The Free Press LIVE from the RNC: Biden's Interview, Trump, J.D. Vance, and More!

This episode covers various political topics, including Joe Biden's recent interview, Donald Trump's activities, and J.D. Vance’s vice-presidential announcement, against the backdrop of the Republican National Convention.

1. Biden's Struggle with Public Speaking: Biden’s difficulty in articulating clear thoughts during interviews raises concerns about his capability as a leader.
2. Trump's Resilience and Strategy: Trump’s swift recovery from an assassination attempt and his VP choice of J.D. Vance are discussed as strategic moves to solidify his base.
3. Media’s Role in Politics: The episode critiques the media’s significant influence on public perception and political narratives, emphasizing biased portrayals.
4. Political Division and Rhetoric: The discussion underscores the deep divisions in U.S. politics, exacerbated by inflammatory rhetoric from both sides.
5. The Importance of Truth in Politics: The necessity for honesty and integrity in political communication is a recurring theme, challenging leaders to uphold these values in their public dealings.

1: Introduction

Overview of the episode’s themes, focusing on Biden's interview and Trump's campaign activities. Michael Moynihan: "This is perhaps the most tumultuous election season we've observed."

2: Biden's Communication Challenges

Analysis of Biden’s interview, highlighting his struggles with speech and public perception. Tara Palmeri: "Biden appears enfeebled, struggling to connect his thoughts clearly."

3: Trump's Post-Assassination Appearance

Discussions on Trump’s handling of the assassination attempt and its political ramifications. Michael Moynihan: "Trump's quick bounce back shows his resilience and may bolster his support base."

4: Media Influence on Politics

Critique of media’s impact on shaping political narratives and public opinion. Batya Ungar-Sargon: "The media’s portrayal can significantly sway public opinion, often overshadowing the truth."

5: Political Rhetoric and Division

Debate on the heated and divisive political rhetoric used by both parties. Tara Palmeri: "The extreme language used by both sides contributes to the polarized political climate."

1. Seek Multiple News Sources: Diversify your news intake to avoid bias.
2. Engage in Civil Discourse: Practice respectful conversations despite political differences.
3. Fact-check Information: Always verify news before sharing.
4. Participate in Local Politics: Engagement at the local level can lead to understanding broader issues.
5. Educate Yourself on Policies: Understand the policies behind the politicians.

A lot happened in American politics last night: the Biden interview, the Vance unveiling, Trump’s RNC entrance—his first public appearance since Saturday’s shooting. And there, to help you all make sense of it, was The Free Press team in our first-ever live video on X. To be honest, we weren’t sure how it was going to go. We were blown away by the response.

There were some 350,000 of you watching this experiment, in which we had the kind of panel we wish were assembled on cable news, or as host Michael Moynihan put it: “the Traveling Wilburys of political panels.”

Monday night’s supergroup included Newsweek editor and Free Press contributor Batya Ungar-Sargon, Puck correspondent Tara Palmeri, Red Scare co-host Anna Khachiyan (chain-smoking, of course), legendary pollster Frank Luntz, Manhattan Institute president Reihan Salam, author and Free Press contributor Rob Henderson, and journalist James Pogue. This is a group of people you just cannot find anywhere else.

People

Joe Biden, Donald Trump, J.D. Vance

Companies

None

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Bhatia Ungar Sargon, Tara Palmeri

Content Warnings:

None

Michael Moynihan
All right, from the free press, this is Michael Moynihan live in Milwaukee on day one of the RNC. Donald Trump is here just a few days after surviving an assassinate assassination attempt by an inch. And today he also announced his vice presidential pick, JD Vance. It didn't surprise too many of us. But before we get to all of those issues, and we have a lot to talk about, because this is the most insane election of my lifetime, and it's been a rather long lifetime for me. But here to discuss these issues and particularly what you just watched, which was Joe Biden submitting to what 20 Minutes was that? 1520 minutes of conversation with Lester Holt, who is very much on the ball. We have two guests with us, Bhatia Ungar Sargon, the opinion editor at Newsweek and author of second class how the Elites betrayed America's Working Men and Women, and Tara Palmeri, the senior political correspondent for Puck and the host of the Election podcast, which you should all listen to. Somebody has got to win. Unfortunately, that is true. Tara, you just watched what I just watched. I'm kind of interested to see what you thought of that. What was your general reaction?

Tara Palmeri
I mean, for me, I'm at the RNC as well, as you can see from the stands behind me. Found a quiet spot. But that was like listening to my grandmother speak to me. And she's about like ten years older than him, you know, not able to finish this thought, the sentence, you know, I understood what he was trying to say. He blamed January 6, but he couldn't really connect one sentence to the next. He lost his, he lost his train of thought. I mean, there's no other way to describe it. He seemed scattered. The delivery was, it wasn't a stutter delivery. He was really grasping for information. And no matter what they do right now, he just does not appear to be a strong leader because his communication skills are so weak and he appears so enfeebled. His face is like a ghosted face and it's delayed. His face is delayed to his emotions and he's slow. So regardless of what the Democrats want to portray, they are portraying a weak candidate because of his communication skills. His brain could be moving at 100 mph, as he claims, but the delivery is off. And this is politics. It's theater. I'm sorry. And you've got to convince people that you've got it all going on. And I don't watch these interviews and feel more confident, frankly. I see the debate, Batya.

Michael Moynihan
Politics is theater. I think Tara's right about that. I mean, tell me what you thought when you watched that interview, because if our viewers and listeners presumably are reading your amazing pieces at the free press, and the last one you wrote, batya, the Democrats shameful betrayal of Biden in the subhead here, it's coup o'clock for the so called defenders of democracy in the Democratic Party. Matthia, they're trying to throw him overboard. You're objecting, but what do you make of what you just saw for about 20 minutes with Lester Holt?

Batya Ungar-Sargon
It's so funny because last week during the press conference at the NATO summit, I, because I so objected to the coup by the elites on democratic grounds, I found myself becoming Jill Biden after the debate. Like, I was, like, he answered every question. You know, he stayed focus. He knew what was going go, Joe. And now that the pressure of the coup has abated and Donald Trump has almost been assassinated, all I could feel was absolute disgust at this man who promised to lower the temperature 24 hours ago and not 24 hours later was giving over the same lies and misinformation about Trump being a threat to democracy, about Trump saying, fine, people on both sides, which he never said, which even CNN, and now admits his misinformation, the same nonsense about him being a dictator, raising that temperature again with that language that he himself promised that we were not going to engage anymore, using that disinformation to paint Trump in the most heinous light. And then he says to Lester Holt, well, what am I supposed to do? Not say anything? And it's like, no, mister president, you're supposed to tell the truth. Like, the problem is not that you're pointing out flaws with Donald Trump's policy. The problem is not that you're pointing out actual threats to this country that he poses. The problem is you are lying in order to foment terror and rage on behalf of your supporters against a man who was almost killed 48 hours ago.

Michael Moynihan
Bachelor. I know that you don't agree with this, which is rather clear, but if you are somebody who actually does believe that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, you look at January 6, the certification of the election, a bunch of things that he's done, we can go through that list. But you know it pretty well. I mean, should you not say anything about it? I mean, is it just sort of the responsibility of the shooter alone? And the temperature of debate is like, look, if this is what I think he is, I should sort of be able to say it, right?

Batya Ungar-Sargon
I have no problem with him pointing out actual things Donald Trump has said and done the problem is he, in the space of the five minutes in which he was trying to lay out the threat to democracy, he mentioned a whole bunch of things that are not true. And that is the real problem here is, you know, he didn't have to, quote, of the lie about Charlottesville and find people on both sides, which has been debunked across the board. Right. That is where it becomes unforgivable incitement, not in a legal term, but in a kind of spiritual term. Right. Of course, he has a free speech. Right and indeed a political obligation to point out the ways in which he differs from Donald Trump. But the fact that he always has to resort to untruths, to me, shows that he doesn't think that the truth itself is quite as dangerous as he would like his followers and listeners to believe.

Michael Moynihan
Tara, Lester Holtz gave Biden the opportunity a number of times, and he seemed kind of frustrated in trying to give him the opportunity multiple times to say, okay, you said you're going to turn down the temperature. And his response was to talk about January 6 and similar things that he's spoken about in the past. Do you think he did a good job or did any job at all towards actually turning down the temperature in this very, very hot debate?

Tara Palmeri
I think he was on the defense. I mean, that's clear. He wanted to show, hey, I didn't start this, let's be, let's be clear. Because obviously the assassination attempt wasn't on his life, it was on Trump's. So he needed to at least lay out. Like, this has been happening for a while. And in fairness, I mean, it's been a tinderbox for, I don't know, ten years. The fact that as a White House correspondent, I needed security to attend rallies because of the vitriol and hatred just towards the press and just the language that we've been using in general on both sides of the aisle. And so I think he felt like he needed to come to that interview armed with defense. When asked, do you take responsibility for this as well? For the most part. I mean, republicans have really been targeted for the language because Trump has, you know, has the January 6 choir at his rallies. Right? There was an insurrection, a person died, and Charlottesville was a very upsetting moment. And Trump did not rise the occasion by condemning it in the way that most people wanted him to, which the country wanted him to. So there is a lot of evidence to point to that says that, you know, the right has been fomenting anger. Right. But at the same time, you know, he had to come aware that he was also going to be called out for taking part in the, in the dialogue. And, you know, both sides, the extremes on both sides have been, have caused this moment to rise. Where did it start? I probably would say it started with Trump on his side of the aisle. But, you know, we are where we are right now. And I do think when the messaging that, you know, this is an election is an existential threat to democracy, like, it's a serious thing whether it's true or not. It may be true, but it, the fact that it causes people to feel so passionately that they would act violently, I mean, obviously this is a disturbed person, but the fact that there's so much venom in the discourse, I mean, I think, yeah, at the end of the day, it takes two to tango, right? So we have to take it. We have to take accountability. I'm not surprised that he came in there armed with defense. He's not going to say, yes, I take ownership for this and Trump won't either.

Michael Moynihan
Tara, I'm going to actually throw this to both of you, but I'll start with you, Tara. Interesting thing that I noticed during this, again, very brief interview, which tells you a lot, by the way, the length of the interview tells you all you need to know. About 20 minutes. And I counted three attacks on the media, actually. What's with you guys? A little later. Where have you been? You're not covering me fairly. And it's pretty interesting to me that the media does seem to have, as botches piece points out, as with the democratic establishment, sort of turned on Biden. And the second that happened, it seemed like there was some heat coming towards him. He kind of seems to be reading from Donald Trump's hymnbook in a way. By going after the media, you're not focusing on what you should be focusing on. You guys are actually a problem here. Did you get that sense or am I, am I over reading this?

Tara Palmeri
Oh, no, totally. But they've been like this all along, honestly. I mean, he's always like shouting at the media when he's passing by, like, what's wrong with you guys? I pray for you. I don't know if you remember, he said that on Easter. He's angry.

Michael Moynihan
I just thought it was an Easter greeting.

Tara Palmeri
Like, you're sick. He said something kind of rude about it. But the thinking is like they've all his, his entire administration has this same chip on their shoulder that he has. He believes he deserves more praise for what they've accomplished. As you can tell he thinks that the media isn't giving him the amount of coverage and praise, that they're too focused on Trump. And now we, you know, the media has shifted to him and his, and his state. But even the stories that came out from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times about his mental acuity before this debate, there wasn't all that war going on between a private war going on between the press shop and the editorial boards at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. And now it's all out in the open. There's no hiding it. And it's just, he's angry. And this is what happens. Like, what do you, this is what you do when you're grasping for straws. Attack the media, right. Like you have nothing else. Yeah, I mean, that's my, that's what I think.

Michael Moynihan
Batsu, what did you make of the kind of attacks on the media? I mean, look, everyone does it. Donald Trump has been incredibly skilled at it over the years. And it just seemed to me that Joe Biden was really indulging this tonight in ways that he hadn't before. But I do take Tara's point that I guess I hadn't paid attention, that when you string it all together, he's been, been pretty aggressive with the press for a while now.

Batya Ungar-Sargon
I think when Trump does it, at least Trump seems like he's enjoying it. When Biden was doing it, he seemed like my grandfather when he was getting on in years and was actually really angry. And it was really personal, I will say, about the sort of both sides of political violence. We have one side of the political spectrum in America that is heavily armed, and we have another side that is ironically responsible for the majority of the political violence we've seen over the last ten years, which is the left, which has, there's been much more political violence coming from the left. We had January 6, of course, but that was a sort of a one time episode and nobody there was armed. So what we have is a situation where the heavily armed side of the political spectrum, everybody understands that they really are not going to bring the full brunt of their anger into the public square. And indeed, the left relies on them to control themselves and not use their weapons, right, even as they call them, you know, white rural rage and violent and so forth. And there's something there that's really interesting to me, the sort of forbearance that the left expects from their very heavily armed, conservative, you know, american neighbors to where, like, there's just such a, such a gap there. There has not been a single riot as a response to President Trump being almost murdered. There has not been a single shot fired. There has not been a single, even a whiff of revenge. And it's just so hard for me to imagine that if that attack had happened on a democratic politician, God forbid, that we wouldn't see the kind of rioting in the streets that we have gotten used to from an enraged left wing, you know, extreme, far, far left corners. Right, whether it's the pro palestinian marching or the George Floyd Floyd rioting or the, you know, whatever. There's so many examples of this over the last ten years. So I think that's really important to keep in mind that it's not just that there is not a balance in terms of the frequency, but that there's a real sort of unconscious acknowledgement that we completely all accept that the form of political violence that could come from the right would be much more devastating because they own firearms that we all understand they will not bring to bear in this way. Does that make sense?

Michael Moynihan
I'm not going to respond to it. I'm supposed to be the neutral arbiter here, Batja, maybe it makes sense, but I'm not going to tell you if it does. But what I am going to tell you is that despite the fact that I love you both and you're Tara and Batya just doing it on their own, we are going to bring in another guest who is one half of, actually, I'm going to tell you some opinions. One half of one of my favorite podcasts, Annika Chian, who is one half of the Red Scare podcast, which if you don't listen to you, you're not cool. And I don't like you because it's great. And Ana, you just watched Lester Holt interview Joe Biden. What did you make of it? We don't have her audio right now, but she did put her hands up like this, which means she probably feels pretty much like we all feel. All right, let me go to Batya quickly because I know you're not muted. We lost Anna, but she'll be back in 1 second.

Batya Ungar-Sargon
Can I tell you something I've been struggling with?

Michael Moynihan
Yes. It's related to politics.

Batya Ungar-Sargon
Yes, it's very relevant to this. I feel probably what President Biden is feeling as well. And Tara, I'm curious if you relate to this at all. On the one hand, I feel very much a responsibility as an American to turn down the temperature myself, like, to do what I can to meet this moment by being perhaps a little bit less scathing in my criticism of the other side. But then, on the other hand, I feel this deep responsibility to be truthful and honest and give voice to the people who agree with me in the most powerful way possible so those people can hear their views expressed in the best possible way. And I'm really struggling in this moment specifically with every time I open my mouth, like, which of those to choose. Because on the one hand, as an American, I feel like we all need to start treating each other with more respect, being a little bit less scathing. But on the other hand, I feel this deep responsibility to be as truthful and honest as possible because I am a journalist, and that's my job. And I'm wondering, Tara, if you relate to this at all, if this is something you ever think about and what advice you might have for me.

Tara Palmeri
Okay, so I have a different perspective on this. I mean, like, I'm a pretty much, you know, straight and news journalists. And what I find when I talk to people is that, like, they're confused. A lot of people are really confused right now. There's a lot of disinformation. I think they want facts, and I think that they want to have, like, a civil discourse. And I don't feel like they, I feel like they feel like they've been gaslit for a while, being told that, you know, Joe Biden is okay. He's great. He's great. He's great. And then they see the debate and they're like, what the hell? We can't, we, we don't trust the establishment. This was the, their candidate. Right. But I think at the end of the day, like, I don't, I don't get the sense that people are like, I need to shout it from the rooftop, what I'm feeling. I mean, maybe I'm talking to different people than you're talking to. I just get a sense of confusion. And because of that confusion, I think a lot of conspiracy theories take over. I think people look to other parts of the Internet for answers. I think they don't trust anything like the reaction that I got from most of the people that I speak to. You know, a lot of them very successful people, calling me being like, was this an inside job? You know, most of the people, either they believe that it was staged by the Trump team or it was liberals trying to take him down, widened the secrets. Like, there's, they don't believe the response from the government anymore. They don't believe the response from officials. They don't trust anything and that's what I fear. And I think that is where the outrageous wise, and I think the most important thing is just like to tone the temperature down because once it turns into tyranny, we're all fucked. Okay? Like, that's, that's when it all goes down. So. And information is the only way to break through. And like, good information, I think trust.

Michael Moynihan
In the media and the government is always an interesting indicator. And one of the things I saw today from Tommy Vitter, the, the Obama universe Denizen tweeted these poll numbers. And this is actually pretty shocking to me. I mean, we talked to people at Trump rallies. I've been to a bazillion of them. I've been to conventions. And you're really self selecting. I mean, these are people that are very interested in politics, very interested in Donald Trump. But, you know, you see these swings. So these things matter. And to Tara's point, I think people do believe that they've been gaslit by the administration and by the media, too, whether or not that's fair. And you see these swings. This is new polls. YouGov polls, pretty astonishing numbers. Arizona, Trump plus seven. Georgia, Trump plus four. Michigan, Trump plus two. North Carolina, Trump plus four. Nevada, Trump plus four. Pennsylvania, Trump plus three. And Wisconsin, where I am right now, Trump plus five. Batuu if you are a democrat, you gotta be a coup monger. You have to be a gol pista. You have to get rid of this guy because you're going to lose. It's not an elite thing so much, right? It's just, this is just practical politics. You see these numbers, you cannot win and then down ballot, you're going to lose a lot of races, too. I mean, you kind of have to have some sympathy for them, right?

Batya Ungar-Sargon
The only way to get him off the ticket is to convince him that is how a democracy works. He got 14 million votes. You can't just replace somebody against their will at that point. It's just, that's, that's not how democracy is supposed to work. And, you know, honestly there, I don't think that this is a shoe in for Donald Trump. I still think that it's going to be more competitive than we think right now. I think that the sort of post assassination attempt bump is going to dissipate. I think a lot of people still feel really ambivalent about Donald Trump. And I agree with the president that it's still competitive. And honestly, I really don't think everybody thinks, you know, Kamala Harris, Michelle Obama, Gavin Newsom, would be more competitive against Trump. I think that's just such wishful thinking. The trends that we're seeing in the working class, black men, hispanic voters, young voters defecting for Trump, you know, some of that has to do with Joe Biden, but some of it has to do with the fact that the taboo of admitting that you like Trump is, is finally good and gone. I mean, that that lasted for nine whole years. And, you know, one thing happened for sure when he stood up from that stage with blood dripping down his face and raised his fist and said, fight like the taboo is over. I mean, he murdered that taboo in that moment. And I honestly don't think that you would be able to just pull some, you know, up and coming Democrat from, you know, central casting or what have you, and that they would be competitive against Trump. To me, that's very wishful thinking at this moment and not democratic. I mean, I understand why the Democrats want to do that, but, you know, there's sort of, people are supposed to vote for somebody. It's the idea of the elite simply walking in and replacing the candidate seems to me to be like they're self fulfilling. The caricature of them that they're always trying to tell us isn't true. No.

Michael Moynihan
You know, it's funny. I mean, we're talking about polling. And I saw the, I think it was a Sienna New York Times poll in Nevada which had Trump, I think, 47, 47 Trump Biden with hispanic men, which is about a 20% hispanic state now in an important state. But, you know, while we're talking about polling, let's look at a clip of Joe Biden saying that those polls don't matter, they're not real, and I'm doing just fine.

Joe Biden
We knew this was going to be a close race from the moment he announced the idea that we are in a situation where if you look at all the polling data, pulling data shows a lot of different things, but there's no wide gap between us. It's essentially a toss up race. And I think one of the arguments that get made, you have the most successful presidency of any president in modern history. Maybe since Franklin Roosevelt passed more major legislation no one thought could get done. We were able to put together consensus. We were able to unite NATO. We were able to deal with foreign policy. Why don't you just decide to rest on those laurels? And the answer is because the job's not finished, Tara.

Michael Moynihan
I mean, is that these delusions of grandeur, are there some grounds to say that he can still win this race and this is actually not as dire as some of the pundits are saying.

Tara Palmeri
I don't know. It just seems like, I don't see how this gets any better. I don't see how like any, just continuing this tour, I mean, he's 22 events is kind of a lot. It just feels like he doesn't seem to be getting better. If anything, from these appearances, he appears to be getting worse and it's nothing confidence building. I just, I just think the problem is that he hasn't been seen enough and that the voters didn't know exactly, like what they were voting for. He was, he was so hidden for so long.

Michael Moynihan
Yeah.

Tara Palmeri
And that's the problem. So I think that's why there's a bit of buyer's remorse. And I think you're right. People did go out and vote for him, but they didn't know who they were voting for. I watched 2020 the debate. Okay. He's a totally different person in 2020. Yes, he has a stutter, but he makes points and he's vital and he has vigor. And this is a different person. This is someone who's clearly day to day to day. It's not, it's getting worse and worse. And, yeah, he had a successful administration by, if you're, you know, if you're a progressive, a Democrat, you know, he had a very sweeping past, sweeping bills. He spent, you know, he accomplished a lot. He had both the house and Senate and he managed to pass a lot of legislation. There's no doubt about that. But you don't, when I look at this, I think people are probably thinking I'm voting for Kamala Harris, who I, you know, that's, that they're probably thinking I'm voting for, for her. But who, who says that he'll give.

Michael Moynihan
Up the reins, you know, Tara, Tara.

Batya Ungar-Sargon
Can I ask you something about that? What? I don't remember which interview it was. Somebody asked him recently, you said you were going to be a transition candidate for one term and then you're going to pass it on. And what made you change your mind about that? And he had some answer about how the stakes are too high or something like that.

Tara Palmeri
Yeah. What do you think?

Batya Ungar-Sargon
Right. What do you think of that? Like what's really going on there? Do you believe him that he believes that or do you think that there's something else happening there? Like what do you make of that?

Tara Palmeri
It's a good question because he has said, he has said many times like I've beaten before. That's his whole thing. So I can beat him again. I'm the only one who's beaten him before. Right? Okay, fine. I mean, then there was that one time where someone chattered at him after the, her press conference. Do you think there are other Democrats who could beat Trump? And he said 50 of them. So, you know, who knows? Maybe, you know, you have to be a narcissist to be a politician. Let's be honest, all of them, really, you know, especially to get to that level. So, of course, he probably thinks in his mind, he is the only person who could beat Donald Trump. But that's not what the polls are showing, and it's going to be really hard to recover. Before that debate, Trump was a convicted felon and they were still in a dead heat. And Trump tends to under poll, frankly, like he was. Biden was always ahead in 2020. He was up by the least he was up by was four points, but it was like four to ten points. People in the Trump administration, they were packing up their bags before the election. They knew it was over. And in the end, Trump only lost by 140,000 votes in the number of houses, the battleground states. So why are we, to think this time when they're neck and neck that it's not, that Trump's actually not doing better than we think?

Michael Moynihan
Tara, thank you for joining us. We're gonna let you go because you appear to be the only person left in the hall and I'm worried about what will happen. I don't want you to get tased or anything. You're the only one there. It's like it empty. So go. Thank you so much for joining us. It was fantastic. And look forward to Tara's. Look at that empty hall. Tara's reporting over at Puck news. Tara, thank you so much.

Tara Palmeri
Thanks, guys.

Michael Moynihan
We are, we're going to replace Tara with somebody else. Annika Chian is back. And if you didn't hear me say this before, my favorite podcast, one half of it is Annika Chian from red scare. Anna, did you watch? We got you now. Is it, does she not even have a real microphone? Is that a fake microphone? Is this the problem? Because if not, I think she's back now.

Annika Chian
Can you hear me?

Michael Moynihan
There you are. Okay. This is going to be so good because now we have you. You watched it? Did you watch Lester Holt?

Annika Chian
I did. I did.

Michael Moynihan
What did you think I'm going to.

Annika Chian
Sound like Biden now because I'm a little tipsy and it's sweltering in this room. I really relate to him more than Trump even though I'm totally maga, because he's, like, muttering and stuttering. I thought this was one of his more fine performances. He sounded literally fine up until he was making that, quote, generic point about Clarence Thomas. I don't know if he was reading off a teleprompter, if he had notes scribbled on his hand or something like.

Michael Moynihan
That, but he just stopped in the middle of that one. Yeah.

Annika Chian
Yeah.

Michael Moynihan
That was the closest to the debate.

Annika Chian
And I've seen a lot of people in recent days make comparisons to Reagan and how Reagan in his old age was also ostensibly senile and demented. But if you actually watch Reagan, it's nothing like that. Yes, he hesitates a little, maybe he prevaricates, but there are no, like, major flubs that are indicative of, like, larger cognitive decline.

Michael Moynihan
Did you get any sort of content from that? When you slash through the thicket of weird pauses and hesitations and sort of going on these weird paths? There were some things in there that I understood, and I heard things like, Trump was responsible for a couple of cops dying on January 6, which I was unaware of, and a bunch of other things about January 6, about Charlottesville, this sort of thing. What did you make of the actual content? If one can determine the content of.

Annika Chian
What Biden said, I'm hoping that now with this assassination attempt on Donald Trump, that all the talk of Charlottesville and January 6 can finally be put to a close. We can stop talking about that.

Michael Moynihan
Oh, come on now. That's not going to happen. You know it.

Annika Chian
I think that I want to, you know, pivot back to what the girl can dream. I want to pivot back to what Tara was saying, that historically, that Trump under polls, and Biden seems to poll reasonably well, I guess. And I'm hoping that the assassination attempt coupled with, like, the verdict, now I really sound like Biden will really shift the ground from stated to revealed preferences because I think polls are hard to follow. But as far as what he was saying, I mean, I think that she's also correct in pointing out that anybody who gets into politics is kind of a narcissistic personality. I've always viewed Trump as kind of, like, a grandiose narcissist and Biden as a covert narcissist. But if you look at footage of him from, like, the seventies, when he was a young senator out of Delaware, he was extremely tenacious and almost bullheaded. This is a guy with, like, a lot of willpower, if not brain power. And I don't think he's going to go down easy even if everybody in the democratic camp is telling him to step down. I don't know if you guys read that amazing op ed by one of my democratic faves, James Carville, in the New York Times, where he was talking about how now that it's been proven, it's been shown to the public that Biden is like, cognitively impaired, we have to replace him with a new candidate. But we can't merely anoint Kamala because that would look a whole lot like election rigging. So we have to have a bunch of town halls moderated by the guys. I happen to work for Obama and Clinton and bring in a bunch of other candidates, and it's actually going to be Kamala in the end because she has, like, a much earned, much deserved invite. Yeah, but we can't make it look that way. And he was calling it like a super democratic process or something, which sounds very fishy.

Michael Moynihan
Yeah, it's like incredible theater. And I have to say that I have fallen in love with James Carville in recent years just because he talks about the democratic politics becoming the politics of the faculty lounge, which is apparently him saying faculty lounge, it's like lefty politics. But, you know, and also the narcissism thing. Do note that in this, one of the things that I could decipher was Joe Biden saying that he was the greatest president since FDR, maybe even better than FDR, more legislation or whatever.

Annika Chian
I don't think that's usually even more crippled than FDR.

Michael Moynihan
We're live, right? I can't respond to it.

Annika Chian
They're the two most disabled presidents in recent history. This is true.

Michael Moynihan
We have a clip of Joe Biden talking about January 6. Why don't we play that and get your reaction to it?

Rob Henderson
Taken a step back and done a.

Michael Moynihan
Little soul searching on things that you.

Rob Henderson
May have said that could incite people who are not balanced.

Joe Biden
Well, I don't think, look, how do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says, do you just not say anything because it may incite somebody? Look, I have not engaged in that rhetoric. Now my opponent is engaged in that rhetoric. He talks about to be a blood bloodbath if he loses. Talking about how he's going to forgive all the, actually, I guess suspend the sentences of all those who were arrested and sentenced to go to jail because of what happened in the Capitol. I'm not out there making fun of, like, remember the picture of Donald Trump when Nancy Pelosi's husband was hit with a hammer going, talking about joking about it.

Michael Moynihan
That, I think, by the way, was the best bit when he did the, when he was looking like that. It's funny because you talk about the rhetoric and then he repeats a bunch of stuff that are sort of dubious. I mean, the bloodbath stuff. I mean, that's been, can you say it's been debunked?

Annika Chian
I mean, to preface everything, when Democrats talk about a threat to democracy, what they really mean is things not going so well. For democrats, it's actually democracy working just as it's meant to work, just as it's designed to work. Often when you submit things to, like a democratic referendum, things don't go the way that you necessarily wanted to. But otherwise, I mean, I thought his answer was pretty fair and balanced. I suppose the problem is the one that Bhatia pointed out where you have one half of the public that's historically very well armed and another half that seems to be responsible for all the political violence. And the question I have for you guys with regard to this recent assassination attempt is like, is this stochastic terrorism? The libs have been bleeding, I think, for months, for years now about this concept of stochastic terrorism. I'm sure you guys have heard it being thrown around. You know, when a public demonization of a group or a person leads to an incitement of violence, that that is a probable but unpredictable and so on and so forth. So to me, I think this latest attempt was probably the closest thing we have to that term. And of course, the guy was a registered Republican. Right. You have people coming forward now being like he was the conservative da da da da. But for me, it's neither here nor there.

Michael Moynihan
Yeah, I don't think so either. The details of his politics are so far pretty sketchy. We're a couple days from it and we haven't had a flood of stuff. It's usually there's that archaeology that happens. And we find stuff online, find stuff that's like, even kind of, you know, questionable. And we'll be debating the meaning of it for a long time. I want to bring in somebody who knows more about Trump voters and Biden voters and has spent his career talking to those voters, the one and only Frank Luntz, who I have had the pleasure to sit in on a few of his sessions. And Frank is joining us now. Frank, thanks for being here.

Frank Luntz
I don't know if you can hear it, but I got the convention behind me. And there's something that has scared me. More than Joe Biden, more than Donald Trump. Are older white republicans dancing?

Michael Moynihan
It's not, it's not a good, it's not a good look. No. And I think I'll lose the election for them if you turn your camera towards them. So please don't. So, Frank, what do you, you've done some panels, you've been talking to voters. What's the kind of vibe you're getting right now?

Frank Luntz
The level of intensity that every Trump voter is energized and every Biden voter seems demoralized. And I don't believe that the shooting is going to have any impact on public support for either candidate. I don't believe that the debates had much of an impact or even Trump's entire indictments and convictions. There's 4% of Americans who are undecided. That's it. And basically, you're seeing movement of one or 2% after these major significant game changing events. And the reason why is that everyone's made up their minds. However, I don't know how Joe Biden's going to win this race when every single Trump supporter is going to be a Trump voter on election day and so many Biden supporters are going to stay home. That differentials were between one and 2%, which is enough to swing three or four states, maybe 80, 90 electoral votes. This is significant. And in the entire going all the way back to 2015, Donald Trump has never been in the position that he is now a clear front runner with momentum. The win has at his back. He seems to be in full stride. And these interviews that Joe Biden is doing, they're not helping him.

Michael Moynihan
Did you, did you watch this interview with Lester Holt?

Frank Luntz
I got a chance to watch 15 minutes, and then I got to look at the transcript as it was done. And you were speaking about what was the most important, which is that both candidates need to be really careful about what they say, because their voters are really, and they're likely to respond. And I don't know if you can hear, but Donald Trump is just coming into the convention hall right now and the place is going nuts. It's going wild. I've been to every republican convention since 1992, every democratic convention since 1988. I have never in my life seen this level of enthusiasm and passion. And it seems like Trump just keeps getting better. And, and by the way, I don't support either candidate. But Joe Biden comes across. They said he was defiant after the Stephanopoulos. They're going to say the same thing about Lester Holt. No. Donald Trump waving his fists in the air, surrounded by Secret Service people bleeding on the side of his face. That's defiance. And that's exactly what his people wanted to see. And if you can hear it, this place is going absolutely crazy tonight.

Michael Moynihan
So, you know, us political nerds, you know, are looking at the winds in all the swing states, et cetera. But it strikes me that, you know, the most important question that people I know who aren't as interested in stuff as I am want to know is a very simple one. Is there a way that Joe Biden can win right now?

Frank Luntz
And I think that there is. And by the way, I've never seen someone light a cigarette and smoke it on a podcast like this. So my, as a poster, my, my question to her is, did I say something that either upset you or that, uh, that turns you off?

Annika Chian
No. No, I'm, I'm just really self destructive and a nicotine addict. But I actually had a question for you because don't you think that there could be an effect of.

Batya Ungar-Sargon
Thank you.

Annika Chian
Bye.

Michael Moynihan
Okay, Batia has to go. She has some other important working class people to hang out with. So good to see you. And tell the cops at the bar, sorry, next hit.

Batya Ungar-Sargon
Sorry.

Michael Moynihan
Yeah, next hit. But Anna, you had a, you had a question for frank while you were spoken?

Annika Chian
Yeah. Don't you think that there is going to be some kind of maybe marginal effect of, like, Trump voters staying home because they feel like they've got it in the bag? And also the, you said that the assassination attempt wouldn't affect his chances, but I think that going back to something Batya said, I think now whatever shame there was surrounding being a pro Trump person has been fully killed, has been fully dissipated. So you have these two kind of competing effects going on.

Michael Moynihan
What do you make?

Frank Luntz
No, I don't. Because the Trump voter wants to be heard. The Trump voter wants to be recognized and respected, and they don't want to be ignored. They are going to be active, engaged and involved. You see bumper stickers and lawn signs and boat parades and car parades and, and I like that better. And seeing this anger, I want to point out that it really frightened me that these people were yelling at the tv cameras, Trump is being taken away. He just gets in the vehicle and behind him people have their fingers, their middle fingers out, yelling, racial epitaphs. Not racial, just swearing at the cameras and at the press. That level of hostility is really out of control. And that's what frightens me. So if, if they're participating and engaged and involved, that's a good thing.

Annika Chian
Yeah, I mean, channel, um, their energy into, like, productive anger, as Tony Soprano says. I see they have like, JD Vance and Tucker cross in the house.

Michael Moynihan
Well, yeah, we have a shot in Tucker, and Trump is walking out now in the. If we can keep you for a second, Frank, I want to show you a clip now related to JD Vance, who was announced today as Trump's VP candidate.

Frank Luntz
Delegates and alternates, ladies and gentlemen, I.

Batya Ungar-Sargon
Am proud to announce that Senator JD.

Frank Luntz
Vance has the overwhelming support of this convention to be the next vice president of the United States.

Michael Moynihan
That was a clip of JD Vance being announced in a very sort of throaty response from the crowd. Frank, what do you think? What do you think of the pick? Do you think it was a smart one?

Frank Luntz
I never thought. Well, first off, to set the context, I never thought that the vice versa vice presidential nomination mattered, that the only time that it does matter is when they are drag on the ticket, when they say or do something that causes a problem to the presidential candidates. I'm trying to think as I speak to you now, I don't know of any time where the vice president actually won it for the presidential, the presidential candidate. That said JD Vance communicates to every Trump voter that he's now created a legacy, a younger, healthier, more engaged version of himself. And so this is not just something that's temporary. This is going to last. I'm not sure what. I'm not sure would have gone that way. I know that I would have looked at some of the other candidates as well.

Michael Moynihan
Who would you have looked at, Frank?

Frank Luntz
I would have looked at Tim Scott, because Trump is strong, unusually well, among younger african american men. I would have looked at, at someone who could have done more with the latino vote, because Trump is doing especially well with Hispanics. But JD Vance does bring in a union, working class, hard working taxpayers coming to this paycheck to paycheck. Vance writes about them, understands them. And so for that, from that sense, it was a very smart pick. I just want to say, you're going to cut this off shortly. This should not be about the next election. It should be about the next generation. I say this to every Republican and to every Democrat. Be careful what you say and how you say it. We are a tinderbox right now as a country, and I don't want to see any more violence.

Michael Moynihan
Frank Kenneth, follow up on one thing there. I mean, I've seen this when I've been out in the field, and in 2016, we heard that, you know, Donald Trump saying Mexicans are rapists, et cetera, that he is an unreconstructed racist. He cannot win with these groups. As you point out, amongst black men and amongst Hispanics, his portion of the vote has grown substantially. You've talked to a lot of people. Why do you think that is?

Frank Luntz
I'm going to surprise you here from the work I've done. It is not a pro, necessarily a pro Trump vote. It is an anti Biden vote. And that just makes everyone angry for me to say it. But it's the truth. There are people who are voting for Donald Trump. They like his policies, but they don't like his Persona, and they find him in some cases offensive and they find them scary. But Joe Biden in the debate, in these interviews have really disappointed this, these segments that are leaving, and so they're willing to give Trump another look and their vote.

Michael Moynihan
All right, Frank Luntz, thank you so much for joining us. Go back and enjoy the convention and I'll probably see you around in Milwaukee. And Anna, I want to ask you a quick follow up here. JD Vance, you paid attention to him a little bit.

Annika Chian
A little bit, yeah.

Michael Moynihan
Did you read hillbilly elegy?

Annika Chian
I have nothing.

Michael Moynihan
What did you make of the pick? Was it surprised? You think it's a smart pick?

Annika Chian
I mean, I think it's a smart pick to the extent that what really concerns me again is not the upcoming election, it's subsequent elections after that. And there has to be young blood in both of these parties. And it seems like both parties are like strapped for new, interesting candidates. I don't think JD Vance is anywhere near Trump, and I don't know enough about him to comment. But I think a guy like Tim Scott probably wouldn't track, wouldn't have tracked well with anybody. Yeah, probably. Certainly not black people.

Michael Moynihan
Yeah, that's true. Yeah. That Drudge today was saying at like, you know, 02:00 today, you know, the pick is going to be Ben Carson.

Annika Chian
Yeah.

Michael Moynihan
Which I was like, where is he getting this?

Annika Chian
Well, that would have been better than Tim Scott if it was down to those two guys. I wanted to see something wild and weird like Caitlyn Jenner or something like that. But I mean, JD Vance, I guess he has my support for the time being. He's a friend of a lot of my friends and we'll see what happens.

Michael Moynihan
Yeah. Have you met him? Because I do know that he's a friend of some of your friends. But why do your friends, what is the appeal? Because I haven't met the guy. I haven't read his book. You know, I've seen that he obviously, in 2016, was telling friends that Donald Trump was possibly the next hitler. And do you think that that switch is just cynical politics or can people actually change that much over, I guess, an eight year period? It's a pretty long period of time.

Annika Chian
That's a good question. I mean, I think he's young and ambitious, and he's probably switching for cynical reasons because he stands to reason that he has some future in the Republican Party. I think he's probably much more of an establishment candidate than Donald Trump, and he is probably at some point going to be vying for the president. I can't, you know, I don't know his heart. I can't read his mind. So I don't know where he truly stands on Trump. But I guess it's nice to see.

Michael Moynihan
People rallying behind him and just how Maga, are you? Are you gonna vote for Donald Trump?

Annika Chian
I'm pretty Maga, and I disagree with Frank's point that the people who are now switching to Trump are doing it because it's an anti Biden vote. I think a lot of people, if you talk to, like, normal, regular people, like his personality, he energizes people. He seems like a person who's uniquely blessed by God. If you stick with him, good things will happen. I have my, you know, qualms and criticisms of Trump, but now is not the time to air them.

Michael Moynihan
Now is that so? What is it like that makes you, you're a person who lives in New York City. You're not somebody that, you know, you walk by and you say, this woman has got to be a Trump voter. I would surprise most people that you were.

Annika Chian
Yeah, I think most people probably.

Michael Moynihan
Is it an anti everybody sucks vote? Cause, like, I mean, the other side sucks so bad and just the politics that have taken over so many people on the left. Is it that kind of thing, or do you actually like Donald Trump as a politician and like his policies?

Annika Chian
I think he's probably no better and no worse than most presidents in recent history. I liked at least his rhetorical stance on immigration and crime and that sort of thing. For me, it's a really realistic thing because the Democrats in places like New York City have done very little to curb things, the issues that people really care about, which are the economy, immigration, crime.

Michael Moynihan
Yeah. And those are things that you care about, by the way, I just wanted, if you can see on the screen here, they're cutting away to Donald Trump. And I've been traveling today. Maybe I didn't see this. But beyond the photo of Donald Trump with the blood streaming down his face, the Mount Sarabachi photo, the Iwo Jima photo of this generation, love these cutaways to him with the big thing on his ear. I hadn't seen this previously. It looks like he's at the UN in the 1960s getting a simultaneous translation. But it's like, do you think the shooting, because Frank's like, ah. Doesn't do anything, has no effect.

Annika Chian
I think it absolutely tipped the scales because if you compare that with Biden's disastrous debate performance, which I happen to think Washington, you know, all in all, not so disastrous. He was performing like he usually does. He didn't have any huge gaps, gaffes or clubs. But to have that out on the world stage, I think was probably pretty damning for him. And then if you, when you couple that with, like, Trump's almost miraculous reaction to getting grazed by a bullet, I have to think that that matters.

Michael Moynihan
All right, we're going to bring in right now and an old friend of mine and somebody who wrote a kind of prescient book about this that I think more people should remember. And he's going to correct me possibly on the title in the year, I think it was called grand New Party and probably around 2006 or seven, about how the Republican Party can change and reform. He is now the head of the Manhattan Institute. Do we have Raihan Salaam on the line? Are we going to bring him in? Raihan, actually, that book that he wrote, which he co wrote, was Ross Doufitt in like 2006 or seven, that basically said the republican party needs to stop being like the free market party. And for people who are more libertarian, like me, that was like, ah, come on. And it has to be more of a working class party. And he wrote that book a really long time ago, and no one really pays attention to the fact that Raihan was right for a very, very long time. And we're going to have him in a second to talk about that and to talk about the party that he sees in Milwaukee right now. Well, we have Raihan now if we can bring him in. I was a little too eager to get to Raihan because I haven't talked to him in a long time. Hello. He's an old pal. And Raihan, I don't know if you heard my fulsome introduction, and when I talked about how prescient you were with your book, which I think from memory was called grand new party. Is that right?

Reihan Salam
Indeed. Indeed.

Michael Moynihan
2007, eight, something like that.

Reihan Salam
That was that sounds. Yeah, 2008 sounds right. It was. I had, I actually, in fact, did not have hair then. My eyebrows were thicker, bushier, even more formidable than they are today.

Michael Moynihan
Well, I did not lead in by telling people you did have hair then, so it's disappointing to nobody. But at that, at that point you made an argument that seems to, and again, this is from memory, that you were pretty prescient about this stuff, that the republican party needs to talk to working class people. They hadn't been doing. So a lot of white papers from Cato, free market, AEI, et cetera, talking about lowering taxes, and that wasn't going to win voters in the future. Is that kind of broadly what you and Ross Douthat were arguing back then?

Reihan Salam
Yes. So there is inevitably some revisionist history here. But the big picture is that we saw a shift that had been unfolding for a very long time. That is what is now called education polarization, the diploma divide. We had seen a shift of working class voters from left to right, and our argument was, in a sense, a corrective. We were arguing that the emphases of that era. So if you're looking at movement conservative world during the George W. Bush era, particularly in the second term, there was a sense that, oh, the real problem was that the George W. Bush administration wasn't sufficiently austere, that it had departed from small government, the small government ethos and argument was that, well, wait a second, that's not quite right. There was a quality of wishful thinking about that, or there was a kind of narrowness. And then, of course, shortly after her book was published was the Tea Party moment. And there was a belief that this was a real popular uprising of people who were really deeply concerned about basically the size of government related issues. And argument was basically, that's not the right way to think about this, that a lot of this is about attitudes, about reciprocity, attitudes about what is right and fair. So it wasn't necessarily. No, the answer is not to be anti government. The answer is to embrace government and the power of government. Rather, it was an idea that when you're thinking about a conservative politics that would resonate with a larger majority. It can't be reflexively anti statist. That can't be the whole content of it. In some ways, I think that we, again, we're offering a corrective relative to this set of beliefs about the supposed appeal of austerity or the supposed appeal of a very, how do you say, desiccated, anti statist worldview. We were not, I don't think embracing a kind of full on, let's be right wing social Democrats or, you know, let's embrace the left's prescriptions. It's narrative about inequality as the kind of chief challenge facing american political economy or whatever else. And we had various ideas, some of them more clever, more resonant than others. But there are a lot of themes that we picked up on, including the idea that violent crime mattered, that immigration had to be understood through this lens of reciprocity. And, yeah, I think we got a lot of things right. And we also did say that, look, if mainstream Republicans don't embrace the idea that we need a politics that, that feels resonant and responsive to working class voters, you're going to see a demagogue, or you're going to see a series of demagogues. You are going to see some turn into a kind of anti policy direction that scratches those deep emotional itches in different ways. And I think that, you know, there's reason to believe that's. That's how things have unfolded.

Michael Moynihan
Ryan, I want to get back to some more stuff in the news and the news cycle, but I want to bring Anna in here for a second, because a minute ago, I asked Anna a similar question, and she said, I'm not. I don't. I can't talk about politics like this. But Anna, we have a split screen here. And Amber Rose, I can talk about that is on screen. And who better to talk about this than you? I didn't know she had a tattoo on her, her forehead, and I don't know who she is. So if you can explain the significance of this, who Amber Rose is and how excited you are about this appearance, because there's a lot of red hatted guys that are clapping sort of uproariously at the appearance of Amber Rose.

Annika Chian
So Amber Rose is like an old school video girl video ho, who used to date Kanye west. That's really all I know about her.

Michael Moynihan
I. Why is she at the RNC? Can you provide any?

Reihan Salam
And she was married to Wiz Khalifa. Let's not forget that.

Michael Moynihan
Raihan Salaam, for reference. That was surprising.

Reihan Salam
Wiz is very big in western Pa.

Michael Moynihan
I just wanted to make sure that you didn't have anything really important.

Annika Chian
No, no. I think this is my cue to leave. But, Raihan, nice to meet you. I'm gonna check out your book. It sounds super interesting. We had Ross on the podcast back in the day.

Reihan Salam
He is a very dear friend and a legend, and he very much enjoyed being on your program. You should have him back on.

Annika Chian
Look at that. Yeah, I would love to. Yeah. And before I leave, I just want to say that I'm selling some MacBooks on my Twitter, 600 a piece. So if you guys want to deal.

Michael Moynihan
Dm me go to Anna's Twitter and buy MacBooks that were boosted from a truck in New Jersey. Thank you, Anna. We appreciate it. She could hawk her stolen wares if she came on. So thanks, Anna, for joining us. And everybody listen to the Red Scare podcast. It's one of my favorites. Rhyhorn.

Annika Chian
Have a good night.

Michael Moynihan
I want to ask you something. I mean, you brought up George Bush here in that era of republican politics. It's kind of the era where when I was in DC, that's when I met you. And there's a lot of people from that era. And I usually delineate this as the sort of free market types and more populous types. There is this sort of neocon divide that still sort of exists, too. And can you sort of tease that out a little bit when you have somebody like JD Vance who is the vice presidential pick? Is that the sort of final nail in the coffin of that debate within the Republican Party?

Reihan Salam
Oh, Mike, Mike, why? I'm your worst nightmare because I will be dangerously prolixed. So please interrupt me. I have many thoughts about this. So first of all, just, there's no hiding from this. And also, these are still my convictions. I came to Washington, DC. My first job out of college was as a reporter, researcher at the new Republic magazine, which was a very different institution then than it is now. My second day on the job was September 11, 2001. I was a researcher for a book written by Bill Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan, names that will mean a lot to you, not necessarily to folks out there.

Michael Moynihan
A book about why we should invade Iraq.

Reihan Salam
Yeah, exactly. And this was very central. My mentor when I was an undergrad was Sam Huntington. And just, it was very steeped in this, you know, the foreign policy discourse of the time. And absolutely, this was incredibly central, the debates. So I lived in a house with Ross Douthat and Bridge Colby, Bridge Colby, who politico has described as a possible next national security advisor. Were there to be a Trump administration? Were there to be a second Trump administration? So these debates have been really central for me for a long time. I have many people I like and admire on different sides of these debates. JD is someone I've known for a long time and liked and admired. I am. These debates are very personal for me. So not on the.

Michael Moynihan
Can I interrupt you there Ryan asking because you say you've known JD Vance for a long time, who might very well be the next vice president. What do you make of that change? I mean, JD Vance, of course, was writing for commentary, a neoconservative journal. They're very pro Israel. He worked for David Frum, who is the king of the neoconservatives back in the day and now has very different views on foreign policy. A lot of people, look, he's announced and people are dinging him on this. You called Trump the next Hitler. You had these different views. Do you think JD Vance came to those views that he has now honestly, or is he just cynical and trying to, you know, adapt to the new Republican Party?

Reihan Salam
I believe that he absolutely came by them honestly. I might disagree with JD on this or that question, a foreign policy or domestic policy, but I can tell you that he is absolutely sincere, thoughtful, committed on these issues. And, you know, look, he is someone who reads deeply. Everything that comes out of his mouth reflects a considered judgment, considered reflection on what he sees as the nature of the geopolitical challenges facing the country and what we ought to do about them. I also believe that he's someone who, like any statesman worth assault, is someone who is capable of gleaning from changed circumstances that, you know, you might need new and different and distinct approaches. So, you know, I, look, I mean, there, there's so much ink that's been spilled on this. But I think that he's someone for whom the Trump presidency, you know, the Kavanaugh hearings, the particular experience that he had dealing with the hostile media, I think these are things that very profoundly shaped him. And when it comes to foreign policy, this idea that he is someone who is very invested in working class America, in greater Appalachia, in a part of the country that he sees as forgotten. And just having been coming from a world where there were a great many people who served in the military. So I think that it's absolutely sincere. Now as to the content of these debates. Look, I mean, I think that there aren't clear binaries here. There is a lot of complex crossover. When you're looking at how do you feel about great power politics, the centrality of the China threat, what do you see as the right us grand strategy, the us alliance with Israel? There are many different questions where it's nothing. This neat division between neocons and anti neocons or isolationists or what have you, theyre all of these really interesting gradations, even if you look at some of these folks in Congress in the Senate whove been very skeptical, if not outright opposed to aid to Ukraine. Even among those folks, even within that call it a faction, there are a lot of complexities about the different positions people are taking. So I'm happy to answer any question about it, but it's something that I've thought a fair bit about. Yeah.

Michael Moynihan
So one of the things I want to ask you, and I'm going to bring someone in here to talk to us about it. I mean, I think it would be a good conversation because a lot of this stuff, when I see somebody like JD Vance and I realize that the cultural politics of the left have a lot to do with a lot of people's shifts. I mean, I know a number of people who were, you know, mainstream Democrats, and they saw a lot of the cultural policies of the less and the culture war is being waged. They see this stuff online. And Raihan Salaam, you are the president of the Manhattan Institute. You do a lot of work with this, with people like Chris Rufo when it comes to Dei initiatives. And I'm gonna bring in somebody now. I'm very happy to have here Rob Henderson. And Rob, you've heard this phrase luxury beliefs, which is coined, I think, by Rob Henderson. I mean, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain it was. But Rob has a new book out called troubled, which everyone should read. And by the way, very kind of felt similar to me into JD Vance's book. Hillbilly Elegy has similar overlap. Rob, thank you so much for being here. I was just talking to Reinhan about this, about the sort of cultural moment and the cultural politics of the left. You call a lot of these things luxury beliefs. I mean, is that, does that kind of account for a lot of people sliding from their traditional democratic perches to maybe a little more on the right and actually saying, well, maybe Donald Trump's not the worst idea in the world.

Rob Henderson
Yeah, I think that's correct. And, well, at least if you believe Wikipedia, which many people don't anymore, I did coin the term luxury beliefs. So that's, you know, that one's mine. I do think that especially over the last four or five years, a lot of people have seen the effects of decriminalization of drugs, defunding the police, the recent uprisings on campus. And this has affected a lot of people's personal political views, a lot of fence sitters or people who didn't really know how to vote in this upcoming election. You know, I watched the Lester Holt interview with Biden and I, they discussed political violence. And Biden, I think rightfully pointed to January 6. He pointed to Charlottesville. Okay. He made no mention of 2020 in which there were far more deaths, far more destruction, and far more sort of cultural and societal effects. And I think that year it had a large effect on the consciousness of american voters. And there's a reason why this term luxury beliefs, which, you know, I've spent the last five years or so writing about, has caught on and sort of entered mainstream parlance.

Michael Moynihan
You know, I'm just doing this because I like to push out my old friend Rahon son. Just give him as little time to talk as possible. So I'm going to bring one more person in here who knows a lot about this stuff. And all three of us, all four of us are going to talk about it. James Pogue, and I know a lot of you have read James Pogue's article in Vanity Fair on many of these similarities. I know that he knows JD Vance and knows these issues quite well. James Pogue, thank you for joining us. Are you in LA? Are you here in Wisconsin?

James Pogue
I just got back from the NATO summit, so I've been racing around and then I might go to the RNC now, but I'm just, I took a day to chill, so I'm in LA.

Michael Moynihan
I think that, I think you're probably nothing missing a ton. Amber Rose is talking right now. You can probably get the transcript. James, you, you know JD Vance? I do. What do you make of this pic?

James Pogue
Well, I mean, I don't think I'm probably the only person on this panel who knows him. So now I'm nervous. I was at his house in Washington just now, actually, weirdly. And it was, I think, you know, it's a bummer for me as a kind of like literary writer person who's interested in personalities and all this stuff because he is a very complicated and weird and interesting figure who I think, you know, I sometimes see getting buffeted in all these conversations. And I sort of find it regrettable and like sad for America because this figure could be so much more than what we, our politics kind of offer him in a certain way. With that said, I mean, I was, I was on the phone with representatives of foreign governments today because they're calling me going, you know, what's, what's going to happen? How is he going to impact foreign policy?

Michael Moynihan
What did you tell them? What's your sort of stock response to that?

James Pogue
I mean, the stock response is a three hour conversation about the future direction of western society, you know, so it becomes really complicated. But my thing, and I think what a lot of people on the global center left would say privately is kind of like, okay, cool. This is a younger person who understands structural issues that are being sort of baked into. And, Moynihan, I know you. I mean, I listen to a lot of what you say, and I know you and I may disagree with this, but about this, but there. There are certain structural issues baked into the western alliance and how, you know, the post war. The post war sort of consensus has worked out in the last 70 years. There are real major structural issues that people in high levels of government all over the world are worried about right now. And I think, if nothing else, JD is someone who understands those and can talk intelligently about those. And I talked to a lot of Democrats who. It's like, you start getting into the more systemic critiques of how, as a representative of foreign government just said to me just now how this thing works, and they start to look at you blankly on the center left in this country. And I think there are certain people around the world who are pretty happy about the JD pick because at least we can start talking.

Michael Moynihan
When you said you were at his house fairly recently, I presume that's in the last week or so, was it?

James Pogue
Yeah, I think maybe exactly a week ago. I mean, it was off the record. It was just to say hi.

Michael Moynihan
Yeah, but did you get a sense. And I know it was off record. Did you get a sense of how he felt about this position? I mean, he's only. Hasn't been in the Senate very long. Now, being vaulted up to being vice president, I mean, that's a pretty big promotion.

James Pogue
I mean, I think sometimes in these instances, you have to relax in order just to survive them. But he was incredibly relaxed. I mean, he was like, you know, swatting bugs. He was in pajamas. You know, people were hanging out, coming in and out, drinking whiskey. I mean, it was.

Michael Moynihan
It was very.

James Pogue
It was. We watched guns n Roses videos on the tv. I mean, it was just like very, very relaxed.

Michael Moynihan
So I just want to get this. So I get the headline right? You watched Guns n Roses videos in your pajamas drinking whiskey with the future.

James Pogue
I was not. I'm just sorry.

Michael Moynihan
I mean, you're saying, let's not put.

James Pogue
This stuff on headlines. I mean, but there's hypothetically that these are scenes that this is what it looks like.

Michael Moynihan
Right.

Frank Luntz
And, yeah.

James Pogue
Um. Yeah, he was very relaxed. He was joking about it. Um, I didn't. I got the sense that he was pretty confident it was going to happen. Um, I got the sense that in, weirdly, he wouldn't have been devastated if it didn't happen. Um, I think he was. But, you know, when I met him, he was early into the primary campaign that. The primary campaign that, you know, I remember on your podcast, you're like, he's covering himself in shame. He has no chance of winning. And I thought a lot of the time, because I was always a believer that even if he wasn't the right man for the time, he was going to be the man for the time. And I often worried that I was an idiot, right? And, like, I often.

Michael Moynihan
Well, now I'm worried that I was. Did I actually say that on the podcast or did somebody else?

James Pogue
I hope it was something I remember, because I had my. I had my big vanity coming out, and I thought, am I just out ahead of my skis? Am I stupid?

Michael Moynihan
No. I was skiing off a cliff is the problem, as I often do. Raihan. I mean, you hear James talking about JD, and particularly as it relates to foreign policy. I mean, Trump has been very odd in things like this. He didn't really distinguish between a neoconservative or a sort of a vague neoconservative and somebody like John Bolton. And now it seems like he has somebody as a vice president who has a foreign policy. There's maybe not, as you know, exactly aligned with his foreign policy, but I don't even know that he has one. It's sometimes confusing. What effect do you think JD Vance, who is a real thinker about this stuff, has on the ticket?

Reihan Salam
Well, I will take off my hat of someone who likes and admires JD very much and just try to look at it with a little perspective and a little distance. If you think about Dwight Eisenhower, when he chose a running mate under these quite unusual circumstances, Eisenhower was not someone who's considered a loyal, devoted partisan. There was some uncertainty as to where his real political loyalties were when he emerged on the political scene. Having been a kind of national hero, certainly a kind of national celebrity figure, albeit of a very different sort, he chose a 39 year old, you know, very young senator who was known as someone who was a fierce anti communist, and someone who evolved into a very complex, textured figure, particularly when it came to questions of foreign policy, someone who later became a champion of detente, but, you know, who was someone who certainly had very strong bona fides as an arch cold warrior. And if you think about Trump now, of course, from one vantage point, if you think about how he's characterized by the left. He is seen as this right winger. But, of course, what is the axis? What is the spectrum we're using to characterize Donald Trump as far right? There's another way of looking at him, and this is when you look at someone like Robert Lighthizer, how they see Trump. Trump, they see him as being in continuity with a less ideological strain of republicanism that some have even traced back to Eisenhower. Again, you know, this is just one way of understanding him. So if you think of Trump as someone who is not especially ideological, the derisive way, or even the clinical way of putting this would be that Trump is more transactional than ideological than to have someone like JD Vance, who is someone who, you know, whatever you think of it, as someone who is trying to come up with an ideological synthesis. Now, the question is what is contested? Is, is that ideological synthesis that JD is developing? Is it authentically whatever we want to call Trumpism, or is it that, you know, Trump is someone who recognizes that having someone who is, you know, someone who is a thoughtful synthesizer of a kind of an ideological formula is a kind of useful person to have. Is this the kind of Maga populist? And that actually, then who knows what that means? Does that mean that he is genuinely a partner, or does that mean that. Look, I've checked that box. We don't know exactly what it's going to mean, but it is certainly something that sends a meaningful signal. I'm not sure if that signal is going to be interpreted correctly, given what else we know about Trump.

Michael Moynihan
I know Rob has to jump. I want to ask you one thing before you go, Rob, and I want to make sure to ask you one of the most complex questions. Masquerading is a simple question, is that you look at this election, you look at Joe Biden tonight with Lester Holt, the assassination attempt that, I can't even believe I'm saying that two days ago, which, by the way, already seems to not be taken that seriously, very strangely to me, that's how I'm reading it. But what do you make of where this election is now and what you see coming in the next couple of months?

Rob Henderson
Well, even before the assassination attempt, Trump was ahead in the polls, which you didn't really see in 2016. Trump was consistently behind in 2016, consistently behind in 2020, and now he is ahead. We'll see how the polls look in the next couple of weeks, how people will respond to this recent assassination attempt. I think it'll probably help him very sort of anecdotally listening to people speaking with people, messages that I'm hearing and receiving. And it's funny because in the previous two elections, it was Trump who was saying that the polls were misleading or flawed in some way. And now we're hearing the same story from Biden because he's behind. But right now it appears that given Biden's disastrous debate performance and people's sort of flagging confidence in him as a result of his age and the kind of incredible reaction that Trump had in response to being shot, that people maybe are ready to reelect Trump. That's the kind of sense I'm getting right now.

Michael Moynihan
Rob Henderson, thanks for joining us. The book is troubled. And if you liked JD Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy, it's a similar vibe to it. So go buy troubled. I know lots of people have, but just keep juicing those numbers. Rob, thanks for joining us. James, I want to ask you something quickly before we let you go. Is that, you know, am I, I watched this thing. Did you watch the Lester Holt thing tonight?

James Pogue
I did not. Sorry.

Michael Moynihan
You are lucky. But I'll tell you what, and maybe, Raihan, you can jump in here if you watched it. But I was following this on Twitter, and guess what? Nobody was tweeting about it. Everyone was tweeting with the RNC, a bunch of other stuff. And maybe there's something wrong with who I follow on Twitter, but it wasn't that big of an event. I think people are kind of like giving up on this in a way. But I watched this and we had Anna on who said he did. Okay. There were a couple of moments where he kind of stopped in the middle and didn't seem to know where he was. But this just seemed worse than anything I'd seen before because it was a kind of culmination of all these things, trying to save his campaign. In this last bit, I was just like, God, he is not with it. He does not seem to know where he is and cannot answer these questions. James, I'm sorry to ask you the big question. I know you didn't watch it tonight, but this is still a relevant question you can answer. Can it go on like this? Because everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop and, man, time is running out.

James Pogue
Yeah, I mean, I, so I had the pick. I had the pick of going to the RNC or the DNC. And my sort of long shot, like my long shot bet was like, hey, nobody's going to want to go to the DNC, but it's going to be the interesting one. And now everything is interesting or everything is just completely insane. So who knows? Um, but no, I mean, my sense from DC was, I'll tell you that, you know, I'll tell you this because I've been doing this foreign policy stuff for a long time. And I'll tell you privately with behind him, when he screwed up Zelenskyy's name, there were staffers gasping on stage. I mean, people who are high level in foreign governments who were just going, this can not go on. And just. And the thing was not okay. You have to. The thing was not okay. You have to cut this candidate. And the sense that I got from talking to people involved in american politics at the time in DC was not, you have to cut this candidate. It was that you're going to run a Gerald Ford strategy and you're going to protect the down ballot races. But this is game over. And it was actually more sort of resigned than I expected. I thought there was going to, I thought I was coming to DC with like a lot of energy, like, what's going to happen? How are we going to figure this out? And I think it may go on, but people are just going to sort of lose interest in the democratic drama that's. I don't know. I mean, this keeps changing every day. Right before it was, he's gone, then it was, watch the Congressional Black Caucus and see what they say. And then they were backed him. And then they sort of backed off backing him. And so I think for a certain while, like, like we are going to like go on in this kind of la la land and we're going to have this kind of increasingly irrelevant feeling candidate and we're going to see whether America can handle how far the Republicans may go. Because I think with JD, that was the pick of, hey, we're not worried about losing this election, right? We're worried about what happens after we win. And we want the guy who's going to come in and do certain administrative war stuff that a lot of people are worried about, but that people on the right are pretty, pretty pumped about. And I think that was the signal that the JD pick beyond the connection between the two men.

Michael Moynihan
That's sort of why you picked JD Raihan. You watched the Lester Holt thing, I take it, right? Or did you?

Reihan Salam
I'm afraid I just was alerted to join you here and just.

Michael Moynihan
Nobody wants, no one cares. America stopped caring. The man died three years ago and we know it. And they're just like, we can't need a confirmed every time you see him.

Reihan Salam
On tv, I happen to be at a work event. So I did have a, you have an excuse, and I kind of would. So I will say broadly, it's always foolish to count anyone out, particularly when our political environment is so chaotic and unpredictable. And, you know, you never know when an incredibly powerful image, you know, will emerge. Also, you know, the hot swap notion still has some life in it. I mean, who the hell knows what's going to happen? And also, man, I mean, there are so many events that unfolded in 2016 after this point in the calendar that it would be foolish for the folks at the RNC to have even an ounce of hubris, you know, which is one larger question. Look, one way to think about this is if you're a Democrat or if you're a Republican, the real thing is entrepreneurial coalition politics. What can you do to pick away some number of people who are seemingly unshakable from the other coalition? The thing that winds up being really anxiety producing is the idea that suddenly you go from 10% to 15% of the vote among black men or whatever else. These things are incredibly, incredibly meaningful. And what moves the needle when it comes to, if you think about October 7, this is immensely consequential when it comes to a slice of the electorate. Of course, Jewish Americans. But also outside of Jewish Americans, there are a lot of people who felt, you know, looking at the Biden administration seemed to respond to the fact that you had organized riots on a series of elite college campuses, and then to some, and maybe this is fair, maybe this is unfair, it seemed as though the Biden White House literally responded to that and ordered a shift in its policy with respect to, you know, a major us ally that for a lot of people was really not just discomforting, but rattling. And it's something that loosened a lot of people from what they thought was going to be an easy call. That was a really, really big deal. And I think that this has been a year of cronstadt moments. This has been a year of a lot of people who believe themselves to be one thing and believe themselves to be on really solid ground and then to have the kaleidoscope shaken up. And, you know, that's the big question about this RNC. I mean, to what extent, you know, is Donald Trump, to what extent are republicans using this shaking of the kaleidoscope? And to what extent are people kind of settling in a different way? That is surprising. There are a lot of folks who thought that, you know, and James, I think, was getting at this, that, you know, this was a moment to really surprise, maybe surprise with magnanimity or surprise in some other way, some other, you know, kind of identity gesture, some other symbolic gesture that would be really, really powerful and destabilizing. And of course, you know, Donald Trump is a showman. There are more opportunities for him to make those gestures. The one thing that was really, really striking from the last couple of days, from this totally fascinating and unnerving and chaotic and also thrilling and exciting weekend, I, Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania, talking about a man who was a great admirer and champion of the former president. He was really decorous in how he described this, talking about him as a man who is worthy of celebration and doing it kind of unhesitatingly in a way that seemed, it was just kind of unaffected and genuine and just to be able to say, I mean, I hate the term girl dad, as someone who has daughters, but whatever, we'll bracket that. But, you know, just talking about him as a human being who is a decent person. And then to set, and he was a great supporter of the former president. And to be able to say it the way that this didn't seem sneering and just didn't have any judgment or disdain or didn't feel like he had to preemptively apologize for saying something. Maybe it's silly and maybe this is a product of the bubble that I'm in or the stereotypes that, that plague my understanding, but that was powerful, man. And I think that for Joe Biden, as someone who's, hey, I was born in Scranton and, you know, all this other stuff, but the kind of the artifice of just being, you know, I don't know, Kamala Harris had some sort of ad about being someone who was celebrating Aanhpis because we've now added the NH because you don't want to leave out the native Hawaiian Hampshire.

Michael Moynihan
Right.

Reihan Salam
Asian American. Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders. Oh, and, you know, look, I mean, this is just, it's kind of fascinating the way these bureaucratic terms take on this weird talismanic authority. And it just seems so weird and unserious or just kind of the artifice of it feels so strange. But then, you know, yeah, you had Shapiro just sound like a human being and sound like, hey, I actually don't hold people. I don't hold them in contempt. Yeah, it's interesting. So who knows what will happen between now and I now in the election?

Michael Moynihan
All right, well, thank you, Raihan. And I recommend people go back and read the book that you wrote with.

Reihan Salam
Ross Dallas read everything.

Michael Moynihan
He was prescient. There was no betting markets on this. But he was right. And he's an old friend and he is a fantastic writer of Manhattan institute, all that stuff. James Pogue, I have to slather with compliments to his Vanity Fair piece that mentioned. Go look it up. A fantastic reporter, a brilliant guy. And look, I want to thank everyone for joining us tonight. We had apparently over 400,000 people. Is that correct? Am I juicing the numbers? Is that real? That is real. That was a lot of people. And I also want to thank everybody who joined us. The sort of traveling will be of political panels. We had Bacha, Angar Sarga, and we had Frank Luntz. We had Annika Chayan, who else? Paul, Mary Rob Henderson, and of course, James Pogue, who is right here in Raihan Salaam. There's so much more of this, by the way, it's not just this. You have to go over to the free press, the fP.com subscribe. If you don't do that, then you, my friend, are a communist. And you don't want to be a communist, now do you? Go over and subscribe. It makes us allowed to do things like this and bring fantastic guests like this. I'm going to go have a drink and I'm going to watch the rest of this. And we will be bringing you content all week from the RNC. So whatever happens, we will be there. And thank you all 400,000 of you, for watching. Good night.