Vance Vance Revolution

Tommy Vitor
Pod save America is brought to you by noom. There's a lot of weight loss products out there, and they're kind of one size fits all, as if all of us have the same challenges or struggles or priorities and can just, you know, get a simple fix. Noom is different. Noom is built for your psychology and your biology, meeting you where you are. They understand that not everyone is starting from the same place. Noom helps you understand the science behind your eating choices and why you have cravings. Your daily lessons are personalized to you and your goals. Those goals could be just snacking less. It could be trying not to eat late night. It could be portion control. It could be the kinds of foods you're eating. Maybe you want to eat more protein and less carbs, or maybe you want to eat more carbs, less protein. You do you. Noom has got you covered. They will create a plan for you that fits your needs and will work. Stay focused on what's important to you with Noom's psychology and biology based approach. Sign up for your trial today@noom.com and check out Noom's first ever cookbook, the Noom Kitchen, for 100 healthy and delicious recipes to promote better living. Available to buy now wherever books are sold.

Evgeni Marozov
I'm Evgeni Marozov, creator of a sense of rebellion, a new podcast diving into the eccentric lives of forgotten rebels dreaming of a different technological universe in the 1960s. From ecology to scientific, from LSD to the Rockefellers, from AI to the CIA, each episode offers a thrilling mix of drama, mystery, and deep research.

A sense of rebellion available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Jon Favreau
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
We're recording this on Wednesday night in beautiful Milwaukee, site of the Republican National Convention. We're gonna be leaving soon for Charlie Kirk's afterparty in the name of unity. First, we're gonna.

Dan Pfeiffer
I didn't get invited to that one.

Jon Favreau
It's unity. You didn't get invited to that one.

Jon Levitt
We're all Ben Shapiro's plus four.

Jon Favreau
But before we go, we gotta talk about JD Vance's big speech and the rest of the highlights from night three of the RNC. We also found out today that the DNC blinked in the standoff over whether to rush a virtual roll call vote to officially nominate Joe Biden, who was supposed to be campaigning in Nevada today until he tested positive for Covid.

Poor guy can't catch a single break, rush. Also, all kinds of reporting about Pelosi, Schumer. They're all, they're all showing them bad polls. They're all showing them bad polls. All the.

Yeah. So we'll see. We're gonna talk about that later. But first, we just watched JD Vance's speech here in a hotel room together, which is now how we watch all political performances. We'd like to forget. Yeah, that's what we do. We go to a hotel, watch a.

Jon Levitt
This is now the second worst time I've had in a hotel with you boys recently, and I don't want to talk about the worst.

So there's also Biden's speech.

Jon Favreau
Vance's speech was about 45 minutes. It's like an hour. It felt like an hour. Felt longer. There was a lot of his bio, there was a lot of economic populism. There was a lot of Trump worship, but not necessarily in that order. Not really in any order.

But we do have some highlights. The first one is he started off the speech talking about Trump and the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

JD Vance
I want all Americans to go and watch the video of a would be assassin coming a quarter of an inch from taking his life.

Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump. And then look at that photo of him, defiant fist in the air. When Donald Trump rose to his feet in that Pennsylvania field, all of America stood with him.

Jon Favreau
I just wanted to play that one because it really made me mad that he is still. We talked yesterday about his tweet after the assassination attempt, where he basically blamed Joe Biden's rhetoric for the assassination attempt. This was, think about all the lies they told about Trump. And now think about him putting his fist in the air after the assassin's bullet. Like he and other speakers have done this. There's been a lot of. They tried to kill him this week. They. When we're finding out more about the shooter, the FBI found his phone in the phone he was searching for. Biden events, Trump events, date of the DNC, date of Trump rallies. It seems other officials. Other officials. It's Merrick Garland. It does seem so far like this is a kid who hated politicians and was clearly disturbed. And yet this whole, our republican convention, and then again with JD Vince, there is this. They want to connect it somehow to Trump. That just really pissed me off. I don't know what you guys think.

Tommy Vitor
His whole line, JD's line was Trump called for national unity right after an assassin tried to take his life. And, okay, sure, but you pointed the finger, right, and you were saying things on Twitter that were essentially incitement, saying that Joe Biden's rhetoric is the reason Donald Trump got shot with no information, no evidence. Just because I don't, I assume probably because you're a right wing hack and you desperately wanted to get named I the vice presidential nominee, and you knew that kind of outrageous attack dog shit would get you noticed by the Trump team.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. Well, so then after he did his couple minutes of Trump worship at the top, and then he finally got to his bio and sort of his message of, you know, he's trying out this sort of the MAGA version of economic populism. Let's listen.

JD Vance
We need a leader who's not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man, union and non union alike. A leader who won't sell out to multinational corporations, but will stand up for american companies and american industry. The people who govern this country have failed and failed again, where a working class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage as the next vice president of the United States of America.

Jon Favreau
All right, so, Lovett, what'd you think of the speech?

Jon Levitt
So I think a sign of a bad speech is you're not sure it's overdeveloped till he just stops talking. That I really had. Absolutely, because it was couple different endings. Couple different endings. It really circles back. He hits the bio a lot in the speech, but not in a way that's particularly effective because the speech was so poorly structured. It starts with a whole section of just pledging fealty to Trump and all that is good about Trump. Then he gets into his bio, which was, I think, probably the strongest part of the speech, which is walking through his bio while talking about all the different policy positions Biden has taken that he views as being wrong.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, he did this riff where he said, when I was in fourth grade, Biden supported NAFTA, and NAFTA, a lot of jobs left where I'm from and all across the midwest. When I was in high school, Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal or voted for it.

Jon Levitt
When I was in college, he supported the war in Iraq.

Jon Favreau
The war in Iraq. So then there was jobs sent overseas, kids sent overseas to die. And then he said, basically, Biden was wrong on all these issues. Trump was right on all these issues even back then.

Dan Pfeiffer
Right.

Jon Levitt
So I think that was like, if you were to take one section of his speech, I feel like that was, like, probably the part that I thought was the strongest. And I bet what we'll hear on the stump, too. It felt like the start of a stump speech. But the problem is it was in the middle of a meandering and hard to follow speech with a lot of lines, a lot of rhetoric, a lot of long pauses for applause that I felt like didn't really land. Like, none of it really landed that hard. Even the bio. I felt like he has an incredibly compelling story. He's on the ticket because of that story. You would think you would start with that story and use it to kind of frame the entire speech. But it felt really cobbled together, which was relief. That's my feeling about it.

Dan Pfeiffer
It was strategic idiocy. The speech was. It was terrible.

No one knows anything about JD Vance. I know he had a bestselling book, but not that many people read it, you know. Yeah.

Jon Favreau
Who knows about that? Elite broadcasters.

Dan Pfeiffer
Yes, exactly. He had. He had a movie was made of his. Of his book. Almost no one watched it.

And this is his one chance. There'll probably be about twelve to 15 million people watching this tonight. It will be seen, clips will be seen by more people. You chance, you stand up there and introduce yourself to the nation. Right. The VP generally doesn't matter that much, but it's going to matter more in a campaign where the candidate is 78 years old. And so this was his chance to do it. He failed miserably at what should have been absolutely the only reason he's on the stage is he has a compelling personal story and tells it well. And he did not do that. His story is mixed up into a bunch of different places. There's no coherence to it. And you have to credential yourself with your story before you make all the attacks. Like, I think the high school, middle school Joe Biden thing. It's a clever way to get at Joe Biden's age and separate him from working class voters. But you have to tell your story first. But he was confused because they were so enamored with the fourth grade, high school, college line that they made it the story instead of telling the actual story. It was terrible. It was. I'm. And I am shocked. It was so terrible. We were at dinner before this, and I was like, this is gonna be a great speech. Yeah.

Jon Favreau
We were all very worried about the speech.

Dan Pfeiffer
It should have been the easiest thing in the world for him to do. Cause his delivery was fine. Some people have a good story, but they can't tell it. His delivery was totally fine. It was the speech. It was fine.

Jon Favreau
He gave a. He sounded. I wrote this note down.

He wrote a book. He's been on the book circuit tour. He's been on, probably have speakers bureau before he was in congress and did the speaking tour. He sounds like someone who's just been talking to too many crowds of CEO's, other people, random organizations about his book. He didn't actually have the cadence that you need in a convention hall.

And he was waiting for the applause. You're supposed to ride the applause.

Jon Levitt
Waiting for the applause kills me.

They don't build anything because they just let the applause die down and then start up again. When Obama delivers his version of this, which was obviously famously far better, he's like rising through these moments and building to something.

Tommy Vitor
That was a big point in speech prep in 2004, was, you have to ride the applause. Don't stop, talk over it, because it might sound loud in the hall, but at home they will be able to hear you. This time it was the reverse. You almost couldn't hear the applause at home, but JD was pausing and sort of awkwardly waving to everybody, and it just didn't work. And, yeah, the bio has to be your anchor that explains who you are and informs your belief and gives you credibility. And he just didn't do it. They were also just like. It jumped all over the place. There was a point where he did this very corny thing where he talked about his three kids back home, and if you're watching, daddy says, put your butts in bed. And then he immediately did a hard pivot to fentanyl overdoses.

Jon Levitt
Well, I guess that's probably why I took the time to turn the tv off.

Tommy Vitor
I was like, how did we get here?

Jon Levitt
Now it's like such a cliche, even in Emmy award speeches. Like, all right, mommy won. Now go to bed, kids. Your daddy says, go to bed. How are you? Saying it out loud is an incredible feat process wise.

Jon Favreau
One guess as to what might have happened is the speech writers wrote a speech that they needed to have for whoever the nominee was, and then once they found out it was JD Vance, then you insert JD's story into the Trump messaging speech, and then the assassination attempt happens. So then you add that topper in. So now you've got an assassination attempt topper into your bio, into the Trump worship classic structure.

Jon Levitt
By the way, this was my prediction for the Trump speech, that there would just be larded up toppers, which is.

Jon Favreau
So far happening, but just substance wise, too. I think it's interesting that all of the issues that the Republican Party and Donald Trump have vulnerabilities on in this election abortion, election denial, sort of all kinds of extremism, with the exception of immigration, which is sort of core to Donald Trump's political philosophy. Weird word to say. Donald Trump's politics and JD Vance's as well. And sort of this trying to present themselves as economic populace, even though they want to give tax cuts to rich people and deregulate everything. Those were, like, the two main issues. None of the other issues that really trip up republicans. You heard in this speech as much tonight.

Jon Levitt
Yeah, it's always when they get to the working class politics, it's all just vibes, right? It's just working. They're doing working class vibes. They're talking about immigration. They don't mention the corporate tax cut, the ruling class. They mentioned the ruling class.

Never actually policies on that.

Tommy Vitor
This is a real liberal elite comment or thing to notice, but I can't wait.

It's just always striking to me that a speech that can begin with a long intro about an assassination attempt ends up at a place where you're bragging about your grandmother having 19 loaded guns in the house, and no one kind of sees the weirdness there. The disconnect between maybe our gun fetish in this country is part of the problem. Not a thing we're proud of.

Jon Levitt
I tell you. My reaction to that was, which is also, like my recollection of the book, is it's a lot about how this kind of grievance and sense of being under threat is a way of avoiding facing up to the real problems.

Tommy Vitor
He's very hard on his community. It's not understanding. It's super harsh.

Jon Levitt
And that's why that book became a liberal darling. Cause it was actually, like, kind of being honest about the ways these places were supposed to be responsible for what had happened.

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

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 you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. It's 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 therapists anytime for no additional charge.

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

Better help wants you to choose the.

Jon Favreau
Ladder, a line that will undoubtedly appear, and just a dozen convention speeches. Stop comparing and start focusing with better help. Visit betterhelp.com PSA today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelph.com psa.

Evgeni Marozov
I'm Evgeni Marozov, creator of a sense of rebellion, a new podcast diving into the eccentric lives of forgotten rebels dreaming of a different technological universe in the 1960s. From ecology to Scientology, from LSD to the Rockefellers, from AI to the CIA, each episode offers a thrilling mix of drama, mystery, and deep research.

A sense of rebellion available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Announcer
Ever heard of test driving a phone network? Well, us Cellular is letting you test drive their nationwide 5g free. Try out us cellular, wherever you have spotty service, your commute to work, or that one spot in your house where your service dips. It's as easy as doing a little boopy bop boop on your phone. That was me getting the app to try it out. I know. I'm pretty good. Sound effects test drive US cellular's nationwide 5g coverage free for 30 days. Just download the Tryus app us cellular built for us terms. Apply. Visit uscellular.com tryus.

Jon Favreau
So we have had now a full day or two to digest all the JD Vance takes our eyeballs could handle. One notable subplot is that the republican national security establishment isn't too happy with Vance's isolationist views, especially on Ukraine. That did not come up tonight. I don't believe he talked about Ukraine tonight.

Dan Pfeiffer
He made a reference to the big tent on national security issues.

Jon Favreau
Right.

Jon Levitt
And America first. A lot of America first, right.

Jon Favreau
But sort of yada yada'd over Ukraine.

Tommy Vitor
Yeah. I mean, he lied about Donald Trump opposing the war in Iraq, even though last month in an interview with Ross Douthat in the New York Times, JD Vance admitted that actually in 2003, Trump said something that said, he said he supported the invasion of Iraq. So JD, again, a month ago said he knew Trump was full of shit on that front and then tonight gave him credit for it.

Jon Favreau
And apparently some big republican donors aren't too thrilled with his protectionist views, though they probably like that. Democrats are also pushing around videos of Vance saying he wants a national abortion ban. He said that in 2022. There was also a clip of him on Tucker Carlson where he said that we're being ruled by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable with their own lives.

Jon Levitt
I remember when that happened. I remember that clip.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, he really has this, he's had this real hard edge over the last couple years when Tucker and some other speeches that you're like, anything else stand out to you guys since Vance was announced, that has made you either think he'll be valuable to the Trump campaign in this way or, oh, actually he's going to be. This is a real vulnerability now that democrats can exploit. Dan, what do you think?

Dan Pfeiffer
I think that the whole discourse is probably overstated. I mean, the vice president generally doesn't matter very much now. You can absolutely fuck it up like John McCain did with Sarah Palin and which, but then it's not really about the vice president. It's about what the vice presidential choice says about the person who made the choice.

You know, the idea that they're going to park him in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and he's going to be some sort of Rust belt ambassador for Trump.

Jon Favreau
And he said all the states, he.

Dan Pfeiffer
Kept saying them over again, over again.

Jon Favreau
All the blue wall states tonight. Yeah, a couple times.

Dan Pfeiffer
I'm sure he'll go to those states a lot because those are the states that if Trump wins one of those states, the election is probably over. But there's nothing in Vance's record, his performance in Ohio, his policy positions, that suggests that he has some sort of secret sauce that is going to help him with those voters. His populism, economic populism. And there's been all these annoying think pieces about how he and Josh Hawley and these cadre of republican eggheads are coming together to try to create this policy framework around America first populism.

All it is is tariffs and mass deportations.

And he does this performative bullshit where he's like, he said this in the Ross interview, where he's like, I'm more aligned with the Bernie bros than some people of my own party, but that doesn't mean anything. And he says, the nice thing about Lena Khan once, and that seemed to be seen to be that he's some transformative figure in Republican Party. He's not. And the reason that it all doesn't really matter is his policy positions do not matter.

Donald Trump's do. And at the convention on Tuesday night, Steve Scalise, the republican whip, stood up, or the republican leader, I guess, stood up and said, in the first hundred days, we are going to make the Trump tax cuts permanent.

Right. Like, that is the Trump Vance agenda is tax cuts for the rich.

Jon Levitt
Yeah. The sort of populism of the tax policy is hating universal childcare more than you hate a child tax credit, but trying to stop both.

Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah.

Jon Favreau
Before we move on from JD Vance, it was reported that JD Vance reached out to Vice President Kamal Harris. They had this cordial phone call, and then the Trump campaign put out a response to setting the date for the vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Kamala Harris. And their statement was, we don't know who the Democrat nominee for vice president is going to be, so we can't lock in a date before their convention. To do so would be unfair to Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, or whoever Kamala Harris picks as her running mate.

Tommy Vitor
Points for trolling.

Jon Levitt
Yeah, they're having fun.

Dan Pfeiffer
Points for trolling. They're also scared shitless that there might be a change.

Tommy Vitor
Can I just flag one other thing that jumped out of me about JDS? I think he's so new on the stage that people are trying to figure out whether he's sincere or, you know, was the hillbilly elegy JD Vance the real one, or is today the real one? This anecdote jumped out at me from a New York Times profile of him. So they talked to a person named Sarah Nelson, who's a former classmate of JD Vance's, who's transgender and was once close friends with both JD and his wife. And Sophia Nelson recalled that JD delivered home baked treats when Sophia Nelson had top surgery, and then they stopped talking in 2021, when he started embracing these vicious laws, there's an Arkansas bill opposing transgender care for minors. So it's clear that a few years ago, before he was in politics, JD Vance saw the humanity in people first, and he didn't care if you were transgender or not. He'd go to your house and bring you brownies or something. And now he is more than happy to be vicious and nasty and harm people who are his friends if it gets him on the ticket.

Dan Pfeiffer
He is a man driven by visible, palpable ambition and nothing else work for him tonight.

Jon Levitt
But it's funny. It's also why it's like that guy maybe that, you know, you would never know, seeing that guy on stage, that he has that incredibly compelling story, because he is ambitious and he did become what he needed to become to get there. And he looks much more like a tech guy in a vest at this point, doing an impression of a politician. And it speaks to actually his credit how smart he is and how far he came. But it doesn't make him that much of a thing.

Dan Pfeiffer
It's also why he did so poorly in the rust belt parts of Ohio against Tim Ryan. And people can smell that bullshit from a million miles away.

Tommy Vitor
The only time I laughed out loud tonight at all was during Usha Vance's speech, which was fine. She's JD Vance's wife. She seemed a little nervous. It was sweet, but it wasn't great. But she said he had one overriding ambition, to be a husband and a father. And I literally, like, I broke out laughing because clearly he's the most ambitious person possible. 39 year old vice presidential nominee.

Jon Favreau
A few other notable speakers from tonight, Don Junior. His fiance, Kim Guilfoyle, soon to be obscure again. Governor Doug Bergam got passed over. Former Trump aide Peter Navarro, who got out of prison today after serving four months for refusing a subpoena from the January 6 committee, apparently brought the house down.

Dan Pfeiffer
Brought the house down.

Tommy Vitor
Yes.

Dan Pfeiffer
Many people said it was the most applause at the convention since Trump walked in the room on Monday night.

Jon Favreau
Love it. Love it.

Jon Levitt
Is this just still? Because fucking what's his name, Kushner googled trade. He came up with this book. That guy goes, anyway, sorry, what were you saying?

Jon Favreau
No, no.

It was. They love a convict, you know.

Jon Levitt
Yeah.

Jon Favreau
And then there was a man with convictions.

Tommy Vitor
There you go.

Jon Favreau
There you go.

There was also a video that they played of gold star families who had lost loved ones during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Tommy Vitor
Yeah. It was the families of service members who were killed at Abbey Gate in those final days of the Afghanistan withdrawal. And there was a six and a half minute pre taped video where they talked to moms, wives, sister, brothers of the family, who talked about who these service members were. And then they also talked about. They showed footage of President Biden at the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover, looking at his watch. They talked about how things didn't go well in the conversation with Biden. And the families. And then they said in this video that you want to play a clip.

Jon Favreau
Should we play this?

Tommy Vitor
Yeah, why don't we play the clip? The administration, the White House, our president has never once mentioned their names. Not one of them.

Jon Levitt
Honestly, I. I don't feel like Joe Biden cared.

Dan Pfeiffer
He just had no empathy for us at all. I do think incompetence played a huge factor in what happened.

Bad decision, bad leadership. And it all starts at the top.

Tommy Vitor
Joe, why didn't you not be leading this country?

Jon Favreau
There was no point in making that hard deadline August 31. It was 100% a political stunt. He let my son down. He let the 13 down. He let the 45 wounded down. He let those 174 civilians down. He let our country down.

Tommy Vitor
And then what it hurts the most.

Dan Pfeiffer
Is that they could be here.

Tommy Vitor
Yeah. And then after that, the parents of the fallen came on stage, and they read the names one by one.

An incredibly powerful, well done and brutal political hit.

Jon Favreau
Biden did reach out to all those families, right?

Tommy Vitor
Well, he met with them at Dover during the transfer of their remains back home. But I think this was that really tough scene that Jen Psaki actually writes about in her book, where I think he tried to talk to them about his loss and losing his son. And I think that helps him connect with some of the families, but others were offended by it. Didn't go well. And, look, I'm not sure anyone can say anything that would make you feel better in that moment if you just lost a loved one.

Jon Favreau
So then there was Don Junior.

He went up to speak.

He then introduced his daughter, Kai Trump, who's much better than him by far.

Dan Pfeiffer
Not even close.

Jon Favreau
She did more to humanize Donald Trump, her grandfather, than anyone I had heard. And then Don Junior unfortunately got back on stage after she was done and continued speaking. Here's some of his speech.

Dan Pfeiffer
Who's running things?

Tommy Vitor
Does anyone really know?

Dan Pfeiffer
Is it Jill?

Is it Hunter?

Barack Obama?

Maybe it's the ghost of corn pop. Remember, build back better.

Instead, we got broke. Bumbling bidenhood.

Tommy Vitor
What a mistake.

Dan Pfeiffer
The corn pop thing is a real deep hole.

Jon Favreau
I was gonna say, you have to be the biggest junkie. Left or right.

Dan Pfeiffer
Political junkies, 2019, right.

Jon Favreau
It's also the deep cut for political junkies.

Jon Levitt
It's also logical nonsense. It's not like. It's not that. It's not a good. It's just not. What does it mean? Oh, maybe it's corn pop. This old story he tells, does it make sense on its own terms?

Tommy Vitor
Yeah. A guy, he argued with when he was a lifeguard in the fifties.

Jon Favreau
Like, remember build back better? No, no one remembers build back better.

Dan Pfeiffer
That's the problem, actually.

Jon Favreau
They don't always call it the IRA, and no one knows what that stands for either. Yeah.

Jon Levitt
And nobody knows it happened, and nobody will never know.

Jon Favreau
Have you heard about the chipset?

Jon Levitt
Yeah, yeah. And then. And then next year, it'll all be turned into highway funding anyway. But John Junior always has the energy of just, like, a coked out drunk, terrible customer at a restaurant calling a waitress sweetie. You know? Like, that's just sort of like his whole vibe forever. Just the life of doing that.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, yeah.

Tommy Vitor
I mean, Donald Trump's granddaughter, Don Junior. S daughter, 17 year old girl, talked about him as a grandfather, calling her when she's at school talking about the golf game, like, all the humanizing stuff you'd expect from a family member. And then they bring out his son, and he just does this red meat screed that was, you know, probably should have been left on rumble.com or wherever. He usually does his podcast.

Jon Favreau
Yeah.

Jon Levitt
Where does he speak from? His voice?

Tommy Vitor
It's all up here.

Jon Levitt
He speaks up high. It's up high. It's front of the throat.

Tommy Vitor
It's hard lines like, teddy Roosevelt's man in the arena has a name, and it's Donald Trump.

Jon Favreau
I mean, every convention of both parties is just fucking chock full of way too many cliches. But the last couple days have been really. Do you know? Our best days are yet to come. Have you heard that?

Jon Levitt
It's also like they are. Maybe when they made. Maybe when they went through and did their unity pass on all these speeches, they took out all the good lines.

I bet the division lines are probably the toughest.

Jon Favreau
Ron Johnson's got to get his old speech back.

All right, we'll be right back.

Evgeni Marozov
I'm Evgeni Marozov, creator of a sense of rebellion, a new podcast diving into the eccentric lives of forgotten rebels dreaming of a different technological universe in the 1960s. From ecology to Scientology, from LSD to the Rockefellers, from AI to the Ciataine, each episode offers a thrilling mix of drama, mystery, and deep research.

A sense of rebellion available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Announcer
Ever heard of test driving a phone network? Well, us cellular is letting you test drive their nationwide 5g free. Try out us cellular, wherever you have spotty service, your commute to work, or that one spot in your house where your service dips. It's as easy as doing a little boopy bop boop on your phone. That was me getting the app to try it out. I know pretty good with sound effects. Test drive us Cellular's nationwide 5g coverage free for 30 days. Just download the Tryus app us cellular built for us terms apply. Visit uscellular.com tryus.

Jon Favreau
You can host the best backyard barbecue when you find a professional on Angie.

Announcer
To make your backyard the best around.

Jon Favreau
With skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well inside to outside repairs to renovations.

Announcer
Get started on the Angie app or visit angie.com today.

Jon Favreau
You can do this when you angie that.

All right, let's talk about the upcoming democratic convention and Joe Biden, whose streak of luck continued today when he tested positive for Covid right in between campaign events in Las Vegas.

White House said he's got mild symptoms, no fever. We'll be isolating at home in Delaware. Hope he gets better soon. President's also dealing with more bad political news. Just before we recorded this, ABC reported that Chuck Schumer told Biden in a meeting on Saturday that, quote, it would be better for the country if he ended his reelection bid. We then learned this morning that Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries encouraged the DNC to move back the date of the virtual roll call to nominate Biden. This is what we were talking about last episode. In response, the rules committee put out a letter today saying that the voting won't start now until August 1. So that buys some time, though not a lot for the rapidly growing group of congressional Democrats who have publicly called on Biden to step down from the ticket. That faction officially grew by one big name today as Adam Schiffe, who we talked about yesterday as well, said publicly what he was reported to have said in private.

In his statement to the LA Times, Schiff praised Biden as a great president, but said, quote, I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November and called for him to pass the torch. This all comes as a new Associated Press poll shows that two thirds of all democratic voters now want Joe Biden to withdraw. In a new blue labs analytics poll shows basically every other potential democratic candidate running ahead of Biden in the swing states.

Who, where to begin? Where to begin? Let's start with the Schumer news. Dan, you think it's as big as it seems?

Dan Pfeiffer
Yeah, I think, I think it's a very big deal because there have been rumors for a long time that there's a bunch of senators who privately went by in the step aside. Remember, it was like two weeks ago. It feels like 100 years ago when Mark Warner was organizing a meeting that then got canceled. We only as of right now have two senators who've come out, well, yes, one senator and one senator to be Schiff and then Peter Welch of Vermont. This could lead to more schumann. Biden met privately on Saturday right before the assassination attempt on Trump. So we never really got any readout on what happened in that conversation. We now know that Schumer was more direct than I think a lot of people assumed.

Jon Favreau
You know what's interesting, though, is I'm thinking the timeline now. Schumer and Biden meet on Saturday.

Biden does the Lester Holt interview Monday in which he was no less defiant publicly about staying in.

Unless now I'm rethinking it. Did I miss anything? Levitt, what do you think?

Jon Levitt
I think there's two ways to see it. One is, as we talked about in the last pod, Joe Biden has to be defiant until the very moment he's not. There's no other option. I think it is interesting. There's this dynamic. People really want Joe Biden to make the decision, and there's an understanding that Joe Biden is a proud person and so that he won't be pushed, and so they're trying to pull him. You know, there was reporting that a lot more people were about to come forward, calling on Biden to step aside, and then the assassination attempt happened. It was just interesting that Schumer has this meeting. Biden is defiant on Monday, and now we're getting the leak. It does seem like people are starting to come to grips with the fact that it's going to take more pushing than pulling and they're going to have to be more public than maybe they had hoped.

Tommy Vitor
Yeah, I think the initial strategy was to try to have these conversations privately and politely. And now people are going public with demands, not requests. I did see that Jeff Zeleny, a great reporter at CNN, just reported that President Biden is now more receptive to the push for him to leave the ticket. He's gone from saying Kamala Harris can't win to asking if Kamala Harris can win.

Jon Favreau
So it does seem like senior democratic sources saying this to Zelani that in private conversations he's getting, he's sounding a little more, even though he's not publicly. The other possibility here is that Schumer had this conversation with Biden and Biden was not so receptive. And Schumer thought that maybe there'd be some movement on this and there hasn't been. And then maybe that's when it leaked to John Carl. Now officially, Schumer's office put out a statement that was sort of a non denial. That was like, unless the source is Chuck Schumer or Joe Biden themselves, this is just idle speculation. It's like, okay, well, could be.

Jon Levitt
What a strange way to introduce a new thought.

Tommy Vitor
And they also said that leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus directly to President Biden on Saturday. I'm not sure what that was clarifying.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. And we know that most of the caucus at this point, I mean, there was reporting in the caucus meeting that John Fetterman asked everyone, okay, who's actually on board with Biden, and only four senators raised their hands.

Tommy Vitor
Wow.

Jon Favreau
That was from last week.

Tommy Vitor
One of them was JD Vance and a mustache.

Jon Levitt
Also, Menendez was still there at the time. So where was he on this?

Jon Favreau
Right.

Tommy Vitor
Yeah.

Jon Levitt
Well, it depends on who makes me a better offer.

Jon Favreau
So you got, Schumer and Jeffries were both pushing the DNC to push back the roll call vote. Nancy Pelosi is working behind the scenes to try to get Joe Biden to step aside. So it does now seem that the entire leadership of the Democratic Party is, is working on this now.

Jon Levitt
What has ever given us less hope than the entire leadership of the democratic party working on something?

Dan Pfeiffer
Well, I mean, I think the, it can mean that they are working on a, to create a path for Biden to step down. Could also mean that no matter what happens, the best move for the party is to handle this virtual roll call. And the most transparent, fair minded way, because if you, if you, even if Schumer, you know, you get a different report. Schumer didn't make that case to Biden. It's still in his interest to handle the virtual roll call better because it's going to lead to a massive uproar on the party. If you were to go with the plan, the DNC was pushing quite aggressively just 24 hours ago.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. So let's talk about that. So we talked about this last night, and it seemed like it could be as early as next week that they were going to start this thing. Now they're saying no voting can start until August 1, and they do want to wrap it up by August 7, which is the sort of fake ish deadline in Ohio, the old deadline in Ohio that we're still going with. If Biden does step aside, it doesn't seem like there's much time for any kind of mini primary, open convention. Certainly there's enough time at that point. If Biden does just endorse Kamala Harris and the party unites behind Kamala Harris, then we're off to the races. They can do the virtual roll call. She would have to pick a running mate rather quickly. Beyond that, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of time. If they're going to start voting in August, would they just maybe punt the whole virtual roll call altogether in that scenario?

Dan Pfeiffer
I think we would either punt it altogether or you would move it back.

Based on everything you read and everything the Republicans in Ohio say, and I recognize for taking that with a grain of salt, the odds that somehow they go back and change the rules so that Biden or some democratic nominee cannot be on the ballot in Ohio seems quite low. And it doesn't seem like that risk is not so high that you would short circuit a process to pick our new nominee. So you can move it back. If you look at the deadlines of the other states that we talked about, like California and Washington, you can move it back a couple of weeks and either wrap it up right at the beginning of the convention or you could wrap it up at the convention and take on like, there's no good option. Right. Do you want to have a good process to pick your best nominee? Do you want to, or do you want to manage the legal risks that come from low likelihood of success lawsuits preventing ballot access you probably want to side with a longer process helps you pick a better nominee with actual voting in the convention.

Jon Favreau
Yeah. So let's talk about some of these, the polling that Biden and others woke up to this morning. So this is from blue Labs. And what they did is they interviewed 15,000 voters across seven battleground states to test different options for the democratic nominee. That's quite a bit top line.

Alternative democratic candidates run ahead of President Biden by an average of three points. Across the battleground states, nearly every tested Democrat performs better than the president. This includes Vice President Harris, who runs better than the president. But behind the average alternative, the top testing alternative candidates aside from Harris and Biden in alphabetical order, are Mark Kelly, senator from Arizona, Westmore, governor of Maryland, Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania, and Gretchen Whitmerdeh, governor of Michigan. And of course, we mentioned that AP poll that shows now two thirds of all democratic voters want Joe Biden to step aside, including every major demographic group. So what do you guys think about that blue lab polling look, I think.

Jon Levitt
It is, everybody is sort of looking for polling to validate more confidence in this really uncertain moment. I think it is reassuring. If you want to make a change that there is polling that shows even before a campaign has begun, these candidates start in a stronger position. I just think you have to take it with a grain of salt. You go into it, yes, because you are concerned about the swing state polling. You're concerned about the polling you're seeing about Biden. Not just that, the top line head to head numbers, but the extreme concern people have about his age. But you go into it not because you think these other candidates are already polling better, but because you believe if you make this change, then you have a candidate, and that candidate can do the politics you need to do to ultimately overcome the disadvantages that Biden had.

Tommy Vitor
You know, all these alternative democratic candidates are running ahead of President Biden. That includes Vice President Harris. So show like that not great for the vice president is voters are looking for a fresh face, according to this polling. And those closely tied to the current administration perform relatively worse than other candidates. So that's interesting and notable and also probably tells you something about how Republicans would message a Harris candidacy. They would have tie her to Joe Biden, obviously. And some of the challenges recently, also interesting. Some of the gains for these candidates are coming from winning undecideds and those who are supporting third parties, but they are also pulling votes from Donald Trump, which is, and you keep your base as well. So, you know, listen, this, there's a lot of data out there right now. Let's say on balance, it has been generally worse for Joe Biden than Donald Trump. There's a couple polls that have him tied or up a little bit, so it's noisy out there. But this polling from blue lab suggests that some alternatives could fare well in November.

Jon Favreau
Yeah, I mean, we have been obviously pretty vocal about why we think Biden stepping aside would give us a better chance of defeating Donald Trump. But we should be honest that none of the options in front of us are really great options right now because there's just so much uncertainty. And like you said, love it. You cannot have the polling be the only determining factor in this decision. And I'm sure if Joe Biden makes the decision to step aside, it's not going to be just based on the polling. And I think there are obviously risks that come with a Kamala Harris nomination. A lot of those risks, I believe, are probably tied to the fact that she is part of the current administration. And there is this anti incumbency vibe in the United States and all over the world right now. Can she overcome it? I think so.

Tommy Vitor
And racism and misogyny and all sorts of other currencies.

Jon Favreau
I do think, personally, she gives us a, a better chance than Joe Biden does at this point. And then you think, well, what about these very popular governors? And it's a fresh start. And, you know, I think, but getting to the point of an open convention, figuring out which of those candidates is going to be and then making sure the candidate that we ultimately choose can withstand the national spotlight. Like, it's just, there's no sure things here, but we're just, we're in a tough spot. And it's about, what do you think is the riskiest move? And what's the, what's the least risky move?

Dan Pfeiffer
All those candidates other than Kamala Harris right now are basically generic Democrats, right, with a slight bio description. Right. Generic Democrat who's a governor of a midwestern state or generic Democrat who's a senator who was also an astronaut. And once they become the nominee, they will be defined. They have to define themselves, and the Republicans will be racing to define them. And that, that is so these numbers are very, they're interesting. They're not particularly instructive about what a race would actually look like. And I think just this is the point is there's no candidate here who guarantees a democratic victory, not a one. There's no path that guarantees that. This is still a pretty republican political environment. There's an anti incumbent environment. We are the incumbent party there. People are angry about the economy. They're angry about inflation. We are the incumbent party. And so whether that candidate is Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or one of these other people mentioned, they were still going to have to navigate those headwinds. It is just, and there's downside risk, too, that any of these candidates could do worse than Joe Biden is doing.

Jon Favreau
Yep.

Dan Pfeiffer
I believe that they all have a lower floor but a higher ceiling than Biden because we know that the voters are screaming for someone other than Biden or Trump. And if we give them someone who passes some set of tests for that, you could have a good victory. But it's not a guarantee. It's just a question of what risks you want to take. Speaker one.

Tommy Vitor
Well, yeah, I mean, I think the concern about Biden, where that's coming from, is that every candidate has vulnerabilities and you have to fight back against them. But I think the vulnerability of a large subset of the electorate thinking you are too old is an unfixable problem because, you know, once they have that belief, they know no one gets younger.

Jon Levitt
And I do think that's why the Schiff statement, the Schumer statement, it's important because it creates pressure. But I also think it just underscores that that fundamental reality of what we're discussing is not changing.

The other thing is the fact that some of these Democrats are pulling Trump voters think underscores on the other side of what Dan's saying is Donald Trump is a weak candidate. You know, as part of this polling that said two thirds of Democrats want Joe Biden to no longer be the nominee, a lot of Americans don't think Trump should be the nominee. These are both weak candidates. And voters have been saying for a year, not the elites, the voters have been saying this for a long time, that they want a different option. Democrats have been saying for a long time that they thought Joe Biden was too old. It was the everybody else hoping they could get to the end of this process without having to face that reality. But the debate changed that. And I think the fact that there are people out there saying, I'm right now a Trump voter, but I'm open to an alternative. I think just, I think in that.

Dan Pfeiffer
Poll, it is 27% of Republicans want a, would prefer that Trumpy replaces the nominee. And if we were in a normal election cycle, that would be a huge, gigantic number for someone who is at their convention, who won their primary easily, and one in four members of their party want someone else to the nominee. We would be. That is like a flashing red light siren weak candidate. But just because of the situation we're in, everyone's just throwing that number on. Like, look how strong Trump is. Only a quarter of his voters hate him.

Jon Levitt
The idea, too, is like, well, you know, all these republicans want Trump to set aside, and no one's clamoring for that. You know, obviously, Donald Trump is an incredible threat to the country, but politically, they might be better off with somebody who wasn't carrying all this baggage. Nikki Haley might have been a stronger candidate than Donald Trump could ever have hoped to be.

Jon Favreau
We'll never know.

Jon Levitt
And we'll never, we'll never know.

Jon Favreau
Okay, one quick note before we go check out the crooked store. You can shop our new collection of merch for the summer. And feel good knowing that a portion of the proceeds from every purchase goes to support organizations doing incredible work across the country. To ensure every voice is heard. Pick up an only you can prevent gender reveals tea.

Tommy Vitor
I support that.

Jon Favreau
I hate that. For your next camping trip, and wear a hot people vote tee to your next canvassing shift shop new merch@cricket.com store all right, that's our show for tonight. We will be back tomorrow night with the grand finale, Trump's 90 minutes plus speech at the RNC, and everything else that happens tomorrow.

What else could happen? The news.

Jon Levitt
The news. And by the way, you know, gender reveals aren't something that can happen with a cake for a baby. They're what happens when a California teacher keeps a secret from your parents.

How's that? Is that anything?

Jon Favreau
Good night, everyone. I bet that moves some merch.

If you want to get ad free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our friends of the Pod subscription community@crooked.com. friends and if you're already doom scrolling, don't forget to follow us at Pod Save America on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content, and more. Plus, if you're as opinionated as we are, consider dropping us a review. Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producers are Sol Rubin and Farah Safari. Reed Sherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound engineer, with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis writing support by Hallie Kiefer. Madeleine Herringer is our head of news and programming. Matt de Grote is our head of production. Andy Taft is our executive assistant. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Hailey Jones, Mia Kellman, David Toles, Kirill Pallaviv, and Molly Lobelithe.

Evgeni Marozov
I'm Evgeni Marozov, creator of a sense of rebellion, a new podcast diving into the eccentric lives of forgotten rebels dreaming of a different technological universe in the 1960s. From ecology to Scientology, from LSD to the Rockefellers, from AI to the CIA, each episode offers a thrilling mix of drama, mystery, and deep research.

A sense of rebellion. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Announcer
Ever heard of test driving a phone network? Well, us Cellular is letting you test drive their nationwide 5g free. Try out us cellular wherever you have spotty service, your commute to work, or that one spot in your house where your service dips. It's as easy as doing a little boopy bop boop on your phone. That was me getting the app to try it out. I know. Pretty good with sound effects. Test drive Us Cellular's nationwide 5g coverage free for 30 days. Just download the Try US app. US cellular built for us terms apply visit uscellular.com tryuse.

Vance Vance Revolution

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1: Introduction

2: Vance's Speech Analysis

3: Political Implications

4: Broader Commentary

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Content Warnings:

Transcript