchie taylor green yeah i did see like an image of joe biden falling up the stairs they did that one they did do that but i didn't really hear i don't know nothing too exciting that first that this this first night right i'm shocked that the night where the

primetime major speaker was Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn. I was waiting for like a big reveal. Yeah. Anyway. Sort of a tough hit on Glenn Youngkin. Oh yeah, he was there too. Well, I mean, he had to open for Marsha Blackburn.

Hi, I'm Stacey Abrams, host of the brand new Crooked podcast, Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams. Each week, we'll work together to better understand one of those big issues that seems insurmountable. Whether it's the Electoral College, America's loneliness epidemic, or the future of Hollywood post-strikes, I'll challenge you to dig in and ask, how do we get here? What obstacles lie ahead? And what can we do to get good done? Are you in?

Episodes of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams are available starting August 15th. Head to your favorite audio platform and subscribe now so you never miss an episode. Let's talk about Joe Biden. Obviously, up until Saturday afternoon, most of the focus has been on Biden and whether he's still the party's best chance to beat Trump. The assassination attempt to stop that chatter for now, at least. President Biden gave an Oval Office address about the attack on Sunday night.

and he had a previously scheduled primetime interview with Lester Holt at NBC News on the books for tonight. He went ahead with it, and the attack was a big focus there too. Let's listen to a clip of the Oval Office address, followed by a clip of Biden's interview with Lester Holt. Violence has never been the answer, whether it's with members of Congress in both parties being targeted and shot, or a violent mob attacking the Capitol on January 6th, or an attempted assassination on Donald Trump.

There's no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. But in America, we resolve our differences at the battle box.

You know, that's how we do it at the battle block, not with bullets. On a call a week ago, you said it's time to put Trump in the bullseye. There's some dispute about the context, but I think you appreciate that word. I didn't say crosshairs. I was talking about focus on. Look, the truth of the matter was, what I guess I was talking about at the time was there was very little focus on Trump's agenda. Yeah, the term was bullseye.

It was a mistake to use the word. I didn't say crosshairs. I meant bullseye. I meant focus on him. Focus on what he's doing. Focus on his policies. Focus on the number of lies he told in the debate. I mean, there's a whole range of things. Crosshairs just coming out of nowhere there. So what do you guys make of Biden's overall response to the shooting?

I think he has met the moment with the sobriety and seriousness that it deserves, right? He did what he's supposed to do. He went out and addressed the nation after it happened, after he'd been briefed by his team, returned immediately to Washington, met with his team in the situation room, then came out and updated the country on what he had learned. And then in an attempt, I think, to

Bring the temperature down and return to what I think he believes is his sort of core political identity to try to give a call to unity in the wake of this. Like that is...

That is what you want the president to do, right? At a time of great stress and tension and fear and concern for the public, the president should be out there. Put aside the election, the debate about his political future. This is exactly what you would expect him to do in that moment. And he did all of those things. Love it. Yeah, I mean, I...

I think Dan is what Dan is saying. I obviously agree with, I think he did all the things that he was supposed to do. I think what is, I think so troubling in moments like this is the best you can hope for from president Biden is that he does no damage rather than going out there. And I think doing anything particularly inspiring or excellent, there's a lot that could be said about what led to this moment. There's a lot that could be said about the politics and culture and

as we head into this election that he, I don't think can be a voice for the best we can do is to have a short to the point statement, violence, bad. I'm hearing a briefing, uh,

But for the most part, you know, there's the Oval Office address was halting. He manages to respond defensively to every question from Lester Holt, even where he shouldn't be in a way turning every question into a kind of gotcha question where he feels as though he is, I think, reacting from a place of weakness. And the whole thing is very dispiriting. I kind of want to separate what he did basically from the shooting on Saturday through something

Sunday night in the interviews. I think those are two separate things. Yes, of course. Right. There is a long history of, of presidents rising to rhetorical heights and times like this. Bill Clinton, after the, uh,

Oklahoma City bombing, Reagan after Challenger, Obama after Newtown. Like we've seen that before. Joe Biden has given a pretty inspiring moving speeches around January 6th. I think his inaugural address, I think his address on the anniversary of January 6th, he rose to the moment for sure. Yes. Sunday night was not that. I thought the message was appropriate and fine. Like, yes, he stumbled over some words, but he like,

He did. He did. He did fine. He did fine. And I think that, like, we should at least point out when he does fine. Right. There are times when he landed the plane in the Oval Office. The interview was a few bumps on the way down the Oval Office. But, you know, I mean, I really like Lester Holt, but I felt the questions at the top that suggested that Biden's rhetoric had anything to do with the shooter was.

felt pretty baseless and unfair. And I could see why Biden was annoyed at those questions in particular. But the frustration really came through. And I think I counted two or three times where he kind of got annoyed and defensive and lashed back at Lester and was like, why aren't you guys covering Trump's lies? Why aren't you covering this? And I just don't think that that

That doesn't, it didn't land great at times in the interview. It felt defensive. The question about the bullseye is extremely annoying question. And what would have been the very easy answer is like,

What do you mean? I was talking about putting the focus on Donald Trump, right? That's what I said about his policies. I said it at a fundraiser with a bunch of people. That's what I'm going to incite people at a fundraiser. I'm going to say it's time to put the focus on Donald Trump. That's what we should put the focus. I mean, it's just such an easy response to an unfair, annoying question. He could even, by the way, say, you know what, Lester, if people found that term to be wrong, I won't use it again. But I think everybody knew exactly what I mean. You know, there's a lot of there's a lot of things a person who is, I think, has a more of a cup.

Yeah. Well, Lester also asked Biden about the debate and the calls for him to step aside. Let's listen to some of that. Last TV interview, you were asked if you had watched the debate. Your answer was, I don't think so. No. Have you since seen it?

I've seen pieces of it. I've not watched the whole debate. And the reason I ask, because I guess the question is, are you all on the same page? Are you seeing what they saw, which was moments of, frankly, that appeared to be, you appeared to be confused? Lester, look, why don't you guys ever talk about the 18 to 28 lies he told? Where are you on this? Why didn't the press ever talk about that? 28 times it's confirmed he lied in that debate.

I had a bad, bad night. I wasn't feeling well at all. And I had been without it making it. I screwed up. But I just asked the question because the idea that you may or may not have seen what some of these other folks have seen. You're not on the same. I'd have to say I was there. I had to see it. I was there. By the way, seriously, you won't answer the question. But why didn't the press talk about all the lies he told?

I don't know anything about that. We have reported many of the issues that came up during that debate. No, you haven't. We'll provide you with them. God love you. Okay. But if the opportunity came up to do one between now and then, is there a sense of wanting to get back on the horse? I'm on the horse. Where have you been? I've done 22 major events. There are thousands of people, overwhelming crowds, a lot happening.

A lot is happening. Tommy, what'd you think of the, uh, what'd you think of the interview? I think, I mean, I think Lester's question, are you seeing what they saw is kind of the core question that a lot of people are asking about the election generally. Like is, does, does Joe Biden know how bad the debate was or does he really think it was 90 minutes that didn't go well, but four great years of policy is Biden seeing the bad polling that's out there or, you know, uh, uh,

polling from swing districts, from people that don't work for him? Is Biden hearing on Varner's concerns from down-ballot elected officials? And again, I think what you heard was a response that just felt very defensive and angry at the question more than looking to find an answer to kind of assuage those concerns more broadly. Yeah.

There's another part in that in towards the end of the interview where Biden says when he talks about the events he's doing, I'm I'm out there proving to people that I have my faculties. So I have my faculties. And it's it's sad to see it's because.

if that's the threshold, right, if that's what he's out there proving, then we have a, that's not enough. It's a massive problem, right? The fact that we all, that he doesn't respond, Lester Holt's question, right, like, do you know what we saw? Like, were you confused? We don't, it points to the fact that we still don't feel like we have gotten an adequate answer from Joe Biden about what happened that night. And it just means that

Maybe he's right that the polls are closer and that people are sensationalizing gaps that are closeable. But the question is, can he close them? And the fact that we're going to get questions like this about Joe Biden over and over and over again, and that the answers he provides doesn't feel like they give us the space to move on, is why people are so concerned. It's not just what the polls are. It's the fear that he does not have the capacity to close them. Dan, I keep trying to think about when...

you're advising a president or presidential candidate and they keep screwing things up in interviews, right? Like let's put the like age coherence question aside. Let's just talk about his message, right?

So you see after the first couple of times, he's getting very defensive. He only talks about his account. I'm the guy who did this. I'm the guy who did this. Why aren't you reporting about the lies? The 28, all of which we know from research polling, I'm sure his advisors know this are not effective responses, right? Even if you said them like super coherently and crisply. And I, after the first time you do that, like maybe in the Stephanopoulos interview, I would imagine everyone gets together with Joe Biden before the next interview and say like, Hey,

Less defensive. You don't want to be so defensive. You want to talk about the choice in the election. You want to pivot to that. And then what do you think? Do you think that's what they're telling him and that he's just not doing it? Do you think he's stubborn? Like, I can't figure this is what I can't figure out is like, why can he not just get to the right message when he has these same questions over and over again? And, you know, they're going to be annoying. You know, you're going to get questions about what was happening at the debate. Why was that? Like, that's just how reporters are. And you just have to, like, figure out how to deal with it.

I am not sure he is getting all of the information and advice that he needs. There have been multiple stories. There's one in the Washington Post tonight about Biden shrinking his circle of advisors. Some of the people who we know, we even know the people on the inside of the circle, and they're all very smart. But I think that there is a process to manage the president here.

Right. And it does not include necessarily giving him information he does not want to hear. And that includes that your answers are not working. Right. Because there is just no basis in research, strategy, or recent political history to suggest the approach he has taken to answering the questions. Put aside the delivery. Right. Let's just say he's delivered them perfectly. That's what I wanted to do. Yeah. Let's just put that aside. The answers are...

almost a masterclass in how not to persuade a swing voter. Yes. Right. And that is, is just, he is making the election all about himself.

And there is... Everyone knows in the strategic imperative of their campaign, when they say is what they have to do is why they had that first... They had that early debate in the first place was to try to shift the focus to Trump, to make it about Trump. And Biden has been incapable of doing it. He's unwilling to do that in his answers, right? He keeps saying, I'm the guy who did this. I'm the guy who did this. I'm the guy who did this. And not... He doesn't even talk about Trump in this interview. Or the future, by the way. Right. I mean, he... Look, I will say...

On Friday, I think that was, he went to Michigan and he gave a great speech. Yeah. Right. It was well delivered. It was energetic. It was one of the best speeches he's delivered in many months. Yeah. And both in delivery and content. Yes. It had a proactive, really impressive, very progressive speech.

second term agenda. It put the focus on Trump. It took his age. The word is focus. The word is focus. And it used his age as a asset, right? He took it on with some humility and they handled it. And that is not translating off the prompter. But that to me, that was what I was, that's why I brought up the future EEC.

Because what you want is for Joe Biden to take the speech he gives, right, that everyone's reviewing and saying, finally, he's doing it. He's making the case he needs to make. Get in front of Lester Holt and says, Lester Holt, like people are worried about what you're going to do, what's going to what's going to happen in the next four years, whether you're up to it. Not only am I up to it, here's what we're going to get done. Here's what Donald Trump wants to do. But he does not do that. He just doesn't in these interview settings. He is he is in a.

He's very defensive right now. He's in a defensive crouch since the debate. And I, because frankly, every conversation he's having with any person who is not in his immediate inner circle is a Lester Holt interview. Yeah.

Right? Just, he had these meetings with... Truly a nightmare. He is a nightmare. I mean, he did these Zoom calls with a bunch of members of Congress. All the reports are they went quite poorly. Quite poorly. And people are raising concerns. He yelled at Jason Crow, who was a representative from Colorado, who asked him about, like, how do we make sure that, you know, foreign leaders have confidence based on reporting? And he said, stop with that. Enough with that. Don't give me... And then he, like, walked, and then he left the call. He has a...

He could be right. His team could be right. We could all be wrong, but he has a, just a fundamentally different view of where the race stands, the state of his campaign and the state of his candidacy. And I think it's challenging when the people closest to you, and it's a very small circle are telling you potentially what you want to hear. Like, I remember a story in the 2004 campaign, uh,

Barack Obama went to some event. We were running against Alan Keyes at the time. We were winning by 30 points, 40 points, right? It was not a real race. And Obama let Alan Keyes walk up to him. They got in some sort of verbal exchange and it became a thing. It was on all the news. And Obama gets back in the car and Robert Gibbs is sitting behind him and just silently staring daggers into the back of the seat. And Obama kept turning around and being like, what?

What? What is it? You got something to say? You got something to say to me? And Gibbs goes, you didn't just take the bait. You swallowed the whole goddamn hook. Right? And it's like got in his face and was like, you fucked up, man. Don't do that. I don't care that you're up dirty. When you say that to the candidate, the candidate doesn't say, thank you. You're right. They hate you. They hate you for days. But you're like, I'm just going to do it because...

It's the important thing to do. And look, I'm not saying... None of us are saying this is not happening at all. We don't know. It could be happening and Biden could just be saying, fuck you, I don't care. I just... Knowing the people around him, I cannot imagine...

that they are all telling him what he wants to hear. We know all of these people. I know we know them. Well, there's some reporting that some of his closest aides are saying that they don't believe in polling, and maybe that's where kind of the rejection of polling language you're coming from. Even then, I read that today, and it said, there's some anonymous person quoting the post. Take this for what it is, but it says that Mike Donilon and Steve Ruschetti, two of his closest advisors, do not believe in polling.

That is going to come as a gigantic shock to the several pollsters on the Biden campaign. Some of the best in the Democratic Party on the payroll, especially in a general election. You get like this is what this is on Kerry and Obama. You get like a collection of five or six pollsters just so you have different different different strategies. But yeah, you want the whole you want a big, diverse crew of pollsters. I think that they are managing Joe Biden's message.

moods right now. I think he is a very prideful person, and I imagine this debate knocked him for a loop. He also hates to be called old. He has pride himself. You see this in a lot of reporting. He bristles at being... He says this, but he's been the youngest person his whole life, and now he is the oldest. Because if you push... Obama was a great boss to work for. I've worked for more challenging bosses, but

where you have to, you want to tell them what they, you can't, yeah, you can't do what Gibbs did to Barack Obama there because you'll get, you will get the opposite effect. With Biden. Right. So you got to, I can't say whether that's how Biden is right now, but sometimes you have to just sort of like take every inch you can get because if you push too far, it's going to go the other way. I do remember that when there was a, we were working on a speech for

President Obama and in the speeches it's something about how you can't make decisions based on the polls and as we're having a conversation with David Axelrod there's a giant binder on his desk that said polls on it and they're like hey what how how big is the binder when you do make decisions based on polls and he shouts out to his assistant at the time now state legislator Eric Lesser Eric get in here and change this binder to say research I did just but like I do think like

This is about politics. We care about this because of the stakes for politics. But it is what is happening with Joe Biden is not political. It is psychological. It is human and personal. And I do think that is really, really hard. And it's hard, I am sure, for the people around him

whatever they're trying to do to make the situation better. It is an incredibly difficult situation. Well, there was a lot of discussion over the weekend. Does this sort of stop the conversation about whether Biden should step aside in favor of Kamala Harris or another candidate? Because now we've gone through this assassination attempt and now we have the Republican convention, so all the attention now is on Trump and the Republicans for the week.

I, you know, based on it's Monday, but based on some of the polling that came out today, there was some New York Times Sienna, you know, a plus polls, swing state polls. He's down four in Pennsylvania, three in Pennsylvania, three in Pennsylvania, and he's only up three.

Biden is only up three in Virginia, a state that he won by 10 points. That would be a seven point swing to the right. He won Pennsylvania by one point. So that would be a four point swing to the right. In those polls, there was a number of other swing state polls. You have polls came out in every swing state. He's behind four or five in every one. You know, you can square some of this polling with the Biden campaign theory of the case that was laid out in their memo last week, which is they said, you know, we are it is a margin of error race in the battlegrounds. We need to get to 270. So Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan.

And, you know, margin of error in those states could be three points, four points behind. So, yeah, they might just be three or four points behind in those blue wall states. But the question is, again...

How do you make up three or four points in an incredibly polarized electorate where both candidates are at 100% name ID? And every time he goes and does one of these interviews, people who watch the interviews, forget about listening to us or anyone else, people who watch the interviews are seeing this. And if he just went out and gave the Michigan speech every single day between now and November, it's like, yeah, fighting chance for sure. But I just...

you know, maybe polarization gets you there. Maybe you get close enough just based on people not liking Donald Trump, people thinking and knowing that Joe Biden is a good man who's done some great things as president and that gets you close enough. And, and if he wins, that's how he wins. But it's certainly not because he is communicating well or making the case as a candidate. Like he obviously did not have some dramatic improvement as a candidate or a stay in the race since, uh,

the shooting, like nothing changed there. But something did change in terms of how people, how things happen in Washington, even before the shooting. In my head, my sort of deadline for whether Biden would stay in the race was today, was Monday, that if he could make it through the weekend and make it to the Republican convention and the VP nomination, that he would have survived long enough because these things have momentum and momentum peters out. And it's just people, there were people were feeling pressure because the media was focused on this

intently. That is not the case. There are no stories about this now. It's not as big a deal. And so maybe something else will happen, but this is Joe Biden's decision. It's only Joe Biden's decision. And it's what has been abundantly clear is that nothing that any other person says to him is going to change his mind. And he met with Hakeem Jeffries on Friday and Schumer on Saturday. We don't know how those meetings went, but Joe Biden said he is 1000% still in the race.

And so this is just, this is where he is. He is at no point. Do we have one piece of reporting or evidence that he has ever seriously considered or been open to the idea of

of stepping down. And that hasn't changed. And if he does, if that, and I hesitate to see what will change his mind because there's, I don't, I think it's like, you see like the, you know, the New York times, Sienna polls, show him down five or six points in those swing States. And like, is that going to do it? I know. Unless like Pelosi, unless like there's, you know, there's room, there's reporting that Nancy Pelosi does really want him to consider stepping aside and is working the phones on this. Maybe if Pelosi goes to him, I don't know. I don't know. I have, I think,

I talked to a member of Congress today and asked this question, like, has the momentum stalled out? And this person said, no, the only difference between a couple of days ago and now is that the conversation is quieted because of the assassination attempt.

But I've read in many news reports and heard from this person that Pelosi still thinks there needs to be a change and that she's working behind the scenes. And this person, you know, is worried that Biden's strategy is basically a run-up-the-clock strategy. Yeah, clearly. And that, you know, it might be hard to do anything through the RNC. But I think what could change his mind is a...

big number of elected officials coming out publicly and saying you need to go. Obviously, these Zoom calls, private conversations, gentle cajoling, none of that works. This person thought that, you know, firm, harsh, sort of like very public pressure efforts might actually change things. But I don't know. I'm just repeating what I was told. I also... Look, I don't know that Joe Biden can be, like, pushed out of the race, right? It seems like he can't. But I...

i do wonder of what happens in the quiet i mean look i i just to i don't know if i'm using this term correctly but but taking the under on dan's point that of course joe biden has to be defiant the second he is not defiant the second he leaves any opening

to the idea that he might not be in the race is the moment he's going to have to step down. That's what Ro Khanna said, basically. The second he would even say to a member of Congress, I'm thinking about it, is the second we're all talking about that and it's happening before his eyes. So it will go from I will never not be running to I'm out.

Much like Joe Biden's interviews, the words you used were incorrect, but I got your meaning. Not even close. Is it the over? The over-under would be like... You score 100 points in a game. Oh, I see. So the odds. I'm saying I think the odds are higher than I say it is. So that's why, wouldn't I then take the under? No, no, no. That's about the spread? What's the spread? Okay, we've gone on long enough. People love this shit. Yeah.

Again, just another factless assertion. Which advisors around Lovett will tell him the truth? Hey guys, is he getting good information? How many podcasts have to come to you publicly? I will not step down. Axio says Pelosi wants you to shut the fuck up. I will finish the job. That is our show for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow with reactions to all the latest and night two.

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