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You now have to finish the job. There's more to do. After officially launching his 2024 campaign focusing on Donald Trump, President Biden dismisses concerns about his age. I can't even say the number.
It doesn't register with me. Idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not is not something that I think is likely. Meanwhile, Donald Trump keeps his focus on Biden and the general election. He is grossly incompetent, has no idea what he's doing.
Are Biden and Trump in a codependent relationship? Do they need each other in order to succeed in 2024? I'll talk to Vivek Ramaswam, a millennial entrepreneur who's running for the Republican nomination. Plus Disney vs.
DeSantis. Disney sues Florida's governor on a six, accusing him of retaliating against the company. I don't think this you guys married. I think it's political.
But Republicans are now distancing themselves from the issue as the battle with the entertainment giant escalates. I do wor this happens too many times. Businesses are thinking about coming to Florida, saying maybe we don't want to go there and border, sir. The Biden administration is racing for a potential wave of migrants at the southern border when a Covid era restriction ends in less than two weeks.
Our border is not open and will not be open after May 11th. This is irresponsible. Will Biden's new strategy make a difference? I'll speak to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayor.
Plus look for me there. Grieving for his father and trying to honor his legacy, Luke Russer has written a new book and how he dealt with the sudden loss of his death. Joining me for insight and analysis are NBC News Washington correspondent Yamichel Sindor, former Democratic senator From Missouri, Claire McCasper, NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Ryan Nobles, and line check, a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Welcome to Sunday.
It's Meet the Press from NBC News in Washington, the longest running show in television history. This is Meet the Press with Chuck Cotton and a good Sunday morning. You know, it was 10 years ago this very month that the Senate so called Gang of Eight rolled out an immigration reform plan that they believe could finally pass Congress. We all wish we didn't have this problem, but we do and we have to fix it because leaving things the way they are, that's the real amnesty.
I think 2013 is the year of immigration reform, but it was not and the laws haven't changed. Two years later, Donald Trump would launch his presidential campaign, building his entire political identity on the issue of being tough on immigration and to border. Trump even promised a wall off the nation's 2,000 mile southern border. And though the wall didn't materialize, its administration, in an attempt at deterrence at the border, instituted policies that included separating migrant children from their parents and and instituting the remaining Mexico program, which sent migrants back to Mexico while seeking U.S.
asylum. Biden endorsed a sweeping immigration plan in his very first day in office, but the plan went nowhere, even though Democrats controlled both houses of Congress at the time. Instead, the administration has adopted several of the Trump policies he once criticized, including the transit ban, which will force some migrants to apply for asylum from their home countries. Now, as Biden formally runs for a second term, the immigration issue, which he never mentioned this week in his announcement video, continues to be one of his toughest challenges.
In 2021, more migrants crossed the southern border than in any year since at least 1960. And in 2022, the record was broken again in two weeks. An emergency public health rule known as Title 42 that has allowed both the Trump and Biden administration to expel migrants and block most access to a sign of the border since March of 2020 allegedly prevent the spread of COVID will officially expire. And the US Relationship with Mexico has perhaps the government that is has perhaps never been worse with cooperation on the drug war at its lowest point in decades, thanks to an administration in Mexico that doesn't seem interested in dealing with the Cartels.
Fentanyl, which is produced in Mexico with chemicals sourced from China, is now the leading cause of death for America between ages 18 and 49, according to our friends at the Washington Post. This week, ahead of Title 42 expiration, the Biden administration announced new steps to stem unauthorized migration, including opening new processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala, creating a new family reunification program and increasing assistance to counter smuggling online. Security Secretary Alejandro Marcos acknowledged there would be a border surge, but he also said it does not mean more migrants should come. The smuggler's propaganda is false.
Let me be clear. Our border is not open and will not be open after May 11th. And Secretary Mayor will not be pressed. Good morning, Chuck.
Look, before I start on this, there's been a horrific execution style shooting down in Texas. Authorities are now. Sir, there's a manhunt right now for somebody who's armed and dangerous. I know you've been monitoring this.
DHS is monitoring this. What can you tell us about the alleged suspect, Francisco Orpesa? Chuck, it's a horrific crime and I can assure you and the American people that law enforcement will deliver accountability. The case is an active one, under investigation, so I really can't comment further.
There's some question about his citizenship. He supposedly had a, I guess they refer to as a consulate card from Mexico, meaning he was here legally but perhaps he overstayed. So Chuck, I won't comment on it because it is an active case. Tragedy that occurred is, you described it correctly, just absolutely horrific.
Our hearts go to the victims and the victims families, those children and we'll deliver accountability. We know federal authorities are involved in this right now besides FBI and local authorities. The DHS are you and as your team, border patrol at all. So we are monitoring the situation very carefully.
But the FBI is a lead federal investigative agency and of course working with the locals there. Let me move to the announcement and what's coming in life after 42, there is already reports of Brownsville taxes right now. Shelters are overwhelmed. The cities of Chicago and New York are already overwhelmed.
What's May 12 going to look like if we're already overwhelmed before the expiration of title for a few things. Chuck, first of all, this is a really tough challenge and has been, as we all recognize for years and years. We are seeing a level of migration not just at our southern border but throughout the hemisphere that is unprecedented. It is, I think, greatest migration in our hemisphere since World War II.
The President on day one delivered a solution. He delivered immigration reform legislation that we had hoped Congress would act on swiftly. They haven't. Within the constraints of a broken immigration system, we are doing so much.
Our approach is to build lawful pathways, cut out the ruthless smugglers, deliver lawful pathways so people can access humanitarian belief without having to take the dangerous journey from their home countries. And at the same time, if they arrive at our southern border, in between ports of entry, we will deliver consequences. All right, I want to go through some specific scenarios. So an unaccompanied minor under 18 that comes to our southern border on May 12, what happens?
We follow the law, and the law provides that we take custody of that child and we have 72 hours within which to transfer that child and that unaccompanied child to the Department of Health and Human Services. It is for the Department of Health and Human Services, hhs, to identify a relative, a sponsor in the United States to whom they can transfer care of that child is at all. Do you accept the idea that that is all considered a loophole to get into the country? Chuck, we have to take a look at the humanitarian issue here.
These are parents that are suffering such desperation, whether it's by reason of an authoritarian regime, tremendous violence, acute poverty, persecution, that they are so desperate that they send their children to the southern border alone. We have. The law provides for humanitarian relief for these children and we enforce that law. All right.
When a family comes to the border, if they've not done any of this pre filing, they've not filed for an asylum claim beforehand, they come to the border on May 12. What happens to a family with children under the age of 18? So we will exercise our enforcement authorities in a traditional immigration context. Remember, Title 42 is a public health authority, not an immigration authority.
That was delivered in response to the COVID 19 pandemic. When that ends on May 11, we will use our immigration authorities under Title 8 of the United States Code, that family will be placed in immigration enforcement proceedings, removal proceedings. They will make a claim. If they make a claim for relief, we will adjudicate that claim for relief swiftly.
If they. So it could be days or weeks. It is not going to be months because we've seen that in New York, migrants are getting court dates in 2033. How does that happen?
So we are. What we have done now is we are going to be able to exercise our immigration enforcement authorities. We've been precluded from doing so by a court. We sought to end Title 42 long ago.
Title 42 does not deliver an immigration consequence. Title 8 of the United States Code does. If an individual is removed under Title eight, they will encounter an at least five year bar on readmission to the United States. Here's a question I have.
There are 2 million asylum cases in the backlog right now. What happens to new asylum claims on May 12? Do they get put in line behind these 2 million cases? Do you think this is why the acquitted education.
I get it in theory. How does it work in practice when we're sitting on a 2 million case backlog? So we're going to focus on recent border crossers. But the point, the fundamental point is we have more than 2 million cases in an immigration backlog that has been building year over year over year.
What a powerful example of, of a completely broken immigration system. We have got to fix it. We need legislative reform. What is a.
I've gone to this before. I know there's a comprehensive aspect that we need. But just for border enforcement and migration, you need more money for what? You want more processing centers in country.
Do you want to decide Colombia, Guatemala, do you want to open up centers in Honduras? Could you even open up a center in Venezuela? Or do you trust that government to allow us to do that? So, Jacques, we need resources for it all.
But remember, the resources will enable us to move more quickly, more efficiently within a broken immigration system. So I just want to be clear that we are working within significant constraints. We need people, we need technology, we need facilities, we need transportation, resources, all of the elements of addressing the needs of a large population of people arriving irregularly at our southern border. What's the definition of secure border to you?
It is in the context in which we are working. It is maximizing the resources that we have available to us to deliver the most effective results. And something that is overlooked, that I speak about frequently, is the fact that our apprehension rates at our southern border are consistent with the apprehension rates in the prior administration. And why is that?
It is because of the extraordinary and extraordinarily heroic work of our United States Border Patrol. But the challenge is enormous. I want to ask you about Border Patrol because the union doesn't like you and they make it pretty clear on social media this month and last month, month before. These are all from Border Patrol.
The Border Patrol union on you, the chicken. They're coming to roost because of what he's done. They call you a national disgrace. Remove.
Mayorkas was their most recent tweet. How can you lead a group of people whose union wants you out of office? Chuck, I'm incredibly proud to work with the United States Border Patrol. I have supported them vigorously since My first day in office.
I will continue to do so. A tremendous source of pride. And I will tell you. Let me take a dissent.
This, do you think this is, this is media perception? Why do you think it's a political dissent? It's a redefine. Just simply you're in a Democratic administration.
What do you believe it is, Chuck? I'm focused on mission. That's what I'm focused on. I look at their needs, I try to fulfill their needs.
We go to Congress and seek support. You know, this is the first administration since 2011 that has plussed up the Border patrol with more agents. Our request of Congress for fiscal year 2024 is another 350 Border Patrol agents. That hasn't happened over 12 years.
Let's talk about the fentanyl issue. The biggest impediment in dealing with the fentanyl issue. Is it American's addiction? Is it the Mexican government's inability or frankly passe relation to the cartels?
Or is it the fact that China so easily exports these materials? What's the toughest aspect of this, Chuck? It's a matter of supply and it's a matter of demand. No different than the surge of drugs that has afflicted this country for decades.
But I will tell you something. I was a federal prosecutor for 12 years. I prosecuted cocaine trafficking cases. Methamphetamine, black tar heroin.
Heroin. We haven't seen anything like fentanyl. It's toxicity, it is these cartels are peddling in death and destruction. But we have to stop the flow of fentanyl and we also have to address the demand.
You know, in the 80s, we covertly worked with the Colombian government to deal with these cartels in Colombia. And we had success. Is it time to deal? I mean, I know some people are calling for more direct military confrontation with these cartels or to call on terrorist organizations.
But is it time for a strategy that is similar to what we did with the Colombian cartels in guineas? So a couple things. Number one, we are taking it to the cartels with unprecedented strength and focus. And there's a misperception that Mexico is not a good partner in our fight against.
Is that kind of an ally or not? They don't act like an ally these days. They are an ally and we have a very close partnership with them. And how come they don't help themselves?
They seem to just allay this. There's a misconception. I will tell you that we have transnational criminal investigative units. Our Homeland Security investigations personnel are in Mexico.
Denies it Though Amyl himself denies it in public. Somehow they're, that they're having any anything to do with trafficking. Chuck, I can't speak to his public statements and I can speak to what happens on the ground operationally. And we work very closely with our Mexican partners.
You know that fentanyl, though, you know, precursor chemicals, the equipment used to manufacture it, much of it originates in China and we've got to stop that flow and what is the other way to do that? So of course our relationship with, with China is not very positive. We are working with our Mexican authorities, we are working with our partners internationally to put pressure on China to interdict the flow, to identify the transport companies, to cut off the finances, to hold individuals and companies accountable. Ask you your in cabinet meetings, there's a lot of questions about President Biden and his ability to serve in a second term.
You see him up close, face to face. What's a, is he up for a second, Sir? Oh, Chuck, 100% incredibly sharp, incredibly probing, incredible command of the details. Probing on the details, asking tough questions.
Absolutely. I'm incredibly proud to serve in his administration. I am incredibly proud of the work that we have done across the board. You full confidence he can full service Secretary 100%.
Secretary Marcus, big task ahead of you. We will be back in touchscreen. Thank you, Chuck. Look forward to it.
Thank you. When we come back, he's the youngest candidate running for president. 2024 Vivek Ramaswam, a millennial businessman running for the Republican nomination. What's he next?
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The youngest candidate that's announced in the 2024 field is currently introducing himself to books. Vivek ramaswam is a 37 year old multi millionaire who graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School. He made his fortune at a hedge fund and in biotech. And he ran an asset management company which calls itself Anti Woke.
A first time candidate for political office, he says he has plans to start an anti Woke cultural movement. We're in the middle of a national identity crisis. That means a vacuum and its weight. And when you have a vacuum that runs that deep, that is when poison fills the void.
Pick your favorite one. Wokeism, transgenderism, climatism, globalism, covidism. And Vivek Ramaswamy joins me now. Welcome back.
Thank you. Good to see you. Let me start with this overall look. You've got this anti wokism.
You've written books about this. This is your political identity as you've introduced yourself to folks. I get it in the primary. Why are you convinced this message could actually work if you got that nomination in a general election?
I think I'm speaking as a member of my generation here, Chuck, but I think it's true of all Americans. We're all hungry for a cause right now in America. We're hungry for purpose and meaning. At a point when the things that used to fill our hunger for purpose, faith, patriotism, family, hard work, these things have disappeared.
So I see an opportunity to revive our missing national identity. I think that's something that Americans hunger for across the political spectrum. Answering what it means to be an American today. U.S.
people come that question, you get a blank stare in response. I think that is the vacuum at the heart of our national soul. I'm running for president to revive the ideals that actually set the nation into motion. I think it's a united country.
Yeah. It's interesting. Your rhetoric can sound uniting. And your answer just now.
But then you. You say the following things. The trans movement has become a cult. We need to abandon climate religion in America.
I definitely find the idea of systemic racism revolting. I say this. How do you square those statements with unification? These are divisive times.
This is a polarizing time. We're pretty evenly divided on these cultural issues. How do you unite the country when you're essentially denigrating the views of half the country? I don't think I'm denigrating views of half the country.
I mean, let's take the toughest of those subjects right now on the trans issue. I think that when a kid says that I'm born into the wrong body, that my gender doesn't match my biological sex, more often than not, that is a case of a mental health disorder. That doesn't mean you disrespect that person. It means they're crying out for help.
I met with two young women who regret the decisions they made going through double mastectomies. Want a hysterectomy, Chemical intervention now trying to teach kids across the country that when you're struggling inside going through adolescence. Yes, that involves some struggle. We live in a cultural moment today where adults are affirming that confusion rather than actually you're treating them compassionate.
That's cruelty. You ever talk to parents that have a kid who's going through this? I have actually, yeah. My point is that what we need to do on both sides here is act with compassion.
Not really what makes us feel good about ourselves. And that's my main issue across what? Responsibility, the climate. It's solving the actual underlying issues rather than what allows you to signal your virtue.
What makes it compassionate though to pass a law that denies a parent making their own healthcare decision for their kid? That's the part of this that doesn't sound very conservative. In small governments, there isn't a state of this human that allows you to smoke an addictive cigarette before the age of 18, that allows you to tattoo before the age of 18. That's a body altering change that a kid may later regret in life.
So I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that if you're after 18 years old, you're free to decide what you want to do. That's what means to live in free country. But below the age of 1899, it's perfectly legitimate to say that we won't allow general mutilation or chemical castration to be blockers. But how do you know it's that again?
How do you know? Are you confident that you know that gender is as binary as you're describing it? Are you confident that it is in a spectrum? Do you know this as a scientist?
Well, there's two X chromosomes. If you're one and X and Y, that means a lot of scientific research out there. There's a lot of scientific research out there that says generous spectrum. Check that.
I respectfully disagree. Gender dysphoria for most of our history, all the way through the DSM 5 has been characterized as a mental health disorder. And I don't think it's compassionate to affirm that. I think that's cruelty.
When a kid is crying out for help, what they're asking for is get asked the question of what else is going on at home, what else is going on at school. Let's be compassionate, get to the heart of that rather than playing this game as though we're actually changing our medical understanding. For last time, if a parent is dealing with a child that has these and they have these issues, trust me, the parent, the last thing they want to do is consider something like this. But if that is what they think could help their child pursue happiness, or they're not to kill themselves, why take away that option?
Again, why shouldn't it be up to the parent? So part of why parents now suddenly feel like, well, let's ask ourselves that, job, because we create a culture that teaches parents that they're being bigoted or that they're bad people if they don't actually take those steps. So part of what I think is, listen, gender dysphoria for the rare few people who have suffered is a condition of suffering. My question is, why on earth are we going out of our way to create even more of it?
There's no doubt that the cultural women in this country of education is creating more gender dysphoria. If it's a condition of suffering, let's not create more of that stuff we're doing. Ask you about Disney does not work with Ron DeSantis. On one hand, I assume you agree with pushing back at Disney the way Governor DeSantis has rhetorically.
But is there a point where you think it's too much to use government to punish business? Here's where Ron DeSantis really lost it here. He's gone the wrong path, he claimed. And this part actually sounded good to me.
Disney should have never had crony capitalist lobbying related privileges in the first place. Here's the part he doesn't mention. One of those crony capitalist privileges was, and I think the most relevant one was codified into law by none other than Ron DeSantis in 2021. So Florida passed this political anti discrimination statute, which I applaud at the time.
It says if you operate Internet companies, this includes streaming services like Disney does, that you can't engage in viewpoint discrimination. Now here's the funny bitty little secret of that. They wrote into a last minute exception to that law for anyone who also operates a theme park more than 25 acres in the state of Florida. That's crony capitalism.
So irony is Ron DeSantis, who's now railing against crony capitalism and rolling that back, was the one who actually passed that into law for the case of Disney. So I think that undermines the credibility of his crusade. I prefer to get to root causes rather than doing political stunts. Let me ask you about the idea of cancel culture, because I feel like the criticism that the right was making up the left two years ago, that it looks like some of the right embracing cancel culture, I think, but light, I think about the transgender representative in Montana who was basically kicked, not allowed to Speak on the floor.
Do you think some of this is going too far? So, look, I'm an opponent of victimhood, culture, cancel culture, you name it. I've written a book about this. I do think that the way the culture war ends is not with a bang, but with a whimper where both sides get infected by those same norms.
So the right's been infected by this. One of the things I said to conservative audiences across the countries, we have to be the party of free speech, open debate. We can't be the party said that says, I won't talk to. I'm here talking to you, NBC.
There's other candidates in this race that said they won't talk to NBC News. Ron Sanders is one of them. Why? I go to college campuses where other candidates refuse to go.
So we got to practice what we preach. I'm in this race as a millennial, as a young person who lived the American dream, to actually walk the walk when it comes to free speech and open debate. And yes, I would like to see other Republicans rise to that occasion and do better, starting with the debates stage in our own party this fall. If Donald Trump doesn't do debates, will you not support him?
He's an amendment. Well, I'm not gonna get away with that. Donald Trump would have me let him get away with these. Well, he can do what he wants to do.
I don't think the other candidates, including Donald Trump, are going to relish being on that debate stage with me. But I think that the way that he shown in 2015, what people gave him credit for was that he was outsider and a disruptor. I'm the outsider in this race. And I think if you want to be part of, like Joe Biden, in an existing establishment that doesn't want a debate, what should the party use as leverage to force him to show up on their debate stage?
I think it's the voters. I think it's my and the job of candidates to tell voters that if you want someone sitting across the table from Xi Jinping, if you want someone with a spine to take on the administrative state, it's top of my domestic agenda, you better darn well not be scared to show up on a debate stage with a new challenger. Donald Trump did a great job of that in 2015. On the outsider in this race, you have indicated you would support a six week abortion ban.
If you were a governor of a state and all this, what would you do on a federal level? Would you, would you create a floor? So I believe in principle on this check I'm unapologetically pro life and like many the pro life movement, I believe that abortion is a form of murder. Murder that was regulated by the states, not by the federal government.
I believe in the Constitution. I think Roe was wrongly decided. I've said so for a long time. This is a matter for the states, not the federal government.
And a standard principle. When does the fetus have constitutional rights? So look, six weeks is at the end of life. When you lose brainwaves, that's a moment of death.
Where in the Constitution does it say someone has constitutional rights as a fetus? It's not codifying the Constitution. It doesn't matter for the states. But I do believe that I'm unapologetically pro life.
But one of the areas where we can do better in the pro life movement is to walk the walk, provide an easier option for women to get to. Yes, I support a conversation about adoption, childcare, even greater responsibility for men. And that's how we turn this issue into being less devices. One of your big applause lines that is a bit of a head scratcher for me is defund the FBI.
So if I didn't say defund the FBI, shut down the fi. So you want to shut down the fi. What you're replacing with, I think it's a new apparatus built from scratch that actually respects the law instead of making it up. The funding charge is if you look at over liquidity, the FBI constantly is making up the law.
That is a huge charge. They just stopped major fentanyl, been able to get rid of it. There's a lot of work the FBI does other than respond to complaints from elected officials who don't like investigations. Actually if you look over the course of the last 60 years, J.
Edgar Hoover, what he did to Martin Luther King, that wasn't a front. It's still the J. Edgar Hoover FBI that people walk into down the street here in Washington D.C. and I personally believe it's somebody who's running to actually run the executive branch of the government.
We have a bureaucracy whose culture becomes so ossified every once in a while you need turned over. And I think, yes, we need federal law enforcement, but that institution has in a bipartisan way become so, I think ossified in its own norms, even corruption, that we need to rebuild it from scratch. And has to replace the FBI with a new FBI. Well, with a new institution built from scratch to carry out federal law enforcement.
Because the existing FBI people who work there have worked there for so long that actually they're getting their own way. I think that's actually important. And by the way, I also sound like it doesn't sound like you just replaced the FI with the fa. Well, the problem is that people have worked there for decades.
And so what I say is if I'm the US President and I can't work for the federal government for more than eight years, which I think is a good thing, then none of those bureaucrats reporting to me should it either. That's the point I'm making. All right, dvek, I'm responding. You bring some energy to your campaign.
We'll be following it. Thanks for coming on and share. Introduce us. Good to see you, Chuck.
Thank you. Before we go to break, I meet the Press minute. When President Biden officially announced his re election campaign this week, his age immediately Biden would be 82. Inauguration if he was to win Trump, by the way, would be 78.
Second was President Everlasting. The average age of a president at the start of the first term is actually 55. Back in 1975, then President Gerald Ford was 62 at the time. Mind you talking about the role age played in his own upcoming election.
Here we are looking at 76 and most of the leading candidates are old geezers like me in their 60s. Now, we seem to have misplaced the generation here somewhere. Is the system out of phase? What explains this?
I think age is a state of mind and obviously a state of health. I'm in the early 60s. I feel as vigorous mentally and physically as I ever have at any time in my life. I don't think you should rule a person out just because they're my particular age.
On the other hand, I don't think you should rule out a younger person who by experience or intelligence or overall capability is a potential candidate. That was 48 years ago. When we come back, it's an extremely codependent relationship. Why the president and his predecessor need each other to run their 2024 campaign.
Panelist welcome back. Panelists here. MCC's Washington Corp. Hill Corner, Noble at the Hoover Institution and former Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill Yamiche.
When we saw the announcement video from Joe Biden, it was not about what he did. It felt like it is about who's running against again. And it felt very much almost like a they even referenced the first video. He really needs Donald Trump to be the nominee.
And Donald Trump responded this Thursday by sir, focusing on him. Are they in a codependent relationship? There is definitely benefits to having both of those men run against each other in both of their minds. I also think Democrats are really coming to the realization that the culture wars that we talk so much about, Republicans for waging also is something that Democrats should be robustly talking about because their voters are mobilized by that.
The first few minutes of that video were January 6th, abortion, and then you got into book banning. Having talked to voters, Democrats are very worried about their own freedoms and really want to wrestle that word back from Republicans. So I think you see Joe Biden in that video making that case and making sure that people say, okay, we might have done something for the inflation of the bills, but your life isn't taken. I think there's a little bit of a fear, frankly, that's being leaned into there, which we also saw on the Republican side.
What's interesting to me is on your being in Congress. You're already seeing members in each party start to focus on the other. Politically, for us, it's helpful. Former President Trump is front Senator John Jesper.
It's probably better for Biden to have Trump as a nominee. Then you look at the Republicans. Dave Carney's strategy. MJ Bide Biden is an easy target.
Wesley Hannah, Congressman protects us. Two more years of this. I'm more and more confident every day. It is fascinating that both parties think the other guy is what keeps them.
I've covered a number of political campaigns where you set the stage of saying, the only person that can beat this candidate is this guy, and the only guy that can beat this candidate is the other guy. And it does seem in many ways that that's what this presidential campaign is shaping up to be. You know, the polls, you know, the poll that we just connected this week shows pretty clearly that most Americans don't see either of these two guys at the top of the ticket right now. But we're in a situation where there aren't clear alternatives.
And I think every time you go back to having this conversation of if it's not President Biden, then who is it? And the same thing with President Trump right now. His stranglehold on Republican, which I see every single day, particularly in the House of Representatives, is so strong. The idea that there would be some sort of Republican alternative in a serious way right now, you know, just doesn't appear to be that clear.
If Trump weren't there, would there be more Democratic? Oh, I don't know. I don't think so. You know, like, would Joe Biden run no matter what?
Yes, he would. I mean, inflation's down 40%. He's created more jobs than Almost any president in the history of our country. He got the infrastructure bill through that Donald Trump kept talking about for weeks and weeks on end.
So he has accomplishments and I think he enjoys the job and I think he would run no matter what. No question. But this is the other thing shock that people forget. This is never a referendum.
Presidential elections, by the time they run around is always, well, who do you like slightly better than the two you don't like? So it is a binary choice. And even if it's not Trump extremism is on the ballot for the Republican Party decide whether they like or not. And most of the time this century close, right?
That isn't the case. Lonnie Trump's focus on Biden right now, I don't sense that the Republican primary electorate is that interested in having a primary, do you? It doesn't feel that way right now. It's funny because we're pretty late in the primary cycle, but people will say that, I mean, so the reality of it is I think the way this feel, the way that this contest is shaping up, it's pretty clear people realize there's going to be one ticket against Trump.
Trump will be there. At the end of the day, the question is who the other person's going to be. And you see that the interchanges, for example between Governor Haley and Governor Santis, you're seeing a lot of people now starting to go after Ron DeSantis because they perceive, listen, there is an opportunity to be that other voice against Donald Trump. We'll get to early next year, I guess.
But boy, Ron DeSantis, you know, have Republicans almost universally now criticizing his handling the Disney thing. We play an array of Republicans critiquing him. I don't think the idea of building a prison next to a place you bring your families is the best idea. I do worry that if this happens too many times, businesses are thinking about coming to Florida saying maybe we don't want to go there.
If Disney would like to move their hundreds of thousands of jobs to South Carolina, bring the billions of dollars with them, I'll let them know. I'll be happy to meet them. I don't agree how Disney has handled things, but you don't use the heavy handed government to punish a business. Ryan, the number two candidate is getting the pylon right now and not the front runner.
Yeah, it's interesting. I talked to some dissensus advisors about this. There is a recognition about how he's being pillared right now by not just Republicans but Democrats as well. And what they keep saying is just wait for him to get in the race.
You know, he's obviously amassing a huge war chest right now, both within a super pack, and he has the ability to raise a lot of money as a candidate himself. And so they're, you know, their feeling is, until he's actually a candidate, we really shouldn't be overstating the difficulty that he's having in this early part of the campaign. You mean there was a former Florida governor who had so much money that was going to be a huge factor in 2015 that didn't work out very well. And you look at Rod DeSantis and I talked to some concerns about this.
They say going toward you with Disney, not only does it look petty and look small, but you're also going after a huge employer of blue collar people who are going to be your base voters. So Disney start telling their employees, hey, this is a problem. And here's the person who's making your life hard. It's going to be hard for Ron DeSantis.
Is this over before it begins? I don't know what to say. That. Boy, it smells rough.
I think a lot of this does, Jimmy. It's not about him getting the race. The question is these primary contests are always sort of battles of attrition, infrastructure building, all that stuff that doesn't get covered. That's what matters.
And so he's got the money to be able to compete in a way that I think people. People need to pay attention. I mean, look, the last couple weeks have been uneven. There's no question about it.
But that is not what I pay attention to, Claire. Barack Obama was in this position against Hillary Clinton. Maybe he's not gonna get there. Do you see any similarities or do you think DeSantis is a different spot?
I think you cannot compare DeSantis to people who have been tested on a national stage, like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. This guy's not ready. He declared war. He doesn't even know what victory is against Mickey Mouse.
Give me a break. Mickey Mouse. When we come back. The cultural wars can be used to motivate the baseball political party.
But our latest NBC News poll reveals why they may be an important test for candidates in 2024. Welcome back into Download Time. As we head into 2024, the culture wars are dominating the conversation right now as we continue to debate what kind of country we should become, how quickly the change should happen. Numbers from our most recent NBC News poll suggest the nation is pretty open to social change and that possibly Give Democrats an advantage, advantage with some of these cultural issues on the national electorate.
Let me show you what I'm talking about here. Do we need to do more to increase social justice? It's a pretty popular expression of support. Overall, 70% of Americans agree with that.
And believe it or not, there's not a ton of differences by party. 91% of Democrats agree with it. But 67% of independents look like countries as a whole. Half of Republicans believe we need to do more to increase social justice.
We start to ask a little bit more. You start to see some divergent by parties with more power and accepting that the LGBTQ community Overall, that's 61%, slightly less than the social justice number. And here you see some divergence, right? Democrats and Independent both have majorities who believe we should be more parent with this community.
Republicans, however, an outlier with just 38%. A lot of that driven by the trans issue issue of late. And in fact, on the issue of trans people, have we gone too far? And accepting trans people, plurality of the country agree with that statement that we've gone too far.
48% start to look at it by party. You see a big disparity that goes the other way. Just 19% Democrats believe that. But independents look like the Nation.
Overall, nearly 80% of Republicans believe we have gone too far on that. But I want to give you a historical nugget here. Keep something in mind. And it's the historical trend line of the legalization of same sex marriage less than 20 years ago, 2 to 1 opposition to same sex marriage.
And in less than 20 years, those numbers completely flipped. And in something in our poll we noticed if you knew somebody who was gay 20 years ago, you're more likely to support same sex marriage. If you know somebody who is trans, you're more likely to support an openness to accepting on that as well. Up next, reading for his father and trying to honor his legacy, Luke Russert has written a new book on how he dealt with the sudden loss of his dad.
Welcome back. At a crowded Orioles game at Candy Yards, Luke Russer remembers his dad Tim, pointing to a hot dog stand saying, buddy, if we're ever separated, look for me there. When Tim died at 58 of a heart attack in 2008, Luke followed his father at NBC News, becoming a Capitol Hill correspondent here. But after eight years of working in television, Luke realized he didn't have a good answer to the question of why he was chasing his father's legacy.
He set off on more than three years of travel to six continents, searching for his father and for himself. And Luke Russer, author of look for Me There, Reading My Father, Finding Myself, joins me now. Luke, welcome back to Mythbreus. It's such an honor, Chuck.
Such an honor. I still get chills every time I see the logo and hear the music. It's. It's pretty special.
I get chills introducing you right now, I'll be honest. Thank you. You were 22 when your dad died. Yeah.
And it seems that you're looking back now and realize you didn't process it then. Yeah. Talk about it. Well, he died and it was such a whirlwind of emotions.
And we came back to Washington. My mother and I were actually in Italy when it happened, which turned out to be a little bit of a blessing because we had one day to ourselves together as a family, as mother and son, to begin to process what happened. He was with you two days before he passed away at the Vatican, which is so fitting considering my father's Catholic upbringing. But when we came back, we thought that people would mourn him.
We had no idea there was gonna be such a national outpouring of grief. He had thousands of people in his wake. And I ended up getting a eulogy at Holy Tree Catholic Church in D.C. and eventually at the Kennedy Center.
And a lot of people saw that, and that sort of catapulted me into a very public, forward facing space that I was still trying to sort of reconcile. What should I do? I think the beginning weeks from graduating college, I graduated college and about three weeks later, I'm looking out over a set of pews of Barack Obama, John McCain, Ethel Kennedy, Joe Biden. It was a whirlwind.
Still surreal. It is still surreal. And I look back on that and I think about, man, 22 year old Luke. You had so much courage, you had so much boys that you never really dealt with.
You lost your dad, you lost your best friend, and you went into this immediately public facing role because you were trying to preserve his legacy the best you knew, and you were trying to bring comfort to people, but ultimately not bring comfort to you. You wrote something that I thought was pretty brave about yourself. You write this. It's apparent that I spent so much time honoring his legacy.
Legacy that I never truly accepted his death. Worse, by honoring that legacy, I failed to forge my own life. Yeah, that's a pretty brave thing to write publicly, buddy. One of the things I found going through this process was I written out all these journals when I was traveling around the world, and I didn't know what was in them.
But when I took the time to read them, I realized I was looking for something. And what I was looking for on this journey was, who am I independent of my parents? Who am I independent of my hometown? Who am I independent of the ways of Washington?
And I never was able to truly figure that out because I was so attached to dad, who's my guiding light? He's gone. I try to stay in that lane, but I never really asked the difficult questions of, who are you? What do you want to do?
Because it was really uncomfortable to ask those questions. I would have to deal with the fact that he was really gone, which was something that I just tried to conveniently power through and white knuckle and not really think about too much. So of all people, it's John Boehner that's sort of flip a switch in your head. What did he say to you that made you say, wait a minute.
I was turning 30. I lost a good friend of mine at 27. My father died 58. So I saw the light in the tunnel.
Friend for getting married, getting mortgages. So I kept thinking about, is this everything that's going to happen with me in my life? This is what I want? I was having anxiety around the position.
There were so many days where I would like, not flip through on television. And I don't know why. Why is that? Why am I feeling that way?
Maybe I should take some time away. And out of nowhere, John G. The House secret time I covered rather aggressively, says, I need to talk to you. And I thought he was going to be angry about coverage.
And he takes me to his office and he goes, what are you doing here? I said, well, you invited me into your office. What do you mean, am I doing here? He goes, what are you doing here on Capitol Hill?
You go, you've been your eight years. You spent all your 20s here. Because I'm a secret house. I want to tell you something.
There is a world outside of Washington. There is a world outside of this place, the capital. Time is a flat circle here. You could end up 50, 60 years old.
And now, you know, the time has gone by by make sure this is what you want to do and go out and do something else if you want. It's okay. Go learn how to do something. And part of it, I think, was that Washington can be fleeting and the connections you make with people can be purely political.
Go out there and really understand human beings. And it was a very impactful statement because Bayonet grew up on 12 children, Catholic upbringing in Cincinnati, very similar to my father. Russell worked his way through college, so it didn't fall on deaf ears at all. I was.
I was really shaken up by it. So I think anybody that's lost somebody close to them, I think this is a book that. That can help them. You put yourself out in this.
It not easy to write about your mom. Your mom's still here. Yeah, Doing great. I mean, Mori north is a force of nature.
I love her to death. I know you do, too. How's this, changeling, sir? When one parent dies, the relationship of the surviving one for the children or the child always changes.
In my case, it was this mix of, you're now the sort of man of the house. There's always logistical things to deal with. The dad used to always take care of. But then sometimes, well, you're my son.
Just do it. So it's trying to navigate this pattern of where really are you in the structure. And also, as a mom, she was more sort of disciplinarian when my dad was a sort of good cop, bad cop, who's sort of the easier guy to get along with at some points. But then I realized when I started traveling, so my mother was a Peace Corps volunteer at a very young age when women, when they graduated college, really had limited opportunities.
It was a paralegal or teacher. And she said, I want you something else. So she goes to Columbia, goes to the Peace Corps, and it's through travel and measuring herself against the world that she really knows who she is, and she wanted me to do that. My entire life, I never really traveled.
It was not until I did that that I understood her. She had to fight so hard for everything she got. And that is why she demanded a lot of me, is that she said, you got to be tough, and you got to show yourself yourself. Feel like you found yourself.
I. I think we're always a work in progress, but as it pertains to losing my father, I'm at peace with that. I've accepted it, and I'm so much better for it. Where you headed next?
I like storytelling, so hopefully this book goes well and that opens up some opportunities in that area. All right, man. Nice to see you. Thank you so much for having me, Chuck.
It's such an honor. The honor. It's fine. Appreciate it.
Well, we'll be back next week because if it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press. Hey, it's Kate Snow, NBC News anchor and host of the Drink. This month. Demi Lovato is my guest.
The global superstar tells me that she is the happiest she's ever been right now. But getting there, it wasn't simple. Demi opens up about starting in Hollywood young and why she now thinks she may have started too soon. She talks about recovery, her new marriage, and the deeply personal reason behind behind her new cookbook.
The Drink is always about the journey to the top, and this was an honest conversation about what that takes. Hope you'll listen and follow the Drink wherever you get your podcast.