Trump Is So Beatable

Speaker A
Okay, it's true you might have a group chat to dissect your latest lapse in judgment with your girls. But when it comes to the Supreme Court ruling on women's organs and ignoring oath bringing insurrectionists, it's going to take more than an emoji reaction to figure out what it all means and how it affects you.

Speaker B
That's where strict scrutiny comes in. Think of us as your personal group chat for all things SCOTUS related. If everyone in your group chat had constitutional law degrees or was constitutional law.

Speaker A
Curious, we are breaking down every case.

Speaker B
Scrutinizing every bad decision, and giving you so much inside scoop on court culture. Andy Cohen is shaking in his boots. Wait, who is that again?

Speaker C
Find new episodes of strict scrutiny every.

Speaker B
Monday, wherever you get your podcasts. And now on YouTube and with a track record of the current court, there will be a lot to discuss.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

Jon Levitt
I'm Jon Levitt.

Dan Pfeiffer
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Tommy Vitor
I'm Tommy Vitor.

Speaker B
Greetings once again from Milwaukee, where the only two political stories that matter right now are about Donald Trump, the convicted felon who just survived an assassination attempt to officially accept the republican nomination for the third time in a row, and Joe Biden, the hugely successful president who will reportedly decide in the next few days whether he still plans to accept the democratic nomination, even though most of the party's senior leaders are now urging the 81 year old incumbent to pass the torch. Let's start with Trump, who just finished a record breaking 96 minutes nomination speech. He broke his own record. The second longest speech was his speech in 2016. The third longest was his speech in 2020. But, boy, he blew those records out of the water with a 96 minutes speech that lasted into the next day.

Tommy Vitor
Technically a five day convention. Congratulations, sir.

Speaker B
Thanks to the speech. So it started with a very long, detailed story about the assassination attempt. Hard to describe here. You'll have to watch it for yourself. But we do have a clip.

Speaker G
The ears are the bloodiest part. If something happens with the ears, they bleed more than any other part of the body, for whatever reason. The doctors told me that life said, why is there so much blood? He said, it's the ears. They bleed more.

Speaker B
It is the ears. That was not part of the prepared remarks. Prompter.

Jon Levitt
I want you all to know that this was something that I could relate to because I had my ears pinned back when I was 13. Cause I used to stick out, and then I had a blood clot in my ear and I had to do surgery without anesthesia on my left ear, and it bled a lot, man.

Speaker B
Wow, what a personal anecdote. Sorry about that.

Dan Pfeiffer
Trump started his speech with the story of his bleeding ear, and you started this podcast, the story of your bleeding ear.

Jon Levitt
I'm the Trump of this podcast. We've always, on some level, known that to be true.

Speaker B
You said it. You said it.

Tommy Vitor
I don't want to sound glib, but it's really late, and we've been drinking.

It's very hard to make a speech about narrowly avoiding getting assassinated boring. But he managed to do it somehow. A friend of ours described it as if a second grader were telling a story about a horrifying incident.

Speaker B
As I was listening to it, I'm like, it's really. He's somehow making.

Even though it's obviously a story about the assassination attempt on him. Like, I went into the speech thinking, that's gonna be a really, even for Trump, that's gonna be a moving moment, taught, telling the story, and he somehow made it even more narcissistic than you would imagine. At one point, he was like a crowd, and there were all these shots, and the crowd didn't leave. And you know why the crowd didn't leave? Because they were worried about me. They were worried about the Secret Service.

Tommy Vitor
Had guns and told them not to leave.

Speaker B
That's why.

And before the shooting, I started the speech, and I was speaking so powerfully, so strongly, and it was such a big crowd, and there were so many stats, and the stats were about immigration. All the good things we charged.

It was just. It was that even that part, which people probably say it was the good part of the speech. When did we get to. The other speech was a little weird.

Dan Pfeiffer
But you just delivered that with way more emotion than he did.

He told that story as if I was telling a story to my three year old to get him to fall asleep in bed. It is that same cadence.

Tommy Vitor
So weird.

Dan Pfeiffer
It was bizarre. It was uninteresting, and we actually learned truly nothing from his story that was not available on video.

Jon Levitt
Yeah, it was. Well, I just think it's, you know, stories saying that he's had some sort of spiritual awakening notwithstanding.

The man has no interior life, and that did not change, and so he drew no lessons from it. He learned nothing about violence in America, the danger posed by guns, the rhetoric, and our.

Speaker B
At least nothing that we heard in this speech.

Jon Levitt
Nothing that we heard.

Speaker B
Perhaps there's something floating around in there. I don't want to assign motivation to the man, but I'm only going by what I heard.

Jon Levitt
I will say, like, I think we're pretty jaded. And also, we were following the story very closely. I am like, I do think that Washington, one of the most interesting things we've ever heard, a, it was ultimately the most boring version, but, like, it was the most interesting part of an.

Speaker B
Otherwise very, very, what happened to him is like, what happened is interesting, but.

Tommy Vitor
Show, don't tell the image of you, like, avoiding the bullet, getting cut, punching your fist is on the screen. You don't have to describe how you clenched your fist in the numbing detail.

Dan Pfeiffer
That you described that picture that was in seven versions arrayed around his head on the big screen, on the minecraft big boards.

Speaker B
So he tells that story, right? And you think, okay, that's. And then he ends it by walking over to hug the uniform of the man who was killed, the firefighter who was killed in the shooting. And then we're like, so then we're like, 30 minutes into the speech, and then he starts acknowledgments. Then he starts, then he starts narrating what happened throughout the night. He's talking about Dana White, who introduced him. He's talking about Hulk Hogan, he's talking about kid rock. And so he does all this thing, and then we get into what we were promised is gonna be a unifying speech where his aides were also pushing that he was not going to mention the name Joe Biden at all, and that it was gonna be unifying and different. It was a new Trump because he's now spiritual, because he survived this. And here is just a sample of what we heard for the rest of the speech.

Speaker G
And we must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement, which is what's been happening in our country lately at a level that nobody has ever seen before.

In that spirit, the Democrat party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy, especially since that is not true. In fact, I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country.

Every week they get another subpoena from the democrats. Crazy Nancy Pelosi. The whole thing just boom, boom, boom. If you took the ten worst presidents in the history of the United States, think of it, the ten worst, added them up. They will not have done the damage that Biden has done, only going to use the term once.

Biden, I'm not going to use the name anymore. Just one time. We don't have fierce people.

We have people that are a lot less than fierce, except when it comes to cheating on elections and a couple of other things. Then they're fierce.

Then they're fierce.

I am trying to buy your vote.

I'll be honest about that.

Jon Levitt
That was actually, I would say him saying to Wisconsin, I want to buy your vote was actually one of the most charming parts of the speech. He finishes the assassination. Topper does a pay on to unity, then does acknowledgements for about 15 minutes. Melania, good to see you. I hope you had a great summer.

Spends a long time on Dana White's travel logistics. A surprising amount of time on Dana White's.

Speaker B
Went somewhere with his wife. Italy.

Tommy Vitor
Dana White said it publicly.

Dan Pfeiffer
It was Italy.

Speaker B
Okay. There you go. Yeah, he wouldn't say it was.

Tommy Vitor
Wouldn't say why.

Speaker B
You might think that we're going on about this. He went on for a couple minutes at least about just Dana White and.

Jon Levitt
His travel plans, eventually acknowledges all the members of his family, and then gets to JD Vanch. So we get a couple shots of Usha looking absolutely fucking miserable.

Like Usha, I think, could pull up a chair and be the fifth host of this show if I were.

And then he just went into a stump. So it really was an assassination attempt. Topper into not even that much of a revised version of his stump speech.

Speaker B
So here's a. You know, I try to write questions ahead of time for this podcast for you guys. Here's a hilarious question. Now that I'm reading it. What do you think was the goal of this speech? What audience was the Trump campaign trying to reach, and what message were they trying to drive home?

Dan Pfeiffer
Not a clue. Not a clue.

Jon Levitt
Yeah, Dan, I mean, I really thought.

Speaker B
There was going to be a plan.

Jon Levitt
Me, too.

Dan Pfeiffer
I mean, there has been all this talk, and some of it warranted about how much better this version, the Trump campaign has been and how much.

And I use, I swear I'm doing this on a curve. But how much more disciplined Trump has been throughout this game? Like, he doesn't want to go to prison, right? And it's either he wins, he doesn't go to prison, or he loses and goes to prison. And so he has been more focused than in previous efforts.

But this speech was fucking insane. Just like the content is insane, it makes no logical sense. But the convention speech itself is the easiest layup in american politics. All the networks agree. We're just going to let you speak for an hour directly to tens of millions of Americans. Just say whatever you want. Deliver your message here is free propaganda. And he took that, and he just could not do it. It made no sense. He had no message. He was all over the map. Most people went to bed.

Speaker B
The convention, the people who produced the convention actually did do a good job of just the rest of the convention propaganda.

Dan Pfeiffer
The rest of the convention was incredibly disciplined.

They made even the most, the craziest of MAGA freaks kind of toe some sort of line. There was no discussion of the 2020 election throughout four, slash, five days of this convention. Now, did all of this, and then Donald Trump gets up there in his moment and thinks he's at, I don't, a rally somewhere in, like, rural.

Speaker B
It was like a long Rotary club.

Dan Pfeiffer
It was crazy.

He was honestly doing like, open mic night at Mar a Lago. It was the same.

Jon Levitt
It was heartening, actually. And it was a reminder that this, like, we, I know we've been in a very hard debate about fears that democrats have about losing, but this is a reminder about beatable. This guy is. And what I thought while watching his speech is, fortunately for us, you can run the most disciplined campaign and discipline convention in the world, but it doesn't matter if your candidate is one of the most undisciplined figures to ever grace american public life. That is their weakness. He is their weakness.

Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I think that's right. I think people like us who are sickos, who watched the full speech are like, what was that? People in the hall are probably wondering. Tim Alberta, a great reporter at the Atlantic, was tweeting that even the die hards in the front row were looking at their phones, wondering when it was gonna be over. I think most people turned it off. And the takeaways from the week will be, Trump is tough. He's a survivor, and he will sacrifice everything for you, his flock. It's always been this narrative that this rich man, he gave up fame and fortune and money, and he didn't need the aggravation. And that was obviously bullshit because Trump's a narcissist and he only wants attention. And politics has been his vehicle for attention for many years. But now the assassination attempt is the ultimate example for them of him sacrificing for you, the voter. And some of the voters hear that and think there was literally divine providence. You know, there's a lot of, like, this was a gift from God talk throughout the four days, and then other people just think he's a badass, and the core image is gonna be that photo. So, you know, I think the takeaways will be like strength. They wanted it to be unity. I don't know that they succeeded there, but, you know, yeah.

Speaker B
I think the most generous analysis of what happened tonight would be undecided voters. Like, if the whole this is his flock thing, that's nothing going to work with anyone who's not already voting for Donald Trump. Right. But if you're an undecided voter, you probably turned off the speech 20 or 30 minutes in. If you made it that long. Maybe you thought that the assassination attempt story that he told was, you know, moving, charming, whatever. But I do think that for him, and I started thinking about this today because he definitely feels so confident that he is winning. I mean, he just, this whole convention when he was sitting there, he just exudes this confidence that he hasn't had in a while that, like, I am winning this race. And when he is winning and he is doing well, he gets lazy and he gets like, oh, I don't have to try that hard. And I can just, and he gets self indulgent. This was like a self indulgent speech. Like, I can now do my stump, say whatever I want. I don't really have to try. I'm beating this guy. I'm gonna win. So he just did whatever he want. You can tell when his back's up against the wall and he's in court and he's doing this, he's like, he's doing his fighting thing.

This is his vulnerability now is he thinks he's ahead, which means, I do think he's a, he's. The trump that we saw tonight was beatable.

Jon Levitt
Yeah.

I do think he's running on a post. In his mind, all the talk from inside the campaign and the spin that he's had, this, he's different. It's gonna be more subdued. It's serene. It's unity. He's not gonna say the word Biden. During the speech, my expectation was like, that's a pretty, that seems smart to me. Right. It seemed to acknowledge that what we have talked about a lot, right, that the dye is cast on Donald Trump. The country knows Donald Trump. The reason he's up right now is because they have deep concerns about Joe Biden. But maybe Trump would take the assassination attempts as an opportunity to reset with the american people and present a slightly different version with this as a hinge point that could lead people to say, oh, like, this is the narrative of this election. He decided to run a different kind of race and be a different kind of candidate, and he just could not do it. Crazy Nancy Democrats destroying the country, election 2020 stolen. The media is lying to you. China virus invasion, mass deportations. He couldn't stop himself from doing all the things that repel the kind of people he needs. If Democrats can launch a better campaign.

Dan Pfeiffer
They had two goals with this convention.

Tommy Vitor
Right.

Dan Pfeiffer
What he said really wasn't going to matter that much. It was, would he seem more normal? Right. The whole point of the convention, all the humanizing stories, Dana White reading the text that Trump sent him, the granddaughter, all those things was about making Trump seem more normal to make him acceptable to more voters.

And I think, cleverly have really pushed this idea that the assassination attempt changed Trump, because people don't like Trump. Right? They are looking for, like, they don't like either of the candidates right now. They're looking for somewhere to go. And the idea that Trump is different, like, the Biden folks have a different theory that losing the election changed Trump and made him even crazier.

Speaker B
Right.

Dan Pfeiffer
And so they're trying to take the opposite of that, which is the shooting made Trump a more serious and more serene person. And that was the part of the point of starting the speech with that story, which I will say he did pledge he would only tell once, and I would bet $5 he tells at the rally in Michigan on Saturday with JD Vance, 100%.

But then he went. And as soon as he said that, he just went right to Trump. Right. When we were watching the coverage beforehand, David Axelrod was on, and he mentioned a voter in a focus group who said having Trump as president for four years felt like having a neighbor who always had his leaf blower going, and he hated that. And this was leaf blower Trump. Right. He just loud, wouldn't shut up, didn't make a lot of sense talking about himself.

Speaker B
I will say the only, if you're the Trump team and you're looking at this and being like, let's try to find the win here.

They're probably worried that he would come off seeming scary and threatening, and he didn't necessarily seem as scary and threatening as he has been in the past. He seemed boring, incoherent, and sort of weird, which maybe, maybe they'll take that over the scary, threatening. And maybe people who tune in are like, yeah, he didn't seem like he's gonna come get us all. He seemed a little.

Tommy Vitor
He took half a Xanax too many.

Jon Levitt
I'll tell you. I'll just say it. Which is that what I thought is, I don't know if when you get shot in the ear, if you get a full weeks of tylenol plus coding, like, that was my question. And I'm just gonna leave that question.

Dan Pfeiffer
Out there just to bring people behind the scenes here. For 96 minutes, Lovett was debating whether to tweet that.

So he's just sitting out one.

Speaker B
After some careful consideration, he studies it.

Jon Levitt
Just said like all the love talk, the meandering acknowledgments. Yes, it's very trump. But there was a, there was a, if there was a new and serene Trump, I do think it came in a little bottle.

That's just, I'm just gonna, that's my, I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker B
Before we move on, the, also, it wasn't a bullet.

Jon Levitt
No, I'm kidding.

I don't believe that. That's, that's blue and on stuff.

Speaker B
That's nothing.

Speaker A
Okay, its true you might have a group chat to dissect your latest lapse in judgment with your girls, but when it comes to the Supreme Court ruling on womens organs and ignoring oath bringing insurrectionists, its going to take more than an emoji reaction to figure out what it all means and how it affects you.

Speaker B
Thats where strict scrutiny comes in. Think of us as your personal group chat for all things SCOTUS related. If everyone in your group chat had constitutional law degrees or was constitutional law.

Speaker A
Curious, we are breaking down every case.

Speaker B
Scrutinizing every bad decision, and giving you so much inside scoop on court culture. Andy Cohen is shaking in his boots. Wait, who is that again? Find new episodes of strict scrutiny every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. And now on YouTube and with a track record of the current court, there will be a lot to discuss before we move on. Other primetime speakers, not anyone worth mentioning. Eric Trump was sort of angry. Kid rock sounded kind of crazy. Dana White was there. Tucker CARLSON he's actually, oh, Tucker Carlson was early on and was sort of.

Tommy Vitor
He told a personal story that I think really worked in the room. I don't know about people back home, but it works in the room.

Speaker B
Yeah. Tucker Carlson is the one who, I was like, I thought that JD Vance would be that kind of scary. And JD Vance's speech sucked. And I'm like, Tucker Carlson's the one.

Tommy Vitor
You can, by the way, Trump, I think, detailed Dana White's travel woes before getting to JD Vance.

Dan Pfeiffer
J Vance came like 15 minutes later.

Speaker B
But then, but there was also Hulk Hulgan who sounded like this.

Jon Levitt
So all you criminals, all you lowlifes, all you scumbags, all you drug dealers, and all you crooked politicians need to answer one question. Brotherhood, what you gonna do when Donald.

Speaker B
Trump and all the Trumpomaniacs run wild on you, brother.

Jon Levitt
Well, I mean, well, Mitt Romney will run from them, and Mike Pence will try to escape before he be hung, and Nancy Pelosi will call the vice president and there'll be a long term investigation. Can I just tell you, even just hearing that clip, because now we're hearing it a second time, it really does light up the kid in me who saw Hulk Hogan after american gladiators.

No holds barred was a movie I was too young to see when it was on television. And we gotta get Stone Cold Steve Austin. He said he was in favor of gay marriage in 2014. I think it's an opening. The undertaker also donated to Trump. I was googling this during the event, and the ultimate warrior's fucking dead.

Tommy Vitor
Iron Cheek was attacked.

Jon Levitt
Iron Cheek we got.

Speaker B
But, I mean, that is something like a consultant would say in a democratic campaign meeting after this convention.

Tommy Vitor
What's our ice bucket challenge?

Speaker B
Okay, so you're gonna say I was googling during the convention.

Jon Levitt
You're saying you don't want.

You don't want Stone Cold Steve Austin at the democratic convention. You just want Lin Manuel Branda. You want the cast of fucking suffs. I want stone cold.

Speaker B
That was my joke.

Jon Levitt
Steve offen.

Speaker B
Yeah, it was literally Tommy's tweet. Fucking absolute joke. Theft.

Jon Levitt
I took it to theft. I took it to stuffs.

Tommy Vitor
Dan, do you have something smart to say?

Speaker B
Oh, please. Oh, please.

Jon Levitt
Like Obama once said, I am my best joke writer.

Tommy Vitor
Hulk Hogan will be what is on every social media platform tomorrow, though.

Speaker B
Yeah, he ripped his shirt.

Jon Levitt
It was so cool.

Speaker B
Fuck.

Tommy Vitor
And for the people who are pointing out some of the terrible things Hulk Hogan has done in his life, yes, he would. Very.

Speaker B
And kid rock and Dana White used the n word.

Tommy Vitor
It was very public and awful. When the gawker trial came out, it.

Jon Levitt
Was a night for angry divorced dads, 100%.

Tommy Vitor
Most people probably were.

Speaker B
You tweeted this. We're all trapped in the eighties. All right, well, I was gonna say, let's take a step back and talk about the convention as a whole now that it's over. Dan, you kind of talked about this already. But the overall strategy message of the convention seemed to be, hey, Trump is not as scary as you think. He's a changed man. He's nicer than you think. Don't be afraid. You don't want another term of Joe Biden, but you're worried because you think Trump's kind of scary and weird and we're gonna soften him up.

Did I miss anything?

Dan Pfeiffer
No, I think that's.

Speaker B
And we're not gonna talk about abortion at all because we know it's super unpopular for us.

Dan Pfeiffer
I mean, this was a convention of a party that really wanted to win. Right? Like, this party is the party that passed all these abortion bans. They have spent their entire lives trying to repeal Roe and then to pass these sort of bans. And they went four days without ever talking about it.

Speaker B
And Donald Trump never mentioned it.

Dan Pfeiffer
And there was never, there was no fight about it. Like, in a, in a normal convention, there would have been a platform fight about it. There would have been speakers who would. No, no one. No one did it. The other thing, the other sort of takeaway for me from this is that this is now Donald Trump's party. Even the last time, even in 2020. Like there was an actual convention. But if we think back to the Trump presidency, most of these yahoos were trying to just simply survive the Trump years without getting indicted and then just wait for the next person to come. But now they are all true believers, every top to bottom. The only non true believer is Mitch McConnell. He stood up for 1 second and got booed. Right. And everyone else that whatever Trump believes, they believe whatever Trump wants, they want. And it is. And that is scary, because win or lose, this election, one of our two parties is now a maga, extremist party going forward. And that's gonna make it really hard to govern in a two party system.

Jon Levitt
Yeah, that's what I, when I saw it's, you know, and that, like, it's not a betrayal to turn on your friends and say you love big brother. Like, the actual portrayal is having big brother in your heart. And you feel like at this convention, even the Republicans that once gritted their teeth and said they were for Trump, you can feel them having persuaded themselves to believe that this is actually the way.

It's not just that the old guard has been cast aside, though. A lot of them have. It's that they didn't just relent in their words, they have adopted Trump.

Dan Pfeiffer
JD Vance is the perfect example of that.

Speaker B
Did the convention give you guys any new ideas about how Democrats should run against Trump in these next few months?

Dan Pfeiffer
The convention did not. Trump's speech did. Right. It is a reminder that we want people to see Donald Trump, and they really haven't seen Donald Trump at all in this campaign, particularly over the last three weeks, as the focus has been, understandably so, on President Biden. Right. And, you know, and there's nothing new. Conventions are not news, per se. It's just a, it's a, it's a show that gets put on. And there's been a real conversation, a very important conversation that could lead to a historic decision that we'll get to with President Biden. But Donald Trump is incredibly vulnerable. Just absolutely beatable. He is a bad candidate. Voters do not want to vote for him. They do not like him. Right. And it's just like, what, when I sort of think about the problems trying to do, it's sort of like reverse permission structure. Right. Normally, you want to be for something and you're just trying to give people to permission to do what they want to do here. They don't vote for either of these guys.

Jon Levitt
Right.

Dan Pfeiffer
So you got to give them permission to not vote for that person. And there's a lot that, there's a lot of room that a lot of ammunition that Trump gave us in that speech to. To accomplish that task.

Jon Levitt
Yeah.

Tommy Vitor
I also think we got to make sure we get under Donald Trump's skin so we don't get the barred out, chill version and we get, like, the really angry, ranting, raving person that everyone hates. Also, we need to make sure we're highlighting the freaky religious guy who spoke after Hulk Hogan, who wants to control your life and your contraception, use in IVF and make the younger males that they're going after worry about that guy being on the Trump train and not think about Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off and the manly man, cool version of Trump, who they think has emerged since the assassination attempt.

Speaker B
Yeah, I mean, what you got from this convention is they do not want to talk about abortion. They do not want to talk about any of the policies and proposals in Project 2025. They don't want to talk about their tax cuts for the rich, with the exception of, as you mentioned last night, Steve Scalise. They just don't want to talk about any of these things that aren't popular or the election. And we need a campaign candidate who can prosecute the case and make sure that everyone is hearing about this all the time.

Jon Levitt
I also like there are moments in this convention where you have someone staying up there being like, Donald Trump shall be a champion for our values, and the blood and spirit of this country shall reign supreme. We will have a country again that is the first in all the land. And, like, I can just picture even a George W. Bush calling something, saying, this is some weird shit. Or Barack Obama kind of making a funny joke, like, hey, guys, your job is to pave roads and send out the Social Security checks. Can we tone it down a notch? What the fuck are you going to do when you're in office? There was no policy agenda. There's no details. It was a rambling, meandering set of grievances, attacks, lies, bullshit and all the rest. And just the incredible power that just new and normal would have. I'm just a, I'm just here, like, I want to do these ten things. I don't care about all this other stuff, like, would be so powerful.

Speaker B
So that brings us to the drama surrounding the democratic nominee for president, which has really overshadowed the republican convention this week. Here's the latest from the New York Times. Quote, several people close to President Biden said on Thursday that they believe he has begun to accept the idea that he may not be able to win in November and may have to drop out of the race, though he has not yet made up his mind. So the time story matches all the other reporting as well as everything we're hearing. Two senior House Democrats told CB's they expect Biden to make his decision within three to five days. Of course, he's still recovering from COVID at his home in Delaware. But even since we recorded last night, there's been a flood of bad polls and leaks about how most senior Democrats now believe that Biden should step aside. Congressional leaders, party leaders, House and Senate Democrats. John Tester became the, of Montana, became the second senator, put out a statement tonight that, saying that Biden should step aside. Strategists, donors, and of course, as the polls show now, at least half, if not more, of democratic voters. We should note, though, that the White House and the Biden campaign continue to deny on the record that the president's considering stepping aside. Those denials got more intense, I would say, as the day went on tonight, a source close to Biden talked to Bob Costa at CB's and said that they're furious that while the president's trying to recover, a pressure campaign keeps picking up speed.

So a little hard to tell. There was also sources close to Biden that talked to the New York Times and the Washington Post and NBC News. So it's sort of hard to figure out what's going on. But it did feel like today, even since we recorded last night, was a bit different. There was speculation earlier this week that, that the combination of the assassination attempt on Trump and the convention would freeze or even end the effort to persuade Biden to step aside. I certainly thought that might happen. What do you guys think changed? And what do you make of all the leaks from the last few days, especially today.

Tommy Vitor
I mean, I think it was what Seth Moulton told me earlier this week, which that people who are worried about Biden's candidacy became even more worried after the assassination attempt and felt more urgency to move quickly. And then on top of that, it seems clear that a bunch of polling came back. I think John Tester coming out and being the second us senator to call for a change at the top of the ticket tells you a lot because he's one of the most vulnerable senators up this cycle. And it probably tells you where the polling is in Montana. And so I think what has happened is, or at least what we're reading, is that people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are making an argument that this is bigger than Biden, bigger than the white House. This could be Democrats getting wiped out in Congress as well. And that is kind of motivating the extra push.

Dan Pfeiffer
I think what happened is a lot of people try to do this privately. We know that Hakeem Jeffries talked to Biden on Friday night. Schumer talked to him on Saturday, just hours before the assassination attempt. At some point in that same period, Nancy Pelosi spoke to him at least once. They tried to do it privately. A bunch of House Democrats did Zoom calls with the president. No one felt that they made any ground there, and they started going public. I think they feel, the leaders particularly feel a tremendous amount of pressure from their members to try to get a better result because their members are scared shitless they're all going to lose their seats over this, and we will lose our chance to take the House back and definitely lose the Senate. And so when the private route did not work and Biden seemed, according to all reports, totally unopened to any sort of conversation about it, they started to go more public to put more public pressure on them. And we, the truth is, we are now in reporting silly season.

Speaker B
Yeah.

Dan Pfeiffer
Like these two House Democrats who are like three to five days, that's their guess based on, like the calendar that's not, there are by all reports, like five people talking to Biden right now. And I don't think any of those people are telling reporters that Biden is changing his mind. They're the people who are on background telling the reporters he's not changing his mind. So we, the political environment has shifted dramatically since we last podcasted about this, but we just have no actual insight into whether the president's mindset has actually changed. I think some of the people in the outer circle, not the inner inner circle, the outer circle, have come to the conclusion that Biden should step aside and eventually will have to step aside. But we don't know whether that has actually gotten to the president himself.

Jon Levitt
Yeah.

Speaker B
And we recorded last night, as we do every night. I know. And while we were recording, or right after, there was that story that Nancy Pelosi, I think the New York Times ran the story, and then CNN ran a version of the story as well. Then Nancy Pelosi got on the phone with Biden. And then when Biden started saying, oh, well, there's Paul Shomi winning, and she was like, get Mike Donalin on the phone. Mike Donalin is Biden's closest communications messaging advisor. And she was like, show me the polls. Show me the polls. Because there is concern among Democrats that Biden and Donalin and other people keep saying that there's these polls showing that he's winning and that they don't really exist.

Jon Levitt
Yeah. We don't know what happened after that moment either. The story sort of ends there. Yeah.

Dan Pfeiffer
Just imagine Biden trying to conference in Mike Donald from his beach house in Rehoboth.

But also, Nancy Pelosi, just the best of what she does. Like everyone else, when the president of the United States says there are polls, they're like, okay, there must be polls. She's like, no, get your guy on the phone. Calls the bluff. Get your guy on the phone and show me the polls. Cause I mean, but that's what, like.

Speaker B
Everyone'S like, I wonder. It's, you know, it's some strange bedfellows and the, in the group of people who are worried about Biden staying in versus the people who think he should stay in, it's like, really, all the people from left to center to center, left to wherever else where you fall on the spectrum, the people who are concerned about Biden are people who have been on campaigns, who are currently in office, who are in competitive districts, who have had to run tough races, who have had to persuade voters, who have knocked on doors to talk to undecided voters. These are the people that are most worried about that because they are not ensconced in a bubble on Twitter or in the White House or wherever it may be, hearing from people who are obviously gonna vote for Biden no matter what. Like us. Right? Like, but when you actually go talk to the voters that you need to win, everyone who is talking to these voters, polling these voters, sitting in focus groups with these voters, they're so worried about this, and they've been worried about this. For a long time.

Dan Pfeiffer
I think that there is a lot of the people who are making the argument against a switch are doing it in denial of polling reality. They say all the polls are rigged, it's margin of error, all of that without any evidence of proving that. I think that there is a good faith argument to be made, and some people are making it, that the risk of a switch is greater than the risk of sticking with Biden.

Speaker B
And that's ultimately, and I think, and like I have come to not agree with that, but I think it is completely fair and a completely fair, because.

Dan Pfeiffer
No one knows what's going to happen. We just do not know. And unfortunately, you have to make the decision now. It has to happen in the next couple of weeks, but ultimately has to happen really in the next 72 to 96 hours to maximize the opportunity to have the upside that may be available in a second candidate, but it's a total unknown. So you can have the opposite opinion in good faith, but it has to be based on the data in a realistic assessment of where the race is.

Jon Levitt
And I also do think that we are now at the point where so many people have come out against Joe Biden being nominee, wanting him to step aside, that it is hard to imagine a democratic convention under these circumstances that leads to a Joe Biden sent off, even if everybody comes together and says they're gonna do everything they can. We are now at the point where huge swaths of elected Democrats have called for Joe Biden to step aside. I think the idea originally that the damage was not from the debate, but from the response to the debate, I think was not justifiable. But it is hard to argue now that what is happening is not doing ongoing and irreparable damage to Joe Biden because the people stepping forward believe he cannot win. And so that what must happen is people coming forward and saying, we have to make a switch.

Dan Pfeiffer
I mostly agree with that. I think it's not clear in public opinion yet that ultimately people, the number of Democrats who think Joe Biden is too old has gone up. But it was really hot before, and it's only gone up a few points. I think it's like five points in the New York Times poll. But what is, the point you're making is very important, which is how do you imagine the campaign going forward after this? Right. What does the convention look like? How does he raise money? Right. The reports that fundraising has been cut in half since then. There are people who are not giving bundlers, who are not raising money, then said they're simply, they're focusing on House and Senate candidates instead. What happens when he goes to Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, all the battleground states that also have Senate and House candidates, are they going to simply avoid being with the president for the next four months? It's just, it is an, were the president to continue and it's certainly his choice, and he could do that. It is just a death march to the end, an undignified, terribly damaging death march because the party will be running away from him.

Speaker B
And look, this is awful and sad and shitty for Biden, his family, his staff, the entire party.

No one is happy about this.

No one wanted to be spending the summer arguing about this while we are currently losing to Donald Trump, but we are losing to Donald Trump. And I think the RNC crystallized that reality for Democrats. And no one thinks, to your point, Dan, that Biden stepping aside will guarantee a win against Trump at all. But a growing number of people, including democratic voters, a majority of democratic voters believe that it will give us a better chance against Trump. And like you said, if he doesn't, it's up to him. If he stays, then like we, I can still make an honest argument for Joe Biden. Like, Donald Trump is a, presents a threat to democracy from his, the plans that he proposed, from the things that he said from the party that he now runs, like, absolutely, we'd be better off.

Dan Pfeiffer
And if that's where we're like 96 hours from now, that's where we are. And everyone said, that's it, Joe Biden's it. We've all agreed then I'll give money that day. We'll go knock doors the day after that. Like, we will be 100% in for that.

Tommy Vitor
Well, I'm maxed out, Dan, so I can't do that. But for the general, too, I could do the victory fund. But just so people know, like, the data behind these anxieties, the Wall Street Journal reported today that a research firm called Blue Rose research found President Biden losing in all the swing states behind or even in New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Mexico, Virginia, and Maine, and leading by only 2.9% in New Jersey. So that is like panic button numbers.

Speaker B
Not good, people, not good.

Jon Levitt
I also just like watching Donald Trump deliver this meandering and terrible address. It is a, it is absolutely made me mad. It made me furious.

Speaker B
We should beat this guy.

Jon Levitt
We should fucking beat this guy.

Speaker B
Embarrassing if we lose to this guy.

Jon Levitt
And I thought he was pretty good.

And one thing he said in his speech, which was some version of build the wall build was some version of we should be excited about the future. Right?

Tommy Vitor
Yeah, that was a good line, actually. I noticed that, too.

Jon Levitt
He did.

Tommy Vitor
And I want you to be.

Dan Pfeiffer
I don't know how you could have missed it in the 96 minutes.

Jon Levitt
And we have spent weeks arguing about how or why we are most likely to lose. We have also, I think, even when we were hopeful that Joe Biden was the one who could defeat Donald Trump, despite concerns about his age, were constantly watching Joe Biden in these settings, hoping for the best version of them, hoping that he would, you know, holding our breath a little bit and watching this tonight, watching this fucking terrible, ridiculous, fucking dumb speech, just imagining what it would be like to have a candidate who could fucking make the argument in a way that wasn't just good enough, that wasn't just like, to get us over the finish line, but to actually fuck this guy up, you know, beat him. Beat him.

Speaker B
Yeah. Yeah.

Jon Levitt
Well, lower than the temperature.

Speaker B
Rhetorically, right?

Jon Levitt
Rhetorically.

Tommy Vitor
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Speaker B
Let'S say Biden does step aside one possibility for that candidate. That probably the most likely possibility is that Kamala Harris becomes the democratic nominee, either because Biden explicitly endorses her or because party leaders rally around her and no one else jumps in the race, or both. The Trump campaign and Republicans have clearly been preparing for this possibility. Just listen to how many times they mentioned the vice president during this week's convention.

Dan Pfeiffer
Our border czar, K?

Speaker B
Mala Harris.

That means so bad.

And we have enough bad.

Speaker G
We need some good. We need goodness.

Dan Pfeiffer
Democrats led by border czar Kamala Harris have allowed millions of illegal migrants to invade our country.

Speaker B
President Trump did the job that kamala won't, and Joe Biden simply can't.

Speaker C
If we have four more years of.

Speaker B
Biden or a single day of Harris.

Speaker C
Our country will be badly worse off.

Tommy Vitor
Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington for longer than I've been alive, 39 years old.

Kamala Harris is not much further.

Dan Pfeiffer
Perhaps the greatest blame lies with his own vice president, Kamala Harris.

She has not been truthful with us. She has lied to us.

She has put party above country, and she is as unfit in character as Joe Biden is in body and mind.

Tommy Vitor
I love to get her name wrong.

Jon Levitt
I love it.

Speaker B
Just a bunch of loons. I'm not even gonna talk about who. Maybe you recognize them, maybe you didn't. It's unclear if the vice president is also preparing for the possibility that she may become the nominee, but she certainly sounded like one during an event in North Carolina today. Let's listen.

Speaker C
In recent days, they've been trying to portray themselves as the party of unity.

But here's the thing. Here's the thing. If you claim to stand for unity, you need to do more than just use the word.

You cannot claim you stand for unity if you are pushing an agenda that deprives whole groups of Americans of basic freedoms, opportunity, and dignity, you cannot claim you stand for unity if you are intent on taking reproductive freedoms from the people of America and the women of America, you cannot claim to be for unity if you try to overturn a free and fair election.

Speaker B
Dan, what are the reasons Kamala Harris is most likely to be the nominee if Biden steps down?

Dan Pfeiffer
Well, she's the vice president to the stepping down president. She, in the polls that we've seen, and these should be taking with a grain of salt, she is the, by far, the first choice of democratic primary voters. Now, the democratic primaries don't have to say be delegates, but that would be better to them logistically.

Kamala Harris would be able to, most campaign finance lawyers believe, simply take over the existing Biden campaign operation, including the $91 million they had in the bank as of the last period. So that solves a lot. It's also unclear to me that anyone would challenge her, and that's whether Biden endorses her or not would step in there. And it may be just the party is exhausted by the drama of the last few weeks and is looking for what would be the most likely outcome anyway. Even if you have some sort of process that we've talked about in the past, Harris would be a favorite going into that. And so you could see just a coalescing around her, right. So we can get the general election going. Now, we only have about 100 days left. And so if we spend a few weeks fighting amongst ourselves, you could see people thinking, let's just get our nominee right this second.

Speaker B
And what are some of the reasons she may not become the nominee?

Tommy Vitor
Tommy, thank you for that question.

You and ity, you gotta let them know. I think she could get tagged with questions about, you know, Biden's mental acuity. And the republican line on this is that there's been a cover up, right? So she could get pulled into that debate. She could get tagged with immigration policy or Afghanistan or other vulnerabilities. You know, delegates are political animals. They're not normal voters. They're people like us. They could have concerns about her political vulnerabilities and ability to win. They could be worried about misogyny or racism being a factor in this election and hurting her candidacy. So I think that she is clearly the front runner. And also a lot of politicians might look at the political landscape right now and think, Trump looks pretty tough. I'm not going to throw my hat in now. Let's let Kamala Harris take this one. And if she loses, I'll run in 2028, right? I mean, that's kind of the, like, consultant y version or advice you might hear.

Speaker B
Yeah, I guess there's a scenario that seems unlikely from all the reporting, but who knows where if Biden steps aside and doesn't explicitly endorse Kamala Harris, and then again, it's all up to other potential democratic candidates to jump in. If then they jump in, he hasn't explicitly endorsed her. And then there is some sort of mini primary open process before the convention, and then the delegates start seeing polls, and somehow they're performing better against Trump than Kamala Harris. You could see a scenario where Donald.

Tommy Vitor
Trump is coming to silence this podcast.

Speaker B
You can hear the sirens in the back, the background. Um, like, you could maybe see that as a scenario. But I think the reason everyone says that she's most likely is for everything that. That Dan was saying, which is that would take some doing for a bunch of. It takes like a Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro or a Raphael Warnock or a West Moore, Mark Kelly, JB. JB Pritzker, to say, you know what, Gavin Newsom? I'm going to look at this race and I'm going to jump in. Even though Kamala Harris is in the race. And I, Biden either endorsed her or said really nice things about her.

Jon Levitt
Yeah. I think that, like, the closer we get to the convention, the more it wouldn't feel like an open race and more like Kamala versus, as the incumbent being challenged and somebody who has to make a decision to challenge her. And these are all the same people who decided they didn't want to challenge Biden. There's a cautiousness among this group of the vaunted democratic bench that I find difficult to imagine being willing to do that. But who knows?

Speaker B
But I do think, Tommy, to your point, the way the race would change if it's Kamala Harris versus Trump is they will try to tag her with the unpopularity Biden had, not just due to his age, but incumbency. So some of Biden's unpopularity, a lot of it is probably due to his age, but some of it is due fairly or not. And we would say not to perceptions of how he's managed the economy, persistent inflation, or how he's managed immigration. And so they would try to connect her with incumbency in a way that other candidates probably would not have to deal with. They can't do. She's old and weak anymore. So they will do. Radical leftist from San Francisco. Right. They'll do all that.

They'll try to accuse her of participating in a coverup over Biden's age issues. Right. I think the benefits, though, the way the race changes in her favor and the Democrats favor is she gets to make this race now about the past versus the future. Time to turn the page. Trump's entire campaign strategy from that Tim Alberta piece in the Atlantic was about strength versus weakness. And Joe Biden's age wasn't just about him being old. It was about him being weak and frail. And if they can't run that campaign against Kamala Harris and they have to do the, she's a radical leftist campaign, it's not as strong as an argument for them.

Jon Levitt
I also, it's like, you know, we have been hammering this for months about the need for Joe Biden to make this race about the future. And just, I just don't believe Kamala Harris will fall into the trap that we've seen Joe Biden be falling into. She will make this race about the future. She will be able to pivot when asked a question, like, she will do the things that need to be done to do the politics we need our candidate to do.

Dan Pfeiffer
I mean, just listen to her in the clip we just played, right? Imagine that in three states a day, five days a week. Right. A full boar campaign, one that we know Joe Biden was not able to run. We also know Donald Trump can't run that campaign.

Right. And the concerns about Donald Trump's age pale in comparison about Biden's age, but they're still huge.

Right. And now all of a sudden, you have Kamala Harris, who's 59 right now, Donald Trump is the candidate who's too old, who can't relate to people. It really shifts it.

Tommy Vitor
And he is a VP candidate who only has a year and a half worth of political experience, and no one is talking about it. JD Vance, like, is 39 years old and has been in the Senate since, what, 2023.

Speaker B
Yeah.

Tommy Vitor
It's insane.

Jon Levitt
A vice president older than me and a president younger than my parents.

Tommy Vitor
And to your dan's point, if Biden remains president, there will be a push, I think, to get Biden to step down. But I think that's stupid.

Dan Pfeiffer
He should stay. Absolutely.

Tommy Vitor
But Joe Biden remains president. Kamala Harris, the VP, doesn't really have a day job. You can just hit the road and campaign full time. She's not breaking any ties in the Senate.

Speaker B
Here's the other big difference, too, because I could see people who want Biden to stay in could say, well, Biden when he's on prompter at those events. Like we said, his speech in Michigan was quite good. He can do that for the rest of the time. Yeah, perhaps.

But the big difference with a new candidate is I really don't think we're getting another debate if Joe Biden stays in the race. Trump has already said, I don't want to put him through that again.

Maybe he'll get so cocky and confident that he'll agree to it, and maybe Joe Biden will say, okay, I know, I'm just trying to. No, I know. I'm now playing the devil's arvicate for the Biden side, but I think everyone should. It's very unlikely we'll get another debate if Kamala Harris is the nominee or another Democrat. I think it's gonna be hard for Donald Trump to dodge another debate. I really do, because, and that gives her, or whoever the nominee is, a huge opportunity to speak to, you know, 50 million, if not more Americans in front of a debate setting. And I think that's a big advantage, too.

Dan Pfeiffer
We've, because we've had two geriatric candidates running against each other for a couple of years now. We've lost the thread of what a normal campaign looks like, yeah, right. When you're running for president, you wake up in the morning and she can do interviews. Right? This is my point. Right?

Jon Levitt
What are we talking about?

And John, you know what? I'd like a candidate who can do interviews.

Dan Pfeiffer
But think about this like, we've all, we've all been on the road with a presidential candidate. You wake up in the morning, you do drive time, radio in places, battleground markets across the country, right? Then you get up, you go to a first rally, then you go to another rally. Then you sit for an hour and do satellite local television reviews. That's good stuff, right? Then you do another one.

Speaker B
You get really mad at your staff for scheduling.

Tommy Vitor
You do.

Dan Pfeiffer
But that's what you have to do.

Jon Levitt
And then you rap. And then you do.

Dan Pfeiffer
You have a third rally. You were doing fundraising calls in the car, on the plane. Like, there's a, there's a cadence to this that Donald Trump cannot keep up with. But we know Kamala Harris or any other Democrat could do that. And it would put Trump on the defensive, which he has not been on, and also just him. All Trump has to say about Biden is criticize what Biden has done, which you would do against any incumbent. And attack is a something that 70% to 75% of Americans agree with. What happens when it's someone else. Right.

It's a woman, a woman of color. How he reacts. Trump reacts in ways that turns off swing voters. Yeah, we have to take advantage of those opportunities if he gives them to us. But those opportunities will be there in a way they are not in a.

Speaker B
Race with Biden, but also, and Biden is rightly proud of his many legislative accomplishments as president. She can run on the popular accomplishments because she's part of that administration. But she also wasn't, like, she can have some kind of distance, whereas she is the future and she is younger and she was the vice president. So she doesn't have to own everything. Right. Again, fairly or unfairly. And I'm sure the Biden folks would say unfairly, but, like, she gets to be her own person and she gets to be the face of the party and run a future oriented campaign. There's just a lot of, she gets.

Jon Levitt
To stand up there with a popular governor or a popular senator behind in front of a big sign that says the future on it. Yeah, just pick a VP.

Tommy Vitor
She could pick Greg Whitmer or Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania.

Dan Pfeiffer
Bashir.

Jon Levitt
And I think about going into that convention and the like, the way in which people will rally behind this ticket, it would be like. It'd be incredible.

Tommy Vitor
What if she picked Mike Pence to be her vp?

Speaker B
That's also a possibility.

Tommy Vitor
It's a brain.

Speaker B
Or Hulk Hogan. Okay, we've talked enough.

We're done. It's past Monday.

Tommy Vitor
You could have said that three years ago.

Speaker B
I know, I know.

Dan Pfeiffer
We're now on the second day of this pod.

Speaker B
Exactly. Let's close with this. We don't know what comes next. Biden, anyone else. But winning in November after the shit we saw this week, and especially tonight, is more important than ever. Not just at the top of the ticket, but all the way down. That's why we have Votesave, America's anxiety relief program. You can set up a recurring monthly donation. You can help down ballot candidates and grassroots groups. VSA votes if America does the research, and each month they direct your dollars to the grassroots organizations and candidates that need it most, then at the end of the month, they'll tell you where your money went. Go to votesafamerica.com to get started. This message has been paid for by Votesafe America. You can learn more@votesafamerica.com and this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. Oof.

Jon Levitt
Nice.

Speaker B
All right. And most importantly, we will see you tomorrow night, Friday night.

Jon Levitt
So much content.

Speaker B
04:00 a.m. so we will see you tonight, Friday night. Madison. Damn it. And that show will post in the feed on Saturday morning. Talk to you very soon.

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Trump Is So Beatable

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction and Context

2: Analysis of Trump's Speech

3: Democratic Response and Strategy

4: Broader Political Implications

5: Conclusion and Reflections

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Content Warnings:

Transcript