Welcome to Plaza of America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Tommy Vitor. Well, quite a bit has happened since Friday's show, and absolutely none of it has been good. Donald Trump was shot in an assassination attempt at the campaign rally. His handpicked judge threw out his classified documents case. He picked MAGA heir J.D. Vance as his running mate on the opening day of the Republican convention. And new swing state polls give him an even larger lead over Joe Biden, who spent the last few days giving a number of high-profile speeches and interviews as he tries to convince Democrats and all Americans that he's still the best chance to beat Trump. But let's start with the assassination attempt. Words that still feel just...
awful and shocking to say out loud. The investigation is still underway. Here's some of the new details we've learned as of this recording, Monday night. Head of Secret Service did an interview with ABC News today where she said, quote, the buck stops with me, but she's not resigning. So far, the picture that's emerging of the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, does not suggest he was a Trump hater, a Trump fan.
or even that political. It looks like he once made a $15 donation to one of those scammy progressive groups that fucking emails you all the time. But after that, he registered as a Republican and neighbors just told a Pittsburgh news station they've seen Trump signs around the family's house. Some classmates have said he was conservative. Others said he was bullied. Others said he liked guns. Meanwhile, the wife of Corey Compertour, the rally goer who died, told the New York Post that President Biden did reach out, but she didn't take the call because her husband was a Trump guy and wouldn't have wanted her to. But even though she's voting for Trump, she said that she doesn't blame Biden for her husband's death and that President Trump has not yet contacted her family.
So before we get to all the politics, obviously just terrifying, horrendous news for the country. I heard about it from you, Tommy. You texted. Like, how did you hear it? How did you learn about something? Were you watching the rally? I was just sitting at home. I was with James, my two-month-old, and doing nothing, sitting on Twitter, and all of a sudden just coming through shots fired at a Trump rally. I turned on the news, and I think watched it live like a lot of people did.
It's just wild that the footage was just there for everyone to see and play over and over again. Dan, you were like not home, right? I was driving back from a trip with my daughter and the last text before I got in the car was from time I said shots fired at a Trump rally, which I thought just there were shots at the rally, right? And not someone shot at Trump. And then I didn't look at my phone for an hour and a half. Got home to 1 million texts, mostly from you guys, about everything that happened. I couldn't believe that...
Trump had, someone had shot at Trump. Trump had been hit, that he was fine. But then there was the, you saw the image of Trump with his fist in the air, the bloody image. Some of the photos of the one from Doug Mills, who we used to be, you know, from the White House. Great guy. Where the incredible, great guy, incredible photographer of the bullet, like near, right at Trump's head. Just like almost an impossible thing to process to learn all about, like in one fell swoop. Yeah. Yeah. I just sort of felt sick. I was like, what is going to happen now? Yeah. I felt sick. I really did. That was my instant reaction. I felt sick. I was instantly worried.
even after we knew that it was only an attempt about the implications, about the potential for retaliatory violence, about what we might learn about the shooter. I also just was instantly worried about what it would be like for this to be processed by social media. And the other strange piece about it too was... In the same way, you know, you see, oh, you see the shots fired at a Trump rally. My first instinct is, oh, this is some kind of false or overblown made up story. Because you want it to be. You want it to be and you expect it to be because there's so much misinformation. There's so much sensationalism out there. So you've at first, oh, it's just an airsoft gun. Oh, it was it was shrapnel from a teleprompter. It wasn't actually a shooting. Right. All that is circulating. And then it's slowly becoming clear from real sources what's going on. And I really did. I had a pit in my stomach the whole day, even after we knew that it was that it was only an attempt because of an angry. And I was angry just because it takes control.
of our ability to talk about politics, about about anything and just takes it away from us in favor of what a random mass shooter or assassin wants us to talk about, which is whatever their intention or act is. Tommy, just quickly, what do you make of the Secret Service's lapse here in their response so far? I mean, it seems like having eyes on a shooter who was on top of an elevated building within sight of the president is like the most basic part of the job that Secret Service does to protect any event with either a president, next president or whoever they're assigned to protect. Yeah, the idea that an elevated position 140 yards away with a sight line, a direct sight line to the candidate was not covered by someone somehow was shocking to me. I mean, there might have been. So Secret Service, there's a bunch of different parts of it. There's PPD, who are the men and women around the president, the personal protective detail for the president. What you saw on TV was them reacting and dive on him pretty quickly. And those people are incredibly brave. You know, those individuals literally threw themselves in front of a bullet to protect the president. And they did their job and they did it pretty quickly. But then there are, you know, they partner with local law enforcement. It's not at all clear if local law enforcement was supposed to be securing this building. It's not clear to me why the sniper teams.
that were on other elevated positions, didn't see the gunman sooner. So we'll figure it out. There will be an investigation. I think it's a massive fuck up. I mean, obviously. I'm surprised that the Secret Service director is not offering her resignation. If a candidate, if a president or candidate got shot on my watch and I was running Secret Service, I would feel like I'd failed at my job and resign. I'm sure there will be independent investigations. There will be internal investigations. Biden's in a weird place on this because he's standing by an agency that he is in charge of through Homeland Security.
But I mean, I hope that, you know, Congress will get involved. Maybe there'll be some sort of select committee set up to look into what happened because the Secret Service has had a bunch of near misses and a bunch of bad scandals. And I think as an organization, they are not doing great. Yeah. And that's been true for a while. Yeah, I mean, even though we knew a lot of the Secret Service did an incredible job, but I was in the White House when the guy made it into the White House, the guy who jumped the fence. Yeah, that's right. I was there when they found the bullet holes at the top of the White House that no one knew when they came from. So this has been a problem for a while. Biden did ask for an independent investigation of this, which I think it becomes the basis for making a decision on the future.
So after the shock passed and it was clear Trump was OK, the first understandable reaction from a lot of folks in politics and media was that, you know, everyone needs to tone down the rhetoric and lower the temperature of the political debate in this country. Biden said as much a number of times over the weekend. Trump himself posted Unite America in all caps. And he did a print interview with Selena Zito of the Washington Examiner, where he said he tore up the draft of his convention speech. He said was the original draft was a humdinger.
and was rewriting it about bringing the country together. Axios ran a piece Sunday evening about how Trump advisors are planning a more unifying convention. A piece quoted Tucker Carlson. They interviewed him. He said, quote, getting shot in the face changes a man. And an unnamed Trump advisor said that Trump's view is, quote, now Democrats can't come after me anymore as a fascist. So what are they going to do now? So lots to unpack there. Let's start with the timeless classic. Can Trump pivot to become someone who's unrecognizable to those who've watched him for the last 77 years? Dan, what do you think?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say no. I do not think he's become a uniter, not a divider. I do think that the press seems very thirsty to believe this narrative in a way in which they haven't with Trump in a very long time. He's been very credulous. COVID was the last time. Remember the beginning of COVID? Even that lasted like six seconds, right? Yeah, the first six seconds of his first press conference. No, I think it was the moment when he went and got into the Secret Service vehicle with all the Secret Service agents affecting COVID for the driver on the block. Oh yeah, there's that too. Well, that was later. That was when he had, I was saying when COVID initially hit. Remember in March, the first couple of weeks, everyone was like, oh, he's a new president. He's great, blah, blah. Then he became crazy. Then he got COVID. The point being whether it was our collective near-death experience or his personal near-death experience, we have yet to see a fucking change. I do think he can be just less divisive enough to get a disproportionate amount of undeserved credit.
in his speech on Thursday night. Yeah, I mean, it's, can you hang on for four months? And we, before the shooting, we were saying this about his, how he reacted to the trials and like he, the fear of potentially going to jail has really driven him in this campaign to be slightly more disciplined than usual. Not because it's out of the goodness of his heart, but because he's like, this is how I'm going to win this thing. I've got to just be a little normal for a little while longer. Well, he already says, like, what does unity mean? It means dropping all the charges against me. So he's giving up the game pretty quickly. But I think 2016 was a Super Tuesday when he won the election and then did, like, a giant product placement thing where he had all the Trump products he'd ever made on the table before. Like, the stakes have gone up since that time, to your point. Very much so. Yeah, and again, like you said, already in this campaign, he has said, I mean, every day has said something that would sink any other candidate for office and it completely makes him unfit to hold the office. Just want to put that out there. But relative to Trump and what people expect of Trump, it's been a little different.
When you guys think about the whole Democrats can't call him a threat to democracy anymore thing. Political violence is destructive in a democracy for a lot of obvious reasons. But one reason is that it gives control over our ability to make decisions to random bad actors. We should not give to a random person, whatever their motivations, whatever we discover. We should not voluntarily give up what that person wasn't able to successfully take by force, which is our ability to make a decision about the fate of the country. And that requires being honest about the threat Donald Trump poses. That requires being honest about what it will take to win this election. That is, you know, the fact that this event took place does not remove Trump's menace or the challenge Biden faces. And the sooner we get back to having that debate, the more of a failure this assassination attempt will be. Tommy, go ahead. No, that's a good point. I also think like politics is how we resolve differences without resorting to violence. And those debates are inevitably going to get emotional and heated at times. And they should, because that's our release valve. That's how we settle differences. But that said, like there are.
limits you can't encourage violence you can't condone violence that's why what trump did on january 6 is unforgivable in my mind but i do think people take cues from leaders and it's important not to take it too far because once political violence starts it can be very very hard to stop it can just get out of control donald trump told his supporters to beat the shit out of protesters at his rallies he has amplified calls for violence remember the video of one of his supporters this was after george floyd's murder and one of his supporters said in a video uh the only good democrat is a dead democrat and then he posted that that's one thing he did he told police and the military to shoot protesters in the legs, to shoot immigrants who cross the border, to shoot suspected shoplifters, suspected shoplifters, rough up suspects. We're putting them in the car, rough up suspects. He of course sent a mob of his armed supporters. He knew they were armed. We know this now. He sent them to the Capitol so they could intimidate our representatives into throwing out our votes. He refused to do anything to stop the violence. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the house calls him. He says, they're trying to fucking kill me. Do something. And Donald Trump said in response, well, Kevin, I guess they're more upset about the election than you.
That's what he said. Like, and then now he wants to pardon them. Has Joe Biden done any of those things? Has any Democratic official done any of those things anywhere close to those things? No. So of course you're going to talk about Donald Trump as a threat to democracy that you have to oppose through democratic means, peaceful means, at the ballot box, by convincing other people to vote against him. It's just, it's so stupid. Also, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. He's a threat to freedom. For all those reasons. But also, don't, you don't take my word for it. He says it himself. He's the one who said to be a dictator on day one over the last couple weeks.
the media, people in politics, us have not been paying as much attention to Trump. He has been truthing about how he thinks that various people should have military tribunals. Yeah, Liz Cheney, military tribunals. Yes, he's talking about jailing his opponents. Is that how democracy works? Is that not a threat to democracy? I guess that's just democracy, right? Military tribunals for Liz Cheney? Yeah. And so the idea that after this horrible thing happened, and it would be wonderful that if we could lower the temperature on politics in this country, we could get back to sort of normal debates. But Donald Trump is an abnormal candidate. He has offered a dangerous policy agenda. He has been a danger to democracy.
The press cannot all of a sudden become the civility police and try to chastise Democrats into not saying what is true about Donald Trump. And by the way, one of the reasons that's actually important is because it gives to allow this act of violence to dictate what we can or cannot say, even when it is true, is to give power to this person and potentially to inspire people in the future to think they have the power at any moment to change the landscape of American politics. The reason, like I'm very, look, if people want to say, oh, this is an opportunity for all of us to come together and turn down the rhetoric. Great, that's fine. But the reason we talk about the danger posed by.
violent rhetoric is not because it creates some miasma of risk. It's because it can inspire people. It's because people will take it literally and act on it. We have seen that happen multiple times. We've seen right-wing violence in multiple places, multiple times. We've seen mass shootings. We've seen what happened in Charlottesville. We've seen what happened at the insurrection. There is a trend. The reason you worry about the rhetoric is because you start to see it manifest in a trend of violence.
We don't know anything yet about this person's motive, but there is no evidence as of yet that they were motivated by some sort of political rhetoric. If that evidence comes back and shows that, we should talk about that. But as of right now, everyone is jumping to the conclusion, especially people in the media who love this conversation, jumping to the conclusion they want. But also, yeah, right. Even if for some reason it did, there are going to be people who are inspired by political rhetoric, whether it's on the right or left, to commit violence. And what you can do about that as a political leader is to condemn that unequivocally and to do everything in your power to avoid inciting or condoning that kind of violence, which I think most leaders in this country and...
Previously, the Republican Party, before Donald Trump, a lot of elected officials would take care to do that. Donald Trump has not taken care to do that at all. Even worse, he's joked about and mocked when there has been violence, like the attack on Paul Pelosi or the attempted kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer, right? All of that was something that either they claim is some sort of false flag or make fun of or mock. It was a lover's quarrel, right? When Paul Pelosi was nearly beaten to death. Or when his VP was almost hung. He was cool with that, too. Very, very cool with that, apparently. So, swap them out.
we're not in the prediction business. We don't have a lot of polling numbers yet. It's only a couple of days in, but I'm sure you guys were getting this message from friends. You saw it online. Like when he, the picture of Donald Trump, that's now the cover of Time magazine, fist up in the air. It's the cover of Time? Oh yeah. Well, I mean, both candidates did lengthy interviews with Time. Oh, I know. Even though you're shitting all over the magazine. The polls in the 1986 election just shifted six points. Anyway, we all know the picture now. We all know the picture. Everyone is listening to this. And a lot of people are like, that's it. It's over. It's over. He's won. This is like a show of strength. So that was some of the more extreme. And there's other people like, well, this is going to help him.
There was a quote from Axios on Sunday that immediately was everywhere on the Internet. It was about Democrats feeling worried that Biden's going to stay in the race and then lose. And then it also combined with the assassination attempt and Trump, you know, looking strong and surviving an assassination attempt. And the senior House Democrat said anonymously through Axios, we've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency. Thoughts on the political implications? I mean, that person is a defeatist idiot. And I please just don't talk to the press. If you have those thoughts, keep them inside your head. Like Donald Trump's instinct, he has some political genius in him. We have to be honest, like his instinct to stand up and pump his fist after getting shot in the ear.
It's incredible because it created this iconic image. And if you want to run an entire election that where you're arguing I'm strong and my opponent is weak, it's pretty powerful. You know, that said, I think what will likely happen is it will make the people who support Donald Trump even more certain to turn out for him. Right. It seems to have inspired the base. It's certainly it's it's the image is traveling in U.S. culture in ways that Donald Trump doesn't usually go. Like 50 Cent put up a photo of his Get Rich or Die trying album cover at his concert a couple nights ago with Donald Trump's head on it.
It's probably the first time that's happened. So you're seeing people talk about Trump calling him a badass. There was, you know, the Barstool Sports affiliates were selling T-shirts with the image on it right away. So I'm sure it will appeal to a subset of people. But four months is a lifetime in politics. That's just what everyone has to remember. We have no idea what could happen between now and then. So giving up and giving up in a background quote to Axios on July 14th is ridiculous. Yeah, go to Politico, you know. Dan, what do you think? I think we have had major events in this race already, right? Donald Trump was convicted of crime like 60 days ago. Amazing. The polls moved like about a point and a half.
In front of 50 million people, Joe Biden had the worst debate performance of any presidential candidate in modern history. The polls moved two and a half points. The idea that this will dramatically shift the race is absurd. It belies everything we have seen to date. And there's no real obvious historical precedence here. Like Reagan went up in the polls after he was shot in 81. He was a freshly elected president at the time. And he was seriously wounded. And it was a different era where you would get, with much less polarization, where you would get Democrats and independents who did not like Reagan to approve of him in a moment like that. You saw that up until just a few presidents ago. It does matter, I think, that this happened in Pennsylvania, the single most important state.
uh in both biden and trump's electoral college calculus but The race is basically where it was before this, is Trump has an advantage nationally in the battleground states. That advantage is slight but steady. And I would be shocked if this were to dramatically change the equation. We're never really going to know because this happened. Basically, no poll can really go into the field that won't include the Republican convention as well. It's very hard to untangle this. Because you're going to have a convention balance, which is usually two to three points. You'd be surprised it was that big this time around because the race is so steady. But happening at the same time, those are usually very temporary. So we're never, Trump may go up in the polls for the next week. Whether that'll stay or not, I'm not sure. But we're not going to know from the shooting convention or something else. Yeah, there's polling and then there's just trying to think about.
The person who was like, I think I'm going to vote for Joe Biden, but then Donald Trump, you know, survived an assassination attempt and put his fist up in the air. Like, I have a hard time imagining that person saying, oh, I'm going to vote for Donald Trump now. I have an easier time imagining someone who's like leaning Trump. And then this gives them like a permission structure to be like, yeah, it's OK. He's like a badass. I'm going to do it. Like, I think they're going through young men. They're going through men like 18 to 29. It's like you see that image. You're like, oh, this guy's a badass. Maybe I'll vote for the first time.
I think you had to have, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. But I think you had to have leanings that way anyway. And I wonder if those people were already sort of priced into this. I think that is, you're moving someone from undecided to Trump, not from Biden to Trump. And that's really how most of the movement is going to happen in this race, is there is this small but still significant pool of undecided voters. And Trump may pick some up from that. Will those people stay with him? Will they actually vote? Open question. What happens in the next four months? We'll decide that. But he may get some of those votes. Also, by the way, it's an open, this is why it is so important that this debate not be about Trump as a person versus Joe Biden as a person. It has to be at the stakes. Because if someone's thinking about abortion and taxes, I don't think Trump's fist pump is going to matter. The other, you know, I
reaction to the photo that Tommy did. But I also like there's been reporting over the years about how much Donald Trump has actually thought about this, that he has thought that he's afraid of this kind of thing. He has thought about it and about assassination, about being in crowds. He has thought about this in the past. And I have no doubt that Donald Trump, who is a creature of the 80s, is very aware of how Ronald Reagan said, honey, I forgot to duck, that there's this video. I think it's years after. But Ronald Reagan is at an event and a balloon pops and he goes, they miss me. And the whole crowd goes wild. He was he's a showman in the same way Reagan was a showman. And I think he in that moment, that part of him that's been.
worried and thinking about this moment his whole life uh was there and he made the most of it and he's like i'm okay now yeah i wouldn't think about a second gunman myself Before I got there and Jersey shorted it, but I guess do what works for you, Don. Maybe, yeah. GTL. But yeah, resigning ourselves. Come on, people. It's like we're not resigning ourselves. If you do that, you're definitely going to get another Trump presidency. Guaranteed. If you try, at least, to avoid that by going and talking to voters who are undecided or who haven't made up their mind whether they're going to vote yet, then we have a chance to avoid a second Trump presidency. So let's do that. Don, is there a place that people who would take you up in your call to action could go to undertake such activities? You could go to Vote Save America. And what we will do is make sure that your time and money is spent on the most efficient candidates and organizations and places to make sure that you have the biggest impact on politics.
How's that? I thought it was pretty good. It was unclear. Was that quote saying we should resign ourselves to Trump winning because of the assassination attempt? Or resign ourselves to Trump winning because the assassination attempt means we can't have an honest conversation about Joe Biden and therefore because we can't have that conversation, Joe Biden is going to... It was unclear from the quote. It was a story about both, so it was sort of all mixed up. There's a science to natural gas safety. Signs of a gas leak? Testing your carbon monoxide alarms? Keeping your gas meter and vents properly maintained? But you don't need to be a scientist. You just need to know what to do. Learn more at embridgegas.com slash safety.
I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmieri, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Long Play Series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Not even Alito. But who knows?
Trump seized on Cannon's ruling, writing on Truth Social that all the other judges should now do the same thing, framed, of course, as a way, again, to unite the nation. Here's what I can't figure out. Cannon had already made sure there was no chance that this case was going to trial before the election. It was not going to happen. She succeeded in delaying. Why did she do this? Was she just, like, feeling emboldened? Is she just, as some legal scholars have said, not that right? Well, it's a...
It seems like Clarence Thomas gave her an idea. I don't think it has to be more complicated than that. She had not thought of that before. Clarence Thomas gave her a roadmap for what she could do to get out of this. She's like, well, I better copy his work. He's a smart guy. I'm just some schmuck who got confirmed during a lame duck. In his dissent in the immunity case that came out, what, two weeks ago? So she saw that, read it, and was like, ooh, yeah. I think she wanted to get rid of this case. Not just for Trump. As you said, she'd already delayed it past the election. She'd already done him the favor, but...
Also, this is a way to not have to deal with this every single day. Yeah. She's also, though, been she's been playing this game where she didn't want to give Jack Smith anything to appeal to the 11th Circuit and then ask that she be removed from the case, which like it really has to be pretty extreme. He can now like so a lot of the legal nerds think this is getting overturned for sure, like she's not able to throw it out. But they think it's now possible for her to get booted from the case for doing this. Not not probable, but possible. So it's a little risky. You see Matt Gaetz's tweet said future Supreme Court justice canon.
Control. Control and possibly a solid prediction. Yeah. Yeah. And also future middle judge decider. She's a swing vote. She's a swing vote. I like to go behind. I couldn't think of the term. Swing vote. Swing vote. Anyway. I shouldn't go on.
Speaking of way too young MAGA leaders, the other huge news on Monday was Trump's announcement that his running mate will be J.D. Vance of Ohio, the 39-year-old senator, author of Hillbilly Elegy, and former CNN contributor who went from calling Trump America's Hitler to becoming the MAGA heir apparent and one of Project 2025's best friends. Here he is talking to Sean Hannity at the convention on Monday night, giving us a preview of what his potential debate with current Vice President Kamala Harris might sound like. First of all, the Democrats want to try to run from this, and they're saying that Joe Biden has to step down, or Joe Biden can't run for president. That's not public spiritedness, that's political cynicism, because they should have been saying it three years ago. Kamala Harris.
has allowed America to be saddled with a president who clearly doesn't have the middle capacity to do the job. It is not public spiritedness to call for him to step down when he's about to lose an election. They should have been doing it years ago. And it's not just Kamala Harris. It's Nancy Pelosi. The entire Democratic apparatus lied about this guy. I just want you guys to know, we did add that music. Every time we would play a J.D. Vance clip, we would be playing that music. That's Tommy's weekend dad band. That's a cover band called Six Wire. And they're just shredding it. He's always doing the research. I did do Google just now. Okay, what do you guys think about the Vance pick? What's your take on why Trump took a pass on?
Our boy, Doug Burgum, little Marco Rubio, and dozens of others in favor of JD. Dan? Well, I think in the interview that Trump did that you and I talked about on the pod last week, Trump kind of answered these questions. Doug Burgum, it was the abortion legislation in North Dakota. They have gone to great lengths to try to essentially lie about what their abortion plans are, their abortion policy is. So that takes Doug Burgum off. Marco Rubio, one, the Florida residency thing, I think was probably a little bit complicated. Also, he doesn't like Marco Rubio. He doesn't want to spend time with him. He doesn't trust him. He thinks he's a huge wuss and not that bright. So that probably takes him off. Marco Rubio talks to go gay now, but a couple years from now, you're going to have to hang him.
That's what he's thinking. Really. Right? Is he a good hang? He's not a good hang. He's a good hang. J.D. Vance is a good hang. Pod title. J.D. Vance is a good hang. Rubio is going to be someone who's going to hang good. Can we put in the civility alert, please? Guys, guys, can we please lower the temperature? What have you done to lower the temperature? So you think it's a process of elimination, then? It's a process of elimination. Because there's no good political argument for J.D. Vance. He adds almost nothing to the ticket. There is no... He has no geographic appeal. He doesn't moderate the ticket ideologically. He doesn't address a specific weakness.
If you go through people's picks in the past, they either bring a state into play. That's a little more prepolation. That was a typical reason. They appeal to a group that the nominee is weak with, like the reason Trump picked Pence, the evangelicals, or they address a weakness, right? Bill Clinton picked Al Gore because Bill Clinton was scandal-plagued and Al Gore had a reputation as the most ethical and frankly boring member of the Senate. And so he picked him. But Vance offers nothing in that way, right? He's doubling down. The only group that Vance has a deal with are the voters that Trump already has, which are hardcore MAGA voters. He doesn't even, like Rubio at least would have given some signal to like normie Republicans that there's like an establishment person there.
Vance doesn't do that either. I would say two things. I think one thing he does do is he signals to a certain set of rich Republicans or libertarian types that Trump's fully on board with their program. And I think the second thing is J.D. Vance can articulate, he does with Sean Hannity, he can articulate a version of Trumpism that is more sophisticated and rational sounding than it sounds when it comes out of Donald Trump's mouth. And I think that is of some utility.
My thought on the political aspect, I don't think it's about necessarily winning a state or even winning the election. First of all, I think J.D. Vance is a pick Trump made because he is confident that he is ahead. And so he felt like he could take a little bit more of a risk. We'll see whether that's right. But if you read Tim Alberta's interview in The Atlantic with Susie Wiles and Chris Lasavita, very long interviews, but a lot of time with them about their strategy, they're running the Trump campaign. And they basically say in that interview that they don't care that much about losing suburban women to either Dobbs or Trump's character, things like that. And that they are going after younger voters, particularly younger working class men, white, black, Latino.
When you talk to these younger working class men, when you listen to them, and I just thought about this because we did our wilderness focus groups with a whole bunch of young people a couple weeks ago, all over the place. And what do they talk about? They talk about they're struggling financially. They blame corporate greed, but they also blame government. They talk about spending too much money on foreign aid and foreign wars. They're more isolationists. They talk about immigrants taking their jobs. So there's this weird sort of populist anti-establishment. It sounds like J.D. Vance's version of MAGA and Trumpism. And Trump doesn't really articulate. Trump has like a sort of gut instinct about it.
J.D. Vance, actually, whether he believes or not, it's a whole conversation for another time, but he doesn't. He articulates it. Right. And I do think that if you are the Trump campaign, they're thinking we're going to go. We're not trying to bridge the gap with the Nikki Haley, old establishment part of the Republican Party. We're changing the party. This is a new party. And we want to go after younger, a new generation. This is now the first millennial on a ticket. Right. J.D. Vance is 39 years old. And obviously, Ohio is not going to matter as much because Donald Trump will win Ohio. But maybe they think Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, those that's.
those three states are Joe Biden's last chance. And maybe whatever appeals to Ohio voters about J.D. Vance could similarly appeal to him in those Midwestern states. Yeah, I also wonder, I mean, Donald Trump Jr. is extremely close to J.D. Vance. And it's interesting, look, we kind of, we make fun of the Trump relationship with his children because he's a narcissist and only cares about himself. But I do think having your son constantly in your ear about this one person and his charisma and his political abilities is probably powerful. And look, Doug Burgum, he's not necessarily lighting up a room. He's got a lot of money and I assume that Trump would like the old rich guy, but he put all that time in with Tiffany. That was stupid. I do think also the Don Jr. piece of it too is what John, Don Jr. is loyal.
And he's saying, this is our guy. Yeah. Burgum, maybe. But Rubio is never going to be your good hang. But the Vance did this long interview with Ross Daffet in which he lays out. Close listeners of the pod would know that I already brought up this long interview and never made fun of before. Oh, yeah. I remember that. Love and I specifically made fun of. Well, first of all, Tommy brought it up literally three minutes ago. Did you bring it up on the pod? You said do this. First of all, I think we should embrace Republican politics in which hypocrisy is a sign of strength. And but anyway, you go through that interview and he is.
articulating a populist economic message. And it's a reminder, too, that when Donald Trump wins in 2017, the biggest worry was that he would pursue a more economically populist agenda. And instead, he embraced repealing Obamacare and tax cuts for corporations and the kind of Paul Ryan style of governance. And it was to our benefit. And so I think it is very like this is a kind of it's a scary version of Trumpism because I think it is a far more sophisticated version. Just in simple terms, he's got a compelling personal story. Like Hillbilly Elegy was a good book. It just was. I enjoyed reading it. He's a veteran. And I think J.D. Vance can be can talk about how, look, liberals love me.
You know, Rob Ryan, was it Rob Ryan or someone? Ron Howard. Ron Howard made my book into a film. I'm close in a moment. Hollywood loved me until I came out for Trump. And then Trump can point to how J.D. Vance used to criticize him, but he came to love him and now he bent the knee. So I think there's a compelling story there. The one thing that's just worth pointing out is that the Washington Post had a good analysis of.
J.D. Vance's political weakness in Ohio. In 2022, Vance won by six points, but he underperformed every other statewide official. Mike DeWine won by 26 points. The attorney general won by 20 points. The secretary of state won by 19. Even the Supreme Court nominees won by double digits. J.D. Rance had the closest race, in part because he had extreme views on a lot of policy areas. So there could be some risk here. And Tim Ryan. Yeah, and Tim Ryan. And a lot of credit to Tim Ryan there. Well, you know, in Ohio. I mean, he basically ran. J.D. Rance even. I think, John, you were right that this is a pick that is made from a confident view of the Trump standing in the race. I just think it is more about...
what J.D. Vance does after they win, not what J.D. Vance can do to help them win. Because if they were really trying to go for the kill shot here, you really would pick Rubio or Tim Scott or Byron Dallas. Because if you can make real inroads, or even the inroads the polls suggest right now, with Black and Latino men, that's between a narrow victory and a landslide. That's the kind of thing that could form an alignment. I think their view is probably, again...
No idea if it's right or wrong. Their view is just because he picks a black or Latino candidate does not mean that's going to make it easier to get younger black and Latino men. That it's just as possible with a younger white man like J.D. Vance. Again, who knows? But I'm sure that's their view. Yeah, I just think J.D. Vance is the pick.
you make if you want to turn the MAGA agenda into an actual policy agenda. Which is why he's so scary. Right. I think I said this. I never know what we say on mic and off mic, but at some point in the last week, around the time you and I recorded a podcast together. You heard this Ross Douthat column? Oh, he writes for the Times, right? Yes. Did you talk to J.D. Vance recently? God, it's so funny. By the way, shame on us. None of us know how to say the guy's fucking name. I don't care. No one does. That's his fault. I didn't name him. I think it's Douthat. I think that's correct. Sure, Douthat. That's right. I thought that J.D. Vance was the best case scenario in terms of the election because he has less upside than the other ones and some risks because he's so extreme, but the worst case scenario if Trump wins. I think that's correct.
So the Biden campaign statement about J.D. Vance said that Trump picked him because he'll, quote, do what Mike Pence wouldn't do on January 6th, bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, enact Trump's Project 2025 agenda. And then they also said this is someone who supports banning abortion nationwide while criticizing exceptions for rape and incest survivors. And he has admitted he wouldn't have certified the free and fair election in 2020. What do you guys think of that message? Is that the most effective message? Because you can do the hypocrisy thing. You know, he used to criticize Trump, but now he doesn't. But then there's also he is for all of these extreme positions. If you do the hypocrisy thing, wherever you are, I'm going to come and find you. Because it is the least effective message.
Possible. We just threatened the lines. Yes. Turn the temperature down. Turn the temperature down, Dan. Get that alarm going. I'm going to give you a hug. Where's the redhead alert? We already played it earlier. Dan's putting a bullseye on those kinds of talking points. I'm going to come to your house for a civil discussion of why your message is terrible. And it's because we should say.
Every poll, every focus group, every time you talk to voters, here's the problem. Voters think all politicians are hypocrites. So when you go after a politician on hypocrisy grounds, it just doesn't land. It doesn't land with the voters that you need. They don't care about hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is about the person. Policies are about the people they affect, right? Hypocrisy is about the person's values, what they represent. It's about their story. And by the way, J.D. Vance is very happy to talk about this and how he evolved in Donald Trump and how it actually came to realize that Trump was the vehicle for taking on the villains that he talks about in Hillbilly Elegy. He has a story ready to go about how to turn that into a feature from a bug. So, yeah. We should at least say that J.D. Vance is absolutely more full of shit than anyone in American politics.
Yes. His position this week is prayers up for Hitler. So we should just be clear about that. That's where he's at. Well, I was just saying, I don't know how he squares, you know, calling Trump America's Hitler, even though he has evolved on that position, with what he tweeted. To me, the reason he is completely unfit for office is hours after the assassination attempt, before we knew almost anything, he tweets that President Biden's rhetoric, quote, led directly to Trump's attempted assassination, which is just not true. Baseless. Didn't know that was true. Even if he suspected it, why would you say it without any other information? It's crazy. And also doesn't quite fit with the convention's unity message.
Ron Johnson apparently called democratic policies a clear and present danger to the nation. And then he was asked by a reporter, hey, what happened to the unity message? He was like, oh, that was actually the old pre-unity speech that was loaded into the prompter. They accidentally loaded the division speech, not my unity speech. You know, they accidentally loaded in what we all believe, not what we think we have to say now to win. We're doing this because we want to win. We're close. They want unity. We want to give them unity. This is also November. There's no more unity. There'll only be unity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Unity. Yes, that's a scary kind of unity. But this is also, I think, why the post-assassination attempt turned down the temperature.
conversation is a little, it's kind of twisted because like that's a, that's a good example of just right-wing rhetoric has become completely divorced from reality. Even when it's not inciting direct or even indirect violence, it is ascribing views, policies, and outcomes to Democrats in ways that are not true. They're just making it up. They're saying things, they say whatever they want to make the Democrats seem as evil and terrible as possible and Republicans as the saviors. And that is part of why we are so divided. That polarization, right-wing propaganda is why we are so divided. It is what is raising the temperature, even if you can't point to any specific example. I didn't get to see a lot of the
Did the Unity thing work out? That was great. It was awesome. Not really. I saw that Marjorie Taylor Greene gave a speech that I was like, it was bad, but it wasn't bad because it was as extreme as she usually is, but she wasn't softening. It was just sort of lame. It was like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Well, they cut her big finish, which was burning Nancy Pelosi in effigies for Unity. I thought she was going to be like CrossFit. Nothing really stuck out at me as either super unifying or like really mean. I mean, some pretty gross, disgusting attacks on trans people. I didn't say that. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Yeah, I did see like an image of Joe Biden falling up the stairs. They did that one. They did do that. But I didn't really hear, I don't know. Nothing too exciting that first, this first night, right? I'm shocked at the night where the primetime major speaker was Tennessee Senator Marshall Blackburn. I was waiting for like a big reveal. Sort of a tough hit on Glenn Youngkin. Oh yeah, he was there too. Well, I mean, he had to open for Marshall Blackburn.
Longplay, our docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South, is back. Newsflash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South, too. We're in the final stretch of the midterms, and the political map has only gotten more competitive, with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmieri, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Longplay Series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Long Play, our docuseries exploring the people and forces shaping the South, is back. Newsflash, the South is the new political epicenter of the country. Democrats are way on their heels in this region, but Republicans are going through their own reckoning in the South, too. We're in the final stretch of the midterms, and the political map has only gotten more competitive, with new states and districts emerging as potential flips. So we thought it was time to get back out on the road and take a closer look at what's actually happening on the ground. I'm Erin Haines, journalist and expert on all things Southern politics. And I'm Jennifer Palmieri, former White House Communications Director. Tune in on Mondays to Long Play series on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Let's talk about Joe Biden. Obviously, up until Saturday afternoon, most of the focus has been on Biden and whether he's still the party's best chance to beat Trump. The assassination attempt to stop that chatter for now, at least. President Biden gave an Oval Office address about the attack on Sunday night, and he had a previously scheduled primetime interview with Lester Holt at NBC News on the books for tonight. He went ahead with it, and the attack was a big focus there, too. Let's listen to a clip of the Oval Office address, followed by a clip of Biden's interview with Lester Holt. Violence has never been the answer.
whether it's with members of Congress of both parties being targeted and shot, or a violent mob attacking the Capitol on January 6th, or an attempted assassination on Donald Trump. There's no place in America for this kind of violence, or for any violence, ever. But in America, we resolve our differences at the battle box. You know, that's how we do it at the battle box, not with bullets. On a call a week ago, you said it's time to put Trump in the bullseye. There's some dispute about the context, but I think you appreciate that word. I didn't say crosshairs. I was talking about focus on. Look, the truth of the matter was, what I guess I was talking about at the time was, there was very little focus on Trump's agenda. Yeah, the term was bullseye.
Crosshairs just coming out of nowhere there. So what do you guys make of Biden's overall response to the shooting? I think he has met the moment with the sobriety and seriousness that it deserves, right? He did what he's supposed to do. He went out and addressed the nation after it happened, after getting briefed by his team, returned immediately to Washington, met with his team in the Situation Room, then came out and updated the country on what he had learned. And then in an attempt, I think, to...
bring the temperature down, and return to what I think he believes is his sort of core political identity to try to give a call to unity in the wake of this. Like, that is what you want the president to do, right? At a time of great stress and tension and fear and concern for the public, the president should be out there. Put aside the election, the debate about his political future. This is exactly what you would expect him to do in that moment, and he did all of those things. Love it. Yeah, I mean, I think what Dan is saying, I obviously agree with. I think he did all the things that he was supposed to do. I think what is so troubling in moments like this is the best you can hope.
for from President Biden is that he does no damage rather than going out there and I think doing anything particularly inspiring or excellent. There's a lot that could be said about what led to this moment. There's a lot that could be said about the politics and culture as we head into this election that he I don't think can be a voice for. The best we can do is to have a short to the point statement. Violence bad. I'm hearing a briefing.
But for the most part, you know, there's the Oval Office address was halting. He manages to respond defensively to every question from Lester Holt, even where he shouldn't be in a way turning every question into a kind of gotcha question where he feels as though he is, I think, reacting from a place of weakness. And the whole thing is very dispiriting. I kind of want to separate what he did basically from the shooting on Saturday through Sunday night in the interviews. I think those are two separate.
things. Yes, of course. There's a long history of presidents rising to rhetorical heights in times like this. Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing, Reagan after Challenger, Obama after Newtown. We've seen that before. Joe Biden has given pretty inspiring moving speeches around January 6th, I think, his inaugural address. I think his address on the anniversary of January 6th, he rose to the moment for sure. Sunday night was not that. I thought the message was appropriate and fine. Yes, he stumbled over some words, but he did fine. He did fine. And I think that we should at least point out when he does fine. He landed the plane in the Oval Office address. The interview.
I mean, I really like Lester Holt, but I felt the questions at the top that suggested that Biden's rhetoric had anything to do with the shooter felt pretty baseless and unfair. And I could see why Biden was annoyed at those questions in particular. But the frustration really came through. And I think I counted two or three times where he kind of got annoyed and defensive and lashed back at Lester and was like, why aren't you guys covering Trump's lies? Why aren't you covering this? And I just don't think that that that doesn't it didn't land great at times in the interview. It felt defensive. The question about the bullseye is extremely annoying question. And what would have been the very easy answer is like,
What do you mean? I was talking about putting the focus on Donald Trump, right? That's what I said about his policies. I said it at a fundraiser with a bunch of people. That's what I'm going to, that's what I'm going to incite people at a fundraiser. I'm going to say it's time to put the focus on Donald Trump. That's what we should put the focus. I mean, it's just such an easy response to an unfair, annoying question. He can even, by the way, say, you know what, Lester, if people found that term to be wrong, I won't use it again. But I think everybody knew exactly what I mean. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things a person who is, I think, has a more of a capacity to respond quickly and effectively to a question could provide in those moments. But instead you get just very hard to follow defensive, confusing response. Yeah. Well, Lester also asked Biden about the debate.
And the call for him to step aside. Let's listen to some of that. The last TV interview you were asked if you had watched the debate and your answer was, I don't think so, no. Have you since seen it? I've seen pieces of it. I've not watched the whole debate. The reason I ask is because I guess the question is, are you all on the same page? Are you seeing what they saw? Which was moments of, frankly, that appeared to be confused. Lester, look. Why don't you guys ever talk about the 18 and 28 lies he told? Where are you on this? Why didn't the press ever talk about that? 28 times it's confirmed he lied in that debate.
I had a bad, bad night. I wasn't feeling well at all. I screwed up. I just ask the question because the idea that you may or may not have seen what some of these other folks have seen, you're not on the same road. I got to see I was there. I got to see I was there. By the way, seriously, you won't answer the question, but why didn't the press talk about all the lies he told? I don't know anything about that. We have reported many of the issues. No, you haven't. No, you haven't. We'll provide you with them. God love you. Okay. But if the opportunity came up to do one between now and then?
Is there a sense of wanting to get back on the horse? I'm on the horse. Where have you been? I've done 22 major events with thousands of people, overwhelming crowds, a lot happening. A lot is happening. Tommy, what do you think of the interview? I think Lester's question, are you seeing what they saw, is kind of the core question that a lot of people are asking about the election generally. Does Joe Biden know how bad the debate was or does he really think it was 90 minutes that didn't go well but four great years of policy? Is Biden seeing the bad polling that's out there or polling from swing districts from people that don't work for him? Is Biden hearing unvarnished concerns from down-bound elected officials? And again, I think what you heard was a response that just felt very defensive.
angry at the question more than looking to find an answer to kind of assuage those concerns more broadly. There's another part in that, towards the end of the interview where Biden says, when he talks about the events he's doing, I'm out there proving to people that I have my faculties. So I have my faculties. And it's sad to see it's because... If that's the threshold, right, that's what he's out there proving. And we have that. That's not enough. It's a massive problem. Right. The fact that we all that he doesn't respond. Lester holds question. Right. Like, do you know what we saw? Like, were you confused? We don't. It points out that we still don't feel like we've gotten an adequate answer from Joe Biden about what happened that night. And it just means that maybe he's right that the polls are closer and that people are sensationalizing gaps that are closable. But the question is, can he close them? And the fact that we're going to get questions like this.
about Joe Biden over and over and over again. And the answers he provides doesn't feel like they give us the space to move on is why people are so concerned. It's not just what the polls are, it's the fear that he does not have the capacity to close them. Dan, I keep trying to think about like when... you're advising a president or presidential candidate and they keep screwing things up in interviews, right? Like let's put the like age coherence question aside. Let's just talk about his message, right? So you see after the first couple of times, he's getting very defensive. He only talks about his, I'm the guy who did this. I'm the guy who did this. Why aren't you reporting about the lies? The 28, all of which we know from research polling, I'm sure his advisors know this, are not effective responses, right? Even if you said them like super coherently and crisply. And after the first time you do that, like maybe in the Stephanopoulos interview, I would imagine everyone gets together with Joe Biden before the next interview. It's like, hey,
less defensive. You don't want to be so defensive. You want to talk about the choice in the election. You want to pivot to the, and then what do you think is, do you think that's what they're telling him and that he's just not doing it? Do you think he's stubborn? Like, I can't figure, this is what I can't figure out. It's like, why can he not just get to the right message when he has these same questions over and over again? And you know, they're going to be annoying. You know, you're going to get questions about what was happening at the debate. Why was this bad? Like, that's just how reporters are and you just have to like figure out how to deal with it. I am not sure he is getting all of the information and advice that he needs. Like there have been multiple stories with one in the Washington Post tonight about Biden shrinking his circle of advisors.
Right. Some of the people who we know, we even know the people inside the circle and they're all very smart. But I think there is a process to manage the president here. Right. And it does not include necessarily giving him information he does not want to hear. And that includes that your answers are not working. Right. Because there is just no basis in research, strategy or recent political history to suggest the approach he has taken to answer the questions. Put aside the delivery. Right. Let's say he's delivered that. That's what I want to do. Yeah. Let's just put that aside. The answers are almost a masterclass in how not to persuade a swing voter. Yes. Right. And that is just he is making the election all about himself.
And there is everyone knows in the street compared to their campaign when they say is what they have to do is why they had that first. And they had that early debate in the first place was to try to shift the focus to Trump, to make it about Trump. And Biden has been incapable of doing. He's unwilling to do that in his answers. Right. He keeps saying, I'm the guy who did this. I'm the guy who did this. I'm the guy who did this. And not he doesn't even talk about Trump in this interview or the future, by the way. Right. I mean, I will say.
On Friday, I think that was, he went to Michigan and he gave a great speech. Yeah. Right. It was well delivered. It was energetic. It was one of the best speeches he's delivered in many months. And both in delivery and content. Yes. It had a proactive, really impressive, very progressive second term agenda. It put the focus on Trump. It took his age. Focus. The word is focus. The word is focus. And it used his age as a asset. Right. He took it on with some humility and handled it. And that is not translating off the prompter. But that to me, that was what I was. That's why I brought up the future.
Because what you want is for Joe Biden to take the speech he gives, right? That everyone's reviewing and saying, finally, he's doing it. He's making the case he needs to make. Get in front of Lester Holt and say, Lester Holt, people are worried about what you're going to do, what's going to happen in the next four years, whether you're not doing it. Not only up to it, here's what we're going to get done. Here's what Donald Trump wants to do. But he does not do that. He just doesn't in these interview settings. He's very defensive right now. He's in a defensive crouch since the debate. And frankly, every conversation he's having with any person who is not in his immediate inner circle is a Lester Holt interview, right?
He had these meetings. I mean, he did these Zoom calls with Congress. All the reports are they went quite poorly, quite poorly. And he yelled at Jason Crow, who was a representative from Colorado, who who asked him about, like, how do we make sure that, you know, foreign leaders have confidence based on reporting? And he said, stop with that. Enough with that. Don't give me any like walk. And he left the call. He has a.
He could be right. His team could be right. We could all be wrong. But he has just a fundamentally different view of where the race stands, the state of his campaign, and the state of his candidacy. I think it's challenging when the people closest to you, and it's a very small circle, are telling you potentially what you want to hear. I remember a story in the 2004 campaign. Barack Obama went to some event. We were running against Alan Keyes at the time. We were winning by 30 points, 40 points, right? That was not a real race. And Obama let Alan Keyes walk up to him. They got in some sort of verbal exchange, and it became a thing. It was on all the news. And Obama gets back in the car, and Robert Gibbs is sitting behind him and just silently staring daggers into the back of the seat. And Obama kept turning around and being like, what?
what what is it yes i'm gonna say something to say to me and kibbs goes you didn't just take the bait you swallowed the whole goddamn hook right and it's like got in his face and was like you fucked up man don't do that i don't care that you're up when you say that to the candidate the candidate doesn't say thank you you're right i hate you you're like i'm just gonna do it because it's the important thing to do and look i'm not saying none of us are saying this that like this is not happening at all we don't know like it could be happening and biden could just be saying fuck you i don't care i i just knowing the people around him i cannot imagine that they are all telling him what he wants to hear that's we know all we know that there's i like something well there's some there's some reporting that like some of his closest aides are saying that they don't believe in polling. And maybe that's where kind of the rejection of polling language are coming from. Even then, like I read that today and it said like, it's the quote that there's some anonymous person quote in the post, but it says that Mike Donilon and Steve Reschetti, two of his closest advisors, do not believe in polling. That is going to come as a gigantic shock to the several pollsters on the Biden campaign. Some of the best in the Democratic Party on the payroll, especially in a general election. You get like, this is what Kerry and Obama, you get like a collection of five or six pollsters just so you have different strategies. But yeah, you want a big, diverse group of pollsters. I think that they are managing Joe Biden's moods right now. I think he is. He is a very prideful.
person, and I imagine this debate knocked him for a loop. He also hates to be called old. He has prides himself, like the aging, you see this in a lot of reporting, he bristles at being, because he's been the youngest, he says this, but he's been the youngest person his whole life, and now he's the oldest. And so you were trying, because if you push, and Obama was a great boss, I've worked for more challenging bosses, where you have to You want to tell them what they, you can't do what Gibbs did to Barack Obama there because you will get the opposite effect. I can't say whether that's how Biden is right now, but sometimes you have to just sort of like take every inch you can get because if you push too far, it's going to go the other way. I do remember that when there was a, we were working on a speech for President Obama and in the speech, it said something about how you can't make decisions based on the polls. And as we're having the conversation with David Axelrod, there's a giant binder on his desk that said polls on it. And we're like, hey, what, how?
How big is the binder when you do make decisions based on polls? And he shouts out to his assistant at the time, now state legislator, Eric Lesser. Eric, get in here and change his binder to say research. I remember that. It was so funny. I do think this is about politics. We care about this because of the stakes for politics. But what is happening with Joe Biden is not political. It is psychological. It is human and personal. And I do think that is really, really hard. And it's hard, I am sure, for the people around him.
whatever they're trying to do to make the situation better. It is an incredibly difficult situation. Well, there was a lot of discussion over the weekend. It does this sort of stop the conversation about whether Biden should step aside in favor of Kamala Harris or another candidate because now we've gone through this assassination attempt and now we have the Republican Convention, so all the attention now is on Trump and the Republicans for the week. It's Monday, but based on some of the polling that came out today, there was some New York Times-Siena, A-plus polls, swing state polls. He's down.
Four in Pennsylvania. Three in Pennsylvania. Three in Pennsylvania. And he's only up three. Biden is only up three in Virginia. A state that he won by 10 points, that would be a seven-point swing to the right. He won Pennsylvania by one point, so that would be a four-point swing to the right. In those polls, there was a number of other swing state polls. YouGov polls came out in every swing state. He's behind four or five in every one. You can square some of this polling with the Biden campaign theory of the case that was laid out in their memo last week, which is they said, it is a margin of error race in the battlegrounds we need to get to 270. So Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan. And margin of error in those states could be three points, four points behind. So yeah, they might just be.
three or four points behind in those blue wall states. But the question is, again, how do you make up three or four points in an incredibly polarized electorate where both candidates are at 100% name ID? And every time he goes and does one of these interviews, people who watch the interviews, forget about listening to us or anyone else, people who watch the interviews are seeing this. And if he just went out and gave the Michigan speech every single day between now and November, it's like, yeah, fighting chance for sure. But I just...
you know, maybe polarization gets you there. Maybe you get close enough just based on people not liking Donald Trump, people thinking and knowing that Joe Biden is a good man who's done some great things as president and that gets you close enough. And if he wins, that's how he wins. But it's certainly not because he is communicating well or making the case as a candidate. Like he obviously did not have some dramatic improvement as a candidate or a stay in the race since the shooting. Like nothing changed there. But something did change in terms of how people, how things happen in Washington, even before the shooting. In my head, my sort of deadline for whether Biden would stay in the race was today. It was Monday. That if he could make it through the weekend, make it to the Republican convention and the VP nomination, that he would have survived long enough because these things have momentum and momentum peters out. And it's just.
people were feeling pressure because the media was focused on this intently. That's not the case. There are no stories about this now. It's not as big a deal. And so maybe something else will happen. But this is Joe Biden's decision. It's only Joe Biden's decision. And it's what has been abundantly clear is that nothing that any other person says to him is going to change his mind. And he met with Hakeem Jeffries on Friday and Schumer on Saturday. We don't know how those meetings went, but Joe Biden said he is 1,000% still in the race. And so this is where he is. At no point do we have one piece of reporting or evidence that he has ever seriously considered or been open to the idea of stepping down.
And that hasn't changed. And if he does, if that, and I hesitate to see what will change his mind because there's, I don't, I think it's like, you see like the, you know, the New York times Siena polls thrown down five or six points in those swing states. And it's like, is that going to do it? Unless like Pelosi, like there's, you know, there's reporting that Nancy Pelosi does really want him to consider stepping aside and is working the phones on this. Maybe if Pelosi goes to him, I don't know. I don't know.
I think I talked to a member of Congress today and asked this question, like, has the momentum stalled out? And this person said, no, the only difference between a couple of days ago and now is that the conversation is quieted because of the assassination attempt. But I've read in many news reports and heard from this person that Pelosi still thinks there needs to be a change and that she's working behind the scenes. And this person, you know, is worried that Biden strategy is basically a run of the clock strategy and that, you know, it might be hard to do anything through the RNC. But I think what could change his mind is a.
Big number of elected officials coming up publicly and saying you need to go. Obviously, these Zoom calls, private conversations, gentle cajoling, none of that works. This person thought that, you know, firm, harsh, sort of like very public pressure efforts might actually change things. But I don't know. I'm just repeating. I also look, I don't know that Joe Biden can be.
like pushed out of the race, right? It seems like he can't. But I do wonder what happens in the quiet. I mean, look, I just, I don't know if I'm using this term correctly, but taking the under on Dan's point that, of course, Joe Biden has to be defiant. The second he is not defiant, the second he leaves any opening to the idea that he might not be in the race is the moment he's going to have to step down. That's what Ro Khanna said, basically. The second he would even say to a member of Congress, I'm thinking about it, is the second we're all talking about that and it's happening before his eyes. So the moment, it will go from I will never not be running to I'm out.
Much like Japan's interviews, the words you used were incorrect, but I got your meaning. Is it the over? The over-under would be like... Oh, I see. I see. So the odds. I'm saying I think the odds are higher. So that's why, wouldn't I then take the under? That's about the spread? Okay, we've gone on long enough. People love this shit. Again, another factless assertion. Which advisors around Lovett will tell him the truth? Is he getting good information? How many podcasts have to come to you publicly?
I will not step down. Axios says Pelosi wants you to shut the fuck up. I will finish the job. That is our show for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow with reactions to all the latest and night two of the Republican National Convention. What a good time we have coming up this week, boys. Good times. The best news yet to come. Remember that?
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