Trump's Shooting Upends 2024

Tommy Vitor
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Jon Favreau
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Jon Levitt
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Jon Favreau
See center for details. The Ups store be unstoppable welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

Jon Levitt
I'm Jon Levitt.

Dan Pfeiffer
I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Tommy Vitor
Tommy Vitor.

Jon Favreau
Well, quite a bit has happened since Friday's show, and absolutely none of it has been good. Donald Trump was shot in an assassination attempt at the campaign rally. His handpicked judge threw out his classified documents case. He picked MAGA air JD Vance as his running mate on the opening day of the republican convention. And new swing state polls give him an even larger lead over Joe Biden, who spent the last few days giving a number of high profile speeches and interviews as he tries to convince Democrats and all Americans that he's still the best chance to beat Trump. But let's start with the assassination attempt. Words that still feel just awful and shocking to say out loud. The investigation is still underway. Here's some of the new details we've learned as of this recording. Monday night, head of Secret Service did an interview with ABC News today where she said, quote, the buck stops with me, but she's not resigning. So far, the picture that's emerging of the shooter, 20 year old Thomas Matthew Crooks, does not suggest he was a Trump hater, a Trump fan, or even that political.

It looks like he once made a $15 donation to one of those scammy progressive groups that fucking emails you all the time. But after that, he registered as a Republican. And neighbors just told a Pittsburgh news station they've seen Trump signs around the family's house. Some classmates have said he was conservative. Others said he was bullied. Others said he liked guns. Meanwhile, the wife of Corey comprator the rally Gore who died, told the New York Post that President Biden did reach out, but she didn't take the call because her husband was a Trump guy and wouldn't have wanted her to. But even though she's voting for Trump, she said that she doesn't blame Biden for her husband's death and that President Trump has not yet contacted her family.

So before we get to all the politics, obviously just terrifying, horrendous news for the country.

I heard about it from you, Tommy. You texted, like, how did you hear it? How did you learn about this whole thing? Were you watching the rally?

Tommy Vitor
I was just sitting at home. I was with James, my two month old, and doing nothing, sitting on Twitter, and all of a sudden just coming through, shots fired at a Trump rally. I turned on the news and I think watched it live like a lot of people did.

Jon Favreau
It's just wild that the footage was just there for everyone to see and play over and over again. Dan, you were, like, not home, right?

Dan Pfeiffer
I was about. I was driving back from a trip with my daughter, and the last text before I got in the car was from Tommy. It said, shots fired at a Trump rally, which I thought just. There were shots at the rally, right? And not someone that shot at Trump. Then they didn't look at my phone for an hour and a half. Got home to 1 million texts, mostly from you guys about everything that happened. Just that I couldn't believe that Trump had, someone had shot at Trump. Trump had been hit, that he was fine. But then there was the, you saw the image of Trump with his fist in the air. The bloody image. Some of the photos from the one from Doug Mills, who we used to, we know from the White House, great guy. Were the incredible, great guy, incredible photographer of the bullet right at Trump's head. Just almost an impossible thing to process, to learn all about in one fell swoop.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, I just sort of felt sick because I was like, what is going to happen now?

Jon Levitt
Yeah, I felt sick. I really did. That was my instant reaction. I felt sick. I was instantly worried.

Even after we knew that it was only an attempt about the implications, about the potential for retaliatory violence, about what we might learn about the shooter. I also just was instantly worried about what it would be like for this to be processed by social media.

And the other strange, good worry, good concern.

And the other strange piece about it, too, was in the same way. Oh, you see shots fired at a Trump rally. My first instinct is, oh, this is some kind of false or overblown made.

Jon Favreau
Up story, partly because you want it to be.

Jon Levitt
You want it to be and you expect it to be because there's so much misinformation, there's so much sensationalism out there. So you at first say, oh, it's just an airsoft gun. Oh, it was shrapnel from a teleprompter. Oh, it wasn't actually a shooting. Right. All that is circulating and then it's slowly becoming clear from real sources what's going on. And I really did. I had a pit in my stomach the whole day. Even after we knew that it was only an attempt because of.

And angry. And I was angry just because it takes control of our ability to talk about politics, about our ability to talk about anything and just takes it away from us in favor of what a random mass shooter or assassin wants us to talk about, which is whatever their intention or act is.

Jon Favreau
Tommy, just quickly, what do you make of the Secret Services lapse here in their response so far? It seems like having eyes on a shooter who was on top of an elevated building within sight of the president is like the most basic part of the job that secret Service does to protect any event with either a president, next president, or whoever they're assigned to protect.

Tommy Vitor
Yeah. The idea that an elevated position 140 yards away with a sight line, a direct sight line to the candidate was not covered by someone somehow is shocking to me. I mean, there might have been so secret service, a bunch of different parts of it. There's PPD, who are the men and women around the president, the personal protective detail for the president, what you saw on tv was them reacting and dive on him pretty quickly. And those people are incredibly brave. You know, those individuals literally threw themselves in front of a bullet to protect the president. And they did their job and they did it pretty quickly. But then there are, you know, they partner with local law enforcement. It's not at all clear if local law enforcement was supposed to be securing this building. It's not clear to me why the sniper teams that were on other elevated positions didn't see the gunman sooner. So we'll figure it out. There will be an investigation.

I think it's a massive fuck up. I mean, obviously, I'm surprised that the secret service director is not offering her resignation.

If a candidate, if a president or candidate got shot on my watch and I was running secret service, I would feel like I'd failed at my job and resigned. I'm sure there will be a independent investigations. There will be internal investigations. Biden's in a weird place on this because he's standing by an agency that he is in charge of through homeland security.

But, I mean, I hope that Congress will get involved. Maybe there'll be some sort of slick committee set up to look into what happened. Because the Secret Service has had a bunch of near misses and a bunch of bad scandals. And I think as an organization, they are not doing great.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. And that's been true for a while.

Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah. I mean, that was true when we were in the Obama, I mean, even though we knew a lot of your services, just did an incredible job. But there I was at the White House when the guy made it into the white house. The guy who jumped the fence.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, that's right.

Dan Pfeiffer
I was there when they found the bullet holes at the top of the White House that no one knew when they came from. So this has been a problem for a while. Biden did ask for an independent investigation of this, which I think it becomes the basis for making a decision on the future.

The head of the secret service.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. So after the shock passed and it was clear Trump was okay, the first understandable reaction from a lot of folks in politics and media was that, you know, everyone needs to tone down the rhetoric and lower the temperature of the political debate in this country.

Biden said as much a number of times over the weekend, Trump himself posted Unite America and all caps, and he did a print interview with Selena Zito of the Washington examiner, where he said he tore up the draft of his convention speech that he said was the original draft, was a humdinger, and was rewriting it about bringing the country together. Axios ran a piece Sunday evening about how Trump advisers are planning a more unifying convention. The piece quoted Tucker Carlson. They interviewed him. He said, quote, getting shot in the face changes a man. And an unnamed Trump adviser said that Trump's view is, quote, now democrats can't come after me anymore as a fascist. So what are they going to do now?

So lots to unpack there.

Let's start with the timeless classic, can Trump pivot to become someone who's unrecognizable to those who've watched him for the last 77 years? Dan, what do you think?

Dan Pfeiffer
I'm going to go on a limb and say, no, no, I do not think he's become a uniter and not a divider? I do think that the press seems very thirsty to believe this narrative in a way in which they haven't with Trump in a very long time. It has been very credulous.

Jon Favreau
Covid. Covid was the last time. Remember the beginning of COVID Even that.

Dan Pfeiffer
Lasted like 6 seconds, right?

Jon Favreau
Yeah. The first 6 seconds of his first press conference.

Dan Pfeiffer
No, I think it was the moment when he went and got into the Secret Service vehicle with all the secret service agents infected with COVID for the driver on the block.

Jon Favreau
Oh, yeah, there's that, too. Well, that was later. That was when he had, I was saying when Covid initially hit, remember in March, the first couple of weeks, everyone was like, oh, he's a new president. He's great, blah, blah. Then he became crazy. Then he got Covid.

Jon Levitt
The point being, whether it was our collective near death experience or his personal near death experience, we have yet to see a fucking change.

Dan Pfeiffer
Yes, I do think he can be just less divisive enough to get a disproportionate amount of undeserved credit in his speech on Thursday night.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, I mean, it's. Can you hang on for four months? And we, before the shooting, we were saying this about how he reacted to the trials and the fear of potentially going to jail has really driven him in this campaign to be slightly more disciplined than usual. Not because it's out of the goodness of his heart, but because he's like, this is how I'm gonna win this thing. I've gotta just be a little normal for a little while longer.

Jon Levitt
Well, it already brought. I mean, he already says, like, what does unity mean? It means dropping all the charges against me. So it's. Of course, he's given up the game pretty quickly.

Jon Favreau
Yeah.

Tommy Vitor
But I think 2016, was it Super Tuesday when he won the election and then did, like, a giant product placement thing where he had all the Trump products he had ever made on a table before him. Like, the stakes have gone up since that time, to your point.

Jon Favreau
Very much so, yeah. And again, like you said, he did already in this campaign, he has said, I mean, every day has said something that would sink any other candidate for office, and it just completely makes him unfit to hold the office. Just want to put that out there. But I. Relative to Trump and what people expect of Trump, it's been a little different.

What do you guys think about the whole democrats can't call him a threat to democracy anymore thing? Love it.

Jon Levitt
Political violence is destructive in a democracy for a lot of obvious reasons, but one reason is that it gives control over our ability to make decisions to random, bad actors. We should not give to a random person. Whatever their motivations, whatever we discover, we should not voluntarily give up what that person wasn't able to successfully take by force, which is our ability to make a decision about the fate of the country. And that requires being honest about the threat Donald Trump poses. That requires being honest about what it will take to win this election. That is, you know, the fact that this event took place does not remove Trump's menace or the challenge Biden faces. And the sooner we get back to having that debate, the more of a failure this assassination attempt will be.

Jon Favreau
Tommy, go ahead.

Tommy Vitor
No, that's a good point. I mean, I also think, like, politics is how we resolve differences without resorting to violence. And those debates are inevitably gonna get emotional and heated at times, and they should, because that's our release valve. That's how we settle differences. But that said, like, there are limits. You can't encourage violence. You can't condone violence. That's why what Trump did on January 6 is unforgivable in my mind. But I do think people take cues from leaders, and it's important not to take it too far, because once political violence starts, it can be very, very hard to stop, and it can just get out of control.

Jon Favreau
Donald Trump told his supporters to beat the shit out of protesters at his rallies. He has amplified calls for violence. Remember the video of one of his supporters? This was after George Floyd's murder. And one of his supporters said in a video, the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat. And then he posted that. That was one thing he did. He told police and the military to shoot protesters in the legs, to shoot immigrants who crossed the border, to shoot suspected shoplifters. Suspected shoplifters to rough up suspects when you're putting them in the car, rough up suspects. He, of course, sent a mob of his armed supporters. He knew they were armed. We know this now. He sent them to the Capitol so they could intimidate our representatives into throwing out our votes. He refused to do anything to stop the violence. Kevin McCarthy, the republican speaker of the House, calls him. He says, they're trying to fucking kill me.

Do something. And Donald Trump said in response, well, Kevin, I guess they're more upset about the election than you.

That's what he said. And then now he wants to pardon them. Has Joe Biden done any of those things? Has any democratic official done any of those things anywhere close to those things? No. So of course, you're going to talk about Donald Trump as a threat to democracy that you have to oppose through democratic means, peaceful means, at the ballot box, by convincing other people to vote against him. It's just, it's so stupid.

Dan Pfeiffer
Also, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. He's a threat to freedom for all those reasons. But also, don't, you don't take my word for it. He says it himself. He's the one who said to be a dictator on day one. Over the last couple of weeks, the media, people in politics, us, have not been paying as much attention to Trump. He has been truthing about how he thinks that various people should have military tribunals.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. Liz Cheney military tribunals.

Dan Pfeiffer
He has talked about jailing his opponents. He has talked.

Jon Favreau
Is that how democracy works? Is that not a threat to democracy? I guess that's just democracy. Right. And so trade tribunals for Liz Cheney. Yeah.

Dan Pfeiffer
And so the idea that after this horrible thing happened, and it is, it would be wonderful that if we could lower the temperature on politics in this country, we could get back to sort of normal debates. But Donald Trump is an abnormal candidate. He has, he has offered dangerous, a dangerous policy agenda. He has been a danger to democracy. And the press cannot all of a sudden become the civility police and try to chastise democrats into not saying what is true about Donald Trump.

Jon Levitt
And by the way, one of the reasons that should, that, one of the reasons that's actually important is because it gives, to allow this act of violence to dictate what we can or cannot say, even when it is true, is to give power to this person and potentially to inspire people in the future to think they have the power at any moment to change the landscape of american politics. The reason, like, I am very, look, if people wanna say, oh, this is an opportunity for all of us. To come together and turn down the rhetoric, great, that's fine. But the reason we talk about the danger posed by violent rhetoric, it's not because it creates some miasma of risk that it's because it can inspire people. It's because people will take it literally and act on it. We have seen that happen multiple times. We have seen right wing violence in multiple places in multiple times. We have seen mass shootings. We've seen what happened in Charlottesville. We've seen what happened at the insurrection. There is a trend. The reason you worry about the rhetoric is because you start to see it manifest in a trend of violence.

Dan Pfeiffer
We don't know anything yet about this versus motive, but there is no evidence as of yet that they were motivated by some sort of political rhetoric. Right. Let's, if that evidence comes back and shows that, we should talk about that. But as of right now, everyone's just jumping to the conclusion. Especially people in the media who love this conversation are jumping to the conclusion they want.

Jon Favreau
But also. Yeah, right. Even if it, even if for some reason it did like, there are going to be people who are inspired by political rhetoric, whether it's on the right or left, to commit violence. And what you can do about that as a political leader is to condemn that unequivocally and to do everything in your power to avoid inciting or condoning that kind of violence, which I think most leaders in this country and previously the Republican Party, before Donald Trump, a lot of elected officials would take care to do that. Donald Trump has not taken care to do that at all.

Jon Levitt
And even worse, joked about and mocked when there has been violence, like the attack on Paul Pelosi or the attempted kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer.

Dan Pfeiffer
Right.

Jon Levitt
All of that was something they either they claim is some sort of false flag or make fun of or mock.

It was a lover's quarrel. Right? When this guy was, when Paul Pelosi is like, nearly beaten to death or.

Tommy Vitor
When his vp was almost hung, he was cool with that, too.

Dan Pfeiffer
That was very, very cool with that.

Tommy Vitor
Apparently swapped him out.

Jon Favreau
We're not in the prediction business. We don't have a lot of polling numbers yet. It's only a couple of days in. But I'm sure you guys were getting this message from friends. You saw it online, like when he. The picture of Donald Trump, that's now the COVID of Time magazine. Fist up in the air.

Dan Pfeiffer
It's a cover of Time.

Jon Favreau
Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Well, I mean, both candidates did do lengthy interviews with Time down.

Dan Pfeiffer
So I know I know, just even.

Jon Favreau
Though you're shitting all over the magazine.

Dan Pfeiffer
On the polls in the 1986 election, just shifted six points.

Jon Favreau
Anyway, we all know the picture now. We all know the picture. Everyone who's listening to this, and a lot of people are, that's it. It's over. It's over. He's won. This is, this is like a show of strength. And so that was some of the more extreme. Then there's other people like, well, this is going to help him.

There was a quote from axios on Sunday that immediately was everywhere on the Internet. It was about Democrats feeling worried that Biden's going to stay in the race and then lose. And then it also combined with the assassination attempt and Trump, you know, looking strong and surviving an assassination attempt, and the senior House Democrat said anonymously, due Axios, we've all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency. Thoughts on the political implications? Tommy?

Tommy Vitor
I mean, that person is a defeatist idiot. And I. Please, just don't talk to the press. If you have those thoughts, keep them inside your head. Like Donald Trump's instinct, he has some political genius in him. We have to be honest. His instinct to stand up and pump his fist after getting shot in the ear, it's incredible because it created this iconic image. And if you want to run an entire election, that where you're arguing, I am strong and my opponent is weak, it's pretty powerful. You know? That said, I think what will likely happen is it will make the people who support Donald Trump even more certain to turn out for him. Right. They seems to have inspired the base. It's certainly the image is traveling in us culture in ways that Donald Trump doesn't usually go. Like 50 cent put up a photo of his get Richard die trying album cover at his concert a couple nights ago with Donald Trump's head on it. It's probably the first time that's happened. So you're seeing people talk about Trump calling him a badass. There was, you know, the Barstool sports affiliates were selling t shirts with the image on it right away. So I'm sure it will appeal to a subset of people. But four months is a lifetime in politics. That's just what everyone has to remember. We have no idea what could happen between now and then. So giving up and giving up in a background, quote, the axios on July 14 is ridiculous.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, go to Politico. You know, Dan, what do you think?

Dan Pfeiffer
I think we have had major events in this race already, right? Donald Trump was convicted of a crime like 60 days ago.

Jon Favreau
Amazing.

Dan Pfeiffer
The polls move, like, about a point and a half in front of 50 million people. Joe Biden had the worst debate performance of any presidential candidate in modern history. The polls moved two and a half points. The idea that this will dramatically shift the race is absurd. It belies everything we have seen to date, and there's no real obvious historical precedents here. Like, Reagan went up in the polls after he was shot in 1981. He was a freshly elected president at.

Jon Levitt
The time, by the way, and he was seriously wounded. Yes.

Dan Pfeiffer
And it was a different era where you would get, with much less polarization, where you would get democrats in independence who did not like Reagan to approve of him in a moment like that. Right. Which you saw that up until just a few presidents ago.

It does matter. I think that this happened in Pennsylvania, the single most important state in both Biden and Trump's electoral college calculus. But the race is basically where it was before. This is, Trump has an advantage nationally in the battle of grown states. That advantage is slight but steady. And I would be shocked if this were to dramatically change equation. We're never really going to know because this happened. Basically, no poll can really go into the field that won't include the republican convention as well.

Jon Favreau
It's very hard to untangle because you're.

Dan Pfeiffer
Going to have a convention bounce, which is usually two to three points. Would be surprised it was that big this time around because the race is so steady, but happening at the same time. Those are usually very temporary. So we're never. Trump may go up in the polls in the next week. Whether that'll stay or not, I'm not sure, but we're not going to visit from the shooting of the convention or something else.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, there's polling, and then there's just trying to think about the person who was like, I think I'm gonna vote for Joe Biden. But then Donald Trump, you know, survived an assassination attempt and put his fist up in the air. Like, I have a hard time imagining that person saying, oh, I'm gonna vote for Donald Trump. Now. I have an easier time imagining someone who's, like, leaning Trump. And then this gives them, like, a permission structure to be like, yeah, it's okay, he's like a badass. I'm gonna do it. Like, if I think if they're going.

Tommy Vitor
After young men, they're going after men, like 18 to 29. It's like, you see that image? You're like, oh, this guy's a badass. Maybe I'll vote for the first time.

Jon Favreau
I think you had to have, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. But I think you had to have leanings that way anyway. And I wonder if those people were already, like, sort of priced into this.

Dan Pfeiffer
I think that is, you're moving someone from undecided to Trump, not from Biden to Trump.

Jon Favreau
That's what I was going to say.

Dan Pfeiffer
And that's really how most of the movement is going to happen in this race is there is this small but still significant pool of undecided voters, and Trump may pick some up from that. Will those people stay with him? Will they actually vote? Open question. What happens over the next four months? We'll decide that. But he may get some of those.

Jon Levitt
And also, by the way, it's an open.

This is why it is so important that this debate not be about Trump as a person versus Joe Biden as a person. That has to be at the stakes. Because if someone's thinking about abortion and taxes, I don't think Trump's fist pump is gonna matter. The other, you know, I add the same reaction, too, to the photo that Tommy did. But I also like, there's been reporting over the years about how much Donald Trump has actually thought about this, that he has thought that he is afraid of this kind of thing. He has thought about it and about assassination, about being in crowds. He has, he has thought about this in the past. And I have no doubt that Donald Trump, who is a creature of the eighties, is very aware of how Ronald Reagan said, honey, I forgot to duck that. There's this video, I think it's years after, but Ronald Reagan is at an event and a balloon pops and he goes, they miss me. And the whole crowd goes wild.

He is a showman in the same way Reagan was a showman. And I think he, in that moment, that part of him that's been worried and thinking about this moment his whole life was there and he made the most of it.

Jon Favreau
And he's like, I'm okay now.

Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I would have been thinking about a second gunman myself.

Dan Pfeiffer
True.

Tommy Vitor
Before I got up there and Jersey shorted it. But, you know, I guess what, do what works for you, Don, maybe.

Jon Levitt
Yeah, GTL.

Jon Favreau
But, yeah, resigning ourselves. Come on, people. It's like, we're not resigning ourselves to, like, yeah, if you do that, you're definitely gonna get another Trump presidency, guaranteed. If you try at least to avoid that by going, talking to voters who are undecided or who haven't made up their mind whether they're gonna vote yet, then we have a chance to avoid a second Trump presidency. So let's do that.

Dan Pfeiffer
Donna, is there a place that people who would take you up in your call to action could go to undertake such activities?

Jon Favreau
You could go to vote, save America. And what we will do is make sure that your time and money is spent on the most efficient candidates and organizations and places to make sure that you have the biggest impact on politics. How's that?

Jon Levitt
That was pretty, I thought it was pretty good. It was unclear. Was that quote saying we should resign ourselves to Trump winning because of the assassination attempt, or resign ourselves to Trump winning because the assassination attempt means we can't have an honest conversation about Joe Biden? And therefore, because we can't have that conversation, Joe Biden is going to.

Jon Favreau
It was unclear from the question. It was a story about both. So it was sort of all mixed up.

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

Tommy Vitor
It does.

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

Tommy Vitor
You know what? That's not my problem.

I don't get the 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.

Jon Favreau
Which is why I do let strangers get me mad.

Tommy Vitor
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.

Jon Favreau
You wanna talk about it a little more?

Tommy Vitor
I think this should go deeper, which is why betterhelp is a sponsor of this show.

Jon Favreau
Tommy. Tommy comparison is the thief of joy. It is. And it's easy to envy other people's lives. It might look like they have it all together on their instagram, but in reality, they probably don't. Therapy can help you focus on what you want instead of what others have, so you can start living your best life. If youre thinking of starting therapy, give Betterhelp a try. Its entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist anytime for no additional charge.

Tommy Vitor
John, you can cut others down or you can lift yourself up.

Betterhelp wants you to choose the latter.

Jon Favreau
A line that will undoubtedly appear in just a dozen convention speeches. Stop comparing and start focusing with Betterhelp. Visit betterhelp.com PSA today to get 10% off your first month. That's Betterhelp. H dash e dash p.com Psa hello, people of Earth.

Paul Scheer
This is Paul Scheer, co host of the Unspooled podcast. Over the next few months, my co host Amy Nicholson and I will be breaking down some of our favorite disasters to see if they still hold up. In our disaster movie summer. We're talking about Independence Day, Godzilla minus 128 days later, and more. You're not going to want to miss these conversations, I tell you, unspooled is where it's at. This summer. You can listen to new episodes of Unspooled every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Angie Hicks
Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co founder of Angie. When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well, from roof repair to emergency plumbing and more done well. So the next time you have a home project, leave it to the pros. Get started@angie.com. dot.

Jon Favreau
One of the weirder strains of post shooting we need to tone down our politics. Reactions came from people like Senator Mike Lee, who wrote right afterward that the Justice Department now needs to drop all charges against Trump. That's unity. That's how we come together. Sure enough, after Mike Lee tweeted that on Monday morning, Judge Eileen Cannon did just that, she dismissed classified documents case entirely, basically out of nowhere, saying that the appointment of a special counsel violates the Constitution. Which also Clarence Thomas had said in the immunity case. He was like the one justice that said that in one of his concurring opinions, Jack Smith is appealing. Experts think the dismissal is almost certain to be overturned on appeal, particularly because none of the other justices signed on to Thomas's concurrence, not even Alito. But who knows? Trump seized on Cannon's ruling, writing on truth social that all the other judges should now do the same thing, framed, of course, as a way, again to unite the nation.

Here's what I can't figure out. Cannon had already made sure there was no chance that this case was going to trial before the election. It was not going to happen. She succeeded in delaying.

Why did she do this? Was she just feeling emboldened? Is she just, as some legal scholars have said, not that bright?

Jon Levitt
Well, it seems like Clarence Thomas gave her an idea. I don't think that has to be more complicated than that. She had not thought of that before. Clarence Thomas gave her a roadmap for what she could do to get out of this. She's like, well, I better copy his work. He's a smart guy in his descent. I'm just some schmuck who got confirmed.

Tommy Vitor
During a lame duck in his dissent in the immunity case that came out, what, two weeks ago. So she saw that Reddit and was.

Dan Pfeiffer
Like, ooh, yeah, I think she wanted to get rid of this case, not just for Trump. She'd already, as you said, she'd already delayed it past the election. She already done him the favor. But also, this is a way to not have to deal with this every single day.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. She's also, though, been, she's been playing this game wherever I, she didn't want to give Jack Smith anything to appeal to the 11th circuit and then ask that she be removed from the case, which it really has to be pretty extreme. He can now.

So a lot of the legal nerds think this is getting overturned for sure that she's not gonna be able to throw it out, but they think it's now possible for her to get booted from the case for doing this. Not probable, but possible. So it's a little risky.

Tommy Vitor
You see, Matt Gaetz's tweet said, future Supreme Court justice cannon.

Jon Favreau
Good troll, good troll. And possibly a solid prediction. Yeah.

Jon Levitt
Yeah. And also, future middle judge decider, choose the swing. But like Joe Biden, I couldn't think of the term.

Tommy Vitor
Swing, but swing.

Jon Levitt
But anyway, I shouldn't go on.

Jon Favreau
Speaking of, speaking of way too young MAGA leaders, the other huge news on Monday was Trump's announcement that his running mate will be JD Vance of Ohio, the 39 year old senator, author of Hillbilly Elegy, and former CNN contributor who went from calling Trump America's Hitler to becoming the MAGA heir apparent and one of Project 2020 five's best friends. Here he is talking to Sean Hannity at the convention on Monday night, giving us a preview of what his potential debate with current Vice President Kamala Harris might sound like. First of all, the Democrats want to try to run from this, and they're saying that Joe Biden has to step down or Joe Biden, you can't run for president. That's not public spiritedness, that's political cynicism because they should have been saying it three years ago. Kamala Harris has allowed America to be saddled with a president who clearly doesn't have the mental capacity to do the job. It is not public spiritedness to call for him to step down when he's about to lose an election. They should have been doing it years ago. And it's not just Kamala Harris, it's Nancy Pelosi. The entire democratic apparatus lied about this guy. I just want you guys to know, we did add that music every time we would play a JD Vance clip, we will be playing that music behind it.

Jon Levitt
That's Tommy's weekend dad band.

Tommy Vitor
That's a cover band called Six Wire, and they're just shredding at the IR's.

Jon Favreau
He's always doing the research.

Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I did Google just now.

Jon Favreau
Okay. What do you guys think about the Vance pick? What's your take on why Trump took a pass on our boy Doug Bergamde, little Marco Rubio and dozens of others in favor of JD Dan?

Dan Pfeiffer
Well, I think in the interview that Trump did that you and I talked about in the pod last week, Trump kind of answered these questions. Doug Bergam. It was the abortion legislation in North Dakota. They have gone to great lengths to try to essentially lie about what their abortion plans are. Their abortion policy is. So that takes Doug Bergamoff.

Marco Rubio wondehen. The Florida residency thing, I think was probably a little bit complicated. Also, he doesn't like Marco Rubio. He doesn't want to spend time with him. He doesn't trust him. He thinks he's huge wuss and not that bright.

Jon Levitt
So that probably takes him off.

Marco Rubio talks to go game now, but a couple years from now, you're gonna have to hang him. That's what he's thinking, really, right.

Jon Favreau
Is he a good hang?

Jon Levitt
He's not a good hang. He's a good hang.

Dan Pfeiffer
JD Vance is a good hang. Pod title.

Jon Levitt
Yeah. JD Vance is a good hang. Rubio is going to be someone going to hang. Good.

Tommy Vitor
Can we put in the civility alert, please?

Jon Levitt
Guys, guys, can we please lower the temperature?

Tommy Vitor
What have you done to lower the temperature?

Jon Favreau
So you think it was process of.

Dan Pfeiffer
Elimination, then it was process of elimination because there's no good political argument for JD Vance. He adds almost nothing to the ticket.

There is no. He doesn't bring it. He doesn't. Has no geographic appeal. He doesn't moderate the ticket ideologically. He doesn't address a specific weakness. Right. If you go through people's picks in the past, they either bring a state into play that's a little more pre proliferation, but that was a typical reason.

They appeal to a group that the nominee is weak with, like the reason Trump picked Pence with evangelicals, or they address a weakness. Right. Bill Clinton picked Al Gore because Bill Clinton was scandal plagued and Al Gore had a reputation as the most ethical and frankly, boring member of the Senate. And so he picked him and. But what is. Vance offers nothing in that way. Right. He's just, he's doubling down. The only group that Vance has appeal with are the voters that Trump already has, which are hardcore MAGA voters he doesn't even like. Rubio at least would have given some signal to, like, Normie Republicans that there's like an establishment person there. Vance doesn't do that either.

Jon Levitt
I was a. Two things. I think one, I think, I think one, one thing he does do is he signals to a certain set of rich Republicans or libertarian types that Trump's fully on board with their program. And then I think the second thing is JD Vance can articulate, he does it with Sean Hannity. He can articulate a version of Trumpism that is more sophisticated and rational sounding than it sounds when it comes out of Donald Trump's mouth. And I think that is of some utility.

Jon Favreau
My thought on the political aspect, I don't think it's about necessarily winning a state or even winning the election. First of all, I think JD Vance is a pick Trump made because he is confident that he is ahead. Yes, exactly. And so he felt like he could take a little bit more of a risk. We'll see whether that's right. But if you read Tim Alberta's interview in the Atlantic with Susie Wiles and Chris Lacivita, a very long interview, spent a lot of time with them about their strategy. They're running the Trump campaign, and they basically say in that interview that they don't care that much about losing suburban women to either DObbs or Trump's character, things like that. And that they are going after younger voters, particularly younger working class men, white, black, Latino. And when you talk to these younger working class men, when you listen to them, and I just thought about this because we did our wilderness focus groups with a whole bunch of young people a couple weeks ago all over the place. And what do they talk about? They talk about how they're struggling financially. They blame corporate greed, but they also blame government. They talk about spending too much money on foreign aid and foreign wars. They're more isolationist. They talk about, some of them talk about immigrants taking their jobs. So there's this weird sort of populist, anti establishment. It sounds like JD Vance's version of Maga and trumpism. And Trump doesn't really articulate. Trump has a sort of gut instinct about it.

JD Vance, actually, whether he believes it or not, it's a whole conversation for another time.

Dan Pfeiffer
But he doesn't.

Jon Favreau
He articulates it right. And I do think that if you are the Trump campaign, they're thinking, we're gonna go. We're not trying to bridge the gap with the Nikki Haley old establishment part of the Republican Party. We're changing the party. This is a new party, and we wanna go after younger, a new generation. This is now the first millennial on a ticket. Right? JD Vance is 39 years old. And obviously, Ohio is not gonna matter as much because Donald Trump will win Ohio. Maybe they think Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, those three states are Joe Biden's last chance. And maybe whatever appeals to Ohio voters about JD Vance could similarly appeal to him in those midwestern states.

Jon Levitt
Yeah.

Tommy Vitor
I also wonder. I mean, Donald Trump junior is extremely close to JD Vance. And it's interesting. Look, we kind of. We make fun of the Trump relationship with his children because he's a narcissist and only cares about himself. But I do think having your son constantly in your ear about this one person and his charisma and his political abilities is probably powerful. And look, Doug Bergam, he's not necessarily lighting up a room. He's got a lot of money. And I assumed that Trump would like the old rich guy.

Jon Favreau
But also, he put all that time in with Tiffany. That was stupid.

Jon Levitt
I do think also the Don junior piece of it, too, is Don Junior is loyal, and he's saying, this is our guy. Bergam. Maybe, but Rubio's never gonna be your good hang. But Vance did this long interview with Ross Daffet in which he lays out close.

Jon Favreau
Listeners of the pod would know that I already brought up this long interview, and everyone made fun of before.

Tommy Vitor
Oh, yeah, I remember that, love. And I specifically made fun of you.

Dan Pfeiffer
Well, first of all, and Tommy brought it up literally three minutes ago.

Jon Levitt
Mike, did you bring it up on the pod?

Jon Favreau
You said, do the Joe Biden over.

Tommy Vitor
Take out the dinner.

Jon Levitt
But first of all, I think we should embrace republican politics, in which hypocrisy is a sign of strength.

But anyway, you go through that interview, and he is articulating a populist economic message. And as a reminder, too, that when Donald Trump wins in 2017, the biggest worry was that he would pursue a more economically populist agenda, and instead, he embraced repealing Obamacare and tax cuts for corporations and the kind of Paul Ryan style of governance. And it was to our benefit. And so I think it is very, like, this is a kind of. It's a scary version of Trumpism, because I think it is a far more sophisticated version of Trump.

Tommy Vitor
Look, just in simple terms, he's got a compelling personal story like Hillbilly. Elegy was a good book. It just was. I enjoyed reading it. He's a veteran and I think JD Vance can be, can talk about how look, liberals loved me. You know, Rob Reiner, was it Rob Reiner or someone?

Jon Levitt
Ron Howard.

Tommy Vitor
Ron Howard made my book into a.

Jon Levitt
Film, gun close and a mumu.

Tommy Vitor
Hollywood loved me until I came out for Trump. And then Trump can point to how JD Vance used to criticized him, but he came to love him and now he bent the knee. So I think there's a compelling story there. The one thing that's just worth pointing out is that the Washington Post had a good analysis of JD Vance's political weakness in Ohio in 2022. Vance won by six points, but he underperformed every other statewide official.

Mike Dewine won by 26 points. The attorney general won by 20 points. The secretary of state won by 19. Even the Supreme Court nominees won by double digits. JD Rance had the closest race in part because he had extreme views on a lot of policy areas. So there could be some risk here.

Jon Favreau
And Tim Ryan.

Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah, and Tim Ryan.

Jon Favreau
And a lot of credit to Tim Ryan there.

Tommy Vitor
Well, you know, it was Ohio. I mean, he basically ran, JD ran even he ran behind.

Dan Pfeiffer
I think, John, you are right that this is a pick that is made from a confident view of the Trump standing in the race. I just think it is more about what JD Vance does after they win, not what JD Vance can do to help them win.

Jon Favreau
Because if they really trying to part.

Dan Pfeiffer
Of it to go for the, the kill shot here, you really would pick Rubio or Tim Scott or Byron Downs. Because that is, that is if you can make real inroads or even the inroads the polls suggest right now with black and latino men. That's difference between a narrow victory in a landslide. Right. That's the kind of thing that could be alignment.

Jon Favreau
I think their view is probably, again, no idea if it's right or wrong. Their view is just because he picks a black or latino candidate does not mean that's going to make it easier to get younger black and latino men like that. That it's very. That it's just as possible with a younger white man like JD Vance. Again, who knows? But I'm sure that's their view.

Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah, I just think JD Vance is the pick you make if you want to turn the MAGA agenda into an actual policy agenda, which is why he's so scary. Right. I think I said this. I never know what we say on mic and off mic. But at some point in the last week, around the time you and I.

Jon Favreau
Recorded a podcast, you heard this Ross Doothat caller.

Tommy Vitor
Oh, he writes for the Times.

Jon Levitt
Right.

Dan Pfeiffer
Did you talk to JD Vance recently?

Jon Levitt
God, it's so f. By the way, shame on us. None of us know how to say the guy's fucking name.

Tommy Vitor
I don't care.

Dan Pfeiffer
No one does.

Jon Favreau
That's his fault.

Tommy Vitor
I didn't name him.

Jon Levitt
I think it's doubthead.

Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah, I think that's douthat.

Jon Favreau
That's good.

Dan Pfeiffer
You're right. I thought that JD Vance was the best case scenario in terms of the election because he has less upside than the other ones and some risk because he's so extreme. But the worst case scenario if Trump wins, and I think that's correct.

Jon Favreau
So the Biden campaign statement about JD Vance said that Trump picked him because he'll, quote, do what Mike Pence wouldn't do on January 6. Bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, enact Trump's project 2025 agenda. And then they also said, this is someone who supports banning abortion nationwide while criticizing exceptions for rape and incest survivors.

And he has admitted he wouldn't have certified the free and fair election in 2020. What do you guys think of that message? Is that the most effective message? Because you can do the hypocrisy thing. You know, he used to criticize Trump, and now he doesn't. But then there's also. He is for all of these extreme positions.

Dan Pfeiffer
If you do the hypocrisy thing, wherever you are, I'm gonna come and find you. Cause it is.

Jon Favreau
You know how I feel about this.

Dan Pfeiffer
The least effective message possible.

Tommy Vitor
You just threaten the audience who threaten.

Dan Pfeiffer
Who am I talking to?

Jon Favreau
Turn the temperature down.

Jon Levitt
Turn the temperature down. Dan, get that alarm going.

Tommy Vitor
I'm going to find you to give you a hug.

Jon Levitt
Yeah.

Dan Pfeiffer
Where's the red head alert?

Jon Levitt
We already played it earlier, Dan. Dan's putting a bullseye on this, on those kinds of top. On those kinds of talking points.

Dan Pfeiffer
I'm gonna come to your house for a civil discussion of why your message is terrible.

Jon Favreau
And it's because we should say every poll, every focus group, every time you talk to voters. Here's the problem. Voters think all politicians are hypocrites. So when you go after a politician on hypocrisy grounds, it just doesn't land. It doesn't land with the voters that you need. They don't care about hypocrisy.

Jon Levitt
Hypocrisy is about the person policies are about the people they affect.

Paul Scheer
Right?

Jon Levitt
Like, hypocrisy is about that person's values, what they represent. It's about their story. And by the way, JD Vance is very happy to talk about this and how he evolved in Donald Trump and how it actually came to realize that Trump was the vehicle for taking on the villains that he talks about in hillbilly elegy. He has a story ready to go about how to turn that into a feature from a bug.

Dan Pfeiffer
So, yeah, we should at least say that JD Vance is absolutely more full of shit than anyone in american politics.

Jon Levitt
Yes, his position this week is prayers up for Hitler. So we should just be clear about that.

That's where he's at.

Jon Favreau
Well, I was just saying I don't know how he squares calling Trump America's Hitler, even though he has evolved on that position with what he tweeted to me, the reason he is completely unfit for office is hours after the assassination attempt, before we knew almost anything, he tweets that President Biden's rhetoric, quote, led directly to Trump's attempted assassination, which is just baseless. Not true. Baseless. Didn't know that was true. Even if he suspected it, why would you say it without any other information? It's crazy. And also, it doesn't quite fit with the convention's unity message.

Jon Levitt
No, it doesn't. Ron Johnson apparently called democratic policies a clear and present danger to the nation. Then he was asked, bear Porter, hey, what happened to the unity message? He goes, oh, that was accidental, actually, the old pre unity speech that was loaded into the prompter. They accidentally loaded the, the division speech, not my unity speech.

Jon Favreau
You know, they accidentally loaded in what we all believe, not what we're not, what we heard.

Dan Pfeiffer
Inside thoughts.

Jon Favreau
We're doing this because we want to win. We're close. They want unity. We want to give them unity. This is all November. There's no more unity.

Jon Levitt
Well, then there'll only be unity.

Yeah, yeah, unity. Yes. That's a scary kind of unity. But this is also, I think, like, why the post assassination attempt turned down the temperature.

Conversation is a little, is kind of twisted because, like, that's a, that's a good example of just right wing rhetoric has become extreme, completely divorced from reality. Even when it's not inciting direct or even indirect violence, it is ascribing views, policies, and outcomes to Democrats in ways that just are not true. They're just making it up. They're saying things. They say whatever they want to make the Democrats seem as evil and terrible as possible. And Republicans as their. As the saviors. And that is part of why we are so divided. That polarization, right wing propaganda, is why we are so divided is what is raising the temperature. Even if you can't point to any specific example.

Jon Favreau
I didn't get to see a lot of the conventional.

Did the unity thing work out? What did you guys wait?

Tommy Vitor
It was awesome. It was a good time.

Jon Favreau
I was just sort of not really prepping for the show. No, it didn't.

Dan Pfeiffer
I mean, let me put it this way.

Jon Favreau
I saw that Marjorie Taylor Greene gave a speech that I was like, she was. It was bad, but it wasn't usually. It wasn't bad because it was as extreme as she usually is, but she wasn't softening. It was just sort of lame.

It was like Marjorie Taylor Greenwich.

Jon Levitt
Well, they cut her big finish, which was burning Nancy Pelosi effigy. So for unity, I thought she was.

Tommy Vitor
Just gonna be like, crossfit.

Jon Favreau
Nothing really stuck out at me as is either super unifying or, like, really me.

Dan Pfeiffer
I mean, some pretty gross, disgusting attacks on trans people. I didn't see March at Green.

Jon Levitt
I miss that.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, I did see, like, an image of Joe Biden falling up the stairs. They did that one.

Tommy Vitor
They did do that, but I didn't.

Jon Favreau
Really hear, I don't know, nothing too exciting that first. This first night. Right.

Dan Pfeiffer
I'm shocked that the night where the primetime matrix speaker was Tennessee Senator Marsha.

Jon Favreau
Blackburn, I was waiting for, like, a big reveal.

Jon Levitt
Anyway, sort of a tough hit on Glenn Youngkin.

Jon Favreau
Oh, yeah, he was there, too.

Dan Pfeiffer
Well, I mean, he had to open for Marcia Blackburn.

Paul Scheer
Hello, people of earth. This is Paul Scheer, co host of the Unspooled podcast. Over the next few months, my co host Amy Nicholson and I, we'll be breaking down some of our favorite disasters to see if they still hold up. In our disaster movie summer, we're talking about Independence Day, Godzilla minus 128 days later, and more. You're not going to want to miss these conversations. I'm going to tell you. Unspooled is where it's at this summer. You can listen to new episodes of Unspooled every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Angie Hicks
Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co founder of Angie. When you use Angie for your home projects, you know all your jobs will be done well. Roof repair, done well. Kitchen sink install, done well. Deck upgrades, done well. Electrical upgrade, done well. Angie's been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for nearly 30 years, so we know the difference between done and done well. Hire high quality certified pros@angie.com.

Jon Favreau
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. 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 curious, we are breaking down every case, 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.

Let's talk about Joe Biden. Obviously, up until Saturday afternoon, most of the focus has been on Biden and whether he's still the party's best chance to beat Trump. The assassination attempt stopped that chatter. For now, at least. President Biden gave an Oval Office address about the attack on Sunday night. And he had a previously scheduled primetime interview with Lester Holt at NBC News on the books for tonight. He went ahead with it, and the attack was a big focus there, too. Let's listen to a clip of the Oval Office address followed by a clip of Biden's interview with Lester Holt.

Joe Biden
Violence has never been the answer, whether it's with members of Congress of both parties being targeted and shot or a violent mob attacking the Capitol on January 6 or an attempted assassination on Donald Trump. There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. But in America, we resolve our difference at the battle box.

You know, that's how we do it at the battle box, not with bullets.

Lester Holt
On a call a week ago, you said it's time to put Trump in the bullseye. There's some dispute about the context, but I think you appreciate.

Joe Biden
Focus on, look, the truth of the matter was, what I guess I was talking about at the time was there was very little focus on Trumps agenda.

Lester Holt
Yeah, the term was bullseye.

Joe Biden
It was a mistake to use the word. I didnt say crosshairs. I bullseye. Focus on him. Focus on what hes doing. Focus on his policies. Focus on the number of lies he told in the debate. Focus. I mean, theres a whole range of.

Jon Favreau
Things that look crosshairs just coming out of nowhere there. So what do you guys make of Biden's overall response to the shooting? Dan?

Dan Pfeiffer
I think he has met the moment with the sobriety and seriousness that it deserves. Right. He did what he's supposed to do. He went out and addressed the nation after it happened, after getting briefed by his team, returned immediately to Washington, met with his team in the situation room, then came out and updated the country on what he had learned. And then in an attempt, I think, to bring the temperature down and return to what I think he believes is his sort of core political identity, to try to give a call to unity in the wake of this.

That is what you want the president to do, right? At a time of great stress and tension and fear and concern for the public, the president should be out there. Put aside the election, the debate about his political future, this is exactly what you would expect him to do in that moment. And he did all of those things.

Jon Favreau
Love it.

Jon Levitt
Yeah. I mean, I think what Dan is saying, I obviously agree with. I think he did all the things that he was supposed to do. I think what is, I think, so troubling in moments like this is the best you can hope for from President Biden is that he does no damage, rather than going out there. And I think doing anything particularly inspiring or excellent, there is a lot that could be said about what led to this moment. There's a lot that could be said about the politics and culture as we head into this election that he, I don't think can be a voice for. The best we can do is to have a short, to the point statement. Violence bad? I'm hearing a briefing, but for the most part, you know, there's, the Oval Office address was halting. He manages to respond defensively to every question from Lester Holt, even where he shouldn't be, in a way, turning every question into a kind of gotcha question, where he feels as though he is, I think, reacting from a place of weakness. And the whole thing is very dispiriting.

Dan Pfeiffer
I kind of want to separate what he did, basically, from the shooting on Saturday through Sunday night in the interview, because I think those are two separate things. Yes, of course. Right. There is a long history of presidents rising to rhetorical heights and times like this. Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing, Reagan after challenger, Obama after Newtown, like we've seen that before.

Jon Favreau
Joe Biden has given a pretty inspiring, moving speeches around January 6. I think his inaugural address, I think his address on the anniversary of January 6, he rose to the moment for sure.

Dan Pfeiffer
Yes. Sunday night was not that I thought the message was appropriate and fine. Like, yes, he stumbled over some words, but he, like, he did, he did, he did fine. He did fine. And I think that, like, we should at least point out when he does fine, right. There are times when he landed the.

Jon Favreau
Plane in the Oval Office, address the interview less good. Few bumps on the way down. Well, I was in the Oval Office, but, you know, I mean, I really.

Tommy Vitor
Like Lester Holt, but I felt the questions at the top that suggested that Biden's rhetoric had anything to do with the shooter felt pretty baseless and unfair. And I could see why Biden was annoyed at those questions in particular.

But the frustration really came through. And I think I counted two or three times where he kind of got annoyed and defensive and lashed back at Lester and was like, why aren't you guys covering Trump's lies? Why aren't you covering this? Why aren't you covering? And, like, I just don't think that that doesn't.

It didn't land great at times in the interview. It felt defensive.

Jon Favreau
The question about the bullseye is extremely annoying question. And what would have been the very easy answer is like, what do you mean? I was talking about putting the focus on Donald Trump, right? That's what I said about his policies. I said at a fundraiser with a bunch of people, that's when I'm gonna, that's what I'm gonna incite people at a fundraiser where I'm gonna say, it's time to put the focus on Donald Trump. That's what we should put the focus. I mean, it's just such an easy response to an unfair, annoying question.

Jon Levitt
He could even, by the way, say, you know what, Lester? If people found that term to be wrong, I won't use it again. But I think everybody knew exactly what I mean. You know, there's a lot of things a person who is, I think, has a more of a capacity to respond quickly and effectively to a question could provide in those moments, but instead, you get just a very hard to follow, defensive, confusing response.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. Well, lester also asked Biden about the debate and the calls for him to step aside. Let's listen to some of that last tv interview.

Lester Holt
You were asked if you had watched the debate. Your answer was, I don't think so. No. Have you since seen it?

Joe Biden
I've seen pieces of it.

Lester Holt
I've not watched the whole debate, because I guess the question is, are you all on the same page? Are you seeing what they saw? Which was moments of, frankly, that appeared to be appeared to be confused.

Joe Biden
Lester. Look, why don't you guys ever talk about the 18 to 28 lies he told?

Where are you on this? Why didn't the press ever talk about that? 28 times. It's confirmed. He lied in that debate.

I had a bad, bad night.

I wasn't feeling well at all. And I had been without making. I screwed up.

Lester Holt
I just asked a question. Because the idea that you may or may not have seen what some of these other folks have seen, you're not on the same.

Joe Biden
I'd have to see. I was there.

I'd have to see it. I was there. And by the way, seriously, you won't answer the question, but why didn't the press talk about all the lies he told?

I didn't know anything about that.

Lester Holt
We have reported many of the issues that came during that debate. No, you haven't, but we'll provide you with them.

Joe Biden
God love you.

Lester Holt
Okay.

But if the opportunity came up to do one between now and then, is there a sense of wanting to get back on the horse?

Joe Biden
I'm on the horse. Where you been? I've done 22 major events, thousands of people, overwhelming crowds.

A lot happening.

Jon Favreau
A lot is happening. Tommy, what did you think of the interview?

Tommy Vitor
I think Lester's question, are you seeing what they saw? Is kind of the core question that a lot of people are asking about the election generally.

Does Joe Biden know how bad the debate was, or does he really think it was 90 minutes that didn't go well, but four great years of policy. Is Biden seeing the bad polling that's out there or polling from swing districts, from people that don't work for him? Is Biden hearing on varnished concerns from downvout elected officials? And again, I think what you heard was a response that just felt very defensive and angry at the question, more than looking to find an answer, to kind of assuage those concerns more broadly.

Jon Levitt
There's another part towards the end of the interview where Biden says, when he talks about the events he's doing, I'm out there proving to people that I have my faculties. So I have my faculties. And it's sad to see it's because if that's the threshold, right, if that's what he's out there proving, then we have a. That's a, that's not enough. It's a massive problem.

Dan Pfeiffer
Right.

Jon Levitt
The fact that we all. That he doesn't respond. Lester Holt's question. Right.

Do you know what we saw? Like, were you confused?

It points the fact that we still don't feel like we have gotten an adequate answer from Joe Biden about what happened that night. And it just means that maybe he's right, that the polls are closer and that people are sensationalizing gaps that are closable. But the question is, can he close them?

And the fact that we're gonna get questions like this about Joe Biden over and over and over again, and that the answers he provides doesn't feel like they give us the space to move on to, is why people are so concerned. It's not just what the polls are. It is the fear that he does not have the capacity to close them.

Jon Favreau
Dan, I keep trying to think about when you're advising a president or presidential candidate, and they keep screwing things up in interviews. Let's put the age coherence question aside. Let's just talk about his message.

You see, after the first couple of times, he's getting very defensive. He only talks about his, I'm the guy who did this. I'm the guy who did this. Why aren't you reporting about the lies, the 28 lies, all of which we know from research, polling, I'm sure his advisors know this, are not effective responses. Right. Even if you said them, like, super coherently and crisply. And after the first time you do that, like, maybe in the Stephanopoulos interview, I would imagine everyone gets together with Joe Biden before the next interview and say, like, hey, less defensive. You don't want to be so defensive. You want to talk about the choice in the election. You want to pivot to the, and then what do you think is, do you think that's what they're telling him and that he's just not doing it? Do you think he's stubborn? Like, I can't figure, this is what I can't figure out is like, why can he not just get to the right message when he has these same questions over and over again? And you know they're going to be annoying. You know you're going to get questions about what was happening at the debate, why was this bad? Like, that's just how reporters are, and you just have to, like, figure out how to deal with it.

Dan Pfeiffer
I am not sure he is getting all of the information, advice that he needs.

There have been multiple stories. There's one, the Washington Post tonight about Biden shrinking his circle of advisors.

Some of the people who we know, we even know the people on the inside the circle, and they're all very smart. But I think that there is a process to manage the president here, and it does not include necessarily giving him information he does not want to hear. And that includes that your answers are not working.

Jon Favreau
Right.

Dan Pfeiffer
Because there is just no basis in research, strategy, or recent political history to suggest the approach he has taken to answering the questions. Put aside the delivery.

Jon Levitt
Right.

Dan Pfeiffer
Let's just say he's delivered the, that's.

Jon Favreau
What I wanted to do. Yeah.

Dan Pfeiffer
Let's just put that the answers are almost a master class in how not to persuade a swing voter.

Jon Favreau
Yes.

Dan Pfeiffer
Right. And that is just, he is making the election all about himself.

And there is, everyone knows in the strategic imperative of their campaign when they say is what they have to do is why they had that first, they had that early debate in the first place, was to try to shift the focus to Trump, to make it about Trump. And Biden has been incapable of doing it. He's unwilling to do that in his answers. Right. He keeps saying, I'm the guy who did this, I'm the guy who did this. I'm the guy who did this. And not, he doesn't even talk about Trump in this interview or the future, by the way. Right. I mean, he get, like, I will say on Friday, I think that was, he went to Michigan and he gave a great speech.

Tommy Vitor
Yeah.

Dan Pfeiffer
Right. It was well delivered. It was energetic.

Jon Favreau
It was one of the, it was the, one of the best speeches he's delivered in many months.

Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah. And both in delivery and content.

Jon Favreau
Yes.

Dan Pfeiffer
It had a proactive, really impressive, very progressive second term agenda. It put the focus on Trump. It took his, a focus, the word is focused. The word is focused. And it used his age as a asset. Right. He took it on with some humility and handled it. And that is not translating off the prompter.

Jon Levitt
But that, to me, that was what I was, that's why I brought up the future.

Because what you want is for Joe Biden to take the speech he gives, right. That everyone's reviewing and saying finally he's doing it. He's making the case he needs to make, get in front of Lester Holt and says, lester Holt, like people are worried about what you're gonna do, what's gonna happen in the next four years of whether or not to it, not all may up to it. Here's what we're gonna get done. Duh, duh, duh, duh. Here's what Donald Trump wants to do, but he does not do that. He just doesn't, in these interview settings.

Dan Pfeiffer
He is in a, he's very defensive right now. He's in a defensive crouch since the debate. And I, because frankly, every conversation he's having with any person who is not in his immediate inner circle is a Lester Holt interview. Right. Just, he had these meetings with really.

Tommy Vitor
A nightmare members of Congress.

Jon Levitt
It is a nightmare.

Dan Pfeiffer
I mean, he did these Zoom calls with a bunch of members of Congress. All the reports are they went quite poorly.

Jon Favreau
Quite poorly. And he yelled at Jason Crow, who was a representative from Colorado, who asked him about, like, how do we make sure that, you know, foreign leaders have confidence based on reporting? And he said, stop with that. Enough with that. Don't give me. And then he, like, walked, and then he left the call.

Dan Pfeiffer
He has a look.

He could be right. His team could be right. We could all be wrong. But he has a just a fundamentally different view of where the race stands, the state of his campaign and the state of his candidacy.

Tommy Vitor
And I think it's challenging when the people closest to you, and it's a very small circle, are telling you potentially what you want to hear. Like, I remember a story in the 2004 campaign.

Barack Obama went to some event. We were running against Allen Keys at the time. We were winning by 30 points, 40 points.

Dan Pfeiffer
Right?

Tommy Vitor
It was not a real race. And Obama let Alan Keys walk up to him. They got in some sort of verbal exchange, and it became a thing. It was on all the news. And Obama gets back in the car, and Robert Gibbs is sitting behind him and just silently staring daggers into the back of the seat. And Obama kept turning around, being like, what?

Jon Levitt
What?

Tommy Vitor
What is it? Get something to say. You have something to say to me? And Gibbs goes, you didn't just take the bait. You swallowed the whole goddamn hook, right? And just, like, got in his face and was like, you fucked up, man. Don't do that. I don't care that you're up dirty.

Jon Favreau
When you say that to the candidate, the candidate doesn't say thank you. You're right. They hate you.

Tommy Vitor
They hate you for days.

Jon Favreau
But you're like, I'm just going to do it because it's the important thing to do. And look, I'm not. None of us are saying this, that, like, this is not happening at all. We don't know. Like, it could be happening. And Biden could just be saying, fuck you. I don't care.

Dan Pfeiffer
I I just. Knowing the people around him, I cannot imagine that they are all telling him what he wants to hear.

Jon Favreau
That's why we know. We know them. There's. There. I like, well, there's some.

Tommy Vitor
There's some reporting that, like, some of his closest aides are saying that they don't believe in polling. And maybe that's where kind of the, the rejection of polling language you're coming from.

Dan Pfeiffer
That's what I'm saying. Speaker one, even then, like, I read that today and it said, like, it's the quote, that post, there's some anonymous person quote in the post takes, take this, what it is, but it says that Mike Donilon and Steve Rochetti, his two of his closest advisors, do not believe in polling. That is going to come as a gigantic shock to the several pollsters on the Biden campaign, some of the best.

Jon Favreau
In the Democratic Party on the payroll, especially in a general election. You get like, this is what, this video on Kerry and Obama, you get like a collection of five or six pollsters just so you have different, different strategies. But yeah, you want the whole, you want a big, diverse career pollsters.

Dan Pfeiffer
I think that they are managing Joe Biden's moods right now. I think he is, he is a very prideful person. And I imagine this debate knocked him for loop. He also hates to be called old. He has prides himself. Like the aging, it's been, you see this, a lot of reporting. He bristles at being was, he's been the youngest person. He says this, but he's been the youngest person his whole life, and now he is the oldest. The point, people are saying too old. And so you are trying, because if you push, and I've worked, Obama was a great boss to work for. I've worked for more challenging bosses where you have to, you want to tell them what they, you can't yell. You can't do what Gibbs did, Barack Obama there, because you will get the opposite effect. Right. So you gotta, I can't say whether that's how Biden is right now, but sometimes you have to just sort of like, take every inch you can get. Cause you push too far, it's gonna.

Jon Levitt
Go the other way. I do remember that when there was a, we were working on a speech for President Obama, and in the speech, it said something about how you can't make decisions based on the polls. And as we're having that conversation with David Axelrod, there was a giant binder on his desk that said polls on it. And we were like, hey, how big is the binder when you do make decisions based on polls? And he shouts out to his assistant at the time, now state legislator Eric Lesser. Eric, get in here and change this binder to say research.

Tommy Vitor
I remember that.

Jon Favreau
It was so funny.

Jon Levitt
I didn't just, but like, I do think, like, this is about politics. We care about this because of the stakes for politics. But it is, what is happening with Joe Biden is not political. It is psychological. It is human and personal. And I do think that is really, really hard. And it's hard, I am sure, for the people around him, whatever they are trying to do to make the situation better, it is an incredibly difficult situation.

Jon Favreau
Well, there was some, a lot of discussion over the weekend.

Does this sort of stop the conversation about whether Biden should step aside in favor of Kamala Harris or another candidate?

Because now we've gone through this assassination attempt, and now we have the republican convention. So all the attention now is on Trump and the Republicans for the week.

Based on, it's Monday, but based on some of the polling that came out today, there was some New York times, Sienna, you know, a plus polls, swing state polls. He's down four in Pennsylvania, three in Pennsylvania, three in Pennsylvania, three in Pennsylvania, and he's only up three. Biden is only up three in Virginia, a state that he won by ten points. That would be a seven point swing to the right. He won Pennsylvania by one point. So that would be a four point swing to the right in those polls. There was a number of other swing state polls. Yougov, polls came out in every swing state. He's behind four or five in every one. You know, you can square some of this polling with the Biden campaign theory of the case that was laid out in their memo last week, which is, they said, you know, we are, it is a margin of error race in the battlegrounds. We need to get to 270. So Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and, you know, margin of error error in those states could be three points, four points behind. So, yeah, they might just be three or four points behind in those blue wall states. But the question is, again, how do you make up three or four points in an incredibly polarized electorate where both candidates are at 100% name id? And every time he goes and does one of these interviews, people who watch the interviews forget about listening to us or anyone else. People who watch the interviews are seeing this. And if he just went out and gave the Michigan speech every single day between now and November, it's like, yeah, fighting chance, for sure.

But I just, you know, maybe polarization gets you there. Maybe you get close enough just based on people not liking Donald Trump, people thinking and knowing that Joe Biden is a good man who's done some great things as president, and that gets you close enough. And if he wins, that's how he wins. But it's certainly not because he is communicating well or making the case as a candidate.

Dan Pfeiffer
He obviously did not have some dramatic improvement as a candidate or a state in the race since the shooting. Nothing changed there. But something did change in terms of how people, how things happen in Washington. Even before the shooting. In my head, my sort of deadline for whether Biden would stay in the race was today, was Monday, that if he could make it through the weekend and make it to the republican convention and the VP nomination, that he would have survived long enough, because these things have momentum and momentum peters out. And it's just people there. People were feeling pressure because the media was focused on this intently. That is not the case. There are no stories about this now. It's not as big a deal. And so maybe something else will happen. But this is Joe Biden's decision.

Jon Favreau
It's only Joe Biden.

Dan Pfeiffer
And it's what has been abundantly clear is that no one, nothing that any other person says to him is going to change his mind. And, you know, he met with Hakeem Jeffries on Friday and Schumer on Saturday. We don't know how those meetings went. But Joe Biden said he is 1000% still in the race. And so this is just. This is where he is. He is.

At no point do we have one piece of reporting or evidence that he has ever seriously considered or been open to the idea of stepping down. And that hasn't changed. And if he does, if that, and I hesitate to see what will change his mind because there's. I don't.

Jon Favreau
I think, like, you see, like, you know, the New York Times, Sienna polls show him down five or six points in those swing states. And, like, is that going to do it? I know. Unless, like, Pelosi, there's, you know, there's room. There's reporting that Nancy Pelosi does really want him to consider stepping aside and is working the phones on this. Maybe if Pelosi goes to him. I don't know. I don't know.

Tommy Vitor
I have. I think I talked to a member of Congress today and asked this question, like, has the momentum stalled out? And this person said no. The only difference between a couple days ago and now is that the conversation is quieted because of the assassination attempt. But I've read in many news reports and heard from this person that Pelosi still thinks there needs to be a change and that she's working behind the scenes. And this person is worried that Biden's strategy is basically a run out the clock strategy.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, clearly.

Tommy Vitor
And that it might be hard to do anything through the RNC. But I think what could change his mind is a big number of elected officials coming up publicly and saying, you need to go. Obviously, these Zoom calls, private conversations, gentle cajoling, none of that works. This person thought that firm, harsh, very public pressure efforts might actually change things. But I don't know, I'm just repeating.

Jon Favreau
What I was told.

Jon Levitt
Yeah, I also, look, I don't know that Joe Biden can be pushed out of the race. It seems like he can't. But I do wonder what happens in the quiet. I mean, look, I don't know if I'm using this term correctly, but taking the under on Dan's point that of course Joe Biden has to be defiant. The second he is not defiant, the second he leaves any opening to the idea that he might not be in the race is the moment he's going to have to step down. That's what Ro Khanna said. Basically. The second he would even say to a member of Congress, I'm thinking about it is the second. We're all talking about that and it's happening before his eyes. So it will go from I will never not be running to I'm out.

Dan Pfeiffer
Much like Joe Biden's interviews, the words you used were incorrect, but I got your meaning.

Tommy Vitor
Not even close.

Jon Levitt
Is it the over?

Dan Pfeiffer
The over under would be like you.

Tommy Vitor
Score 100 points at a game.

Dan Pfeiffer
Over or under?

Jon Levitt
Yeah. Oh, I'm saying. Oh, I see, I see. So the odds, I'm saying I think the odds are higher than I say it is.

Dan Pfeiffer
Yes, yes, yes.

Jon Levitt
So that's. Why wouldn't I then take the under?

Dan Pfeiffer
No, no, different.

Jon Levitt
That's about the spread.

Dan Pfeiffer
The under spread.

Jon Favreau
Okay, we've gone on long enough.

Jon Levitt
People love this shit.

Tommy Vitor
Again, just another factless assertion which from.

Jon Favreau
The liberals around love it will tell him the truth.

Is he getting good information?

Jon Levitt
This is the kind of how many.

Dan Pfeiffer
Podcasts cos have to come to you publicly.

Jon Levitt
I will not step down.

Tommy Vitor
Axio says Pelosi wants you to shut the fuck up.

Jon Levitt
I will finish the job.

Jon Favreau
That is our show for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow with reactions to all the latest and night two of the Republican National Convention. What a good time we have coming up this week, boys. Good times. The best is yet to come.

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Paul Scheer
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Trump's Shooting Upends 2024

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2. The Shooting

3. Political Reactions

4. Media and Public Response

5. Looking Ahead

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