Feeling the Trump Trial Aftershocks With John Heilemann
47:23 Share

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight, which streamer is on the brink of collapse, and which executive is on the hot seat.

Disney, Netflix, Who's Up, Down, and Who'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. Follow The Town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by Jersey Mike's Subs. Jersey Mike's uses only the highest quality meat sliced right in front of you, piled high with the freshest toppings. It is a Jersey Mike thing. My favorite is number 13, the Italian. Love the Italian. I'm half Italian. I like Italian subs. I especially like Italian subs made in good places.

Like Jersey Mike's, planning your summer picnic, backyard adventure, or beach day? Well, Jersey Mike's. They have you covered with everything you need to beat the summer heat. They have your favorite summer sub combo. They have everything you want at Jersey Mike's. A sub above. Order on the app today or visit jerseymikes.com to learn more. Great app, by the way.

This episode is brought to you by Vitamin Water. So much of what the world is obsessed with starts out in New York City. It's a place full of style and character that has something for everyone. With a range of flavors to meet any kind of taste, it's no wonder Vitamin Water was born there. Colorful, flavorful, anything but boring, Vitamin Water injects a daily dose of vibrancy into a watered-down life. Grab a Vitamin Water today. Vitamin Water is a registered trademark of Glasso.

Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. Well, we are in the final days of the Trump hush money trial.

This time next week, the prosecution will start closing arguments and then defense will give their arguments and the jury will deliberate and make a decision. On Monday, the prosecution's star witness, Michael Cohen, faced a particularly brutal cross-examination when he admitted that he stole $30,000 from the Trump organization when he was angry that he had a smaller bonus that year.

He admitted that he owed a tech company that manipulates polling $50,000, but he only paid them $20,000 and kept the rest for himself. He said, quote, I just felt it was almost like self-help.

He also admitted that he's made about $1.4 million in books and podcasts based on his rivalry with Donald Trump. So that was interesting, especially if you believe that this case rests on the credibility and testimony of Michael Cohen, who's obviously perjured himself before and lied before Congress and served time in jail. But at the end of the day, we'll find out soon what the jury decides. It's up to them, after all.

But this show isn't about legal strategy or how the defense or prosecution has been doing. Today, we'll look at the political impact of the trial. Will it have any impact at all? Are voters even tuned in six months ahead of the election? And...

How will Trump spin it? And will that matter? Will a hung jury, an acquittal or only being found guilty on a number of the 34 counts be a total exoneration, as Trump said? Will it be a huge cash windfall and momentum for his campaign? Or will a guilty verdict impact independent voters who are turned off by voting for a presidential candidate who's a felon? Would those same voters perhaps agree with Trump that he's a martyr?

and that it's a witch hunt? Or will they all just see it as noise in this political ecosystem? I've got John Heilman on the line. He's star of Showtime's The Circus, and he's the author of one of my favorite books, Game Change. He's also Puck's

Chief political columnist. He's the latest addition to the best and the brightest team. Another reason why you should subscribe. We also talk about my latest column where I write about how Joe Biden's pitiful numbers in New York state could drag down the Democrats and their dream of taking back the house. I also give my latest analysis and reporting on what Trump is considering for the veep stakes. And we talk about the presidential debate calculus.

All right. Well, John, so happy that you're here, that you've joined Puck. I'm excited. You have your kind of debut column. You came out first to explain why you joined the crew, but this is exciting to read about your thoughts on Puck.

the trial of the century and how it really may not have much political impact at all. So I actually really agree with you on that. I think it's a dud. I think all these counts have just melded together. People don't care if there's 94, might as well just be one. And

And it probably won't have much impact at all on the race. But tell me what you think. I definitely think that that's the conventional wisdom about the case. And, you know, you have a jury of 12 and you need to have one person who decides that my

Michael Cohen is just a lying liar who lies and just is not to be believed. That's going to be the Trump closing argument on Trump's defense is going to be, we've shown you that this man's a pathological liar. He's a proven liar. He's lied about a million things and we caught him out in a couple of specific lies in this case. And you can't trust him on this. You can't trust him on anything. He's the key to the government's case. And so...

you got to, that's reasonable doubt. That's the path to reasonable doubt. He was annihilated basically on Thursday, right? I mean, saying that he had a conversation with Trump, but it was really about a prank phone caller. And it just seems like that was pretty tough. I think annihilated overstates it. I think they caught him in one thing that he either misremembered or lied about. Hard to know which of the two. The problem is that every single thing in Cohen's testimony is already in the written record. So

Right.

But I think, you know, that was, there was a moment, a bad moment for Cohen. By and large, I think his testimony was actually surprising. If you know Michael Cohen, he's managed to maintain his composure through most of it. And like I say, most of the stuff's already stood up in the prior record, in the written record in the case.

But I think, you know, that a notion that you're not going to get an acquittal on 34 counts, and it's clear that Trump's guilty on most of them, at least of the business records, you know, the basic violation of the law, whether it goes, whether the other question is whether the prosecution can kind of make the case that these should be felonies because he committed a state crime in order to try to...

to furtherance of a federal crime, which is why this becomes a felony case to begin with. And that's always been what a lot of people think is kind of a legal stretch. Right, because the feds didn't prosecute him on this. They ultimately decided not to. Right. And so I think the question is,

If the case ends up being a hung jury, which I think if you were talking to legal people, they would say is probably the... Maybe the likeliest outcome. I mean, acquittal is the least likely outcome. A hung jury is probably the most likely outcome. Or they charge him on some of the accounts and let him go on others. And the accounts that he gets charged with, it's like a fine. Yeah. I mean, really, they...

all the counts are felonies. And so there's really not going to be, I don't think there's going to be a fine in any of those cases, but I think there's a question of obviously they could, there's 34 counts in the indictment. So he could get convicted on some and not convicted on others. They'll like split the baby, maybe something like that. I've seen that happen a lot. It's possible. It's totally possible that that'll happen. And so I think, you know, in that instance, if we end up with either acquittal and acquittal, or we end up with a hung jury, or we end up with some kind of an outcome that seems like

He was charged on 34 counts, but they only found him guilty of two or something. There's a way in which I think most of the conventional wisdom about this seems right to me, which is that, you know, it'll either work to Trump's advantage a little bit or...

won't have much of an impact at all. I think the difference is, you know, if he's convicted, that's the thing that kind of gets you into the zone of it's unclear. You know, I don't trust really the polling on any of this very much because it's all in the realm of things that have never happened before. So you have people, I think, both, I mean, but in both directions, you have people who say they get a call from a pollster that says, you know,

Do you think it would, that it's significant or would it impact your vote if Donald Trump was convicted on a felony? I think there are people who say yes to that even when they don't really mean it. I think there are a lot of other people who really aren't paying attention and just have not focused on this at all

And the thing you said before, Tara, which is that all the counts kind of meld into one, for a lot of people in the country who are not paying attention to this at all, and that's my strongest contention, is that by and large, we all who are in this business are all obsessed with this trial and follow it kind of beat by beat. Right.

But that if you go out in the country where I've spent most of my last month or so not in the seller corridor, people are just not focused. They're just like, Trump is a scumbag. I either think that's fine because he's a lovable rogue, or I think it's terrible, but I was already going to vote against him.

you know, persuadable voters who are actually tuned into the beats of this trial and watching it is really the people who are cable news junkies because they are people who watch cable news all day. That's a very small sliver of the population. The notion of Trump getting convicted of a felony, what the impact of that will be on people's perception of him, all of these things are marginal. Everything's marginal. It's like people say, well, that will only be marginally important. And I know you know that.

This is an election that's going to be fought on the margins. It's like, that's where the election's going to happen. Right. I mean, you don't, you know, people talk about, well, does Joe Biden's, you know, if Joe Biden has a 6% decline in African-American support, you know, that could cost him Georgia or that could cost him this state or that state or Hispanic vote or youth vote or whatever, to which I say, yes, a hundred percent. Yes, that's correct. That could cost him those places. If your coalition is falling apart, that's a

Yes, but the other side of it is people say, well, it's not that much. You know, I mean, these are marginal things. It's like they're all, when the race is really close, and my basic contention is that this is a margin of error race. It's going to be, we're not going to know who the winner of the election is going to be until election night. It's not going to be someone's going to be crushing the other side. I don't even think we'll know the next day. I bet you it'll go on like last night. I mean, yes, it could go on for a long time. But if that's, if you believe it's a margin of error race where it's going to be really close, then...

you know, 30,000 votes here, 20,000 votes here, 15,000 votes there makes all the difference. And is there some number of people, again, if there's the question of people whose minds it changes, and then there's the number of people who just decide to stay home. One of the things with the Biden coalition is it's not that black voters have to decide to go vote for Donald Trump. It's that they just have to decide to sit out the election because they're disgusted with both of them. It's the same on the other side, which is just, there's, you know, uh, you

establishment Republicans in the Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs who either don't have to switch their vote to Biden, but just have to say, you know what, this election is ridiculous and I don't want to be part of it and stay home. It's the couch election. Yeah.

Yes. Getting people off the couch. It is. And, you know, I've never seen this before, really, you know, in a totally polarized electorate where everybody normally rallies to their side. And even if they don't like their candidates, like, I just, you know, I'm, you know, I'm deep red or deep blue. It's the way it's been, even in races where people have not been that excited about their candidates, they still managed to get...

really riled up for their team. It's the basic reality on the country right now is people don't want anything to do with the election. Their attitude is like, this is not what I want. I don't want these 80-year-old men. That's why the name of the show is Somebody's Gotta Win. It's just that's the vibe. It's the acquiescent election. It's the people who are like, and you find it on both sides. I find it with, you know, there's a third of both parties who really like Joe Biden and really like Donald Trump. And the biggest chunk of both parties is kind of like,

yeah, I like him better than the other guy and I'll vote for him probably. But I really just, is this really the best we can do? You know, that's like if I were writing a book on this election, that would be the title. It would be, is this really the best we can do? Because I hear that question

from normal people who are not political people. Every day, it's like, really? These are the two best guys to be president of the United States? And the polling shows it too, though. Like 70% of voters don't want either on both sides. Yes, it's overwhelming. But those 30% give us what we've got right now, right?

Totally. Exactly. And, and, you know, I mean, I think it's really the, the, the people are going to, I mean, I think, you know, by the time we get to October, people will start to be like, oh wait, the stakes of this are really a big deal and we'll start to tune in. But man, it's really like just being out covering the primaries. It was just, even on the Republican side, people were like, eh, I don't want to, I don't want to see Donald Trump, you know, compared to eight years ago where they were completely excited about Trump, uh,

And, you know, they flooded the rally. She went out this year. Well, what's what more is there to know? Like, which also kind of brings me back to like advertising. OK, so what? Trump is a convicted felon. The decision is made in May or June. We're going into what? Six months from now. Do people really care? Does advertising like you can have a billion dollars in advertising to spend? But like, at what point does it just stop? Do you really need to tell more about things that

about candidates where we know everything about them. When will people just tune out? I don't know. I don't know. I feel like advertising doesn't matter. Trump hasn't reserved any money so far, which is kind of crazy if you think about it. But clearly the Biden campaign thinks advertising will help them. I don't think Trump's team thinks that. I think, well, there's a problem that, I mean, Trump's team doesn't think that because they don't have any money to advertise. So they're kind of in a position where they don't have a lot of options. Look, I mean, advertising a long time ago

stopped being really about persuasion. It's really much more about motivation than it is about persuasion. And it's about getting your coalition to turn out and reminding people, because the one thing we know about the electorate is that they're not really excited about either one of these candidates. And the other thing that we know is that people are

congenitally amnesiac. People don't remember stuff. It's like, you know, there's part of the function of what the Biden campaign is trying to do is remind people they do this thing, as you know, on their social channels all day long. It's like, what was it really like four years ago with Donald Trump? Hey, remember this when he told us we should drink bleach?

It's like, they're not doing that because it's funny. They're doing it because it's amazing how short people's memories are. Yeah. They're not thinking about politics, like the Trump amnesia, whatever it's called. Yes. They remember that their 401k was better and that things were cheaper. It's the same thing. Their 401ks weren't better. This is actually part of the problem, right? Their stock market just hit a record high. Their 401ks are better now than they were four years ago. And that's kind of what the Biden campaign has to do all the time is kind of say to people, yeah, I know you

kind of have this some memory, some distant dim memory of 2020, but really let's look at it. Like look at what Trump was actually like

And that's not so much about changing anybody's mind. It's not like we're trying to convince people who voted for Trump in 2020 to vote for Biden in 2024. It's more trying to remind people who marched to the polls in 2020 because they were scared of Trump or hated Trump and kind of say to those people, hey, you guys voted for us last time. You need to make sure you come out and vote for us again. If Joe Biden got every vote that he got

in 2020 and 2024, he's going to win the election. So the question for them isn't really about trying to like peel off, you know, Trump voters from 2016 or 2020. Their question is there is how do you get the people who voted for you last time to come out and vote for you again? And that's what the job for them is. I think the problem is that he he sold them that he's the adult, that there would be no chaos anymore, that there would be a steady hand in the White House and then

Then obviously with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, you saw his numbers dropping down because that was like a moment of chaos. And then you saw inflation rise and people get annoyed. And yeah, 401ks, they don't really matter. Not that many people even like play in the stock market, but there was the vibe that the economy was doing better at the time. And it probably had just, it just had to do with inflation, the feeling that people had more money. But I think that the Biden administration has been a rocky road. And I think people thought that it would be smoother. And that's why-

They're not really running out right now, or at least when they're being pulled, they're they're placing their displeasure, even if it's just messaging and not how they ultimately vote. I mean, look, there's a lot of that's in all that to unpack. But I think, you know, the the the country does has not been particularly favorable towards incumbent politicians yet.

for the last 20 years. It's hard to run as an incumbent, and the incumbents always start from a disadvantage. Biden has two other problems. People think he's too old. And forget about Afghanistan, which was the trigger for the beginning of

the downward slope in his poll numbers. But today, nobody talks about Afghanistan. People talk about the price of eggs and the price of gas and how expensive it is to refinance their house or get a mortgage. And the downward pressure from, I mean, there's literally no more toxic thing

in any country ever in history, then the most toxic thing for an incumbent president is inflation. It's a political killer for everybody. And if you go out and spend time out in the country, you walk around, this is literally true for 200 years in every democracy.

democracy that's ever existed. Inflation is poison. People who have to walk out every day and spend more money to feed themselves and take care of their basic needs. And that has been the killer for Biden for four years. It's better than it was three years ago. It's still, though, more expensive. It's still just, you know, every moment that they look at the, they look at the CPI more than they look at any other thing. The unemployment rate, people don't really feel, you know, if you, if the unemployment rate takes down tomorrow,

You go, well, that's nice, but I already have a job. Or that's nice, but I still don't have a job. The only people that get affected when the unemployment rate goes down, directly affected, is someone who just got a job in that month. Inflation hits people every day. Just every single day they walk out and have to buy something or fill up their car or think about why they can't move or why they can't get their first house or whatever it is.

And that's like the kill. That's been the killer for Biden for the last three years is still the killer for him. And the age thing is a really is a real thing. I think the age thing in Afghanistan go hand in hand. The idea that he was too old or not engaged enough, like it was handed off to the lanyards inside the White House. I think that's how people probably feel. And they weren't able to control it.

I guess. I haven't heard anybody in the world talking about the Afghanistan withdrawal in a long time. I think people mostly just look at Biden and go, hey, I know an 82-year-old. That guy, the 82-year-old shouldn't be president. I love my grandpa. He's really great, but his best days are behind him. I love him to death, but he's not what he once was. And this is the hardest job in the world. I think it's also the same thing with Trump.

A lot of people look at both of these people. It's like, I mean, if you're really being honest with people, you ask them, do you really think that in the hardest, most demanding job with the highest stakes in the world, should you have somebody who's in their 80s do it? Again, it's not ageism to say this. No one who, if you talk to an 80-year-old and say, hey, how

How are you compared to how you were when you were 50 or 60? They all go, uh, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm, you know, I can't remember where I left my keys this morning. It's like people don't even fight with you about that. It's just kind of a ludicrous, again, I'm not really, I'm just saying about both of them.

It's a thing that people instinctively, everyone has met their grandparent, you know, it's like, and they know what that's like. So. But we elected Biden when he was in his 70s. It feels like there's a difference between 70s and 80s. There is. And I think that's why Trump gets off a little bit more than Biden does on the age thing. He also just has different energy. Trump has the different energy for sure. And, you know, and yet it's also the case that, you know, if you actually added up the number of Biden's affect is not

great. He comes across as kind of slow and halting, but he doesn't make nearly as many factual errors as Trump does. Trump's probably more on the path towards senility than Biden is in truth. But I mean, if you just actually counted up the mistake, the number of times that Trump forgets who he's running against and all that stuff. So I think either one of them win that battle. But look, the bottom line is that reelections for sitting presidents are fundamentally a

a referendum on the incumbent. And then incumbent who's in trouble tries to make the race into a choice and say, you know, it's not really just about what do you think up or down on my performance? Is it me versus this other person? So that's, you know, was the case with George W. Bush in 2004. He made it into a choice between him and Kerry. That was what Barack Obama did in 2012, who was not that popular in the 2012 cycle. He said, this is between me and Mitt Romney, that really rich guy who doesn't give a shit about you and kills...

factory workers in Ohio. And he managed to make that work. That's what the Biden campaign has to do is to basically say, yeah, you don't, as Biden often says, you know, you don't like me, but don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. And this guy is batshit crazy and is going to make the, he's going to take you back to 2020 when things really sucked.

And the fundamental kind of question is, can they remind their coalition that that's the way it was? And the jury's out. We'll find out when we get to the fall when people, I think they're right.

that people are not tuned into. The one thing the Biden campaign says, which is their spin, which is, again, my anecdotal experience is true, is this thing we've been talking about, which is they say our coalition will come back. They're not paying attention right now. When they pay attention in the fall, things will change. You think they will? I have no idea. That's a prediction game that I, you know, who knows? I have no idea. There's a lot of things that are going to happen between now and then. But the thing, the basis of it, the fundamental thing of it, which is

are they really tuned in right now? They're not. I mean, they're not. The country's not tuned into this election for the reasons we talked about before. So the premise that they're not tuned in is, I think, correct. Whether they can then persuade, motivate those people to come back because, oh yeah, I'm not really tuned in. Now I remember Donald Trump is really terrible. Joe Biden's not great, but he's better than Donald Trump. Or do they just say, you know what?

A lot of us voted for Joe Biden as a transitional president. We thought we were going to get one term of him. We didn't ever think we were signing up for two terms, and he's asking us to keep him in office.

until he's closer to 90 than 80. Yeah, I think that's the thing. People feel like they were betrayed when he said he was a bridge. But I do want to go back to the idea of the incumbency and like how it's so hard and to kind of tie it into this debate. So obviously, Team Biden decided that they don't want to go with the presidential commission on debates and they want to do their own debate and they want their first debate to be in June. And I write a little bit about this and the timing issue. And typically, incumbents don't do well in their first debate, right? They tend to lose.

Do you agree that if Biden has his first debate in June and then his next debate in September and he doesn't do well in June, isn't that a long time for that to linger with people? When Trump is going to have the opportunity to pick his vice president so he has a big newsmaking moment. They have the RNC. Then they have the DNC. So sure, Biden has a newsmaking moment then, but it's like months.

And usually debates, there's another one 10 days later. So if you don't do well in the first one, there's a comeback story a month later. I mean, not a month later, 10 days later, in which the president just to show, hey, I'm back. Sorry, I was too busy dealing with running the country. Or do you think the timing doesn't matter? Well, it's not that I think the timing doesn't matter. It's just that I don't think a lot of the precedent here is particularly useful in the sense that

You know, the things that people are worried about about Biden's performance are not like the kind of things that people are worried about with Barack Obama, where you could say, well, he had a bad first debate, but he's Barack Obama. He'll come back in the second debate. Who knows whether that would be the case for Biden in number one. And number two, there's never been a candidate like Trump. Trump's fucking horrible in debates. He's horrible and insane. Yeah. And it was horrible and insane in 2020. So it's like,

I think the timing matters. I think the Biden campaign wanted them to go earlier. What if he just looks weak next to Trump? Tara, it's so speculative. What if this happens or that happens? I don't know. I mean, there's a winner and a loser usually in debates. Well, there's a winner and a loser in the media's eyes for sure, but...

The question of what if this happens and that happens and then what will happen in the months after, I don't know. I don't know the answer. I know what the Biden campaign really wanted. They really didn't want to debate in front of an audience. They really didn't want to debate. They had this set of things that they were focused on. They wanted to have mainstream media organizations moderate the debates. They are. They wanted to not be in front of an audience. They aren't.

And they wanted to only do two debates and they got that. So I'll tell you from their standpoint of what they thought were, and they also, I think quietly were wanted to make sure that they didn't,

but they had enough time. The time thing is kind of either it cuts both directions. We say, well, if they do it in June and he has a bad performance, the whole summer it could linger. The worst thing is Biden has a terrible performance in the last debate and it's October and there's no time to change. There's no time to turn it around. You can play that scenario, those scenarios out either way. I think they were more concerned about the latter scenario that like,

waiting too late wouldn't give them time to turn it around than they were about having them be early and having the first debate. And if the first debate doesn't go that well in June and not the way that they want it to go, they would rather have the summer when, again, no one's going to be... People will pay attention to the debate, but by 4th of July, people have forgotten about the debate. It's going to be like, you know what the summer's like? It's like people are going to be like, oh, hey, that was really interesting. We all watched it. We all had an impression of it. But

But there's another one in September and I'm taking the summer off and I'm not going to pay attention to politics. And you don't think people are going to be like, we have to replace Biden. That was such a bad debate. And that'll just be the chatter for a long time. I think there will be chatter about that because people chatter all the time. Do I think Joe Biden is going to be the nominee? I do. Yeah, I mean, no.

I do, too. But people chatter about, I mean, like, you know, there'll be Democrats who will be chattering about if you wanted to talk about replacing Joe Biden as the nominee, you should have had that conversation two years ago. It's not a it's not going to be out. There will be. There were people who freaked out over Barack Obama's first debate performance, too. It's like, oh, my God, Joe Biden.

But then they have another one and they have another one. So it's like, there's so many debates that it just kind of like neutralized itself. And that's why I think for so long, people have said debates don't have that much impact. And it's probably because you have so many opportunities. And that's why in the end, the viewer is like, oh, that was a strong moment. This debate, that one was weak. That was strong, blah, blah, blah. They all get their chances to kind of

prove themselves. And then in the end, it kind of didn't matter anyway. But by isolating them, I think they'll have more impact. Maybe. I mean, we've never seen it before. So there's not a... I don't know the answer to that question. I think, like I said, I think that my sense of the way the electorate is right now is that people will pay attention to this debate. It will be a couple... It'll be a news cycle. It will be a week of coverage on the back of it. And then people will forget about it and move on. There'll be another one in September. I think they don't matter in the sense that

do I think that a debate performance matters more than how people feel about their future or about, about how they think, what they think the economy is, is promising or whether they're suffering or whether they're, uh, feel like they're doing well, whether they think their kids will have a better, have a chance to, to, to do better. I think those, like the fundamental stuff is what drives, is what drives this stuff, uh, way more than any of these performances do. But they're clearly, you know, with two candidates who are these as, or as again, unpopular and, and,

and have the various weaknesses that they have, people are going to be paying attention. But the number of the pool of persuadable voters, the pool of voters are going to decide the election is really small. And then that number-

Yeah, that number is going to be the salient issue for them. In the end, it's going to be anybody's debate performance. It just strikes me as like maybe I mean, you know, I mean, you want to do well in the debates. I just think it's a competency test. It's like, what or are you giving off? Sure. Trump can go overboard and it could be a mess. I mean, I was personally horrified by the 2020 debates. I couldn't even watch it. I shut it off. It was really difficult. I can't watch the super cuts of them now. They may just think there's too painful to watch. It was very uncomfortable. Yeah.

This episode is brought to you by Jersey Mike's Subs. Jersey Mike's uses only the highest quality meat sliced right in front of you, piled high with the freshest toppings. It is a Jersey Mike thing. My favorite is number 13, the Italian. Love the Italian. I'm half Italian. I like Italian subs. I especially like Italian subs made in good places. Like Jersey Mike's, planning your summer picnic, backyard adventure, or beach day? Well, Jersey Mike's. They have you covered with everything you need to beat the summer heat.

They have your favorite summer sub combo. They have everything you want at Jersey Mike's. A sub above. Order on the app today or visit jerseymikes.com.

to learn more. Great app, by the way. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Business. We all need more hours in the day, right? Well, Amazon Business gets it. They've got super smart business buying solutions that make the admin stuff a breeze. That means you can spend less time buried in paperwork and more time growing your business. That's pretty smart. Head over to amazonbusiness.com and see what smart business buying is all about.

This episode is brought to you by Vitamin Water. Food, entertainment, sports, and more.

sports teams. New York City is one of those places that oozes choice. It's got something for every taste. So it's fitting that vitamin water was born there. It's a product of its environment. Colorful, flavorful, anything but boring. Vitamin water injects a daily dose of vibrancy into a watered-down life. So grab some vitamin water today, NYC style. Vitamin water is a registered trademark of Glasso.

I know everyone, including in Biden world, they dismiss the polling, right? At least the national polling in the battleground states. But I write about in my latest column, New York, and people don't think about New York as a battleground state. It's not a battleground state, but it really matters in the sense that if...

The Democrats want to take back the House. There are about five competitive seats, six that is a frontliner Democrat seat. And, you know, Hakeem Jeffries, who could be the speaker of the House, he's a minority leader right now. The only way to take back the House so that there isn't a Trump presidency...

Republican House, Republican Senate, because we will likely see a Republican Senate, is to flip those red seats that turned blue in 2022 back to Democrats. But in the latest Sienna poll, Biden's numbers in New York are down by about 13 points, actually, since the election in 2022. He's only 10 points ahead of Trump.

And the double digits that he was ahead in some of these, you know, swings districts are down many Democrats think to the single digits and it's just not looking so great. So I guess the feeling is right now that Biden is...

a drag on perhaps the House in New York. I don't know. I feel like there's nothing they can really do. And it's kind of a luxury just to even think about New York for the Biden campaign, right? I mean, they're just hanging on for dear life to try to win reelection. I mean, I don't really think the Biden campaign is going to think about New York at all. I mean, there's not really their job is to, I mean, I wouldn't put it quite the way you're putting it as like to hang on. I think their job is to get reelected. And if they get reelected, it'll be things we find in New York.

I mean, Biden is an unpopular president. So as an unpopular president, he's a drag on every single Democrat in every single district everywhere in the country. I don't think it's unique to New York. So it's like the reality is, yes, those are definitely seats they need to flip. If Biden gets beat in the general election, the likelihood that the House runs in the other direction, that the House, that Democrats make gains in the House while Biden loses to Trump is, you know, unpopular.

It's virtually... I don't think it's ever happened before. It's very unlikely. There are definitely cases where congressional districts... This happened in 2020 in Georgia and other places where congressional candidates run ahead of the top of the ticket. That was the case in almost, I think, all the congressional districts in Georgia. The Republicans overperformed Trump's performance in Georgia. So it's not like you can run...

better than the top of the ticket sometimes. Yeah. It happened in a few seats in New York, yeah. As a national thing, the idea that every Democrat in the House is going to be hoping for Joe Biden to be Donald Trump and that he'll be a little bit of a help at the top of the ticket. But you're definitely right in the sense that the bigger question is if Biden wins- Will he have a Republican House? Yeah. Does that necessarily pull across those candidates in New York? But

You know, in a world where you run for president, you have a couple of things that you can do. I mean, you have really like a couple of variables that you can control, like you can control your message, you can control your money, you control your time. You're not, I mean, Joe Biden's never going to campaign in New York. No, no, no. And he shouldn't. He really shouldn't go to New York anyway. It's probably not good for these House races. But I do think if there's a really strong possibility, just based on the fact that his numbers are so low in New York, that if he is reelected, that he will have a Republican House to deal with again and a Republican Senate. Yeah.

he might like i said there's a there's a reasonable chance that biden could win reelection and not and not in the house this house stays where it is now it's going to be really close it's going to close presidential election very in the early divided house i don't think you know nobody really imagines that there's going to be a blue wave

No, no. But I also don't think anybody really thinks there's going to be a red wave in November. But I mean, no one who's sensible. It just will probably stay the same. It's like these minority-majority situations, basically. It's a highly likely outcome. But, you know, the world is weird and weird stuff happens. So I think that Hakeem Jeffries, as you say, is a hyper-competent, hyper-skilled political athlete. And I think there'll be a lot of focus on those races in those contested districts here. I think there are six. Yeah.

where there's going to be a ton, the D trip is going to put a bunch of money and it'll be, those are, they've recruited some pretty good candidates. $45 million, three times what they spent in 2022 when they lost those seats. So there's hope in that sense. I mean, there's, you know, well-recruited candidates with, uh, with enough money that you're still have to deal with the stuff at the top of the ticket. Uh,

and the drag from the top of the ticket, you're still going to be fighting against that. It'd be great to have a president from your same party that had like a 49 or a 52 or a 56% approval rating. But those races, those districts were funky. And holding on to those districts, winning those districts is super key to Democrats if they're going to have a chance of having a majority in the House. Yeah.

So we'll see what happens. Obviously, Republicans do not have as much money as the Democrats this cycle, at least so far. But they're about to spend $20 million in New York, which is just crazy to think about Republicans spending that much money in New York state. It's a lot of dough. Yeah, it's a lot of dough and they don't even have much. OK, so we keep seeing poll after poll. Biden is losing to Trump in five out of the six battleground states. Nothing seems to be changing. If anything, it seems like the margins are widening.

You hear from Democrats, we don't care about the polls. Everything's going to be fine. We don't need to be bedwetting. I think they should be peeing their beds. I think that in 2020, there was never a moment in which, at least at this point in the campaign, in which Trump was leading Biden in the polls. Biden was always leading Trump. And I remember in the final days of the election that, you know, Trump's aides were all packing up their desks. They knew it. The writing was on the wall. And I think that it's hard to poll Trump voters.

He historically performs better than polling. Why now should we not trust the polls? Well, I wouldn't say that we shouldn't trust the polls. So, I mean, I think the polls are flawed and also useful if properly conceived of. I mean, if the question is, is Joe Biden in a historically unpopular president who's struggling in a lot of these battleground states and is is and directionally unpopular?

race is having Trump ahead in those battleground states. We'd have to kind of take two things. There's one thing, which is the New York Times-Siena poll, which showed a variety of very dramatic things that are just not... I mean, there's not a world where Donald Trump's going to win Nevada by double digits. And some of those poll, I think people were reasonably... There are a lot of weird things in those battleground state polls. But if you took the aggregate over...

of all the battleground state polling over the course of the last year, you would say, you know, Biden has a problem in those states. And directionally, they're problematic. And more importantly, the constituent parts of them are problematic. It's like the

The places we talked about before, the coalition, and this is what the Biden campaign really looks at, is that they look at their level of support with Black voters, their level of support with Hispanic voters, their level of support with young voters. They need those support levels to be commenced roughly in the same zone as they were in 2020 to win those states, and they're not in those places. And it's why...

Georgia, it does not look as good because the black vote's really important there. Arizona and Nevada don't look that good because the Hispanic vote's really key there. They're stronger in the older, whiter states in the upper Midwest.

Those are all true things. Everyone looks at these polls and sees there's a thing at the bottom of every single poll that says margin of error. The margin of error is the statistical noise within the poll. And people, first of all, don't know how to read margin of error because it's not when it says the margin of error is 3%. It means that each number could be

up or down that much. 3% higher or 3% lower. Or 3% lower. No, but in both directions. So it's like the numbers apply to the individual. So it's like if the poll comes back and says that it's tied 45-45, the reality of that could be that either candidate could be up by as much with a margin of error as 3%. Either candidate could be up 6%.

One candidate could be at 48, the other could be at 42. So the margin of error is bigger than people think. And so when I look at those polls, I say directionally, Biden has a lot of problems in those states and the constituencies. What he does about the constituencies, he has problems.

But honestly, I mean, like, I mean, I'm not carrying water for anybody. I would say I said this in 2020 in the other direction. They're all within the margin of error. So no one's really leading in any of those polls. They're like, it's a meaningless thing to say Trump's winning in those polls. It's like he's not winning. It's first of all, it's not predictive. It's a snapshot. And second of all, there's a margin of error, which tells you that they're both within the margin of error. So they're really statistically tied. The direction matters a lot, though. And what the Biden campaign would like to see is them getting themselves gaining ground or

Right. In those states and improving with their numbers, with their constituency groups. So it's not, I'm not, I'm not saying they don't have a challenge. They have a big challenge. Okay. And so Nevada is not within the margin of error, but we think we should discount it. Although I've heard people say, oh, it's like housing prices. It's just a wild outlier. It's like, there's, I think there's a, you know,

double-digit leads in a state like Nevada, which Joe Biden won in 2020. There's so much funky about those polls. Like, you know, John De La Volpe pointed out this thing where like he looked at the youth number of

in the three Midwestern states. And one was like, Biden was like negative 24. Another, he was like up 24 and the other was even. And the idea that like young voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are so different from each other that you would have those differences, like one plus 24, one negative minus 24, and one at even from 2020, just makes no sense.

So I don't like, I like to generally think, I think the polling in aggregate does a pretty good job and is not like, oh God, the polls are all skewed or the polls are all rigged and it's all bullshit. I don't think that's true. There is occasionally a poll or a set of polls that comes out and you look at some of the, of the underlying crosstabs and you go, well, that's a little hinky. You know, that's, it just doesn't make any really, it doesn't really make any sense. And people have raised these questions about this particular poll and said, hey, can you guys please explain to us how you could possibly come up with these?

with these numbers. And there's not a good answer to that. So I just I think my main thing to when I talk to just to normal people about this is it's not ignore the polls because they're rigged or they're fake or they're phony or they're skewed. It's just don't get too hung up on whether you're a Democrat or a Republican.

on one set of good polls or one set of bad polls on any given day. It's like, look over the course of like number over the course of a six month span and sort of look at what's the direction. The trend isn't good for Biden. I think that's the one thing. But the reason I look at these polls and then I think back to 2020 and Biden was beating Trump

outside of the margin of error in the polls consistently around this time. And he's not now. And in the end, he only beat Trump by like, what, 40,000 votes across the handful of battleground states. So like, should we be looking back at 2020 and thinking, well, they underpolled Trump last time? There are two separate questions. I mean, one question is there was a big difference in 2020. One of them was in the incumbent and the other one was the challenger.

Unpopular incumbent in the middle of COVID, et cetera, et cetera, all the things that were true about Trump. Biden was the challenger, benefited from being the challenger. You know, it's the case that Trump's benefiting from being the challenger in this race. I think that, you know, I think you should look, people should look back at 2020. The polls, I do think there's no question that both in 2016 and 2020, the polls were systematically unpopular.

or to your point before, had a propensity to undercount the Trump vote. And so, yes, I think that's an area of a thing to be concerned about. I don't know...

You know, whether I think there's, so things are fixed. The polling industry has been trying to meet that, has been trying in good faith to try to solve these problems. They tried between 2016 and 2020. Is it overcorrection maybe that's going on right now? I don't know. I don't know the answer. And I don't, I hesitate to speculate about things I don't know the answers to. So I do think that if the point is,

Joe Biden is, again, it's like, you know, I go back to like the first principles things here. He's an incumbent president with an approval rating like that's right at about 40 or below. Like that's, that's trouble. I mean, there's no, there's not, there's not like some revelation here that like, wow, you know, Joe Biden's really in trouble. It's like, yeah. You've got a historically unpopular opponent as well.

who's already been president. He's an incumbent president where people are not happy with the direction of the country. They feel economically pressed. They're not optimistic about their future. And they look at, and you think about this, he's at sort of Jimmy Carter levels of popularity. That is an incumbent facing an uphill run. You can then break down a million different things that you can look at to kind of make that same point again. But no one's, I mean, no one's sane is denying the fact that Biden is running against, running into Trump.

like significant headwinds and that for him to win the race, which, you know, because of Trump's unique unpopular, his unique challenges, his all the things that we know about Trump, it's a winnable race for Joe Biden. But no one's like, no one who's sane is looking at this going, yeah, Joe Biden's got control of this race. He's really actually secretly he's way ahead. I mean, I know some liberals on Twitter do, but like,

Like, in reality, no one who's a professional person in this business looks at those numbers and goes, yeah, Joe Biden cakewalk. You know, it's no problem. He's got it. Yeah, but his team doesn't believe it. They don't like he doesn't believe in polls. I don't live inside Joe Biden's head, so I don't really know what Joe Biden believes. But I do know I do think that the people on Joe Biden's team are very aware of the degree of the challenges they face in terms of the polls.

position the president's in. I don't think anybody in there is, nobody there is delusional. And, you know, they create amazingly Tara. I know you've covered some, uh, your share of campaigns in the past. It's, it's amazing. They spin just like everybody does. No one sometimes comes out and goes, yeah, the polls. Yeah. The polls suck. Our boss is doomed. We're giving up.

they all say, you know, they put the best face on the thing. This is what both campaigns do. Every campaign has ever done in history. But inside the Biden campaign, no one is looking at these numbers and going, yeah, we don't believe the polls. Because their own polls are showing them the same thing. Yeah, I was going to say, I've talked to people that also poll for them. It's the same. They know it's an uphill battle, but they have...

some degree of confidence around the fact that they ran this race against this guy in 2020. They know he's uniquely fucked in a whole bunch of ways. And they are going to have a lot more money and a lot more organizational strength on the ground. Those don't mean we guarantee we're going to win the race. What they are is...

We recognize our position is challenged. We have a difficult road to hoe, but we also have some assets here that the other guy doesn't have. For instance, a candidate who though old is not insane or a threat to democracy or likely to do any kind of nutty ass thing on any given day. And we have a lot of money and we have a playbook.

they look at those things as ways to, to overcome the challenges that they know they face. Probably having the organization on the ground is probably the most helpful thing and being able to like actually have voters who believe in mail-in ballot voting and being able to follow up and knock on doors and tell them it's time to vote. Like that's the kind of thing that Trump doesn't have because he keeps telling his voters that it's rigged and,

his party is fighting against him. So I think in the end of the day, he shot himself in the foot. All right. Let's just end this with a little fun. Okay. Veepstakes, gossip, you know, it's the parlor game in Washington. Who do you think Trump will pick? I have no idea. I refuse to do predictions on this matter. I think the veepstakes thing is the biggest waste of time in the history of our coverage. I think what will happen is I think Trump

is using these people who are obviously thirsty for a job. He's using the, he's using the spectacle of it to raise money. Yeah. He's using the spectacle to raise money. He is, he wants them to go out and mine their donor networks for him and to raise money and to use them as surrogates. So they're outside in front of the courthouse saying the things that he'll have to pay a gag order or go to jail for. And he needs surrogates on TV. They're not booking him the way they used to. He wants their money. He wants Tim Scott to go to Larry Ellison, write him a nine,

figure check, whatever it's going to take. And I believe that in the last minute, Trump will pick whoever he needs at that moment around the time of the Republican National Convention. And it's probably, it may not be any of the people we know right now. And I

I think he'll look at whether some of them are liability, though, when it comes to abortion, because he is terrified about that issue and how it could be a drag on his presidency. So it is fun to gossip about it. I feel like everybody has a who's up, who's down. But I do think in the end, it'll just come down to like a donor play, maybe a constituency play. And I even think he could pick Nikki Haley if he thinks he needs to. I think Trump could do almost really almost anything in any given moment. It'll be everything you said. I think I agree with it's fun to watch it.

Not my idea. Fine. Let's put it that way. Okay. Well, I enjoy watching their desperation. I just find that the whole thing always consumes an enormous amount of column inches that I think could be better spent on other things. To me, it's like the guy's going to pick somebody eventually. And when he picks them, we can then scrutinize that pick. I get it for a Washington perspective. Like,

From like the actual like swamp perspective of people who make money off access to the presidency, like a lot of them just don't have deep connections to Trump. Really, no one does, maybe for a few people. So if they can get their guy in the White House, like then they have billable hours. And that's why everyone in town is like, oh, my guy's going to get in. My guy's going to get in. You know, this is access. But and then, of course, when Trump does something horrific, they can be like, well, you know.

Pence was my guy, you know, it wasn't Trump. So there's the distance as well. So yeah, that's why I think in Washington, everyone's really talking about it. Everybody outside of DC, it doesn't really matter. He might pick a celebrity. Who knows? Yeah. Let's hope that'd be great. Right. Yeah. Right. You can put Rosie O'Donnell on the ticket. Yeah. Well, thank you for your time, John. This was fun. I'm so happy you're part of the team. Can't wait to read your next column. See you around the office, Tara. All right. Talk soon.

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

This episode is brought to you by Jersey Mike's Subs. Jersey Mike's uses only the highest quality meat sliced right in front of you, piled high with the freshest toppings. It is a Jersey Mike thing. My favorite is number 13, the Italian. Love the Italian. I'm half Italian. I like Italian subs. I especially like Italian subs made in good places. Like Jersey Mike's, planning your summer picnic, backyard adventure, or beach day? Well, Jersey Mike's. They have you covered with everything you need to beat the summer heat.

They have your favorite summer sub combo. They have everything you want at Jersey Mike's. A sub above. Order on the app today or visit jerseymikes.com to learn more. Great app, by the way.