Fear and Unity in Milwaukee

A
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B
Welcome to Pod save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

C
I'm Jon Levitt.

D
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

E
I'm Tommy Bismarck.

B
On today's show, the Republican convention wraps up itself second night with a parade of former Trump critics and opponents bending the knee to their mAGA. God.

Trump tries to get RFK Jr. S endorsement with some anti vax pandering. In a leaked video of the two men chatting, the Trump campaign now thinks they can put states like New Jersey and Maine in play. And the effort to convince Joe Biden to step aside appears to be coming back to life in response to the DNCS plan to officially nominate the president as early as next week. But let's start with day two at the republican convention, where the theme was making people afraid of immigrants and making former Trump opponents compete to see who could get their head the farthest up his ass. We'll let you be the judge. Here's some of what was said by Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ted Cruz, and Nikki Haley.

C
My fellow Republicans, let's send Joe Biden back to his basement and left and then Donald Trump back to the White House.

F
If you want to make America great again, vote Trump.

D
God bless Donald J. Trump.

G
Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period.

B
All right, under the heading of we watch the convention so you don't have to. Did you guys see or hear anything notable from the stage tonight? Tommy, let's start with you.

E
Jim justice, the governor of West Virginia, brought his dog out. Really, baby? Dog justice.

B
Interesting that he brought the dog out the night after Christy Noem spoke.

E
Yes.

D
Ooh, you not a queer. You're the first person to make that joke today.

B
You know what?

I've been trying to fucking dance, Lamb.

I've been trying to produce the show. I didn't even know. I didn't even know that was a fucking joke, Jon.

C
It was a good joke.

E
I was also reminded that Vivek Ramaswamy is a person who exists and he has a repellent personality. That came out today.

C
Jim justice has the kind of.

B
We're going all in on the Jim justice speech analysis, huh?

D
It was the most interesting by far. CNN went crazy for the dog.

C
Yes. Everything else was pretty boring on stage. He has the kind of demeanor of the villain in a Matlock episode where that's relatable.

D
Somewhere Joe Biden goes finger on the cultural pulse.

C
I just want to sign.

B
I think ideology, partisanship aside, the speeches are so bad.

C
Boring.

E
It's very boring.

B
So bad.

E
Paint by numbers.

B
It's just like, it's. I don't know. Can people give a good speech anymore? No, it's all recycled lines, all cliches, all shit that you've heard before.

C
Not like the music back in our day.

They knew what rock and roll was back then.

B
Even, like, even, like George W. Bush could give a good speech back in the day.

Nikki Haley came, like, maybe the closest to giving an okay speech.

D
Eh. Is right.

E
You guys were out of the office. Dan and I watched Carrie Lake. She did a much more muted version of herself. Everything was a little toned down. You know, the previewing that it would be less crazy, this convention than the last one has been true so far.

D
Her rhetoric is now sepia toned is what I would say.

E
Yes.

C
Yeah. Her rhetoric has been. They're shooting the rhetoric through the gauze.

B
I mean, they did have placards that were saying, like, Biden border bloodbath. And they're, you know, they used the.

D
Term weakened at Bernie's presidency.

B
Well, that's. I'm talking about, like, sort of violence. Right? Like, they also.

They talked about. Ted Cruz did a whole thing that basically said Democrats purposely released undocumented immigrants who went on to commit rape and murder because they wanted their votes. So he. They're all. They all did the replacement theory. That's, you know, so that stuff was not very toned down. Yeah. And then.

C
And also just like the.

Just Elise Stefanic getting up there and talking about the Biden crime wave. And it's like, you know, we all know that crime has been going down since it peaked in 2020, but you wouldn't know it by watching it. But it almost seems like beside the point.

D
I mean, it was interesting that Donald Trump was in the arena again to watch.

B
Of course.

D
He was just sitting up there like someone wanna be roman empire, just watching his former.

E
He wanted to thumbs down Ron DeSantis.

D
He enjoys nothing more than watching people just discredit themselves for him.

B
Yeah. Nikki Haley finished speaking, and he stood up and he said, give it up for birdbrain. Give it up for birdbrain.

C
Everyone loves it.

Is here for tiny D. It's a conflict, right? Because he enjoys people supplicating themselves before him. But he is also quite bored because he has to pay attention. So that was a struggle. The most interesting moments were offstage. One was Matt Gaetz harassing Kevin McCarthy and then a bystander harassing Matt Gaetz and calling him an asshole. And then Matt Gaetz turns and faces that guy and goes, I don't even know who you are. And that guy's like, I don't care if you know who I am. You're an asshole. And Matt Gaetz just walks away with sort of defeated by it, which I loved.

B
Good hit.

C
And then Rudy Giuliani got into a fight with a row of folding chairs and lost. You see this? He kind of just careened over a set of folding chairs. And there were.

B
For the grace of God.

C
Well, that's sure.

But I felt bad for you. See it, did you? It wasn't just that he fell over. It was how long it took them to get him back up. And ever since he told someone at Mar a Lago, and it was overheard by Page six that he feels as though he's trapped in a living nightmare. I feel bad for him.

B
Yeah, well, join the club, Rudy.

Let's talk about Nikki Haley's speech. So, first of all, she got cheers. No booze for Nikki Haley. She started off by saying, donald Trump has my strong endorsement period, which, you know, she had obviously said before that she was voting for him. It was not a full throated endorsement before. So now she has decided to just leave it all behind. She's back. She's back. She said, you don't have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. We must expand our party. Certainly the only speaker so far at the convention that has said anything like that.

Will anyone care? Will any swing voters tune in and hear that? What do you think, Ted?

D
No, I don't think they will tune in. I don't think they care. And Nikki Haley, speaking of this convention, is not Hillary Clinton speaking at the 2008 convention, does not. Bernie Sanders speaking at the 2016 convention. Nikki Haley is nothing more than a basically generic vessel for anti Trump Republicans.

B
Yeah.

D
They don't care about Nikki Haley. They don't have Nikki Haley signs in their yard. They don't. Nikki Haley bumper stickers. Many of them can't figure out on a lineup. She. Many of them voted, didn't even know she had dropped out of the race when they voted for.

E
A lot of them voted after she already dropped out. It was just a protest vote.

B
Yeah. The whole. The narrative, like, what will happen with the Nikki Haley voters? They'll probably vote for Joe Biden again, like they did in 2020, we hope. Right? Yeah. Yeah, that's.

D
I mean, some of it, that's the best thing. They are still a persuasion target, but their affiliation with Nikki Haley tells you nothing about them.

B
Right. It's not like she has a hold on a section of the party like a Bernie Sanders did, like a Hillary Clinton did in zero eight.

C
I think that goes to why the speeches feel so ineffective. More broadly, even that statement, like, he has my strong endorsement, period.

As if she's saying that in defiance of some media campaign to say that she hasn't endorsed him. Well, she hasn't. Right. She hadn't actually endorsed him. It was an open question as to whether she would. She did dodge it for a long time. And there's a way in which both her and DeSantis and Ted Cruz, they're performing this version of themselves that is just so completely phony, and it leads to them with these kind of grandiose, overwritten speeches that all feel pretty empty because none of them are saying what they really think. They're putting on a show for Jabba.

E
Yeah.

All I could think when I saw Ron DeSantis come out was he might be the biggest loser of the JD Vance picked in terms of people getting leapfrogged for next up to be well.

B
And his speech is just.

He is not cut out for this. He's not cut out for the big stage. A bunch of lines you can tell that some consultants or advisors or speech writers wrote him. He did. Our enemies don't consign their designs to between 10:00 a.m. and 04:00 p.m. america can't afford four more years of a weekend at Bernie's presidency. But he's like his voice still with the voice, too fast, too annoying, too yelly. He's yelling the whole time. He's a little sweaty. He's just not. The one thing I thought, he doesn't have it. The one thing I thought watching this convention is they are so lucky that they have Donald Trump because so far there's not one other Republican that's taken the stage that you're like, oh, I'm worried about that person. That person has gravitas. Like, they just, it just, no one has it.

D
In fairness, we left right as Eric Schmidt started speaking, the heretofore unknown senator.

B
From Missouri, not the Google guy who was like, my presence on this stage is unlikely. I'm a tall white guy from Missouri.

What are you talking about?

C
This spot has been held for you whole time.

B
It's the likeliest presence of anyone. All right, so another group getting speaking slots today were the republican Senate candidates and key races.

We've talked a lot about democratic Senate candidates and how they're all polling ahead of Biden, but it also seems like the republican Senate candidates in these swing states are polling behind Trump. Dan, what do you think's going on there?

D
In most cases, they are polling behind Trump because they are thoroughly unknown.

E
Yeah, right.

D
Eric, the Eric Hovdy, is that how you say in Wisconsin, Sam Brown in Nevada, David Cormack, a little more well known because he at least had run the republican primary.

B
But they're just, he lost once already.

D
So he's just, they don't have any real name id. And so there are a couple different ways to look at these braces, right? You have a handful of incumbent Democrats like Sherrod Brown, John Tester, Timmy Baldwin, Bob Casey, who have independent, strong brands, and they are running well ahead of Biden. Their coalitions look much like a traditional democratic coalition. They don't have Biden's same struggles with young voters or independent voters or black voters or latino voters, whatever else they look like a 2020 Democrat. Then you have Jackie Rosen in Nevada and Lissa Slotkin, who is running for an open seat in Michigan who are basically running as generic Democrats. Jackie Rosen, not well known. They are still polling ahead if they're republican candidates, but they are polling at about Biden's level.

Their top line number is in the low forties. There is a poll out today which has one poll that has slotkin up in the high forties, but that's the first one we've seen like that. And then you have the Arizona Senate race, which is unique because Ruben Gago, who's not super well known, but he is running against Kerry Lake, who is incredibly well known and incredibly unpopular. And so she's sort of functioning as the incumbent and anti incumbent race there. And so much different things happen there. There's reasons in some of those incumbent races to have hope for democrats. No matter what happens at the top of the ticket, where you have a lesser known Democrat, that's where there could be drag if Biden doesn't perform strongly in those states.

B
And you would imagine that once the Trump campaign, Republicans really start spending money and some of these Senate races on tv that, like, at least Trump's number in these states is achievable for a lot of these republican Senate candidates who aren't like a Carrie Lake, right, who is well known and crazy. But some of these were just, you know, the Republicans did a decent job getting the I won't. They're all, they're still pretty crazy and they're still pretty extreme, a lot of these republican Senate candidates, but they didn't do a 22 22. They're more generic than they have been in the past.

E
And it's worth remembering that in the states that are swing states in the presidential, Joe Biden has been on tv fairly heavily and Donald Trump has not.

B
So tonight's theme was making America safe once again. We're doing, once, we haven't talked about this yet, everything is making America wealthy once again. Making America safe once again. Making America great once again.

A
Once.

B
You don't need the once.

D
You could have gone, make America great again. Again.

C
They tried that. It felt it was that.

D
Yeah, no, what was 2020? I think that's make America, keep America great.

C
He did roll out. Make America great again.

D
Cash or win, keep America great again. But she also.

B
No, it was just CAG. Right?

D
Just cag.

E
Yeah, that's right.

B
So tonight's theme featured a bunch of, quote, everyday Americans talking about things like immigration and crime. It got really dark and awful.

How persuasive do you guys think that was for voters beyond the MAGA base? The Ted Cruz took a lot of this. Right?

He kept doing every damn day. And then he would tell another story of someone who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant. Tommy.

E
Well, it's a grisly crime. Stories are a feature of most Donald Trump events. I'm not totally sure how effective they were tonight. It's worth noting, just for context. I mean, in November of 2023, there was some polling on this, I think, from Gallup that found 77% of Americans said they believe there was more crime in the US than a year ago, including 55% who said the same about their local area. So it was a national issue in their mind and a local issue. Now, again, since 2002, that annual poll has found that a majority of Americans think crime is on the rise every year, even when it's falling, usually sort of in the 60% level or not. So it's not clear to me how much of a vote driver crime will be this year as opposed to every year. It may be that we. We Americans just always think crime is a problem and on the rise.

In reality, violent crime has decreased year.

D
Over year per year.

E
But those statistics aren't as lurid as the stories you were hearing out of someone like Ted Cruz. So I just. I don't know how salient the issue is compared to a year ago or two years ago when crime really spiked.

D
I mean, the rubric that Donald Trump wants in this race is strong versus weak. And that only works if people are scared. Right? It's the famous Bill Clinton Lyon about someone. You would rather have someone who's strong and wrong than right and weak. And that works when people are scared and insecure and afraid. So you have to gin up fear. Right. It's basically the entire reason that Fox News exists is to scare the living shit out of people that a terrorist, an immigrant, some other person is gonna come to your community and your family is at risk. So that you will then put aside other things you may care about, like higher minimum wage, more fair tax system, access to abortion, in order to vote for the candidate you think of, multiple criminal convictions, to vote for the candidate that you think will keep you safe.

B
Fear and unity, those are the themes.

D
That's actually basically fear and unity is that is fascism, like.

B
Right, that's what I'm saying. It's unity for us. And then be afraid of the people who aren't like us. And to your point, minimum wage abortion, those issues haven't really made an appearance yet. You don't hear about those a lot at this convention. So they have done. I mean, boiling it down to just strong versus weak. It also reveals, like, there's. Do you hear anyone talking about, like, policy? What. What Donald Trump's going to do, what to do about the immigration. Broken immigration system, what to do about inflation last night? No, it's just like, Donald Trump is strong. He will get in there and things will be better.

D
We heard some build the wall chants.

C
Yeah, there was. There was some talk of mass deportations, right?

B
Yeah. But not. Not a lot of, uh. Not a lot of solutions from this crowd.

D
I would just say, watching this for two days now, um, one, I want to apologize to myself for that, but is this is a party that desperately wants to win?

B
Oh, yeah.

D
They are on script. Like, the unity thinks mostly bullshit, but they have tampered the crazy from, like, a 15 to, like, a seven. I don't think I've heard a single thing about the 2020 election in any of these speeches.

E
Me either.

D
Right. They know that is a massive vulnerability for Trump, and they're not talking about it like they. They want to win. Donald Trump wants to win and stay out of jail. And that sort of discipline is throughout the speaker. A lot of air is boring and lame, as many speeches are of. They are not doing damage to the effort to electrocute.

B
Right. Yeah. Like, I don't know necessarily that they're moving voters to their side, but you're right that they're not doing any damage, because to the extent that they're saying crazy stuff, which they all are in their speeches, it's all language and rhetoric that we've heard before from them. It's not anything new and extreme or new and. Right. Like, it's all sort of warmed over crazy.

C
Well, they feel like they're winning, and it's. And that is. And that's pretty unifying. Nothing brings a team together like a feeling like they're winning. There've been a bunch of reporting from different, from different places about reporters being surprised by just the feeling of being on the ground in Milwaukee, that they expected a kind of darker, scarier version of republican politics. But after the assassination attempt, given how poorly Joe Biden is performing and the fact that the polls look so good for him in these swing states, it's a joyous affair. They're having a fucking blast.

B
Well, we'll be the judge of that because we'll be there tomorrow.

C
Yeah, we will.

B
This show is sponsored by better help. Do you tend to compare your life to others? Does social media play a part in that?

E
It does.

B
What do you do when you get caught up wishing your life looked like someone else's?

E
You know what? That's not my problem. Yeah, I don't get the, like, envy. But you know what I do? Do? I decide to use social media. I weigh in on things that suck, and then terrible people criticize you, and you could tell yourself it doesn't matter, but it actually does bother you.

B
Which is why I do let strangers get me mad.

E
I've just started deleting tweets. Cause I'm like, you know what? I just. I don't care. I don't need to let someone attack me all day long for no reason.

B
You wanna talk about it a little more?

E
I think this should go deeper, which is why Betterhelp is a sponsor of.

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I mean to fight this war and win it.

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C
Good to war, then.

B
Speaking of polling, here's some interesting convention news. Politico reported that on Tuesday afternoon, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio talked with the Florida delegation about just how good the campaign thinks the map looks for them. Fabrizio said that the Sun Belt states are locked up for Trump, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida. But he also said that they now think Minnesota, Virginia, New Mexico, and New Jersey or toss ups. He claimed that the campaign might even make a play for Maine. Fabrizio also reportedly bragged that the campaign is this competitive without having done much in the way of tv ads, which is true. And he said, quote, get ready, they're coming. How much of this, Dan, do you attribute to Trump world cockiness, and how much of it do you think is real?

D
It's not Trump world cockiness. Like, there is a strain of thought in republican politics that goes back to the Atwater, which is you should always look like you're winning is a wisdom of crowds approach to politics. It's why Bush sent Cheney to Hawaii in 2004, to make it look like you're winning. You're always on offense.

C
I do remember that. And also claim New Jersey was in play.

D
Yep.

Claim New Jersey was in play in every election. And who knows? I don't know if it is here or not, but it's worth remembering that Phil Murphy barely beat a heretofore unknown truck driver. I think new to politics in the 2021 gun control race, I don't want to, like, depress people or scare people, but what Tony Fabrizio was saying about New Mexico, Maine, Virginia is showing up in private polls that Democrats are passing around everywhere.

E
Yeah.

B
Yeah. We haven't talked about Martin Heinrich, who's the democratic senator from New Mexico. And people associated with their, they're worried about his race because Joe Biden's pulling so poorly there.

D
When you look at all the polls, we can debate the size of the margin, all of these. But there is a consistent theme, which is that Biden struggles with a certain number of groups, black and Latinos, primarily men and younger men, republican leading independents, the Trump Biden voters and young voters. And the states that we're talking about here are ones that over index on a lot of those groups. It's why Virginia is in play, even though the reason that it turned democratic for Barack Obama in 2008 became a safe democratic state years after that are the same reason that Joe Biden is struggling with it, because the demographic change in that state, which used to benefit Democrats and is now hurting us. If those Biden continues to struggle with.

B
Those groups, do you think Democrats will have to spend money to defend some of these states, like New Mexico, Minnesota?

D
We shouldn't.

E
I mean, if we do, it's a huge deal.

B
Yeah.

E
That's what folks need to understand is there's not unlimited money out there. You're budgeting. You're budgeting for really expensive ad spends in a lot of major cities. And all of a sudden, if you're putting ads on air in Washington, DC or the Twin Cities, like that is going to impact everything else you do.

D
You can't. Right. I may be the only person who will remember this, but in 2012, when we were running for reelection, we knew we were going to be massively outspent by the right because it was the first post Citizens United presidential campaign, and the right had raised hundreds of millions of dollars into super pacs, we did not have that apparatus. So we knew the Republicans would outspend the democratic side. And so Plouffe and Axelrod and others made the decision that we were not going to run ads in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin because if we, because we had to get to 270, we had to get Ohio and Virginia.

B
Oh, yeah.

D
And there's no way the states are correlated. And so if you are losing Pennsylvania, you're not winning Ohio. And so in order to husband our resources so that we could compete in these states, including Florida, which was a big, important state for us, we said we were not going to spend money in the United States. And we did not do that other than one brief period of time when we had to go up in either Michigan or Wisconsin at the very end. Briefly. And so if you're in the Biden land, you can't afford to be in all those states. So you're going to have to, you've.

B
Got to spend all your money on the blue wall states because that seemed second district in Nebraska.

D
If you were losing Maine or Virginia or New Mexico, you're winning nowhere.

C
It's, look, ads don't just fall out of a coconut tree. They just, in the context of all that came before. But no, if we are talking about spending money in those places, we are talking about Senate candidates and House candidates who are running away from Joe Biden and trying to save themselves. We were talking about Joe Biden after having spent tens of millions of dollars in ads that haven't seemed to change the dynamic in this race, suddenly facing an influence of Trump money, tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in money from Trump's backers. There's been story after story in the past couple of days of all of these people from Elon Musk gone down deciding they're going to pour money into this race. You know, if we're talking about the Biden campaign and whether or not they should be spending in Virginia, we're talking about senators everywhere desperately trying to save themselves and running away from the democratic ticket and saying how they will be a check on Trump. Like, that's the world we'll be living in in the fall.

D
And these things sometimes change over the summer, right? A lot of these states that are traditionally democratic or republican revert back to the mean as more people tuned in the race, right, in that undecided pool. So we may be just like, Trump may certainly outperform his 2020 numbers in all of these states, and Biden might still win all of them and probably.

B
A little points yeah, I'm not comfortable with that.

C
Just to be clear, I'm describing a scenario. I'm not claiming it as what's happening.

B
So Trump's apparently feeling confident enough that he took a crack at getting RFK junior to endorse him. The two reportedly met in Milwaukee on Monday. Trump also called Kennedy on Sunday, and Kennedy took the call on speakerphone while his in house videographer, according to Kennedy, was rolling for something else. You can hear Trump saying on the call that the bullet going past his ear sounded like, quote, the world's largest mosquito, that he had a nice call with Biden where the president asked him how he managed to duck out of the way. Trump also asked for Kennedy's endorsement and then told Kennedy how much he agrees with him on childhood vaccines. Let's listen.

I
I said, I want to do small doses, small doses. When you, when you feed a baby, Robbie, a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it's good for a horse, not a, you know, ten pound or 20 pound baby. And do you ever see the size of it?

B
Right.

I
You know, it's massive.

And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically. I've seen it too many times. And then you hear that it doesn't have an impact. Right. But you and I talked about that a long time ago.

B
Is Trump like a pediatrician?

E
I didn't know that.

B
He's seen it all the time. He watches them get the vaccines, then he watches the babies change.

C
You know, babies, ten pounds, 20 pounds, just babies. Look, I've seen babies by the Hogshead dealing with this kind of problems, metric tons of baby experiencing these kinds of problems.

B
So RFK junior s son posted and then deleted the video with an apology.

The Biden campaign put out a statement saying the video is proof that Trump can't be trusted to protect Americans healthcare. Kennedy reportedly declined to drop out and endorse Trump, at least for now. Trump was talking in that same video about, like, maybe there's a big job, you can do a big, like, he's trying to give him a job, get an endorsement. He's trying to do something here. Let's start with Trump's anti vax pandering, which he's also been doing in his stump speech. It's not like we needed a secretly recorded video. He's out there saying, I'm not giving a penny to any state that has, where schools have any kind of mandates, not just mask mandates, but vaccine mandates or anything.

D
Have you interpreted that to not mean, COVID vaccine, but for all, all vaccines.

C
He said it repeatedly. He has said it repeatedly. He will know vaccine mandates of any kind, have funding for education, get rid of the department of education. Like, that is his position. He is not. He is not characterized it as Covid. And I don't think we should do any work for him.

B
If he ever sat down. No, no, I know.

C
I'm mad at the situation.

B
Well, if he ever sat down for an interview with a reporter that wasn't. Not like a right wing reporter, maybe they would ask him that if perhaps if he had debated someone who could have brought that up at the debate, we could have learned it there, too. But, yeah, no, he will not. He has tried to skate over this by just making it seem like it's Covid vaccines for people like that, but also nodding to and pandering to the anti vax crowd, which is what he did here on this call with RFK. Dangerous, obviously. Also kind of dumb in a general election, although I don't know. What do you guys think to just be out there doing the vaccine, being against all kinds of, like, childhood vaccines?

C
Well, first of all, just. My reaction is, whenever you hear Trump in context where he doesn't think he's being recorded or it's for public consumption, he's just like, I gotta call that fucking RFK guy. What is he like? Oh, yeah, he's crazy about the vaccine. So I'll just tell him the vaccine thing, see if that works, maybe try to get him a job. Just very transactional, very simple.

B
Back to that speech where he was like, oh, see, I just talked about tax cuts and no one's clapping. And then I was talking about this trend stuff and you're all clapping and applauding. That used to never be like that. A couple years ago, you guys, I'll keep saying it.

This just, like, is the most. Yeah, it's like pure cynicism.

C
We're losing to a skinner box.

D
He is actually more of a politician than any politician.

B
I'm a big outsider. No, it's like, you know, you just tell any single fucking person exactly what they want to hear and then you do not deliver in any way, shape or form. That's it. That's like, that is Trump to his core.

D
I think that anti childhood vaccine stuff is like a marker of extremism for a lot of voters, and so it's good to do. It's also just funny, like, what it's like to work on a campaign is like the Biden folks have to put out the same one. They want to just say, it's like, that shit's weird.

C
Well, I do think, like, I think, like, I think the reason Project 2025 took off is that it plays into something we don't often get to plan to. There is a secret recording of Donald Trump colluding with one of his opponents to try to defeat the Democrats and to take away childhood vaccines from schools. Like, I feel like we're not making enough of the secret leaked caught image. It looks bad. It looks sinister.

D
Yeah.

E
I mean, at the end of the day, I think the Trump campaign views all of the third party candidates as tools to help them. They're trying to get Cornel west on the ballot in various states. They are clearly colluding with RFK's campaign and having him continue to run because it helps them. I think one of someone who, a top person on RFK's campaign essentially said as much in another leaked video a few weeks back, which is basically like, we're all in this to defeat Joe Biden.

Robert F. Kennedy Junior is a narcissist with a massive ego that wants to promote exactly these insane anti vaccine views that we are now discussing. So win win for him to stick around and, you know, do Trump's bidding until the time when they deem him no longer useful and maybe he drops out. But clearly he's angling for some sort of elevation of the issues he cares about, some job for himself. I mean, this is working for him.

B
How much do you guys think a Kennedy endorsement of Trump would matter? Change the race?

E
I think it would matter. I actually do like the Joe Rogans of the world will not have Donald Trump on the show, but he will of RFK Junior. And he believes and trusts Robert F. Kennedy. RFK going on that show and endorsing Trump would be a big deal, in my opinion.

D
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, Kennedy, he had been at his highest 15% in the polling average a few months ago. He's down 8% now. That'll probably continue to go down. But, I mean, that's four times the margin right now.

B
Right?

And there's probably some of his voters that don't like Donald Trump. But if, you know, they're parking their votes for Kennedy and if he think he's telling them it's okay to be for Trump, obviously Trump's not gonna get all those people. Cause they've already decided they don't like Trump, but get some. You only need a little, you know, and he's already ahead.

C
So I think loose kooks go to Trump.

But like, I also just the political space Donald Trump has because of the support among Republicans that he has. Like, it is inconceivable to us that Joe Biden would call and he shouldn't call RFK to get his endorsement. It is such an assumption that Donald Trump can say whatever he wants, appeal to whoever he wants, that freedom to move is an advantage he has. And it just, I don't know, just sucks.

B
Yeah, lying is an advantage in politics for sure.

C
Right? But also lying and the fealty he has of his base that just trust him no matter what he says or does.

B
All right, just quickly, before we go to break, like we said, we're going to be in Milwaukee Wednesday and Thursday, and then on Friday, July 19, we're hopping over to Madison.

C
Yeah, we are.

B
For a live show at the Orpheum Theater with co host Aaron Haynes and guest Ben Wickler. And on Saturday the 20th love it or leave it will also be in Madison, joined by special guests Thomas Lennon, Victoria Vincent, former lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes, and state representative Francesca Hong at the Barrymore Theater.

C
I'm gonna have four days of dairy, and then I'll fly myself home.

B
Glad I'm not on that plane. Glad I'm not on that plane.

C
Safer than a boeing.

And more reliable.

E
Speaking of loose nukes.

B
Head to kroger.com events to grab tickets now. When we come back, we'll be talking about the Biden campaign and why the DNC is planning a virtual roll call ahead of the convention.

E
I mean, to fight this war and win it.

F
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H
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F
The second season starts Sunday, June 16, but new episodes of this podcast start on May, May 22.

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Listen directly on Max or wherever you get your podcasts.

C
Good to war, then.

H
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B
Okay, last night we talked about whether the effort to replace Biden was dying out. Pretty clear after today that it has not. The Times reported this morning that Congressman Adam Schiff, the democratic nominee for Senate in California, just told donors at a fundraiser in New York over the weekend, quote, I think if he is our nominee, I think we lose. And we may very well lose the Senate and lose our chance to take back the House. That's according to someone who saw a transcript of the event. He also told the crowd that the Biden team isn't listening to opposing views right now. An anonymous House Democrat also told axios, quote, the replace Biden movement is back. One member talking about this on the record is Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who Tommy interviewed on Pod save the world today.

Here's what he said very early Sunday morning. The first phone call I got was from a colleague who agrees with me as the majority of Democrats in Congress do, but like most, hasn't come out and said it publicly. And he just said, what do we do? It's even more urgent now. I mean, Trump is going to ride this assassination attempt right into the White House. The only chance we have is a change at the top of the ticket. Tommy, what did Seth say about what his colleagues are saying in private? And does he think more will come out or.

E
Yeah, I mean, I asked him, I think the question that we've all had, which was it felt like there was growing momentum in Congress from democrats calling on Biden to drop out of. And I asked him if that momentum had stalled out after Saturday. And he said, actually no. In private, concerns have only increased. People are even more worried that Trump is gonna ride this scary assassination attempt to victory and use it for political advantage and that people are talking about it even more. They're just not all together right now. I think they're all home. So this is happening on text. So I do think these efforts that we'll talk about in a minute to potentially move up the nomination vote have pissed off a lot of people. There might be some more momentum, might be picking back up in terms of people coming out publicly to call in Biden to drop out. But Seth's message to them was like, what's the point of being in politics if you're not going to say what you think? You know what I mean?

How can you possibly say you're concerned now and sit on your hands and then wake up after election day and live with yourself?

B
Well, so let's talk about the development that also restarted this conversation, which is the DNC's continued push to hold a virtual roll call vote on the nomination, apparently as early as next week. This is not a new plan. Exactly. And it originally had to do with making sure the democratic ticket appears on the ballot in states like Ohio that have deadlines in early August before the democratic convention. All of this is because the democratic convention is quite late this year, and some of these deadlines are in early August and obviously the democratic conventions in late August. But even though Ohio just passed a law, republican legislature, republican governor, to give Democrats more time to get on the ballot after their convention, the DNC is still moving forward with the virtual roll call vote, which is leading some Democrats in Congress to believe that it's all about nominating Biden as quickly as possible in an effort to end the conversation about him stepping aside. Congressman Jared Huffman, one of the members who's been vocal about the challenges that Biden presents, is now circulating a letter for other Democrats to sign that asked the DNC to call off the roll call vote. We don't know how many members have signed on, but we do know that several frontline members, including Susan Wilde of Pennsylvania, Mike Levin of California, Pat Ryan of New York, plan to sign it. Huffman told the Times the DNC forcing the roll call would be, quote, a power play of the highest order.

Former DNC chairs Donna Brazile, Howard Dean and Terry McAuliffe sent their own letter today in favor of the DNC's virtual roll call vote. They don't mention Biden, but argue that this is the best way to ensure the democratic ticket is on the ballot in every state. Dan, who's right?

D
Both sort of and no one.

I mean, prior to the debate. Right. The plan the DNC was putting in place makes sense, even if Ohio has changed the law. You want to be extra covered because it's not just Ohio. States like California and Washington have their ballot access certification deadlines at the outset.

B
Of the democratic convention, 20th, 22nd, 23rd or some of those states.

D
And there is a turnaround time between when Biden is actually nominated and you get all the signatures notarized, et cetera, filed appropriately. What has happened in previous years is you basically send a pledged to that you're going to send the real stuff and they will swap them out when you send the real stuff, like almost an IOU for notarized signatures. That's been fine. People are very worried that in this new world of insane MAGA election interference, they're going to try to deny democrats ballot access. So in a completely, in a world where Biden's obviously going to be the nominee, this is all pro forma, just do it early, get it done.

B
They came up and not because, not even because the concerns are like better to be safe than sorry.

D
Why not?

B
Why would you even risk it?

D
Belt and suspenders. Right. And then, and the timing makes sense too, because it is a relatively complicated process to get all these people. You have to get a majority of the delegates to vote. Their votes have to be certified in some way, shape or form. That takes time. So they were just give themselves several thousand people. It's almost 3000 people you need. They gave themselves time to do it. They put that plan in place. Debate happened. Debate about the debate happened. And now they're proceeding with the plan as if they were. And they're in this position that is very challenging because if you change the plan, you're acknowledging the legitimacy and possibility that there could actually be a change at the top of the ticket, which is very hard for the DNC, which is run by Joe Biden, to do. But if you go with the old plan, you further inflame the division within the party that has come since the debate. And so we are sort of, which.

B
Is why you get these talking points from DNC chair Jamie Harrison and others that, that sound so bullshitty because they're only what he has decided is, well, I'm going to blame the Republicans in Ohio and say that like, you know, even though they passed a law that, to say that Democrats could be on the ticket, I'm going to make people believe that maybe they'll change their minds and pass another law. You know, like, and it doesn't really pass the smell test. Now it's true that Republicans in the Ohio legislature are not the only problem here. There could be random conservative groups that file suit. A number of legal scholars were like, well, that wouldn't really carry any water, but, you know, immunity. They're letting the president do whatever they want. So, like, yeah, people are a little worried about that. But the other option here is to have the virtual roll call vote as close to the deadlines as possible and not starting next week. Right.

C
Well, the thing that I have trouble wrapping my head around is, okay, so doing this next week feels like the worst possible option because it tries to silence a debate that isn't done in a way that will be as.

B
Yeah. And whether it's intentional or not, that's what it does.

C
That's what it does. And it will be. I just to attend. Like, I'm just looking at this republican convention and the Energy and enthusiasm we're seeing and imagining the kind of enervated slog that would be a democratic convention in which I. This debate was silenced by procedure.

I think it's not a very optimistic experience, but it's just a horrible.

B
Anyway, I'll see you guys in Chicago.

C
It's what it is. And I'm like, we're fucking around. It's horrible. But so then it's like, okay, the virtual roll call has to be later. So there can be space for there to be this debate and the possibility of another nominee. But it seems hard to imagine that actually taking place until the convention actually begins. Right. It's just hard to wrap your head around how you can actually like Joe Biden himself, whether aware or unaware of what the actual plan was said. If you think I shouldn't be the nominee, challenge me at the convention. The convention is the place where everyone's, in everyone's mind, brokered convention, that this is where it would play out. If the lawyers are saying that that's dangerous, it leaves everybody in a very conventional, wait.

B
When Biden said that, that was not.

E
That was rhetorical bullshit.

C
No, no, I know, I know.

E
I'm just, I'm telling the listeners that was rhetorical bullshit. The thing that I do think complicates this conversation is I'm looking at a story in NBC News right now that's talking about the debate over whether Biden should drop out. And here's a couple lines from it. By the end of last week, the president and his team had settled on a strategy forward. The five people familiar with the internal discussion said that strategy, as described by multiple Biden aides and allies, is to run out the clock.

B
No shit, huh?

E
And if you reduce the amount of clock outstanding. Of course people are gonna act like, okay, you're trying to rig the system.

D
He just. This continues to be part of the problem coming from some of the people advising Joe Biden right now is they seem to be so committed to being the nominee that they're willing to sacrifice being reelected president to do so. Because, let's say Joe Biden had been challenged, it had a real primary. This is the exact moment when you're doing what the Republicans are doing, which is you're trying to unify the party. You're bringing your opponents in the party into your coalition. It's when Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders got together. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Right. That is how it happens. But because Joe Biden was not officially challenged, even though 50% and sometimes more percent of Democrats wanted a different nominee or didn't want him to run, and then he did well in these very low turnout, non competitive primaries against Dean Phillips and Marian Williamson, he and his team have been operating under the illusion of party unity because there had been unity before the debate, at least publicly, from all the elites in the party, all the elected officials, all the pundits, everyone else. But the electorate was not there. And so the process here, if Joe Biden is going to be the nominee, is not just to run out the clock. It's to unify the party behind him so as the nominee, he can win. And this is counterproductive to that.

B
Yeah, I mean, I don't. And it sounds as if now that they're going forward with it, I could see them saying, like, yeah, maybe we'll push the final date of the voting to like. But like it either way, we are running out of time. Right. And Joe Biden's strategy of running out the clock is it's, it's. It's going to be effective. Right. And I think the only thing, like, people have made their voices heard. We certainly have. Uh, according to every poll, the voters have, Democrats have the. At least, at least half of Democrats in just about every poll, registered Democrats want him to step aside. A majority of black voters, a majority of latino voters, majority of women voters. Right. Majority of young voters. That has not broken through. Some members of Congress have gone through. I think the last play here is back to your conversation with Seth Moulton, that, like, if a bunch of House Democrats and Senate Democrats either go to Joe Biden or publicly talk about this, or Pelosi, who there's a lot of reports has been behind the scenes wanting him to step aside, Pelosi goes to him like, there's one more play here, right, of people that Joe Biden has known for a long time and respected senators, too. He was a former senator. Go to him and make one last plea. And then if he says no, then he says no, and we're. That's it. Everyone did what they could. But I do think for those representatives who want this, you gotta say it.

D
In the meantime, you gotta do it.

C
Now, and you gotta do it now. And by the way, in the meantime, I think everyone making clear that the DNC moving forward with a roll call vote this quickly would be a fucking disaster. I can't imagine something that will alienate more people that are the people that are very nervous about Joe Biden, but are also the people that will donate and knock on doors. They are part of the 14 million that voted for Joe Biden because there wasn't an alternative. And by the way, would be proud to support him if he were the nominee. Who would feel so silenced and pushed aside by the decision to move ahead with a roll call vote this quickly. It's just as terrible a decision as I could imagine.

E
Yeah, I think it would feel sneaky. All of this is why another member of Congress I was talking to yesterday said, that's why they feel like they have basically, from the day after the republican convention ends till, like, Monday or Tuesday to get a bunch of people to come out publicly and say, you know, you have to step aside. Cause I think members of Congress feel like they tried. I mean, Seth said this to me, too. They tried to privately get a message to him after the debate that they thought there needed to be a change and that was ineffective. So that's why all these members are going public.

B
Tried to get a message through George Stephanopoulos, through Lester Holt, through all those great reporters who asked questions during the NATO.

E
They're complex.

D
They took morning Joe off the air.

They silenced Joe.

B
There's smoke signals, there's poles, there's silence.

E
Mika.

C
We had to do, like a kind of, to get through the inability to get. We had to drop flyers over the White House like, we're trying to reach people.

E
Kamala Harris, like the North Koreans.

C
Yes.

B
Kamala Harris has been walking by him drinking from a coconut.

I don't know if we're gonna end this. This is a high note or not. But one thing not for us. We noticed Chris Lacivita, Donald Trump's Senate senior advisor, told everyone that for his speech on Thursday night, to buckle up, because it's going to be at least an hour and a half an hour and a half.

C
I was thinking about why this is, and here's why. I think it's going to be an hour and a half. Because what we're going to get is English and Spanish.

Because I think what we're going to get is the post assassination attempt unity topper.

I think they're just two seasons bolting. We're getting a bolted on top and bottom. And then the red meat division draft.

E
What I see is tape back together. Does the peachy store up?

C
Yeah, I do. I do think it's gonna be. We got, there's no torn up speech. Donald Trump does not start from page one. He's not that kind of a worker. So I think we get a new top and a new bottom and the same fucking american carnage right there in the middle. That's my prediction. I'm gonna predict something.

B
A 90 minutes speech is terrible.

E
How much time do they have with the networks? 2 hours.

D
Five days after Donald Trump was shot in the air, he could speak for 17 hours.

B
He could go full Castro.

He could be there all night.

E
Gaddafi there.

B
Yeah, for sure.

D
They got to get to modern family rewards.

C
Gasp of the plus, there's got to leave time for him to read the get well soon card from Melania, who's not speaking again in any other time. We're like, wait, what? Not speaking?

B
Yeah, 90 minutes. Don't give. Hey, just here's a tip. 90 minutes speeches. Don't do it. 60 minutes speech. Don't need it.

D
Anything past 17 is.

E
Yeah, it's not ideal, honestly.

B
20 minutes. 20 minutes is your, that's your outer perimeter.

E
I mean, in 1988, Bill Clinton got destroyed for giving a 33 minutes speech.

D
It was a seven minute slot, though.

E
17 minutes slot. 17 minutes slot.

B
Anyway, that's our show for tonight. We will talk to you from Milwaukee tomorrow night.

D
We hope.

B
Yeah, we hope.

We'll see you there. Bye bye, everyone.

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Fear and Unity in Milwaukee

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1: Analysis of Republican Convention Speeches

2: The Role of Humor and Satire

3: Reflections on Political Strategy

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