Factually! with Adam Conover - Why Everyone Hates the 2024 Election with David Weigel

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Widespread denial looms over the 2024 presidential election. Will Biden be replaced due to his age? Could a conviction halt Trump's ambitions? While enthusiasm is scarce for this exhausting rematch, it's going to happen whether we like it or not. Adam and Semafor political reporter David Weigel set aside concerns about old age and criminal trials to dissect the state of both campaigns, and what it will actually mean come November. SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hello, and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, I hate to break it to you, but we're in the middle of an election year, even though nobody really wants to acknowledge it. And, you know, I understand why. The last presidential election was awful. We had a right-wing populism, a historic pandemic,

voter suppression, the whole thing sucked. But now, in 2024, we're doing a rerun of that election with the two oldest candidates in election history, who by the way, most Americans have strongly unfavorable opinions of. And yet we find ourselves barreling down the same lonely road of Super Tuesday, awkward campaign events, national conventions,

gaffs, polling, maybe even October surprise, whether we like it or not. But even though we definitely do not like it, we still need to pay attention to it because the stakes are somehow even higher than usual. To get the obvious out of the way, Joe Biden is very old and everyone notices and it is killing him in the polls. But Trump, well, he is a corrupt autocrat who is partnering with right-wing religious zealots who wanna cut taxes on the rich, roll back environmental regulations as the world burns, throw gay and trans people back in the closet,

throw even more immigrants into camps, destroy social security, and make labor organizing impossible. And that is just the beginning of what he has literally said on the campaign trail. So it is no wonder that a lot of people are in denial and just want to pretend like maybe this election just isn't going to happen the way that it is. A lot of people have pinned their hopes to the many legal cases against Trump, hoping against hope that he can be

disqualified or thrown in jail or that somehow Nikki Haley will beat him. And then on the left, pundits are throwing out takes hoping that Biden is just gonna step down and a new candidate will be chosen, as if there's any precedent for that ever happening in American history, and as though that process would have any chance of yielding a better candidate. It feels as though we're all in the passenger seat

for the biggest car crash in political history, there aren't any seat belts, and the only steering wheel we have is the one Maggie uses in The Simpsons. But despite all of that, we need to keep our eyes on the road because what happens next in American democracy is truly incredibly important. So today we are going to dig into the 2024 election with one of the best campaign reporters working to get a view of what is actually happening on the ground, separate from all of the media spin. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you that if you want to support this

show and all of the amazing conversations we bring to you every single week, you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. You can join our community discord. We do a live book club over zoom. It's so much fun. Hope to see you there.

And if you like standup comedy, I hope you come see me on the road coming up April 18th through 20th, I'll be in Indianapolis, Indiana, April 26th through 28th in La Jolla, California. And on May 1st, I will be in San Jose, California, head to adamconover.net for tickets and tour dates. And now let's get to today's episode. David Weigel is a political reporter for Semaphore.

He is one of the lead political reporters in America today. He has an absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of what is happening this second in the presidential race. I know that you are gonna love this interview. So let's get to this conversation with David Weigel. Dave, thank you so much for being on the show. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Your reporting is always fascinating on the ground. Like you're one of the people just writing, here's what happened today. But with a bit of a critical lens, I feel like. I feel like you also bring in a way a lot of reporters don't the big picture of what's also happening at the same time. So let's just jump right into it.

How is this election different from other elections, even from 2020 or 2016, which were also historically weird fucked up elections? It's, especially in the way the media has covered it, probably the least substantive election, the presidential one we're talking about right now, least substantive one I've covered, because I got spoiled in 2020, even 2016.

I was covering 2016, Trump would come out with some proposal that every Republican was against. They would at least talk about it. Democrats, Bernie would come out with some idea that Hillary was against. They would debate it. 2020 Democrats were full of white papers and ideas and here's how I pay for this and Medicare for all versus public option. This one is just Nikki Haley talking about electability

and before that, Tim Scott talking about electability. Before that, Rick Santas, Trump doing his thing and Biden putting all his challengers in a box. I think not in the unfair, he's president and it's hard to run against a president, but he's not proposed a bunch of new things either. He just, he said, I'm going to double down what I'm doing. So that's the first thing I like.

I like. I like covering campaigns as a way to draw out policy or what people are worried about. And it's been much easier in a down-ballot race. Presidential, it's just, there's maybe 13, 12, 13 hours about a story. And then we go back to, but really though, electability. How do you raise some money?

How do you win? It's gotten really low, low content. Yeah, all the talk about the election, now that you say that, it makes me realize there's almost no policy at all. It's all about the political, is there a way to get a nominee other than Biden if he's too old at the convention,

kind of like, you know, moving on our chess pieces around rather than anything about what people actually care about. I mean, I suppose one exception might be immigration. There's been a fair amount of what Biden's policy changes are about immigration and like the bill that the Republican Congress attempted to pass and then decided they didn't wanna pass anymore and all of that.

But yeah, there's been almost no, it's almost like nobody wants to have the election. You know? When this year rolled around as a comic, I would sort of, you know, you always write a couple of New Year's jokes, and one of mine was, I would be like, hey guys, it's an election year.

And everyone would go, ah! Like, it was just horrifying, because everyone's thinking, didn't we just do that? I don't want to do it again. And it almost feels as though the candidates also don't want to do it again. The media doesn't want to do it again. Like we're, we're missing all of the sort of,

it's, it's as though, it's as though we're having the Olympics, but there's no opening ceremony. There's no, Bob Costas isn't there. Like we're missing all of the shit that we normally get within an election in the media. there's no opening ceremony, there's no, Bob Costas isn't there. We're missing all of the shit that we normally get within an election in the media. Yeah, and the media does, what everyone thinks the media,

I find that the bias in the media is towards new stuff and conflict. Yes. And there's been some conflict, but in the Republican primary, it really has felt, a lot of like I've covered one of these elections, but it's felt like one of those

former Russian Republic elections where there's the president, and then there's the opponent, and then they're allowed to run, but it's felt like one of those former Russian Republic elections where there's the president, and then there's the opponent, and then they're allowed to run, but they don't really have a shot. It's felt like that about 90% of the time. Yeah. Does that mean Nikki Haley is about to die

in like an icy prison? I think she'll be okay. I think she's very healthy. We'll see what happens in November. Yeah, not one of the ones where the opposition disappears for some reason, but one where they're allowed to run.

It's like, oh, thanks for that. We had an election. Good luck next time because Putin will stand up those sort of guys, you know, that not in the ones he kills, but like here's the opposition party. Go vote for it. It felt a little bit like that. And you mentioned the Biden age thing that has dominated every every week. And that's if people find out what I do.

Oh, you're a political reporter. That's the first question they've asked me for like a year and a half. Yeah. It's not really me, Biden, is it? It's going to be somebody else, right? It's not really going to be Trump again. I'll find somebody else. Right. And I say, no, I mean, unless something changes, those are the those are the choices. But we're still stuck in that in that Ouroboros, that like holding

pattern of people saying you you see Gavin, Gavin Newsom who's doing all the surrogate work for Biden, half the questions you get are like, but really, they're gonna like find a nice place for Joe to go hit, send him to the farm and then you're gonna run, right? He's like, no, I swear to God, it will be Joe Biden. I know some people are unhappy. It will be Joe Biden, Donald Trump. And then in the media, we know those guys, we profile those guys. I think actually Trump has benefited because he will say new things, new policy ideas that go way further than he did before,

like rounding up immigrants into literal camps on the border is a new idea. And I don't think it gets covered like he did in 2016. And Biden's ideas, I don't think they get covered at all. And also, we'll talk about this. I'm in the media, when I hear somebody in the media say, why don't you cover it? Well, I do, but I don't control,

I don't push a button and say, here's the discourse on CNN and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and here's what people are talking about in the cafes or whatever. Yeah, it just got really content free for all kinds of reasons. It feels like people are playing fantasy football, or maybe not even fantasy football,

like Dungeons and Dragons with politics, where it's a fantasy. I mean, a whole news cycle, at least in my part of the media sphere, was Ezra Klein, the top columnist for the New York Times, or at least the one who I think is one of the most intelligent and interesting and moves the needle policy-wise, wrote a huge piece, did a whole episode of his podcast

about can Joe Biden be removed and how would we do it and da da da da da. And I think there's a real problem here. And I was reading it going, this is one of the smartest guys. Whenever I read him, I'm like, he's much smarter than I am. And I read it and go, who are you fucking kidding? You're in denial that any of this is,

you think at the convention, the Democrats are gonna choose a different, who are you fucking kidding? Like you're in denial that any of this is, you think at the convention, the Democrats are gonna choose a different, why did you even write this? Like it's not going to happen. And yet he's one of the most read people around, like it's important and impactful that he wrote it, but also it's about something that won't happen. It's bizarre.

And he's stuck in the same box because he would like the election to be about things. It would be, wouldn't it be great if we could contrast Trump and his movement trying to disband like the NLRB, the Labor Relations Board and Biden having the most aggressive one ever. Wouldn't it be great if we had something about his energy policy, which actually has been explored for more, barely talked about. And I think from Ezra, and I know Ezra pretty well, he also wants the election to be about stuff. And when he talks to Democrats,

he talked to some of that piece, or conveyed their wisdom. You talk to Democrats in high places and they say, all right, we all have to get through this. He is very old. We're not sure how the second term is gonna go. He was conveying their actual wisdom. I've seen this, I've covered Biden, not as much as like a full-time White House reporter,

but enough stuff where at the events, sometimes he's fine, sometimes it does feel like everybody kind of biting their lip and somebody's, like the crowd outside Willy Wonka's factory when he first walks out. Really, but it feels like that where people are saying, but he's almost there, why is he taking so long to make this point?

Like you see people saying, but maybe it'll get better. And it's an it's there a moment when he does the somersault like in Willy Wonka everyone's all worried and then he does the somersault and everyone's like, oh my god incredible Well, it doesn't I mean he doesn't do gymnastics on purpose He does occasionally then he'll find it find a moment and You'll see oh, this is the 2010 16 Biden. Yeah, you've seen he'll find a moment and you'll see, oh, this is the 2010, 16 Biden. You've seen it, he'll whisper, whisper, and then he'll say something energetic. But if you've covered him, and I'm from Delo originally,

so he was my senator when I was born, the guy has changed a lot. And it's frustrating for someone like Ezra or someone like the entire administration saying, he'll give a 30 minute speech, he'll explain what he's about to do on something important. He'll explain the new, our new, last week it was the, reversing Trump's pro-settlements policy in Israel,

and no one covers it, because they'll ask him, seriously though, like when he was going to California last week, the questions he was asked by the White House press corps, you're not an easy job to get. That's like, you know, you have to do your time, you're in the business, you're at the Rose Garden, you're the White House press corps, you're not an easy job to get. That's like, you have to do your time, you're in the business, you're at the Rose Garden,

you're waiting for him to leave. And their questions were, are you going for a plan B? Are you going to California to see if there's a plan B? Like, you really aren't running, are you? And they all deal with that. So there's people who see Biden up close, it's not like there's a conspiracy to say, we need to hide this guy away.

It's that, oh, in public, we wish he was better. Every day we wish he was doing better. And they do the same with Harris, who's not old, but just, it's more, I feel we're doing all this rhetorical criticism, but just she'll express a point and sometimes it gets like lost in space. She's not a concise speaker.

It's a way more, I think, vapid complaint with her. Cause you get what she's saying, but she'll say, you know, when her videos of her go viral, it's more, she could, vapid complaint with her. Because you get what she's saying, but she'll say, yes, you know, when her videos are her go viral, it's more she could make a simple point and then it goes off into the wilderness. I mean, she's she's I find her not great on camera. You know, I there was a viral moment where she like completely botched an interview with Charlemagne, the god on Comedy Central.

And I was like, if you cannot nail, if you could not nail that interview with Charlemagne the God on, if that's what your handler has to step in to say, we have to stop this interview and you look like a boob on that show, like you have a problem. But that's neither here nor there.

Why do you think that Trump doesn't get the same, you know, obsessive coverage about age when he's like what? Like less than a presidential term younger than Biden is. That's a great question. And I do think there's an implicit bias in there because I was there in 2015, 2016. In 2015, I just started at the Washington Post.

And one of my first assignments on the road was to go cover Trump in Iowa. And it was after he'd insulted John McCain. I like guys who don't get captured. And definitely the mood as they sent me was, go check this Trump thing out because it might be the last week of this. Might be the last gas.

And it wasn't. So I think there has been a general desensitization to Trump saying the sort of thing where if your councilman said it be the last gas and it wasn't. So I think there has been a general desensitization to Trump saying the sort of thing where if, you know, your councilman said it and started to ramble about like the wrong name or his enemies and how he was gonna take revenge on them, you'd say, that's, something's gone wrong with this person.

We need to call their family. And it doesn't happen with Trump. You know what Trump is? Yeah. So I had a friend in high school who he transferred to the school sophomore year. And the first day of school, he showed up super high. So everyone just thought he was like that all the time.

They were just like, oh, this guy is just kind of spacey. So he got to go to school high every day and no one was like, what's up with you today, man? And I feel like that's what Trump is. He showed up on the first day incoherent and weird and erratic and people just got used to it. Whereas Biden became a little bit more erratic. Yes, people have seen Biden age and become,

not just erratic, but slower. I mean, Biden would say the wrong words. When he was picked as Obama's running mate, he walks on stage with Obama in Springfield, Illinois, big rally, and he calls him Barack America by accident. And he was a much younger man, but he just has had this problem where he'll say the wrong word sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, he also famously, well, not famously enough has a stutter. And I remember in the run up to the 2020 election, there was a beautiful profile in, I think, the Atlantic by a reporter. John Hendrickson, yeah, yeah. Oh, who also had a stutter and knew that Biden had a stutter

and Biden claims to have beaten the stutter. And the reporter is, Hendrickson is writing, I can tell that he hasn't beaten it. I can tell that he's using coping mechanisms that I use too to like replace one word with another to get around the stutter. And that makes him sound like he's, beaten it, I can tell that he's using coping mechanisms that I use too, to like replace one word with another to get around the stutter. And that makes him sound like he's, you know, has forgotten a word or he's slower in some way. When he's actually doing is dealing with a pretty trivial disability, not a trivial

disability, but a, you know, a disability that one can work around that doesn't actually interfere with your, with your ability to do the job. And the reporter then had an interview with Biden and asked, you know, do you have a stutter? And Biden was like, no, I don't. I beat it years ago. And you know, Henderson was like a little bit crestfallen. I just wish this man would admit

that he still struggles with it. That would mean a lot to me. And I always wondered even in 2020 when he was a little bit quicker, if he just gave a speech where he was like I have a stutter and that is why I speak this way Yeah, you know and and I'm gonna own it. I know he's from a older generation couple or older generations Yeah, maybe that's not in his makeup, but it feels like a missed opportunity to like, you know

Turn a weakness into a strength. They haven't done that. I think it's too late to do that what they've have done a bit more of is making jokes about his age. He says this press conference after the special accounts report, I am an elderly man. He had a joke at a fundraiser a couple, I think last week, where Pelosi was mentioning Aristotle and Biden said, I knew him well. So he started to lean in and what they would love in the Biden campaign is for people to see him as Clint Eastwood and Gran Torino. Like old, obviously old, obviously not what he used to be.

Because even you watch a Clint Eastwood, late Clint Eastwood movie, and some of the pathos is all, we remember this guy when he was like a gunslinger in Sergio Leone movies, and now he's aged and he's missed. He doesn't have the fastball, but he can still push it, push it, push it down. And not that's not what they've done. And the polls are overwhelming.

So I mentioned what the what's the bias of the media? The media in the press, we don't want to take an obvious stand on issues. You want to be able to cover things fairly. But if something is not ideological, this is not a left wing position or right wing position. When polls say he looks old and he's too old to be president and voters say, I'm worried he's too old to be president, that's a neutral story. And I think that's another reason it gets a lot of coverage. And as a reporter, I was in South Carolina a couple weeks ago covering Haley and that comes up a lot. You just, I'll ask

voters as a follow-up, or so I'll meet a voter, I met many who were voting for Nikki Haley and that comes up a lot. You just I'll ask voters as a follow up. So I'll meet a voter. I met many who were voting for Nikki Haley strategically because they hated Trump, but they probably didn't want to vote for Trump in the November. I asked what they thought about Biden. It was that he's old and I'd say, well, what policies would you like to see change? And often they didn't have one. I wasn't trying to gotcha them. I wasn't trying to make them look silly.

Yeah. But their main concern was, you know, how things are not, yeah, we could be doing better, but it's mostly he's really old. And that's it. And so that has flattened a lot of the discourse in the campaign because that there's never been an issue. I've not seen an issue that overwhelming. I mean, when Hillary Clinton was running, could she be trusted?

That was a big question. It was like 60% in polls, so they didn't trust her. And that was big, but people, we've had presidents we can't trust. We've like, I would about say survive. And that was big, but people, we've had presidents we can't trust. We've like, I would about say survived. Probably not been better off for it, but a president who's very old with a vice president,

people don't know a lot about and don't hear her saying things that make them confident she could, you know, get us through like an asteroid hit me. Well, and she was, she was, you know, probably the right choice politically in 2020, but it's not as though she had a lot of she wasn't cruising to win. She doesn't have a lot of like democratic legitimacy, you know, in terms of like, oh, she's won so many votes and everybody loves her and etc.

She's just like, you know, was the best choice at the time for the VP role. And is good at some things. I mean, she's very good debater. She has that that prosecutorial experience, which I think hurt her in the primary, but she is good at that But it's extemporaneous speech not great the thing that people who've left her office and there's a lot of them will talk about is just There's a subject where she's not a hundred percent there and she won't You know do the hard annoying work of it like digging in and making sure she knows every angle so it's not like she'll make a huge mistake, so just kind of whiff and

Wing it and you'll see like what did she know what she was talking? That sort of thing. Yeah. And that's, it's, again, we haven't talked, this is the topic, but we haven't talked a lot about the policy differences, even this conversation, because that's where it starts. And you look at the Democrat, the Biden record,

I was talking to people else, like as a thought experiment, let's say we were like a parliamentary democracy and Trump came back, you know, special election, Trump comes back a year ago. I think the story would be if nothing else changed, economy was the same, et cetera, you know, the Ukraine war was still happening. It'd be, well, we did get most of that inflation's passed us

and the economy's been growing and our 401Ks are pretty good. There'd be a lot more of a discussion of what has improved in the last year. And this is the frustration Democrats have is we love to talk about things that have improved. Obviously people are angry about our policy in Israel. Obviously people are angry about a lot of things,

but things have gotten better and no one wants to talk about it because they think the president's old and this, that overwhelms everything. Yeah. Right. And so let's, well, let's move off of it in one second because I think the fear, I want to get into the policy, but I think the fear that people are expressing that like,

you know, Ezra Klein's piece seemed to be really aimed at the political class. He was saying, I have a fear that after the election, Trump will have won and we'll see all of these tell all books from people inside the political machinery in the Democratic Party who knew that Biden was doomed and didn't do anything. I think the reason you're hearing so much of it, not just from voters, not just media bias, but there are people who are worrying, is this like already a killer for Biden winning? Like is the feeling among the public that they know one thing about Biden is that he's too old, the poll numbers are so high, it's so overwhelming, there's no way to beat it,

and like we are baking in the loss. Is that possible? What do you think about that? That's what they're worried about. And it's tough to poll because people will poll and you put up a famous Democrat who's not Biden or Harris, like Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, and they don't win,

but everyone, but those same Democrats will say, well, that's because people don't know who they are. Give us an election that's Trump, who everyone knows versus a fresh Democrat who's younger and can express, it will be fine. They all think that. And by they, I mean, I hate when people say they and they don't know who they're talking about.

That like Democratic staffers, Democratic strategists, many members of Congress, people who didn't endorse Biden the first time, and they really do love him. And they think his record is amazing. And they wish he was 10 years younger, or can just explain the record without that question. They think that what they were saying since the before the midterms, those Democrats was Ron Reagan 1984, if two years for the election, you would have said he was gonna lose.

The polling was terrible. The economy was actually much worse than it was two years ago for us, like unemployment at 10%, inflation at 10%. And then things turned around and people said, yeah, I wasn't sure this was working out for us, but it looks like the ship turned. They thought that would happen with Biden.

A lot of the economic factors got better and it just hasn't happened because he looks so much older and he is so much older. Reagan, he's almost a decade older than Reagan was in that reelect. But that was their theory and that's why they're so panicky. Ezra's probably had the same conversations I have with these Democrats. They said, Reagan 84, Reagan 84, Reagan 84. And as it gets closer, it's like, well, by this point, Reagan was, it was kind of on the come up and he was leading all these guys and this, and Biden isn't. So what do we do?

And the Trump factor obviously makes them paralyze them. They're like, what if we are the reason that this guy comes back that, that, that adds a extra, you know, terrifying element element for every Democrat. But it seems like nothing is actually going to materially change to change that. Like it's, I'm bored of even talking about, is there a way to, it's not gonna happen, right? No, no, they're all bored about talking,

they're all bored talking about it. I dealt with this in 2020 before Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, as I'd occasionally ask a Democrat, okay, what will you do if she dies for the election? Because Republicans were on the record saying, Mitch McConnell, like, it's an election year, you can't possibly vote on a Supreme Court nominee. And sorry. No, that was actually a good impression. But they said, well, he said that,

but you could tell behind their eyes, they were very worried that it would happen. I remember asking Ed Markey, because he had a primary, John Kennedy's like, well, we would fight, we would not let them get away with that, and then because they didn't want to think about the eventuality, and that's kind of where their heads are at now, is we don't want to think

about one, a world where he loses, or two, there's a world he already fell over, which was used to be if a president trips, that's all anyone knows about them, that happened early in the term. What if he has some press conference and just fritzes out like a Westworld robot? And like, what if there's-

What if what happened to Mitch McConnell happened to him? Yeah, what if that happened to Biden? What if there's a debate with Trump and he just loses his place? It would be game over. And they all know that, but getting them to admit that. So that's where you have to say, okay, off the record, what do you really think?

And then they'll start to say some of that. But on the record, they can't comment. They're like, no, we don't want to envision, what if we envision this and it happens? What if it's like we say it in the mirror three times and then this horrible thing happens to Joe Biden. So they don't want to talk. And how many times you might ask,

do Democrats need to do this? They did with Ginsburg, way lower stakes for Feinstein, but same thing. Like, yeah, she's old, but I don't want to deal with it later. Like they keep doing this to themselves, the Democrats. Yeah. Well, you're making the case that like, this is the best thing that they can do given the circumstances

Politically, yeah the February 2024 circumstances. This is what they're trapped into and so everyone's just sort of yeah forced to like make the best Of this yeah, what about his decision to run again? I mean there was a point at which he said he was gonna be a one-term president Caretaker president blah blah blah deep bench, etc And then he delays a long time to decide whether or not he's going to run. And then he does. Is that like, you know, looking at that decision making was that I'll put it this way. Was that a party decision or was that a Biden decision or was it both?

It was more of a Biden decision. And what changed was what changed for Democrats was they had a pretty good midterm. There's there's another world where if that midterm was like 2010 and Democrats lost the Senate and they lost 50 seats in the House, I think there were, I know because you're talking Democrats for the election, they were saying this, there would have been immense pressure. Like, okay, okay, we can't do this again. We need to have an open, and even if they wouldn't say we need to have an open primary, there would be people running against Kamala Harris. You talk to Democrats, the vice president,

there'd be, there were Democrats saying, yes, she will not, they'll say that on the record. I mean, I've talked to like democratic governors who I think might run for president, and they'll even say, oh, or I should be careful. They won't say on the record, yes, I'm running. But when they talk about 2028, they notably don't say, well, the vice president's gonna be next in line.

They start to speculate. They were ready to do that, but it was a pretty good midterm and nobody had a precedent for that. Nobody, not in 60 years had Democrats had a good midterm. Yeah, yeah. And it kind of seemed as though, I think for a lot of Democrats Biden overperformed as well like yeah

You know I'm not a partisan But I have issues that I care about that I talked about on this show of course one of them is labor another another one Of them is anti-trust enforcement. You know anti-monopoly work and Biden did a much better job on both of those things then I thought that he would Better than Obama. There's a lot of people I know who are very frustrated with Obama and they've been happily surprised on both of those issues. Actually, Obama was terrible on both. Yeah, because of those issues, they're all in on Biden. Yeah. And so I think there's I think maybe, you know, Biden was a lot of people's not first choice.

Right. And sort of ended up being in this weird way, the consensus candidate after basically the kill shot for Bernie was like, let's all just rally around Biden. Obama makes some phone calls, et cetera. Yeah, sure. A lot of people were sort of grin and bear it with Biden. And then we're maybe a little bit pleasantly surprised by some of the actual policy achievements. I'm sure environmentalists feel the same way with the Inflation Reduction Act was like the up and down that that went through with Joe Manchin and yada yada came out much better than there was like a real black period where people were like,

oh my God, we're gonna lose our chance for a generation. And then the final bill happened. And it was, oh my God, he pulled it out. And so there's a lot of that also happening around 2021, 2022, right? Yeah, I don't know what would happen in midterms without that, but he got much more of his agenda passed

in a super divided Congress than Obama had in a less divided Congress. The one thing that changed, the filibuster got watered down. So Biden could just ram judges down down the line that Obama couldn't. But on the rest of that, I mean, Obama would struggle for a year to get enough Republicans on a bill to let it through. Or every Democrat on a bill and reconciliation. And Biden had a much easier time. He outwitted, I mean, that was the thing. I think a lot of his age concerns went away temporarily because he totally outplayed Republicans. In 2022, they thought they had beaten the Build Back Better agenda, which then becomes shrunk down the Inflation Reduction Act.

And there's this little tantrum that Republicans have because they'd stayed, they thought they won. They split the infrastructure bill. They passed that. And they were so angry. They're on the record that they were we were betrayed. And Democrats point out, we didn't promise you we're not going to pass anything else. You killed it.

Like, we're allowed with our majority to pass some stuff. But, you know, Obama was not regularly doing it. We got Dodd-Frank through when they didn't want it. But Obama was not outwitting them. Obama was getting outplayed a lot. And when Biden outplayed them, that was new for a lot, that really energized Democrats. Again, in that window where they might have been saying,

this guy's too old, they were thinking, no, no, no, he's figured this out. Well, that and Ukraine, whatever people think about Ukraine, they start to say, okay, he can physically travel there and have the meetings and work all night on this, then he's probably still got it. Even if you look at just the Congress

and Biden signing laws party, he's still kind of outwitting them. The immigration bill, where they killed a bill that was their idea full of things that they wanted, and Biden said he was willing to sign because of dissension on their side, like they basically hand him a defense against the immigration attack of like,

I wanted to sign their fucking bill and they didn't let me sign it. So like, it's their fault. Like- Yeah, he did it in Michigan with unions for Trump. So I'm gonna go rally with unions and Biden actually went first president to walk a picket line.

And I remember the coverage of that. It was, is Trump outwitting him? Is Trump outsmarting him? I mean, he completely outflanks him. He gets the UAW endorsement. That happens a few, that's happened enough. Then maybe that depresses the Biden should give it up to chatter for like a week.

But it happens enough where Democrats, loyal Democrats and the elected Democrats say, do we really, we know the problem, but like maybe 20 more of these incidents, can Americans see that and say he's actually still got it? Yeah. Yeah, that's the odd thing is that all of those, what you'd have to call political successes, whether or not you like the outcome,

even if you're a Republican, you hate the outcome, you have to kind of look at some of those and go, well, he got us there, he got us there, he got us there. They aren't translating into a view, overall view of Biden of like this guy's a winner. Yeah, they're not, and it's because when people see him, I think this is also, could he have been different? Could an old president have been treated differently

in the age of three TV networks, nightly news, et cetera? I think so. I think the X factor that has hurt him is, I mean, I'm in my 40s, I grew up reading newspapers. When do I go and buy a newspaper read it for rent to cover anymore? I don't. People younger than me, are they checking,

like let me go watch the entire presidential speech, or are they seeing a video on Twitter that went viral of him like mixing up the names of the Egyptian and Mexican president, or him walking and looking old when he walks. I mean, this is one thing that hurt Biden, literally hurt Biden was that he tripped and broke a bone before he was sworn in.

And if you're old, your bones don't heal. You're not like a kid anymore. He's had a shuffle ever since then. A lot of Republican attacks are just, look at him shuffle out of this press conference. And if I'm barely paying attention to Biden, I look at a video, he looks, oh, he looks pretty old. I don't pay, do I pay attention to the rest of it?

That's been their problem. They have not figured out how to punch past that. Like he'll have a great speech. This is a, Bernie Sanders used to say this, I think he still probably does, but like if I gave the greatest speech you've ever heard, greatest speech is the iceberg address, and then I slip on a banana on the way out,

the press will cover the banana. And that's how it is for Biden. Well, we've spent enough time talking about that here on this show. Let's start talking about the policy and let's start talking about Trump because we've listed what Biden is running on, the things that he's done, et cetera.

What is Trump running on? You've said that he has gotten more extreme in this campaign versus the prior one. Yes, he he is running on both restoring what he was doing in office. Which was what exactly? Well, by the end, it was if remember some of his last acts are banning diversity training in the government, trying to reverse CRT. A lot of things that weren't working for Trump

because he was so polarizing, he leaves office, Republican activists pick them up and they get some momentum. The wall, the border wall and immigration, that's part of it. So his immigration position is both, let's snap back, let's do everything I was doing when I left office, some of which you can't literally because he was using the pandemic to restrict anyone

entering the country for asylum reasons. We'll find a way to do that. And we're going, instead of dithering, we're going to use the national, we're going to call up National Guard from red states who in the last three years we've learned Republican governors will call up to secure the border. We'll use those guys to both secure the border and round up migrants from around the country. Every way we can to find a migrant in the country, asylum seeker,

we're going to pull them into one place where we can process them and kick them out. That's one thing. He wants 10% tariffs on goods, which is one of the things that the Koch Brother, the Koch organization, they're not brothers anymore, that was backing Nikki Haley and just gave up. That was one of their top issues is, oh God, this guy is going to impose a new tax on everybody. He's serious about it. He thinks he wants a trade war. He wants to, when it comes to Ukraine and Russia, same thing kind of reset where we were.

When it comes to Israel, he's talked less about it, but his position when he was president on Israel was do whatever Likud and Bibi Netanyahu say. Like have America back up whatever decisions they want to make. So it's really go back to what he was doing, but with more loyal people who will actually enforce it and with judges who they think will let them get their way. And one-

Less normals and more his people. Yeah, so that's been the big project of the, and you read about this, Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, there's multiple projects going on in the Trump orbit, because when he comes into office, and there are not that many mega people in the trenches. There was the campaign, it's really shambolic,

but there's not like a generation of young conservatives who can staff the administration. They think that now there is. There were four years of people in the administration having jobs, now they're credible, they're experienced enough to apply and get a new job in this. He wants to do an executive order right off the bat

that would let him fire a lot of federal government employees and replace them with conservative activists. So really, it's a way to figure out what Trump's gonna do beyond listening to him is go look at headlines from 2020 about a court blocking Trump or Trump proposing something like one of his ideas is harder in force is getting rid of birthright citizenship. Anything Trump kind of dreamed about that he didn't get, he's kind of ready to do this time and ready to beast it out and dare the court to stop him. And honestly, I'm not making a comparison here,

but the way that Biden dealt with student loan forgiveness of we're gonna try every avenue and if the Supreme Court blocks one, we're gonna do this one. It would be that immediately and not about student loans. If you've got every other Trump agenda item that got stalled. I mean, he barely talked about, I mean, he acted on a lot of, you know, taking the fluid definition agenda out of public law.

Obama added it, Trump took it out, Biden added it back in. Take that out, take away a lot of health care access, try to repeal the Affordable Care Act in part again. He doesn't talk about it. But all that stuff would be, all right, now that we know how we failed before, let's go in and succeed at all that. Let's take all the ideas I was trying to do, run them again, and this time with better judges, better, I mean, more better appointed by Trump, we're gonna win those things. I mean, you saw that happen with the Muslim ban.

He wants to bring that back immediately. He had to fight for a year to get that through courts last time. He now has a conservative court that he's very confident would say, yeah, you can do that. You can, presidential, president wants people not loud in the country.

Sure, he can do that. We've convinced ourselves that Trump was right all along. So yeah, it's- But he's also replaced a lot of the court justices or judges over the years and justices as well. Yeah, and what a lot of, one thing to watch with them, any kind of Republican priority, a lot of stuff moving through the courts right now,

conservative attorneys groups know where to sue. So they will sue in Texas, specifically Northern District of Texas, where there's one judge, Reed O'Connor. There's another district, Judge of Texas, Matthew Kazmarek, two judges who they know will rule for them on almost everything. For their two years when the Obama, sorry, when the Affordable Care Act was in limbo, sort of, that was Reed O'Connor. They went to Reed O'Connor. He said, yeah, I looked at it and it turns out it's unconstitutional.

They do that for a lot of things. There's one in progress now, the Elon Musk supports to get rid of the NLRB. There's one to get rid of basically the power to regulate. All that stuff, they're like, yeah, that's in progress. So we're gonna pick up that ball and be able to act on this agenda immediately. And I mean, the ambition of those lawsuits,

the multiple lawsuits against the NLRB are just shocking in that they are arguing that a hundred-year-old government department is unconstitutional. For like a hundred years, it's been violating the Constitution and they're looking to abolish it. That's a massive lift, right?

It's a massive thing to argue. It's the maximalist version of, I don't like labor laws, I wanna end them. It's like reversing the clock literally a hundred years. Yeah, that's, watch this, the Chevron deference case. It's like this, one of these phrases that for now kind of puts people to sleep. Oh my God, I forgot about the fucking

Chevron deference case. No, I know, I know it, it is a thing that puts you to sleep and yet it's so important. And that is being, where is that at, fuck? It's already been argued, so we're kind of waiting to see if when the justices, this is the annoying thing, I like covering elections because they're dates.

We all know when people show up and vote on it, judges can take their sweet time. They can release this whenever they feel like it. I mean, we saw this with the Obamacare decisions. Again, that judge in Texas released it only after the midterm election 2018 so that no one was voting on it. That could come up. And that's the thing is they think they're sort of foaming the, foaming the wrong way is the wrong way to put it. They're sort of setting the table for Trump to come back and have way, much fewer bureaucratic impediments,

both firing people in the government and people in the government who just won't have the power to stop them. So for those who don't know the Chevron Deference case, I believe, if I can say my dumb dumb version of it, it's like possible that the Supreme Court is going to rule that government agencies basically can't make legally binding decisions anymore, that the EPA can't set

gas emissions, that the Labor Department can't set labor laws. OSHA can't tell you, I don't know, not to let people die on the job, whatever it is, I don't know the legal niceties, but it would be a massive change in that. It would reduce the power of most government agencies massively and like really change our entire legal regime. And you're making me realize, oh, in a way that would benefit Trump where he to be reelected. Yeah, because one of his priorities the first term was the rule they put in place was for

every new regulation they wanted to pass, they would get rid of two. And they got rid of a lot. I mean, this is I was I, I was covering Robert Kennedy Jr. over the weekend. This one, one thing I'm obsessed with is, uh, you know that Alex Jones will talk about the chemical that makes the frigging frogs gay, et cetera. Trump deregulated that, Biden regulated it. And if you made the APA unable to regulate without Congress approving it, then it wouldn't be regulated. So, uh, Trump had all these officials in position to pull back the rules, but it would take a while. Getting getting rid of rules, a very boring, painstaking process, hard to cover as a reporter, can people kind of zone out. But it takes, you know, you got four years in office, it takes you like a year to get that done. If the courts say we don't need to, we need to go through the rigmarole. They just can't act. You can get in there and all of a sudden Because it's not like a lot of what conservatives want to do does not require regulation Just require stopping the regulation from happening or changing the definitions in the code so that that's why I keep bringing up gender and transgender rights

You just need to change some of the wording and say executive order. We've redefined this And you get it, you get your way. So that's the difference with Trump is not that many new policies, but quicker, more intense, and more enabled versions of what he was doing before he left office. And things that sound like an even bigger disruption to the last century of American life. Absolutely, yeah.

Like eradicating entire departments, things of that nature. Things that are hard to conceive of actually happening until maybe they do. It also strikes me that a difference this time is that he's running much more as a culture warrior. In 2016, I remember him saying, you know, I'm gonna be the best president LGBT has ever had. He like said at the RNC,

he like said some version of the acronym, I remember. And now he's the absolute opposite of that. Like he literally, I remember in 2016, people were like, oh, he's actually pretty good on gay stuff. And I don't think anybody thinks that now. And that's a really interesting dynamic because, I mean, the culture war for as loud as it is, and as loud as the people who wanna fight it

from that side are, it's still a minority of Americans who give a shit about culture war issues, correct? If they don't give a shit or when they realize something's under attack, they mobilize. I mean, you saw this in the last week with this Alabama Supreme Court decision.

Trump took a week to respond to that. Trump did not want to, when he wants to talk about something, he can. I mean, he has true social, he can immediately react. They avoid, we sent him, every reporter was sending them questions like, hey, so if he's president again, how does he deal with this?

Does his FDA allow it to happen? And we've asked questions like, will they prohibit, will they, under the Comstock Act, prevent the abortion pills from being sent in the mail. And they don't talk about it. But so he has a record of how he acted that's different than the apprentice star Trump people thought about in 2016. He was this New York guy who clearly doesn't care about this stuff. Mike Pence exists, he's the holy roller. Right. Donald Trump is not. Yeah, you're right. Trump has leaned more into this,

but you can tell when he's worried about discussing some social issue. He's worried specifically about abortion. He thinks abortion is a loser. There was a Times piece a couple weeks ago about, quietly he's decided on a slightly more liberal nationwide abortion. 16 weeks, Ben, yeah. 16 weeks, whereas some activists want less.

He kind of wants everyone to shut up about it, like in private, that's what he says to people. But on, you know, anything related to, you know, gender rights, anything along those lines, anything race-based, he's like on stage going like, we are going to put trans people in camps or whatever the fight, and they're like, ah, like, right?

Yeah, we will get, he wouldn't say the word eradicate, but he will refer to transgenderism. Right. And just what it means, the reason I keep saying gender in like a blander way is that under Obama, gender was defined, before Obama it was defined as related to your sex. Obama changed the code so it was, you know, the more fluid there's sex and then

there's gender, gender is separate. Trump changed that back, just a ton of stuff changes in terms of like the healthcare that you can get on Medicaid and Medicare related to gender medicine, that changes completely and Trump never talked about it, now he does. And he has a lot of his speeches, he does like the stuff that's most popular, but he'll talk about transgender athletes in every speech and make fun of it and just joke about how, oh, I could have the best female basketball team ever. I tell LeBron, you know, LeBron, can you pretend to be a woman?

He never used to talk like that. He's gotten much more culturally right-wing, which is, I want to drag us back in time to the Biden thing, but that's one thing Democrats talk about is this version of Trump is like much more of a of a Conservative that people don't listen people that people don't like to elect as president He doesn't have the sheen of different than those other guys. I'm not a politician Yeah, he is running more right-wing than he used to and their thing their their question is will people pay attention to that? Well people notice that? The Alabama case was one where they did

and you kind of squirm, but in every area, in every area, I mean, the people who Trump appoints, he only has so many family members, you know, he's got his like daughter-in-law who put the RNC, unclear Ivanka and Jared will be back administration, but the movement folks who get appointed are all those conservatives who believe. And here's the thing, how was Donald Trump lived?

I mean, he's gotten married three times, et cetera. He's not like a paragon of, you party with Epstein. He's not a go to church every Sunday sort of guy. But the people in his administration would be, and they're very clear how they would govern. And what they love about him is that he still has some of that appeal. There's still a lot of working class white guys

who would never vote for like a Rick Santorum, but Donald Trump, yeah, he's fun. I'm not trying to patronize them. He just, he doesn't seem like he's obsessed with those issues, but in the crowd, he'll talk about them. Like, and I've seen that, I've been to that many Trump rallies this cycle, but he does emphasize the cultural issues that he thinks are gonna play,

but much more than he did before. He just wasn't doing that in 2016. In 2020, even less so. That election changed because of George Floyd, because of what was happening around the country, he started to do a lot more, we're gonna indemnify our cops and that's another thing he talks about now

is they already haven't basically indemnity, but letting cops loose, do whatever they want to like shoot shoplifters things like that. Yeah, he was going on that path already. But this is new the the extra cultural stuff. Because whatever he thinks their belief in the conservative movement is there we have let the culture slide we've let secularism take on too much ground. We've let let we've decriminalized even pornography.

I know there are conservatives, there are laws, in Utah, Louisiana, there are laws to limit access for everybody to pornography. Those are the kind of people who won it in the administration and Trump will kind of hint at that much more than he ever did in his previous races. It almost strikes me that he is kind of like a podcaster who, who like starts going right wing is like, well,

when I say this, I make a little more money. When I say this, I make a little more money. When I say this, I'm explosively popular. Now I'm touring in arenas. I know standup comics, this has happened to, oh my God. Cause there's a big audience that loves this shit. They just want to hear me get up there and slam trans people. Oh, is, Oh, let me at them.

That's what happened with it with the swimmer, the athlete stuff. Trump was getting a big reaction. And so he started to play it up. Except that that works great when you're a podcaster, because if you have 5% of the entire country who loves to hear you talk about that stuff, you can be, you can make so much money. Yeah. But if you're trying to win 51% of the electorate, or 51% of the electorate in the States, the electoral college, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Does it actually play that far? I mean, does he have to eventually stop

talking about trans swimmers? Now there's so much footage about it. I mean, there is a degree to which regular, is there still a degree to which regular people get turned off by like, oh, why are they yelling about trans people so much? I have a trans friend and they're okay. You know?

Oh yeah, it's, he, definitely there's stuff he talks about that's more alienating, but doesn't get covered. I don't think it always does. I've noticed this, I'll listen to Trump speeches and take a note, write a story. But then a month later, he's at a rally, he does it, and there's more media there, and people start writing this.

I'm not trying to say I'm smarter than them, just- Yeah, you're paying attention when someone else wasn't. Yeah, there was another story that week, and I noticed that he did it. I mean, he talks all the time about freeing January 6th political prisoners or hostages. He has a song that they've sung that he plays at his rallies, and that didn't get a lot of attention,

and then it did, but it gets buried by a lot of other news. But he is very responsive to the crowd. I mean, I think the ultimate example of this was he had a rally in 2021 in Alabama where he mentioned the vaccine, everybody get your vaccine, and people in the crowd booed and then he became anti-vaccine. Also, not a popular position. Most people got vaccinated at some point. Like this is not actually one of the party's most popular ideas, but he took that on. And one thing about Trump, it seems obvious, but I think matters a lot. When you don't think you lost the election that you lost,

you don't adjust. He's never said, oh, there's something I screwed up in 2020 and I need to tweak that and make sure I don't say that again. He doesn't think that way. He thinks that when he when he runs, he wins. When he says something, it becomes popular or already was popular with his base. Right. So he he will say things and promise things that I think do

alienate a lot of suburban voters. I was in New York for the special election. Democrats won a couple of weeks ago and I heard that like there were like plugged in voters in Long Island who were very worried about things Trump had said. Some of that penetrates. Yeah. But that was a low return on special election.

I grew up on Long Island. Yeah, yeah. Pretty much all Long Island went for Trump. But they're not like all pro-lifer. Exactly, they're like just sort of, you know, people who work in the city and take the train back and forth, you know? Like they're, but something about Trump

appealed to them in 2016, but a lot of those folks are not, yeah, they're not like movement conservatives, they're not that type of person. Yeah, absolutely. And so some of what he's saying does alienate people. And that's when Democrats spend money on these things, it's not, they talk a lot about the threat to democracy,

et cetera, January 6th, that's unpopular to bring it up, but they really will lean into abortion especially. A lot of the ads Democrats have paid for are women describing the experience they had in Texas or in Alabama because of the Dobbs decision and say, Donald Trump did this, Donald Trump's gonna do more of this. Yes.

And it's not popular. So the individual things he says, I think Democrats have lost their sense that if you talk about it, it can drive the news cycle because people do tune out a lot of what he says. Their bet about the election, I mean, and this is another thing that I'll say, Gavin Newsom will say it,

is going back to our first couple minutes here, people still don't think they're gonna have to put up with a Biden-Trump rematch. And they're like, once they realize it's this guy, once people are listening to the speeches, we're gonna say, hey, did you notice this like five minute section that you suburban voter who thinks Biden is too old is really against?

They think that's how they'll run the campaign. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, I also can't believe that we have gone this long without talking about the fact that Trump is being prosecuted in multiple jurisdictions, so many that I know a couple of them have been mired and Fannie Willis, all this other shit, right? But like, is there not a chance that there's going to be a verdict in a couple more of

these before the election? That's another way that this is like a historically weird fucked up election that one of the candidates is currently under criminal prosecution and there could be a verdict before the election. Is that not the case? It is the case. That's the flip side of Democrats quietly saying,

well, how do we deal with Biden? Is some Republicans do say, the ones who didn't want Trump to come back, something's gonna happen at some point. We need to continue contingency in case he is convicted of a crime. This is why Nikki Haley is still in the race, which she won't say, right?

As she's like, well, if he goes to prison, then hello, it's me, someone's gotta stick around. Yeah, the weirdest iteration of this was Vivek Ramaswamy before he dropped out. His final stretch in Iowa, his slogan was save Trump vote Vivek. And he would say explicitly, he did this, there's a radio ad I remember driving down the road listening to that's like 55 seconds of him saying how great Trump is saying, that's why you need to vote for me. And the argument was explicitly the deep state is going

to try to put Trump in prison. And if they do, a backup plan that's me. That's the discourse in the Republican Party is everything, we're not just talking about Republicans think but the way that most Republican voters interpret this and we've seen this in the exit polls and the primaries is if Trump is accused of something it's fake it's all an effort to come to nail him unfairly and if he is convicted for, that's also fake. That's how they see it. There is a cohort of Republicans who say, well, but no, it would be bad. If he actually is convicted, it didn't help him that he has a mugshot. Yes, he raised some money that month, but he's incredibly unpopular and people don't like the idea of a president

being under this level of criminal suspicion. And his answer to how he would fix it all is he gets elected president pardons himself. Also not ideal. I mean, when Hillary would get in trouble in 2016, I don't think she could have said, don't worry everybody. Yes, I had a private server, but if I win, I can pardon myself.

That has not been tried before. So what Trump's trying to do is pretty audacious. And there are a lot of people who just say, I don't want to have to deal with that. Yeah. Yeah. I think though that you don't hear that much about them because in 2016, a lot of people have this belief, I know I did, that there were a lot of normal voters

out there, normal voters who would not like that stuff. Well, aren't there normal people who will say, that's weird. I don't like weird things. And then Trump won with, you know, not winning the popular vote, but it sort of, you know, changed politics to a large degree. And I feel like things have gotten so crazy over the last couple of years that a lot of people have stopped believing that normal voters exist. Everybody is either a Democrat or a MAGA, you know,

QAnon vaccine denier type person. But are there, are there still regulars? Yes, but yeah. And then in polling, you will see that most people, so most Republicans vote for Trump and don't think anything that he says is wrong or anything he's accused of is real. Most Democrats, and this is the difference,

they'll say, oh yeah, Biden's too old, but they're still voting for him. wrong or anything's accused of is real. Most Democrats, and this is the difference, they'll say, oh yeah, Biden's too old, but they're still voting for him. And then there is this block of people who have their different priorities, different issues. And in general, those voters say, no, I don't like Trump, and I think he is corrupt. If you ask people, which is the corrupt candidate,

Trump has won. I mean, I think Marquette had this two weeks ago. Majority of voters think that Trump is personally not moral, is corrupt, has committed some crimes, but they're processing that versus Biden being old. And Democrats can't believe this, but that is the discourse. Most voters are convinced, yes, Trump is corrupt. And if he's convicted of a crime, they'll be convinced, yeah, that's probably real. Yeah, I mean case by case fewer people think that about the Alvin Bragg campaign finance thing. More people think that about January 6th, although you mentioned it's got kind of screwed up by the Fannie Willis part of this.

But the Jack Smith prosecution and him taking the documents, people think that's real. People do think it's real is just the how many of them will convince themselves. Well, nah, think it's real is just the how many of them will convince themselves. Well, no, he when he's in there, they're always out to get him. And things work out for me personally. It's not ideal. I can just turn off the news and not pay attention to his criminal problems, which is new, which is again, a new thing in politics like that is usually campaigns tried to avoid any other campaign.

If you're running for governor and this happens to you, you're probably losing. Right. It's, it's very unique for Trump that most people, I wouldn't say most people, that a lot of voters will say, this is wrong, I wish he wouldn't do this, it's illegal, but I might have to put up with it. He is in a unique position, but that's different

than a position where most people don't think it's true. Most people do think these charges are true and real. Most people do think he, do you think he knows he lost his way 20? Yeah, it's a question of can they put up with it? Not quite the same thing, but you know, the Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, that's the choice most Republicans made

in the Texas legislature was, yeah, what he's accused of, it sounds pretty real, but his enemies are probably out to get him. And they just, he was impeached, but they didn't convict him because that argument kind of won out. He's the attorney general. He's allowed to get away with this stuff. Look at his enemies. Look who's trying to get him. Do you want to side with his enemies or do you want to side with true conservatives or end Trump who endorsed him? And they said, well, yeah, we're going to blow this off. I mean, if you have that ability to get your base

to say this is not real, it helps. And Republicans create this permission structure for him. Some of it trickles over, but that's why I keep emphasizing. Your average voter who doesn't like this election and is not particularly liberal or conservative, that voter thinks that Trump is legitimately in hot water. They just are trying to process it and say, well, leaving that aside.

It's very weird. Yeah. On our premise that this is a weird election, yes. That is weird. I've never covered anything like that before. Yeah. It's, there's so many bizarre things happening that it feels difficult to,

normally I like to sort of add up the fundamentals. Okay, this happened, that happened. And you play your little political prognosticator. And in this case, so many things scramble that I don't know which way things fall. Okay, let's take another example. Let's talk about foreign policy. Let's talk about Israel and what's happening there.

Now, when Israel started this horrific campaign in Gaza with the support of a lot of the Democratic Party establishment, my first thought is like, oh my God, this splits so much of the Democratic coalition. Even here, even what we, my belief is what we call progressive, when people say progressive, that's when like leftists and liberals agree, right? That's what progressivism is. And suddenly you've got this wedge in between the two groups that like,

you've got the people who hold their nose about Gaza stuff and you have the people who that's their number one issue or the people who are, you know, they're Democrats but they are legitimately pro-Israel. And then suddenly you've got like a wedge between them that's like scrambling a whole bunch of races, even here at the local level in California.

But then on the other hand, I'm like, well, hold on. So I wondered, is this gonna affect, you know, the Democratic party in their chances in this upcoming election? But then I was like, hold on. On the other hand, Trump sure probably has a lot of anti-Semites who love to vote for him. It's difficult to tell what effect this is going to have and it's such a massive event that it scrambles things

in ways that when you combine them with how weird everything else is, you can't make heads or tails of it. So what do you think about how the events in Israel affect the race? Oh, I've been reporting on that because there's this campaign that's ending with the Michigan primary to affect the race? Oh, I've been reporting on that because there's this campaign that's ending with the Michigan primary to get the biggest vote possible for uncommitted on the Michigan ballot.

You have the candidates. You always have an option. This is uncommitted in case you want. And if uncommitted got a 15 percent of the vote, it would be it would qualify for delegates. So there would just be this block of votes that no one has yet has at the convention. There's a campaign to get to maximize that vote against Biden. And the people running that campaign who I've talked to have said,

look, for a lot of Democrats, if this week they vote for uncommitted and he changes course, they'll come back. For some, they're never going to come back. There are people they know who said, I voted for Biden. I voted for Hillary. I'm not going to vote for this guy because of the way he completely supported Netanyahu with the bombing campaign and didn't take action to stop him as he could have. Which is true. I mean, there are George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, there are presidents who said, hey, hey back off.

I'm not sure I'd be too light about this, but you know what I mean? There are ways to say, we are going to pull support from you because you're doing this. The first thing Biden did was the settlement order, but that's it. So they're already saying, yeah, this split the party. Did it split it so that we've lost maybe 5% of our vote of our Democrats in Michigan or 20%? We don't know yet.

It really depends on, is this, I mean, cause think about the election being November, would there have been a year and a month of war in Gaza? How many people would be dead? What would the situation be like? They're saying that we can't control that. What's going to happen with the war will determine if those people come back into the party on the right.

I don't see the same thing because there are some anti-Semites, but just it. Luckily, there's not that many. I mean, it looks if you if you log on to certain websites, it looks like everyone is. Yeah. And they all bought like a check mark. Well, and when Trump ran the first time, there was the sheriff's star and like all that stuff. Like that was a real strain.

There was a strain of antisemitism in the election that year. But they've generally, not that I'm sitting around talking to all those guys, but they generally make the calculation. Biden's gonna do 90% of what Trump does when it comes to Israel. We'll put up with that. We'll put up with that in order to get 90% of what Trump does when it comes to Israel. Uh, we'll put up with that.

We'll put up with that in order to get the rest of Trump, which is the four mentioned camps for migrants, things like that. They're like, they're putting up with it in the way that I think, um, left, left-wing folks who are, uh, adamantly for proceeds fire and not putting up with it. Yeah. They're like, uh, you know what? I'm a racist. I want a racist president.

He's racist. If he's a little nicer to Jews than I like, you know what, he's racist to everybody else, I'm fine with it. Like they're willing to hold their nose for the slight lack of, I mean, I don't even know, like, or the support for Netanyahu or whatever. They're able to hold their nose for that. Yeah, you can log into some prime X spaces

and hear that conversation happening. And generally that is where they end up is some people. People, you know, like Prussian lover 69 or whatever will say, we'll say basically what you said. But there's there's not that many of those. And it's not like they're the reason that the Biden campaign has been so panicky is because there happens to be a state with a large Arab American population that he won by three points.

And if if he lost a lot of that vote, could he win? And I talked to like Jill Stein over the weekend and that's kind of her third presidential campaign is in large part, I am the stop the war candidate and I'm going to be campaigning for those voters. Right, okay. And there's not something happened to Trump. There is not a candidate who says,

I am the right wing guy who hates Israel and I'm gonna take 3% of the vote. I was wondering, because you said all those people are leaving or I said they're not gonna candidate who says, I am the right wing guy who hates Israel and I'm gonna take 3% of the vote. I was wondering, cause you said all those people are leaving or said they're not gonna vote for Biden, who are they gonna vote for? And I forgot about Jill Stein entirely. And of course those are the votes to be scooped up. Yeah, we're gonna give you an escape patch

where there's not a right wings escape hatch for a frustrated Trump voter. Now, no labels is gonna do something rather, but not when it comes to, the particular type of voter you're talking about, they're not gonna have a better alternative. So they'll stick with Trump or, you know, maybe they live in a super safe red state

and they won't bother. But it's not a problem for his flank the way it is for Biden. And I can't fault people who are, you know, gonna not vote for Biden for that reason. You know, it's all well and good to say, oh, hold your nose or whatever. But for some people, that's their main issue.

That's the thing that they care about. Then it's something I care about a lot. For some people, it is their number one thing that they care about only. And like, he legitimately lost them. Yeah, I know people who they live in Queens and they're gonna vote for AOC, but they're not gonna vote for the top of the ballot.

And their response is, what, is Biden gonna lose New York because I didn't vote for him? Yeah. And not that I'm trying to like win whip votes for any candidate, but honestly, no, probably not. You're probably, you can probably vote. That will happen. So that's the question with Biden is how many people are going to protest vote. And I think it is determined, it does determine, it is determined, I should say, by what happens in Israel. Yeah, if the war was still going on in November 2024, no way are those people coming back to vote for him. Let me tell you something, Dave.

I don't think things are going to be good. They are in November 2024. Yeah. They think they're going to wrap it up in six months. They think they're going to rebuild all those buildings. I don't think we're going to have a hyperloop across the Gaza Strip. No, I don't think things will improve that much. And the conversation that I,

oh God, I just cannot, maybe I just won't log into Twitter for a while or mass it on our threads or Blue Sky, about like, oh, well, you know, even if you still need to vote for Biden because Trump is much worse, it's like, at some point it's the candidate's fault. The candidate has to go put the coalition together

and you can't just like, if you are trying to shame people into voting strategically rather than about the shit that they actually care about, you have lost already. It's such a pointless argument to try to shame people. Sorry, it's not a. Yeah, that's why the conversation is, okay, we've still got state primaries. Can we protest vote?

What can we do to move the guy? And like one thing happening is direct action where people are showing up to Biden events and heckling. Heckling is kind of a cheap way of putting it, protesting, showing up and saying, you're genocide Joe, stop the war, stop the killing in Gaza. Like they're getting in his face

and trying to pressure him in that way. And I've seen some of that same discourse, but if you're worried about the election, like that's not the election. They're doing what the electoralist liberals say you should do, which is protest, be very loud, and then maybe think about voting in November. We've got some time.

We've got 200 something days till November. So that's a weird discussion for me of please stop, it hurts. I mean, I talked to Ro Khanna, the Congressman from Silicon Valley about this and his position is because he wants to he wants there to ceasefire and his position is it hurts. It hurts. But if you weaken Biden in a race with Trump, we want to be Biden to be in a strong negotiating position. We want him to be negotiating position because I've talked to him, he is not like Trump.

He does not want to deliver everything Netanyahu wants. And if we weaken him, his hand in any negotiation is not as strong. That's not a very popular position, but that is the liberal position I've heard, is stick with him and show up and protest. And that's about it. And this is what wrote a congressman

who wants to cease fire says. But yeah, that's a really fine needle to thread. Right, I'm just saying the other devil's advocate position is that, if you're wondering what it is. Let's talk about, we're already over time, but I cannot stop talking to you. So we'll give it another five minutes or so. Let's just talk about the amount of money

that's in the race. Who is putting in the most money and where is it going? Well, that's a great question because Trump is not raising money like he did in his last campaign, more than 16, less than this time. The big question right now is which wealthy donors come back to him because they're gonna suck it up and they know he'll be the nominee.

Not all, but a lot of them. Tim Mellon, who's one of the member of the Mellon family, one of the biggest Republican donors, he's given a ton of money. I was talking to a Republican source today who was convinced that Elon is going to come in with a donation because the Elon brand is something different than it was four years ago. It sure is. They think a lot of money will come in from people who see an existential threat from liberals getting to run things, but they haven't really yet. There also might be money coming in

if they think he's gonna win, and they're like, that's a reason Elon might put in money. Oh, this guy's gonna win, I wanna see it at the table. Oh yeah, I'd love you to make my cousin the guy who makes sure there's no more regulation from the EPA, like that kind of thing. Those donors exist. More people are giving to Biden so far.

The Biden fundraising operation actually has improved. It's been out raising Trump every quarter. And that's, he's not getting the kind of small dollars that Obama did or that he did last time. But the answer is a lot of the big wealthy donors are still holding out until it's official. And they're also holding out because the RNC is going to meet March 8th, new chair, because Trump wants a new chair. And they haven't really fully answered if money given to the RNC

would be for the Trump legal defense. That's another thing donors are waiting on. But it's the same people. It's the same people who, you know, if you have, there's certain amount of wealth where you're just gonna keep, your capital sits around and makes money. So if you gave $10 million, you're gonna get that $10 million back in like a week. Those kind of donors are coming around. And Tim Mellon I mentioned,

because he's given to the Kennedy Super PAC, Kennedy has no idea why he says, but Mellon is hedging his bets and saying it's gonna be tough for Trump to win So I would like there to be a high profile third-party candidate that picks up some of those just whatever gets Trump to 270 electoral votes. I'll do it But not a ton not a ton of these guys have shown have shown leg yet It's like member the Mercer's in 2016 a lot of donors did burned. Peter Thiel has said he's not gonna give in this election. And that's kind of the next thing to watch

is which of these guys change their plans and come around to support him. With Democrats, Biden's gonna make, I think actually a little bit less money from the financial sector just because he has pissed them off. I mean, his SEC, his FTC have been much more progressive than they wanted. So how many of those people are gonna say,

I'm so pissed off, I'm gonna go for Trump? Again, I think that's gonna be kind of sorted out in the next month or so, which these people are moving. Yeah, and how much that conflicts with their cultural predispositions. If, you know, I mean, yeah, the FTC is going after tech companies, are those people gonna hold their nose and give money to the person who thinks they think will regulate them less or to the person who, yeah, you know, doesn't want to put gay kids in the camps?

Yeah, I mean, in 2020, it was Sam Bankman Freed and his associates were giving a lot of money to Biden because they wanted to be on that winning side. Right. And have a hand in deregulating crypto. Right. And he's, we know where he is now. He's like being sentenced in the near future. But that industry still exists. And they know that Biden's regulators don't like them.

I think they'll come back in the fold. They're already moving in the California Senate race against Katie Porter because they hate her. But there's going to be, I think watching the campaign money really is like watching avalanches. Like nothing, nothing, nothing, and then all of a sudden, psh, thunder clap, and it all comes down.

Yeah. And they can hide it too. Yeah. I mean, be ready for, in September, some PAC you've never heard of that hasn't declared its donors and doesn't have to until after the election, suddenly being everywhere.

I'm confident that'll happen. How do you feel covering this? I mean, so many people are stressed out and doesn't have to to left the election suddenly being everywhere. I'm confident that'll happen. How do you feel covering this? I mean, so many people are stressed out about the election all the time. Yeah. And you're living it day in, day out. Does the sort of like the fact that it's your profession

and it's, you know, it's the shop to you. Does that distance you from it? Or do you sometimes like, you know, pour yourself a stiff drink and say, God, this is fucked up. Yeah, I've covered it. I've covered elections since 2006. And I've seen them,

I've seen the entire environment get worse in important ways. Whatever one thinks of the mainstream media and their ability to control narratives. And when I was coming up, if you're a progressive, you couldn't stand the mainstream media and their ability to control narratives. And when I was coming up, if you're a progressive, you couldn't stand the mainstream media because it was, you remember 2000 and them calling Gore a liar and obsessing over that.

And you'd split boats in 2004. And you wanted a counter, not like a constant debunking, but an independent media that was critical of that. And then one exists. And right now it's on the right. There is a media apparatus that exists that has no interest in what's on mainstream media. One thing that has changed is Trump does not go around

and talk to, meet the press that much, he did it once. He doesn't do interviews with critical people. He goes on Newsmax, he goes on Fox, he goes on podcasts. So that's one frustration is that we were in talking about policy, it can be hard to figure out what Trump's standing for because he does these interviews where they don't push him on anything and that's gotten worse. In terms of my own reporting, I try to cover lots of layers of politics. So there's the presidential race, which is a lot

of talking to strategists, the rallies themselves, you don't learn a whole lot. There are the down ballot races. There's covering donors. There's just like the blocking and tackling of politics where you're in a, you know, convention hotel talking to people about about what they're trying to get done, how they're writing the platform for finding stories. I mean, week to week, I'm just saying I'm just saying, what is a story that's relevant where I can be there, where I can be

there, where I can find something new? So I don't get very freaked out about that. It's the overall election where I do feel and worry that people can get into their silos more than ever and not pay any attention to the consequences of the election. And it's not like if you learned, if somebody heard the greatest elevator pitch from somebody who disagrees with them, maybe they're not converted, but they may not even know what the policies are.

Yeah. There's a lot of people who might care about what Trump wants to do on the border who might vote otherwise if they realized. Yeah, I mean, one thing I hear from, Trump will say stuff about how bad things are going, that they're not true. He'll talk about gasping $8.

And I mean, we're right where we are now. The most expensive gas in the country, it's not $8. It hasn't been, I forget if it ever was. One point right at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he will catastrophize things. And I do sometimes wonder how much of the country is hearing him catastrophize things

and just doesn't know that't know the doesn't know that things aren't that bad yeah you'll see this take a poll how are things in the country terrible how is the economy it's doing terribly how are you personally doing oh great yeah you see that all the time so I worry that people are not so much for my job but I worry that people are both getting into their own informational hole that doesn't have any light coming in or freaking out unnecessarily because they're reading, you know, looking at scrolling at videos of crime happening in some city they don't live in from three

years ago and freaking out that somebody's gonna bust down their door. I worry about just everyone else freaking out, I think, and think how can I write stories that are, all right, here, fact here factually thing that happened thing that's interesting Yep, don't worry about the freaky video. That's meant to Make you buy a gun and get really paranoid. Please pay attention to reality That's all I can that's what I like to cover and the death of journalism and legacy media is not helping the dynamic that you're talking About and I will say that the the right wing parallel universe media machine I don't think they're having big layoffs at Newsmax, right? Like they did at the LA Times and the Washington

or wherever else, you know? So, I mean, it makes me grateful that people like you still exist at all who are actually covering and actually know what is happening and what is being missed. What do you, for folks who are trying to follow the election better and not fall into these silos and these traps, where do you suggest they go,

what do they do, and where can they find you on the internet? Well, they can find me at Semaphore, it's a company. I was one of the first employees there. We started in October, 2022. It's free. I mean, I read a newsletter called Americana that comes out twice a week where I'm trying to, this week's a good example.

Like my date lines are from three different states. I try to get around the country covering stories and we try to cover, the way we write stories is we break apart the hard news. Here are the facts of the thing that happened with the analysis and the quotes, which has been pretty helpful. We find a lot of people who say they got tired of seeing a headline and thinking like the headline was telling them what to think. They like the way we write it. But beyond us for covering the election, I think Politico's had a great year. I used to work with the Washington Post. They're having they're very good, especially at taking a couple weeks to dig into some

policy that Trump is running on in a serious way or that Biden's running on. But often, all right, Trump's been kind of saying this at rallies. Here's how it would work. They've been doing great. And Bolts is a newer website that covers local politics, especially kind of DAs, crime, judges. That's probably the smallest thing that I read like every day. And it's very good at finding stories

that if you're in a community that lost this newspaper or that got it shrunk down, you might find out for the first time, oh, that's who my sheriff is? I didn't realize that was. That site's really invaluable. So national politics, it's your times, your post, your politico.

Financial Times, I think is good for 30,000 foot stuff. And then Bolts is really good for local stuff. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Dave. It's been fascinating and maybe we'll have really good for local stuff. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, David. It's been fascinating, and maybe we'll have you on after the election to pick apart the wreckage and tell us why this fucking shit happened. Thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was great. Well, thank you once again to Dave Weigel for coming on the show. If you value conversations like that, that we bring you every single week, I hope you'll consider supporting Factually on Patreon. Just head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover.

Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. We have a community discord, a bunch of other great features for 15 bucks a month. I will read your name at the end of this podcast and put it at the end of every single one of my video monologues. This week I want to thank AAK193, Jasmine Andrade, April Nicole, Tsuchi Sue, and Solar Yeti. Thank you so much for helping make Factually possible and keeping it free for everybody who wants to listen.

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And until next week, I'll see you on Factually. -♪ I don't know anything!