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DeSantis DeShakeUp · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm the bar reader of these two Oppenheimers, Jon Lovett.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I'm Tommy Vitor. It's great to be back, guys. Tommy,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: welcome back. I missed you. It's nice to see you.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: He was not here last week. I was not here
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: last week. I just talked to him. It was double
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: your own voice. It sounded great. On today's show, Ron
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: DeSantis gives us the first campaign shakeup of 2024. Joe
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Biden gets good news on fundraising and the economy. RFK Jr.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: is caught on tape at his infamous fart dinner saying
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: COVID may have been targeted to spare the Jews. What
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: a sentence. And later, I'm joined by MoveOn's Rana Epting
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and Third Way's Matt Bennett to talk about the diverse
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: coalition that's trying to stop no labels from a third-party
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: bid that could elect Donald Trump. But first, there were
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: two events over the weekend and some new fundraising disclosures
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: that have made it very difficult to argue that the
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Republican nomination is anything but Donald Trump's to lose.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: You say it with a little sort of, I don't know,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: sadness in your voice or something.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Well, the whole thing is sad. The criminal defendant frontrunner
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: was the only major candidate to skip a big evangelical
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: event in Des Moines, but he did get some help
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: from Tucker Carlson, who emceed the event fresh off his
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: very friendly interview with self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate, recently indicted
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: for rape and human trafficking. That interview was fucking wild,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: by the way. I don't know if anyone caught it
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: on Tucker's Twitter show.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: I absolutely did not during my vacation.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: I watched Black Mirror.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Talk about infuriating things. Was he entertained in a jail cell?
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I think he's under house arrest in Romania. Anyway, great.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Tucker tore into Mike Pence and grilled Tim Scott and
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Nikki Haley over their opposition to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Trump and some other candidates spoke in Miami to Charlie
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Kirk's Turning Point USA. a group so far right that
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: the crowd booed Fox News, heckled other Republican candidates who spoke,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and gave Trump 85.7% of the vote in a straw poll. Nail-biter.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Talk about Putin. Those are Putin numbers right there. Trump
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: focused his remarks on Ron DeSantis. Let's listen.
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: We lead the field by 50 points among young voters.
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: Think of that.
• 2:33
  Speaker 6: With Trump at 64% and a gentleman named Ron DeSantimonious
• 2:39
  Speaker 6: at 14%. He said 14%. And I don't know why
• 2:46
  Speaker 6: he's not here this couple of days, but he should
• 2:49
  Speaker 6: be here. The sanctimonious and his establishment handlers are wasting
• 2:54
  Speaker 6: such precious time and resources.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: To divide the party.
• 2:57
  Speaker 6: They're dividing the party. Although he's dropping so quickly, he's
• 3:01
  Speaker 6: probably not going to be in second place much longer.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Not only does it seem like there were no consequences
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: for Trump skipping the a major evangelical event in Iowa.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: He seemed to get much better coverage than any of
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: his competitors coming out of the weekend. What were your
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: takeaways from the two events, Tommy? So my big picture takeaway,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I watched all.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: Of the Iowa, the Bob Vander Plaats event in Iowa.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Making fun of you for watching Dr. Strudish for seven minutes.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: This guy's just mainlining right-wing nonsense during the weekend.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: In fairness, he tuned in to see Nikki Haley and
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: he just had to watch the rest of it. I
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: caught Tim Scott. I got the bug.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: It used to be that candidates would go to Iowa,
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: talk to local activists and press, create some local buzz, right?
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: And that....
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: You know, you get a polling bump in Iowa, it
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: creates this groundswell of support that gives you a national
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: narrative bump, right? And maybe you do better nationally. That
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: was sort of how Jimmy Carter did well in Iowa. Obama,
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: Mike Huckabee won Iowa.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Back in 2008. People forget. I know you didn't. Not me.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: Not us.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Mike Huckabee.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: To me, watching this event showed me how that order
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: is flipped and how now the national narrative has completely
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: changed the early state campaigns. We heard about this from
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: Democratic candidates in 2020 as well, but This was this
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: big cattle call event in Iowa run by a conservative
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: activist named Bob Vander Plaats. Tucker Carlson moderated it. The
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Blaze was their media sponsor. I didn't hear a single
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: Iowa-specific question. There was nothing about farm subsidies. There was
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: nothing about ethanol. They barely even talked about abortion or
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: gay rights or things you'd expect Christian conservatives to talk about.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Also, at abortion, Kim Reynolds signed the six-week abortion ban, like,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: at the event. Yeah, exactly.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: And Mike Pence tried to bring it up. And Tucker
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: basically scoffed at him and changed the subject.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: It was very intense.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: So instead, it's Tucker asking about things like, was January
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: 6th an insurrection? Should electronic voting machines be trusted or banned?
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: All this Ukraine stuff. He asked Ron DeSantis about red
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: tide in Florida. He also asked Asa Hutchinson if he'd
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: been vaccinated and whether they would pardon Julian Assange. So
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: it was just, it was like bizarro world. In addition
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: to the six-week abortion ban that Kim Reynolds signed, Trump
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: is apparently now attacking her on Truth Social because she
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: hangs out with DeSantis too much. So it's just like,
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: It sort of upended the way the early states normally
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: work in the process to me.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: That was my takeaway.
• 5:15
  Speaker 7: Oh, yeah.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: You missed the Trump attacks, the governor of the first
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: state to caucus cycle last week where he just went
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: on a tear. He really got mad.
• 5:27
  Speaker 8: So DeSantis did have one comment on abortion.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: And what he said was about his six-week ban.
• 5:33
  Speaker 8: If I had a chance to do it again, I'd
• 5:35
  Speaker 8: do it every day of the week and twice on Sunday,
• 5:37
  Speaker 8: which is just ridiculous. OK, well, there's another perfect quote
• 5:41
  Speaker 8: to put in an ad that will be devastating for
• 5:43
  Speaker 8: him in the future. We're so desperate to try to
• 5:45
  Speaker 8: get some kind of traction. He's trying to find something
• 5:47
  Speaker 8: he can do.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: And it's ironic that it would hurt him so much
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: in the general that quote, because it was seen as
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: a subtle hit on Trump because Trump said. I don't
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: think that was a mistake or like, I don't need, I,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: we follow this for a living. I couldn't even follow why.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: I didn't know it was a subtle, I didn't even
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: understand that it was a subtle hit on Trump. It was,
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: I think he was trying to duck the question because
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: the question was, would you do a national six week ban?
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: And he didn't say yes or no, but then he
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: said that quote, which is just as bad.
• 6:15
  Speaker 8: Well, this is why, like, this is why Pence is like,
• 6:17
  Speaker 8: you know, he was so indignant after he said, Oh,
• 6:19
  Speaker 8: you know, the Tucker Carlson kind of had him on
• 6:21
  Speaker 8: the ropes and it's like, you know, Pence is going
• 6:23
  Speaker 8: there to try to distinguish himself on abortion. Uh, It
• 6:26
  Speaker 8: is true that Pence is unequivocally coming out in favor
• 6:28
  Speaker 8: of a national ban, but they've all embraced an incredibly
• 6:32
  Speaker 8: unpopular and extreme position, even as they try to kind of,
• 6:35
  Speaker 8: Trump and Haley and DeSantis all try to kind of
• 6:38
  Speaker 8: weasel out of any opinion on a national ban.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: My overall take from the whole thing is, if I
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: were Donald Trump, I would probably skip most of these
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: events and most of the debates. He can completely control
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: his own message by holding his own rallies, his own events.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: He can do his own interviews with his own sycophants.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: He's got plenty of them. One of them was just
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: moderating the Iowa event in, uh, in Tucker Carlson. And,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: and Trump is doing that. He's going to have a
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: town hall with Sean Hannity Tuesday night in Cedar Rapids
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: in Iowa. So he's like, he can still campaign in
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: all these early States and spend a lot of time.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: He doesn't need to be on stage with any of
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: these people. Well, it's wild. Like he, there's, there's no, he,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: he had, there's no, uh, no consequences for him skipping
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: any of these things.
• 7:24
  Speaker 8: So Trump is in Florida doing this event that's just
• 7:27
  Speaker 8: built around him, this Talking Points USA event.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Turning points, but that's a good slip of the tongue. Yep.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: And this, I just.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: It was not Josh Marshall's outfit. Oh yeah, I was surprised.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Josh Marshall's heel turn has been a real surprise.
• 7:40
  Speaker 8: No, but I just was struck by just how feral
• 7:44
  Speaker 8: the crowd has now gone at these events.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: It was always bad.
• 7:47
  Speaker 8: The CPAC crowds were always bad, but there used to
• 7:50
  Speaker 8: be a little bit of... There was just a little
• 7:52
  Speaker 8: bit of more of a positive feedback loop from the
• 7:54
  Speaker 8: more serious people that would either go or not go.
• 7:57
  Speaker 8: And these people are just unleashed by these events now.
• 8:00
  Speaker 8: This is from The Times. At the conference, attendees could
• 8:04
  Speaker 8: attach sticky notes to cutouts of the Republican candidates' heads.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: First of all, guys.
• 8:09
  Speaker 8: You knew what you were doing, all right? What do
• 8:11
  Speaker 8: you think I was going to say in those sticky notes?
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Freedom?
• 8:13
  Speaker 8: A man placed one with a homophobic slur on the
• 8:15
  Speaker 8: face of Mike Pence. Later, it appeared to have been removed,
• 8:17
  Speaker 8: but a number of stickers branding Pence as a traitor
• 8:19
  Speaker 8: for refusing to overturn the 2020 election covered his face
• 8:22
  Speaker 8: on a cutout of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor.
• 8:25
  Speaker 8: One sticky note said, woman in politics?
• 8:28
  Speaker 9: Cringe.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: TPUSA is the like dubstep strobe light, like wannabe cool
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: version of conservatism. The Iowa summit was this traditional sort
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: of white nationalists. super boring brand of conservatism. I think
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: Trump also skipped it because Bob Vander Plaats, the guy
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: who organizes it, hates his guts. I don't think he's
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: endorsed DeSantis, but he is very anti-Trump, vocally so.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Although he would have faced a pretty friendly interviewer in
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, right? Oh, absolutely.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: I think the better move would be to show up
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: to that and show how tough you are and how
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: you can stand up to everybody.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: He's just competing on a different field than these people.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: And the other question is, you just talked about how
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the attendees at the TPUSA thing were not so nice
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: to some of the other candidates. These candidates, like, Tucker
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Carlson goes and does this series of interviews. Mike Pence
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: shows up. Nikki Haley shows up. Tim Scott shows up.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: They all show up. Asa Hutchinson showed up to the
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: TPUSA thing. Got heckled.
• 9:23
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: He had a tough time in Iowa, too. But it's like,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: what are they all doing? Are they trying to win?
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Are they trying to make a point? I don't know
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: what all these people are doing.
• 9:30
  Speaker 8: Well, I do think this is like, whether Trump goes
• 9:32
  Speaker 8: or not, the crowd... The crowd is the crowd at
• 9:34
  Speaker 8: both of these events. Tucker asks Mike Pence about Ukraine,
• 9:37
  Speaker 8: his position, which is probably a 60-40 position in the country,
• 9:41
  Speaker 8: gets him nearly booed off the stage. So the challenge
• 9:45
  Speaker 8: for all these candidates, Trump goes, Trump doesn't go, these
• 9:48
  Speaker 8: crowds are Trump's crowd wherever, in Iowa, in Florida.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: His interviewers, his party, his crowds, every once in a
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: while you get a Bob Vander Plaats that doesn't like him, right?
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: That's like the exception, not the rule. The rest of
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the party is his party.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and frankly, you know, this same event in 2015,
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: Frank Luntz was doing the questioning, and that's where Trump
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: made the infamous remark about John McCain and liking people
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: that didn't get captured. So even then, the whole event
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: became about everyone denouncing Donald Trump because of these comments
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: about John McCain. It didn't matter. They all still liked
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: him better. But in Poor Mike Pence. He got a
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: raw deal here. I mean, I'm not usually a fan
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: of the guy, as you guys know, but it was
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: quite clear that Tucker Carlson hates his guts.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Let's let's listen to the exchange that everyone's talking about
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: with Pence and Tucker. I'm sorry, Mr. Vice President.
• 10:33
  Speaker 11: Have you I know you're running for president and yet.
• 10:36
  Speaker 11: Your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people
• 10:39
  Speaker 11: can't find on a map, who've received tens of billions
• 10:42
  Speaker 11: of U.S. tax dollars, don't have enough tanks. I think
• 10:45
  Speaker 11: it's a fair question to ask, like, where's the concern
• 10:48
  Speaker 11: for the United States in that?
• 10:49
  Speaker 7: Well, it's not my concern. Tucker, I've heard that routine
• 10:53
  Speaker 7: from you before, but that's not my concern.
• 10:56
  Speaker 11: You recently met with Zelensky, according to news reports. And
• 11:00
  Speaker 11: I'm wondering if during that meeting, as a prominent Christian leader,
• 11:04
  Speaker 11: which you are in addition to your political views, you
• 11:06
  Speaker 11: broached the question of his treatment of Christians within Ukraine.
• 11:10
  Speaker 7: What I can tell you is I asked the Christian
• 11:13
  Speaker 7: leader in Kiev if that was in fact happening, and
• 11:15
  Speaker 7: he assured me that it was not. Now, let me
• 11:18
  Speaker 7: take a break here.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: I know we disagree on this strongly.
• 11:21
  Speaker 11: I would think you would have greater concern for religious
• 11:24
  Speaker 11: liberty in Ukraine. And I'm surprised by your answer.
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: I told you I raised the issue of religious liberty.
• 11:29
  Speaker 11: No, you spoke to one person who's clearly on one
• 11:32
  Speaker 11: side of it. And there are many, many news reports
• 11:35
  Speaker 11: that are not disputed by anybody that many clergy have
• 11:39
  Speaker 11: been arrested. I'm not Russian Orthodox, but you can't arrest
• 11:43
  Speaker 11: clergy for having different views, period. Because if you do,
• 11:47
  Speaker 11: you violate the basic tenet of religious liberty.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Look, I want to be clear with you. I won't
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: stand by it. I won't stand for it. So Pence
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: got booed. later tweeted that he'd been taken out of context.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: And one pastor who was at the event later said
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: his campaign is over. Why do you guys think that
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: evangelicals and seemingly every other Republican has turned on Mike Pence?
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: So I just don't know that that's the case.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: Like, I think Tucker Carlson, he started asking about whether
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: January 6th was an insurrection.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: He asked about electronic voting machines.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: He asked like six questions in a row about NATO
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: and Ukraine and clustering munitions and this and that. And like,
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: It did not go well at all.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: I think the question... You said that Mike Pence refused
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: to say that January 6th was an insurrection.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone was horrible. He said, all I could say
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: for sure is that it.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Was no good.
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: All I could say for sure is that they almost
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: hung me. He said, I never used that word. Then
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: he called it a riot.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: I think the question is still whether... Obviously, Pence's performance
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: to that audience didn't go well. I also want to
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: be clear that I don't think Mike Pence's candidacy is
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: going anywhere.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: He raised $ 1. 2 million in the second quarter.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: But he did try to start his comments at that
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: event by talking about Iowa's six-week abortion ban and basically
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: got cut off. And the question still remains whether there
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: are conservative Christian evangelicals in Iowa who want to hear
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: about the stuff that he's going to talk about ad
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: nauseum at all these events going forward and whether he
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: got tanked by Tucker Carlson or whether– the people in
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: that room just think he's a loser with no momentum
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: and that's all they care about.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I'll take, I'll take that one.
• 13:17
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, look, odds are, but like, I think, I
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: just think Tucker Carlson roasting you cause he hates your
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: guts at one event is it's a little too early
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: to say he's done.
• 13:25
  Speaker 8: I think there, I think there's like a, the problem
• 13:27
  Speaker 8: though is the way Mike Pence thinks that he's going
• 13:29
  Speaker 8: to differentiate himself from this group of people that don't
• 13:32
  Speaker 8: care about policy at all is he's going to say,
• 13:35
  Speaker 8: even though everyone on this stage is, is praising a
• 13:37
  Speaker 8: six-week abortion ban. I'm for a six-week abortion ban, and
• 13:40
  Speaker 8: I'm for a national ban. All these other people refuse
• 13:43
  Speaker 8: to say whether or not they're for a national ban.
• 13:45
  Speaker 8: And there's just no evidence that has gained him any traction.
• 13:49
  Speaker 8: He's been saying it for weeks.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: It is his position.
• 13:54
  Speaker 8: He's too creepy to make that enough to get him over.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: The finish line. I mean, he's not exciting. His name,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: everyone knows who he is. His name ID, because he
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: was vice president, so his name ID is through the roof.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: When they break down polls by asking, they do demographics, evangelicals,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump is way in the lead with evangelicals. When
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: they ask for, they do a specific subgroup of Republicans
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: whose top issue is abortion, Donald Trump way out in
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: front on that issue too. You mentioned the 1.2 million.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: It is rough. He is not qualified for the debate
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: stage yet. The former vice president of the United States.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: He has not gotten to 40,000 donors.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: He has almost full name recognition.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: He cannot get 40,000 donors.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, as he's getting booed at the Tucker event, Vivek
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Ramaswamy says that every other candidate in the field besides
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: him is indistinguishable from Joe Biden on Ukraine and then
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: got a standing ovation. in the room when he left.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: In the clip you played about Trump doing his punditry
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: around what was happening in Iowa, the next sentence was
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: that he thought, he says, DeSantis may not be in
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: second place much longer because he refers to Ramaswamy. I
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: think because Trump, we and Trump consume clips in the
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: same way and he consumed the clips of the Iowa
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: that showed him getting the standing of Asia. Vivek Ramaswamy,
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: I think, has a Tucker Carlson-like view on Ukraine that
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: I think Tucker really liked. What was interesting is Nikki
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: Haley and Tim Scott have a more Pence-like Ukraine policy,
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: and Tucker just didn't even come close to going after
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: them the way he did Pence. He hates Pence's guts.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: I think the harder part was just dealing with January
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: 6th probably for Pence than anything else.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Which I think, by the way, is at the core
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: of why people don't like it. Oh, for sure. I
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: also think that, like, I mean, he said in an
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: AP interview last week that he would force women to
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: give birth to babies even when they knew the baby
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: would have no chance of survival. He, like, explicitly did that.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: And so then the question is, What is the constituency that,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: because you're right, you're not getting that position in the
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: national abortion ban from many of these other candidates right now.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: So what is the constituency that wants that so badly
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: that they're like, okay, Mike Pence is my guy. And
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: I just don't know. I mean, who knows? There could
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: be one. His bet is, look, the last.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: Couple of winners of the Iowa caucuses on the Republican
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: side were Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Mike Huckabee.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: It was just sort of the most right wing, the
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: most religious, the most sort of fake Reagan sounding people.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: So that's his bet.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: I don't think he's going to win that bet, but
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: I think that's.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Well, I think he'd have a better chance at that
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: bet if Tim Scott and Ron DeSantis weren't in his way.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: Tim Scott talks the talk really well. He quoted like
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: seven Bible verses, right? He knows what these people want
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: to hear. Yeah.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: And look, and Mike Pence might have more support than
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: those two, but You got three people in that lane
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: of trying to get the evangelicals and that's tough.
• 16:38
  Speaker 8: It's also, there's a group of people who are celebrating
• 16:43
  Speaker 8: the biggest victory they have had in half a century.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: They won on abortion. They are fat and happy on abortion.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: I don't think they're fat and happy at all. I
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: think they want more. I think they want a six-week
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: ban everywhere. These people in that room, that's what they want.
• 16:56
  Speaker 8: But they are not making abortion the issue by which
• 16:59
  Speaker 8: they are deciding to vote between these candidates at all.
• 17:02
  Speaker 8: There's no evidence that they view someone who's going to
• 17:05
  Speaker 8: do a national abortion ban as a reason that they're
• 17:07
  Speaker 8: going to come out to vote for somebody.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: There's not.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: It's just not anywhere. The polling John just said shows
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: the same thing.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: I think that they're mad at him because he didn't
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: help overturn the election. They want the introduction. So the
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: only Republican candidate who had a worse weekend than Mike
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Pence was Ron DeSantis, who's now given us 2024's first
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: big campaign shakeup story. He fired about a dozen mid-level staffers,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: though more layoffs are expected in the coming weeks, according
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: to NBC News. Everyone's campaign finance reports were released this weekend,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: and DeSantis has apparently spent almost half of the $ 20
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: million he raised, which is quite a burn rate. The
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: campaign will change up its media strategy of not talking
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: to reporters by having the Voters just need to hear
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: more Ron DeSantis. That's what we're missing. In the pantheon
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: of campaign shakeup stories, this one seems relatively small to me,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: but I don't know. What do you guys think? It's
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: so minor.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: It's 10 staffers who do event planning.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: This is nothing.
• 18:00
  Speaker 8: And it sounds like they're also trying to get them
• 18:02
  Speaker 8: over to a PAC, which does tell you, forget the
• 18:05
  Speaker 8: shakeup itself, is about the weakness in their fundraising, which
• 18:08
  Speaker 8: is They did better at the very beginning and then
• 18:11
  Speaker 8: it trailed off. And they clearly have some giant donors
• 18:14
  Speaker 8: that are able to put millions of dollars into the campaign,
• 18:16
  Speaker 8: but not in the same way, in a sustainable way,
• 18:17
  Speaker 8: into the actual sort of small dollars they need for
• 18:19
  Speaker 8: the campaign itself.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's, look, they spent $ 8 million in
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: six weeks. That's a lot of money to spend. They
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: have more than a million dollars of payroll, 92 staffers.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: It's also a lot of staffers for a campaign early on.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of staff for this, really. It's a big,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: big list. Never back down. has raised $ 150 million. They
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: have 400 full-time canvassers in Iowa and across the country
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: already knocking on doors. So they are basically trying to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: cede the entire campaign operation to the Super PAC, which
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: has some advantages, but also a lot of disadvantages because
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: you can't coordinate with the Super PAC. A lot of disadvantages.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: Ask Jeb Bush about all the disadvantages that come from
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: not being able to control your Super PAC spending. The
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: Washington Post had a hilarious story about DeSantis' Super PAC
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: paying people like $ 20 an hour to canvass for him,
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: and doing horrendous jobs, and there's ring videos of these.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Dudes on people's porches, like pissing them off. It's great.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: It's very worth reading. So Never Back Down is also
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: running an ad now. It's the first ad that the
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Super PAC is running directly against Donald Trump in Iowa
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: for Trump attacking Kim Reynolds. Let's hear the ad.
• 19:24
  Speaker 9: Governor Kim Reynolds is a conservative champion. She signed the
• 19:27
  Speaker 9: heartbeat bill and stands up for Iowans every day. So
• 19:31
  Speaker 9: why is Donald Trump attacking her?
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: I opened up the governor position for Kim Reynolds, and
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: when she fell behind, I endorsed her. Did big rallies,
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: and she won. Now she wants to remain neutral. I
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: don't invite her to events.
• 19:45
  Speaker 9: Trump should fight Democrats, not Republicans. What happened to Donald Trump?
• 19:51
  Speaker 9: Never Back Down is responsible for the content of this advertising.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Tommy, I didn't expect the beat to drop so hard there. Tommy,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: you are the master of AI voices in political ads. Oh,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: is that AI?
• 20:03
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Couldn't you tell?
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: That's AI.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: I'm kidding.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: I also just like, there's an Iowa Republican who's paying
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: attention right now who's like, I like Donald Trump, but
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: I didn't know he was capricious about loyalty and that
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: that mattered so much to him.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: I'm shocked. I'm shocked by this.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: If you're so offended by his treatment of the governor,
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: you probably heard about it. I mean, this is probably
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: just an attempt to create a little earned media off
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: of this fake ad.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I did hear Sarah Longwell talk about how in
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the Iowa folks groups, she was surprised at just the
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: level of approval that Kim Reynolds had with Republican voters.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Like they love her. They think she's the great people,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: like bring her up all the time. But I do
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: think there's a difference between I love the governor and And, oh,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I love Donald Trump, but now that he attacked the governor,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go vote for Ron DeSantis. It seems
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: you're right, Tommy. I think it's probably just it seems
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: like a media.
• 20:51
  Speaker 8: But it does just go into their like what happened
• 20:54
  Speaker 8: to Donald Trump. They're still stuck on this idea of like,
• 20:56
  Speaker 8: I love Donald Trump, but something's not right the way
• 20:58
  Speaker 8: it used to be.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Remember early on.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: When you do like the Ron DeSanctimonious or the Ron DeSanctus,
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: you could feel like trepidation in the audience.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Now they know it's coming. They expect it. They laugh
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: along with it. Like they get used to it. I mean,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I am guessing that if the super PAC went and
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: spent some money on this, maybe they saw something in
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the data that this isn't. I mean, it may. I'm
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: trying to make their argument just to just for fun here.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: But like it may speak to not just the love
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: that Iowa Republicans have for Kim Reynolds. But one thing
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: that people don't like about Donald Trump in the Republican Party,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: one of the few things is like he's always causing chaos.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: He's always he's undisciplined. Right. So maybe it leans into that.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: I don't think it helps DeSantis necessarily. But who knows?
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: What do you think about the shift in DeSantis's media strategy?
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Like what are what are they hoping to achieve with
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: a sit down with Jake Tapper?
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: Like, can't you just see this, what happened, right? Like
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: things are going badly. All the donors are calling Ron DeSantis.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: They're calling his wife. They're calling his top strategists. That's
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: getting everyone really spun up. They have a big meeting with,
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: they pound the table and say, you guys are fucking up.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: How are we going to fix this?
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: And they're like, ah, I don't know. Uh, talk to
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the press. Well, I do.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: It's a, it's funny.
• 22:06
  Speaker 8: They, they pretend it was such a long time. Like
• 22:08
  Speaker 8: they don't care about elite opinion. This doesn't matter. We're
• 22:10
  Speaker 8: not going to do any interviews with these people. We're
• 22:12
  Speaker 8: going to go right to the people. We're going to
• 22:13
  Speaker 8: be on the ground. We're only going to talk to
• 22:14
  Speaker 8: Twitter spaces and we're only going to talk to, to,
• 22:17
  Speaker 8: to people that are kind of on our side.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: And clearly that's not true.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: And I do think I was, I was thinking about
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: this and it's like, Every day Ron DeSantis goes out
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: there and he gets questions, reporters are at these public events,
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: they grab him on the line, and every single day
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: his questions are, why are you failing? What's wrong with
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: your campaign? People don't like you, are you weird? Whatever,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: just bad question after bad question. And it's basically like,
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: would you like to fight a thousand duck-sized Jake Tappers
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: or one Jake Tapper-sized Jake Tapper.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying? It's like- Tapper on the
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: rope line or Tapper in the studio.
• 22:50
  Speaker 8: He's getting Tapper every single day in little bits and
• 22:53
  Speaker 8: he can't get out of it.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: So it's like, fuck it.
• 22:55
  Speaker 8: Let's just get in there. I do think though, it's like,
• 22:58
  Speaker 8: you got to work your way up to a sit
• 22:59
  Speaker 8: down with Jake Tapper. You've faced no hard questions. He's
• 23:02
  Speaker 8: talked to- He's talked to no one challenging in so long.
• 23:05
  Speaker 8: You're going to start with Jake. You're going to start,
• 23:07
  Speaker 8: you're going to start with a, you know, that's, that's a,
• 23:09
  Speaker 8: that's a tough level.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: I do wonder if part of the strategy here is
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: to pick a fight with Jake.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: And that's what I would do, you know, and then say, Oh,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: look at me. I picked a fight with fake news,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: CNN's Jake Tapper, that, that lib over there. And now
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: I can, now he can go tell the Republican base
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: how tough he was and, and prove that he's got
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: the right enemies just like them. Yeah.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: That's exactly what the, I was thinking the same thing
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: that I think that would actually be a smart strategy,
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: create a little bit of a spectacle, but like, come on, man,
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: we got to go for, for Chuck Todd.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: You go to meet the press.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's got to do it. What he's, he's
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: not one. He's not, he's not one.
• 23:42
  Speaker 8: I took on the media and they didn't applaud away.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: He's not one away. He's going to do this again
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: and again and again.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I can't wait. I listen. Yeah, no, I'm in. I'll
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: be watching. I'm in. I'm in.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: Uh, any other, it's like, it's like maybe Jake will
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: leave some Coke. It's like Jake's Coke at the white house.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: Just getting ready for this thing. Uh, parody Jake, just kidding.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Uh, any other takeaways from the Republican fields fundraising reports
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: to get into those numbers?
• 24:06
  Speaker 8: Well, the pen's only getting 40,000, not getting, not, not
• 24:09
  Speaker 8: being sure he can get to 40,000 is a pretty desperate.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: Doug Burgum lent himself 10 million. Vivek Ramaswamy lent himself 15.25
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: million since entering.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: It says he will spend a hundred million. It's the
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: first time I saw that number.
• 24:21
  Speaker 7: My God.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine? First of all, I didn't know he
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: was that rich. I didn't know who he was, really.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't know he was going to spend $ 100 million
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: on his race. He's going to be in here for
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: a while. I'm telling you, there's going to be a
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: state where Vikramaswamy finishes ahead of Ron DeSantis.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: You.
• 24:38
  Speaker 8: Just sort of put a picture of all these consultants
• 24:39
  Speaker 8: that are just sort of... just siphoning money off these
• 24:41
  Speaker 8: people and just like, attention in big pockets.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: What was the James Carville quote in 93? Uh, the
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Ross Perot's race was the single most expensive act of
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: masturbation in the history of the world.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: It's going to take that record. Vivek and Doug are
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: both going to be competing for that. Good luck, gents.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: The cash on hand numbers are sort of interesting. Uh,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Tim Scott, 21 million. DeSantis, 12.2 million. Haley, 6.8 million.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Tim Scott, because he transferred 22 million.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: Watch this space. Watch the Tim Scott space.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: It turns out transferring yourself a shitload of money before
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: you start is a great way to do it.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Trump, 17.7 million on hand, but raised more than $ 35 million.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Where's the rest? Legal bills, maybe?
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: That was interesting.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden's fundraising numbers look pretty great. Two of the
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: president's biggest political challenges have been enthusiasm in the economy.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: He got good news on both this week. Biden campaign
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: raised more than $ 72 million this quarter, which crushes Trump's
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: $ 35 million. And together with the DNC, they have more
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: than $ 77 million on hand. Nearly one third of all
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Biden donors are new since 2020. So that's interesting. There's
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: also been some pretty great economic news over the past
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: few weeks. Inflation has now dropped to its lowest level
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: since March of 2021. Wages have now risen faster than
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: inflation for the last four months in a row. Unemployment
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: remains at historic lows. And consumer confidence, we got a
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: report last week, it's now the highest it's been since
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: September of 2021. Economists are starting to change their recession predictions,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: with Goldman Sachs cutting the probability down to 20%. Let's
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: start with the fundraising numbers. New York Times ran two
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: stories about Biden's numbers. One headline called it a substantial haul.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Another talked about, quote, sluggish small donations. What's your take?
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: So I went and looked.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: The Biden campaign is saying they have 394,000 donors, about
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: a third of which are new. You go back and
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: look at Obama at around this time in spring, early
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: summer of 2011, he was at 480,000 donors.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: I like that comparison.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: I was like, in the grand scheme of things, would
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: you like Biden to be higher?
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: But you're going against someone who changed politics in part
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: by attracting a massive support of small donors. So I
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: was like, oh, that's That was hopeful to me.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Also, small dollar donations are down across the board for
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Republicans and Democrats. One reason, because the fucking email and
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: text regime are so annoying. And it's getting harder for
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: people to open emails, harder for people to respond. It's
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: down for everyone.
• 27:16
  Speaker 8: I will pitch out again to the ether my idea
• 27:18
  Speaker 8: for Democrat Plus, where you can sign up and then
• 27:21
  Speaker 8: you never get a message and you just pay a
• 27:22
  Speaker 8: monthly amount. I don't know how it's going to work,
• 27:24
  Speaker 8: but there are smarter people than me that can get
• 27:25
  Speaker 8: on it.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Type, type, type, code, code, code.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: You referred to them earlier as small donors. And I
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: really liked that. Like Danny DeVito is on our team.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: There's small donors we bring in this week.
• 27:35
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: And Carrie Strug. Also, it's hard to compare to Obama
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: in 2012 because the limits have changed. So you can
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: now donate more money thanks to an awful Supreme Court decision.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: There's no limit to how much you can donate to
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: parties and PACs.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right, right, right. So that makes all the
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: comparisons impossible. It's all apples. And it's also hard to
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: compare to Trump and the RNC in 2020. They raised
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: $ 105 million because Trump started in January fundraising and Biden
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: didn't start till April. So. It's pretty, it's just a good,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: it's a really good haul.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: I just want to say that I've completely lost the
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: thread on how much money you need to compete or win. Yeah.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: The numbers sound big to me. It is so much money.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: Like Clinton outspent Trump two to one and lost. Biden
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: raised over a billion dollars in 2020. Trump raised 774
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: million and Biden obviously won, but it was tight. Like
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: clearly Biden's gonna have a ton of money. Big donors
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: are not holding back. They're all supporting him. He's also
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: not trying to raise a lot of money. He's like
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: doing a ton of events right now.
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: So I think this hopefully- Uggar as well for the future,
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: the small dollar donor stuff. I'm sure they would like
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: more of those. But to your point that they're down everywhere.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think money is one of those things, especially
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: now where it's not going to guarantee a win by
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: any means. If you have the more money, as if
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: you have more money, as you pointed out with Hillary
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: and Trump. But if you don't have it, it could
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: be a real problem. So I think this is this
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: is enough. This is just like some breathing room for
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: the Biden campaign. I'm happy about this. It's not going
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: to like assure that they win, but it's good.
• 28:57
  Speaker 8: And also in 2016, one of the things that the
• 28:59
  Speaker 8: Hillary campaign would say, I think, correctly over and over
• 29:02
  Speaker 8: again is. In the end, a lot of the outside
• 29:04
  Speaker 8: money did get behind Trump to make up some of
• 29:06
  Speaker 8: the difference.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but the Democratic outside money was still bigger than
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: the Republican outside money. She's like just overspent him, outspent
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: him big time. The crazy thing to me was Biden
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: has only hired four staffers. Everyone else is chilling at
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: the DNC.
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: So they're frugal, which is great. I mean, this is
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: very Joe Biden.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: Be frugal, yes, but the point of a campaign is
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: to spend it to win. So ultimately, you're going to
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: spend every dollar of it.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: So I don't know. Doing that calculation is for smarter people.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Spawning out field organizers and ads than people at the DNC.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: Field organizing benefits from an early start. But I mean,
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: DNC's probably doing that.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: On the economy, should Biden and Democrats start telling a
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: more hopeful story about the progress we've made, or will
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: that piss people off who still might be struggling to
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: pay the bills? I know we have debated this many
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: times before, but it does seem like the underlying facts
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: have changed. Who's got a take?
• 29:59
  Speaker 8: You know, So James Suricki, there's been a couple of
• 30:03
  Speaker 8: pieces that basically say some version of the data is good,
• 30:06
  Speaker 8: the vibes are bad, right? And that is, you've just
• 30:09
  Speaker 8: sort of seen that as a trend.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: And one point that he made is that there's a
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: disconnect between what's happening in the economy and what people
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: are hearing in the news. In May, Michigan's Consumer Survey,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: roughly twice as many respondents said they'd heard stories about
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: unemployment as they'd heard stories about hiring. One under-discussed reason
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: for this is that the industries that play an essential
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: role in shaping public perception, finance, tech, and the media
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: have been going through a much tougher time than the
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: rest of the economy.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: So that's one piece of it. The other piece of
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: it is if you look at the.
• 30:31
  Speaker 8: Actual polling on approval of the economy, it's at 34%,
• 30:35
  Speaker 8: according to this AP poll that just came out. Overall,
• 30:38
  Speaker 8: that's 34%. It's down to 60% among Democrats, which is
• 30:41
  Speaker 8: pretty low. It's 10% among Republicans.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: There's a little bit of a partisan.
• 30:46
  Speaker 8: So consumer confidence, economic confidence, approval, all of that flows
• 30:50
  Speaker 8: with partisanship now, but it flows more for Republicans, right?
• 30:53
  Speaker 8: There's just a bigger headwind in polling around the economy
• 30:56
  Speaker 8: because Republicans know that it is a signal to say,
• 30:59
  Speaker 8: I don't think the economy is doing well. But all
• 31:02
  Speaker 8: of that isn't to say that independents aren't giving the
• 31:04
  Speaker 8: economy low approval rating. And there isn't just a really
• 31:06
  Speaker 8: sort of sour mood about the economy still, even as
• 31:11
  Speaker 8: inflation numbers are going down, unemployment numbers have stayed down.
• 31:13
  Speaker 8: There's just still this sort of residue of dissatisfaction. And
• 31:17
  Speaker 8: I do think that your options are to let that
• 31:20
  Speaker 8: scare you away from making an argument. But if you
• 31:24
  Speaker 8: don't do it, if you don't actually make the argument,
• 31:26
  Speaker 8: there's no one out there making the case. So he
• 31:28
  Speaker 8: has to make the case. I think, you know, we
• 31:30
  Speaker 8: grapple with this in the early days of the financial crisis.
• 31:34
  Speaker 8: You know, how much do you say you're making progress
• 31:36
  Speaker 8: versus recognize what people are going through?
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: I think it's a balance.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: I think Biden going and giving that speech about Bidenomics
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: is a signal that they understand that they have to
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: shift the balance toward not declaring victory, but declaring progress
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: and saying they're making headway and pointing out the good
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: numbers in the hopes that those good numbers start changing perceptions.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 31:52
  Speaker 7: I mean, like if.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: Economic data and feelings about the economy and now become
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: polarized by political party, like everything else, then you might
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: as well deliver a message that bucks up your side.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: I do think that message should be, here's how things
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: are getting better. Here's the rest of what I'm fighting for.
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: Here's what the other guys are going to do to
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: make it worse. Tax cuts for rich people, like the
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: underlying economic situation. Hopefully we're going to get a soft landing.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: That would be amazing.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: I think economists increasingly believe that Inflation was driven by pandemic,
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: the pandemic weirdness, and the Fed rate cuts have helped
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: along the margins to bring down some prices. You never
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: know if there could be a lag effect to these
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: Fed hikes or some unforeseen event like the SVB collapse
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: that we all thought was going to send the economy
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: into a tailspin for a while. But I do think,
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: to your point, Levitt, you have to make the case
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: or who's going to make the case.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think when we were talking about this before
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: the midterms, It was really tough to tell people inflation
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: was in their heads when inflation was really high, even
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: though unemployment was low. So you'd have a lot of
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: liberals online being like, what are you yelling?
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: It's all the media.
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Why are you talking about people who can't afford milk
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: when we have the lowest unemployment in years? But there's
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: a disconnect and they were really feeling inflation. Now we're
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: actually seeing a lot of improvement in inflation itself. And-
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: we're seeing consumer sentiment, like these surveys of consumer sentiment
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: are higher than at any time since September of 2021.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: At the time, before the midterms, consumer sentiment was quite low, right?
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: And so now, since the underlying facts have changed, I
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: totally agree that you do need to make a case.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: And it is worth trying to affect people's psychology about
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: the broader economy with a story about how Bidenomics is working.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: And notice I said is working, you know, and not
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: has worked, right? It's in progress. And I think as
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: you mentioned, Lovett, we dealt with this all through the
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: early years of the Obama administration. But by 2012, when
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: he was running for reelection, we tested that jobs chart,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the famous jobs chart that showed all the jobs that
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: were being lost when Obama came into office and then
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: all the jobs that were being created. And we tested
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: that with focus groups and it worked really well by 2012.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: And partly it's because it was just so stark looking
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: at that chart. And I think, you know, there's a,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: there's a chart that they have now with job growth
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: that they've been sending around. There's a chart that shows
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: that inflation started going down right after the Inflation Reduction
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Act passed. There's going to be a whole bunch of
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: fact-checkers on that, but that's the chart.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Follow behind me, fact-checkers.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: And we're doing better than other countries. Yeah, and I
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: think the other challenge is a lot of these indicators
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: have just changed in the last, shown real improvement in
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: the last month or so, and a lot of these
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: polls tend to be backward-looking by their nature, so I
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: do think it's still going to be polarized bipartisanship and
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: stuff like that and sentiment, but I think now is
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: the time to start making the case.
• 34:41
  Speaker 8: One, one, I think sign that there is like sort
• 34:44
  Speaker 8: of room to move is Biden's approval. If you just
• 34:47
  Speaker 8: say economy is lower than if you say jobs and economy,
• 34:51
  Speaker 8: which tells you that like, that's just talking about inflation and,
• 34:54
  Speaker 8: you know, that's.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: The inflation inflation is, is it always has been.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: I do think it, I mean, obviously it's going to
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: take more than one speech or a whole series of
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: Biden events. Like they might need some sort of paid
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: element or some big surrogate plan to get people out.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: I just, To reach the people who need to hear
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: this message is going to take a lot of work.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: That's always the problem. Surrogate plan is, and this is
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: like a very, everyone in campaigns when something goes wrong,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: they're like, where's our surrogates? But if it's just Joe
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Biden out there and the White House talking about Bidenomics,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: that's one thing. Like the entire Democratic apparatus, Democratic people
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: in Congress, groups, allies, media organizations, us, right? Like volunteers
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: knocking on doors. Like it's really got to be. the
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: whole party and all the party's allies out there talking
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: about talking up the economy because if it's just Joe Biden,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: it's not going to happen.
• 35:37
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I also do think a piece of this, which
• 35:39
  Speaker 8: is hard to measure in data, is this is also
• 35:43
  Speaker 8: a country that's coming out of two and a half years,
• 35:45
  Speaker 8: three years of a pandemic that either a lot of
• 35:48
  Speaker 8: people lost jobs, a lot of people were working from home,
• 35:50
  Speaker 8: a lot of people had to go to work despite
• 35:51
  Speaker 8: it being dangerous. A lot of people saw sort of
• 35:54
  Speaker 8: uncertainty and confusion and changes that are still kind of
• 35:56
  Speaker 8: playing out. There was no clean moment yet. where anyone
• 35:59
  Speaker 8: was able to say, all right, we're in the recovery,
• 36:01
  Speaker 8: we're post-pandemic. And a moment to sort of talk about
• 36:05
  Speaker 8: the progress that has been made since the pandemic on
• 36:07
  Speaker 8: the economy, like that signals a shift, I think could
• 36:10
  Speaker 8: just have a bigger impact.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: I agree, because the GOP gloom message, it goes well
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: beyond the economy. They're wrapping all of it into one thing.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: And you can tell too, I mean, all this aside,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: the reason they're not just fully celebrating is because there's
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: also potential problems on the horizon. They have to watch
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: out for gas prices. The Saudis could fuck with us
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: before the election. Student loan payments are going to start
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: happening again in September. The pause on student loans is
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: going to end. It could be a government shutdown in
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: the fall, seems likely. And then, of course, we don't
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: know what the Fed's going to do. There could be
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: another one more rate increase. Yeah, war, Russia.
• 36:44
  Speaker 8: And also, you know, now you sort of see some
• 36:46
  Speaker 8: signs that wages may be going up faster than inflation.
• 36:52
  Speaker 8: But that doesn't make up for the months and months
• 36:54
  Speaker 8: and months in which inflation was higher and wages, and
• 36:56
  Speaker 8: people still feel that. Maybe they'll start feeling it shifting
• 36:58
  Speaker 8: back in the other direction, but we're not, you know,
• 37:01
  Speaker 8: no one would go and say, oh, this problem is solved.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: We have made good progress. There is more to do.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: All right, before we get to my interview about no labels,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: there was unfortunately more news over the weekend about another
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: potential spoiler. At the famed polemic fart dinner we talked
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: about on Thursday, RFK Jr. floated a completely unhinged offensive
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theory that COVID was a genetically engineered bioweapon that
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: may have been ethnically targeted to spare Jewish people and
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Chinese people. You've got to hear it to believe it.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Here's a clip.
• 37:44
  Speaker 12: COVID-19, there's an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19
• 37:49
  Speaker 12: attacks certain races disproportionately. The races that are most immune
• 38:00
  Speaker 12: to COVID-19 are because of the structure, the genetic structure,
• 38:07
  Speaker 12: genetic differentials among different races of the receptors, of the
• 38:15
  Speaker 12: ACE2 receptor. COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Black people.
• 38:26
  Speaker 12: The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.
• 38:32
  Speaker 12: We don't know whether it was deliberately targeted or not,
• 38:36
  Speaker 12: but there are papers out there that show the racial
• 38:41
  Speaker 12: and ethnic differential and the impact to that. We do
• 38:45
  Speaker 12: know that the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of
• 38:47
  Speaker 12: dollars developing ethnic bio-weapons, and we are developing ethnic bio-weapons.
• 38:52
  Speaker 12: That's where all those labs in the Ukraine and are about.
• 38:55
  Speaker 12: They're collecting Russian DNA. They're collecting Chinese DNA so that
• 39:00
  Speaker 12: we can target people by race.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: First of all, where on earth did that conspiracy come from?
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: It's Russian disinformation. Literally.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: No, that's literally Russian disinformation about these labs in Ukraine
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: that they started putting out at the beginning of the war.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: Part of what the Russians were saying when they invaded
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: was they needed to save all of us from these
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: bio labs. Look, I think there's been a lot of
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: debate as to whether or not COVID emerged from a
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: wet market or a... some kind of government facility. These
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: are both red herrings. It was from Wuhan's only delicatessen.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: That is where the Jewish doctors, which is a lot
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: like saying ATM machine, as well as the Asian people
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: that conservatives claim had their spots at Harvard stolen. by
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: black people got together and cook this whole thing up.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: And I, for one, um, think that, uh, goyvid 19.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, there he is.
• 40:01
  Speaker 8: Um, um, is finally something that's being exposed. And do
• 40:06
  Speaker 8: I wish it was by someone who wasn't a crank
• 40:08
  Speaker 8: who sounds like the character in a movie who's, uh,
• 40:11
  Speaker 8: dying in a desert and telling someone where a treasure is?
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Uh, sure.
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: I do.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Did you come up with goyvid 19?
• 40:17
  Speaker 8: Uh, no, several people texted it to me during, during
• 40:19
  Speaker 8: our meeting when I was trying to come up with
• 40:21
  Speaker 8: what to call it. Um, uh, I was trying to
• 40:24
  Speaker 8: do something with Shiksa and I didn't land on anything.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: That's funny too.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I do like that. I like the Wu Han delicatessen. Cats.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, so then, you know, he, he, in response,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: he attacks the press. He said, oh, it's supposed to
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: be off the record. And then they've showed the clip
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: and they had the clip. Uh, he said that he
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: doesn't believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: deliberately engineered. It seems fairly obvious in the clip that
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: that's not really what happened at all. And then he
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: tweeted a link to a paper, the paper he shared,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: by the way, uh, which is like a study, a
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: health study. And it speculates that certain genetic mutations may
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: increase COVID severity, but that they are even if they
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: are maybe in some ethnic group, they are extremely rare
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: and have no bearing on public health or the broader
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: or have any broader conclusion that there are, forget about
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: deliberately targeted, that there are ethnic groups that because of
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: genetic mutations are more or less immune. It's just completely
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: of a process. As usual, if you like dig into
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: all of his sort of COVID vaccine conspiracies, what he
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: does is like he takes these studies, these scientific studies,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: And he, you know, intentionally or not, completely misreads them,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: jumps to conclusion, and then they get mixed in with
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: other complete fabricated conspiracies like the Russian disinformation that you mentioned.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: So it's like this stew of like there's a little
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: bit of piece of something in a study and then
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: it's mixed with something crazy and then he just says it.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Argy Jr.
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: Is the final boss of. doing his own research that's
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: what it is it's just you know i'm not i'm
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: not saying it go look up the studies and.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: It's and he tweets the study and everyone's like well
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: this looks like a legitimate study and all his fans like.
• 42:00
  Speaker 8: Oh and i and like he is a good like
• 42:03
  Speaker 8: it is good to he is a good example to
• 42:05
  Speaker 8: point to because he is the he is the most
• 42:09
  Speaker 8: crank like you know on the spectrum of flat earthers to,
• 42:13
  Speaker 8: I don't know, like kind of mainstream conservatives. He is
• 42:16
  Speaker 8: sort of closer now to the flat earther side. But
• 42:19
  Speaker 8: all of those people in this sort of misinformation swamp,
• 42:22
  Speaker 8: your Jordans Peterson, all those guys, like this is what
• 42:25
  Speaker 8: they do. They find the study. They say they have
• 42:28
  Speaker 8: facts and backing and all this information, but it's just
• 42:31
  Speaker 8: a sort of fusillade of lies.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: Well, even referencing the study, I think there was some
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: reference maybe to like Ashkenazi Jews or Sephardic Jews.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: There's a cohort. This receptor.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: A million people in China died from COVID. Clearly, this
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: wasn't genetically engineered to protect them.
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: So, like, it's just these nesting.
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: Dolls of bullshit on top of bullshit that weaves together
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: these conspiracy theories.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: It's impossible to fact check.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: It was like what Jake Tapper was telling us about
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: the piece that RFK Jr. wrote for Rolling Stone and
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: some other outlet.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Was it Slate? I can't remember.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: Cherry picks pieces of information, fabricates other parts, and then
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: uses language like, furin cleave docking site, but has no
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: real idea what he's talking about. But his fans want
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: to believe it because they're like, ah, yes, there is
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: some big bad other out there pulling the strings and
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: trying to control us. And when you believe that kind
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: of conspiracy theory, you are inevitably going to end up
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: blaming the Jewish people because that is what's happened for
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: thousands of years.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: If you followed any like really good doctors and researchers
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: during the pandemic on Twitter, these poor people spent most
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: of their time trying to correct idiots who would read
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: these studies and just misread them, either intentionally or not.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: And it's tough because these scientific studies are like, they're
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: a little dense. They're not very easy to understand all
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Well, they're not written for Twitter.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: They're not written for Twitter, right. And then what happens
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: is people on Twitter, idiots on Twitter, pick out some
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: small part of it out of context and they spread
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: it around to everyone. They get everyone scared and it
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: happens all over the place and he is the final
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: boss of it.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Well, it's funny though, because like, you know, John, you
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: and I especially.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: I know. I know.
• 44:09
  Speaker 8: Because you and I, we had the experience of feeling
• 44:13
  Speaker 8: as though the way research was being interpreted, even by
• 44:17
  Speaker 8: mainstream outlets, was also confusing and misleading and cherry picking.
• 44:21
  Speaker 8: And you and I would go back and forth with studies,
• 44:23
  Speaker 8: but not in the way that we would just read
• 44:25
  Speaker 8: them and be like, this is what someone else is saying.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: This is what this expert is saying.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: They'd be like, Tommy, don't get vaccinated. It's not worth it.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: And then we'd be like, we got to ask Andy
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Slavitt about this.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: We go right to Slavitt.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Let's get Dr. Wachter on the pod.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: We got to go to the source. We got to
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: get the raw data.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: Most scientific research papers are profoundly unsatisfying because they don't
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: come to definitive conclusions. You take 10,000 of them and
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: then you have a body of research that leads you
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: in one general direction that's mostly right.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: But it's funny.
• 44:50
  Speaker 8: It's like there was just a week of headlines, but
• 44:52
  Speaker 8: it is the kind of noisy information environment that also
• 44:56
  Speaker 8: helps these people take off. Because There was a week
• 44:58
  Speaker 8: of stories about Diet Coke causing cancer that everyone was
• 45:02
  Speaker 8: thrilled to tell me about because they know I love
• 45:03
  Speaker 8: Diet Coke because everyone has a Freudian death drive. And
• 45:05
  Speaker 8: they're like ruining something cool for me from my cold, refreshed,
• 45:09
  Speaker 8: dead hands.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? But you have to go in.
• 45:12
  Speaker 8: It's like, no, that is an overstatement of what the
• 45:13
  Speaker 8: study said. Actually, no, they're not saying this. It's actually
• 45:16
  Speaker 8: compared to that. And like that is that is the.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: It's only if you're vaccinated. And it's only if you're vaccinated. No,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: this is all us talking about, you know, trying to
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: debate things with rational people. Media Matters put together a
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: compilation of what actual anti-Semites and Nazis, how they responded
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: to RFK Jr. 's clip. Yeah, dark. One neo-Nazi said,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: based RFK Jr. says COVID was genetically engineered to spare Jews.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: A hilarious thing to say, and I totally support it.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Another Holocaust denier. RFK is 100% correct. A neo-Nazi site.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: I fully support any presidential candidate saying things like this
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: that make Jews upset. And on and on and on
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: and on. So had that effect. Which is just wonderful. Terrible.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: Wonderful that he's doing it.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: It's been a while since Camelot.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Well, then, you know, the Kennedys were out in full
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: force on Twitter denouncing him today. Kerry Kennedy, his sister,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Joe Kennedy. What a mess.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: What a Thanksgiving this will be. Yeah, it's also a
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: little late.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: What a mess.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the neo-Nazis quote you read, I'm not going to
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: name him. also said, I don't even really understand what
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: exactly this means, but clearly the implication. So this guy's like,
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: I don't know what this guy is talking about, but
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: I love it because it's anti-Semitic. That's how Nazis hear.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: What he's saying. Yeah, the perfect combination of just ignorance
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: and hate. Okay, two quick housekeeping notes. We got some
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: new merch in the Cricut store. If your patented Joe
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Biden five-inch inseam shorts don't have enough deep pockets for
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: all your stuff, check out our new on-the-go belt bag.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: It's a sleek black pouch with four different phrases on
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: the strap. You can choose from fruity, fuck bands, Let
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: Women Run Shit. I leave for a week and it's QVC.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: He's got a product out. And Phone Keys Hush Money.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: I like the one that says Phone Keys Hush Money.
• 46:53
  Speaker 8: That's the one I have. And I want you guys
• 46:54
  Speaker 8: to know something. This was placed on my desk with
• 46:56
  Speaker 8: a card. And I will tell you what the card says.
• 46:59
  Speaker 8: It says, John, QVC this bitch during housekeeping. So that's
• 47:06
  Speaker 8: what I'm doing. I was told to do it.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: That's what Ari brought into the office.
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: Cool.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: So I've done it. It's been QVC'd.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Head to cricket.com slash store to grab one today. Also,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: a reminder, you can listen to Pod Save America ad-free
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: by subscribing to Friends of the Pod. Subscribe now by
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: heading to crooked.com slash friends. You get Pod Save America ad-free.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: You know what else you can get? Access to the
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Discord channel. It's like a Slack channel. It's like a
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: friendly Twitter. And on Tuesday night for Trump's town hall
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: with Sean Hannity, we're going to be on the Discord channel.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Talking about what we see. How about that, Elijah? I
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: bet Elijah's pretty happy about that. How about that for
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: a plug? Crooked.com slash friends. You gotta sign up for it.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Gotta sign up.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: You gotta sign up for it.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back to talk to Rana Epting and
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Matt Bennett about the left-center-left alliance that's out to stop
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: no labels from electing Donald Trump. And we're back. A
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: few hours from now, Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican John
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Huntsman will headline a town hall in New Hampshire hosted
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: by No Labels, the third party group threatening to get
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: on the ballot in 2024. Joining us today are two
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: people who represent a broad coalition of left to center
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: left opposition to No Labels plans to potentially play the
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: role of spoiler in the next election. Ronna Epting of
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: MoveOn and Matt Bennett of Third Way. Ronna and Matt,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: welcome to the pod.
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: Thanks.
• 48:35
  Speaker 6: Thank you.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: So people listening today, know how I feel about no labels.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: But let's start here. We know that, you know, we've
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: got a closely divided electorate. There is a critical and
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: potentially decisive group of voters who identify as moderate, complain
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: about partisanship, prioritize unity, don't want a Biden-Trump rematch, and,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: you know, may like the idea of a younger moderate
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: Democrat and a younger moderate Republican running together. And maybe
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: they think that ticket can win. Or maybe they just
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: think it's it's worth a shot. Matt, as someone who
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: spent a long time at a moderate center-left Democratic organization,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: what do you tell those voters about a no-labels ticket?
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: I tell them that it is an incredibly bad idea
• 49:22
  Speaker 5: and they should stay away from it like it is
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: the plague. First of all, I don't have to tell
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: you or your listeners that this is probably, we say
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: it every cycle, but this is the most important election
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: of all time, particularly if Trump is the nominee, which
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: looks like he's going to be. And What we have
• 49:39
  Speaker 5: to understand about what No Labels is pitching here is
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: that they're not offering up a protest candidate. I mean,
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: Jill Stein wasn't telling the world she was going to
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: be the next president of the United States. Ralph Nader
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: wasn't saying that back in 2000. The last guy to
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: say that really was Ralph Perot in 1996, sort of,
• 49:58
  Speaker 5: but really in 1992. And he didn't come anywhere close.
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: He didn't win a single state. The problem with what
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: No Labels is offering is they say they're offering a
• 50:09
  Speaker 5: choice between these two guys that you may not love.
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: But what they're offering is an illusion, an illusion that
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: somehow their candidate is going to defy history, going to
• 50:18
  Speaker 5: do what no one has been able to do before.
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: There's a guy carved into Mount Rushmore who tried to
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: do this and he failed and they're going to win
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: the election. And if you buy that and you give
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: them your vote, you might help reelect Donald Trump and
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: that would be a catastrophe.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: So Nancy Jacobson, who's one of the No Labels co-founders,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: she wrote an op-ed for the New Hampshire union leader
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: where she argued Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans are working to
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: deny voters the chance to vote for a third party candidate,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: which is particularly ironic for Democrats who talk about defending
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: democracy and voters' rights. Rana, what's your response to that argument?
• 50:58
  Speaker 10: Yeah, No Labels, consistently is purporting out there that them
• 51:06
  Speaker 10: offering a third party presidential candidate is about giving people
• 51:10
  Speaker 10: choice or it's about saving democracy in some way. But
• 51:14
  Speaker 10: in fact, it's not. It's exactly the opposite. It's as
• 51:18
  Speaker 10: if Matt says it will definitely swing the election towards
• 51:22
  Speaker 10: a Republican, which is most likely Trump in this case.
• 51:24
  Speaker 10: And if it's not, it'll be some other nominee that
• 51:27
  Speaker 10: will be beholden to a very extreme MAGA base here.
• 51:31
  Speaker 10: And if they are so interested in protecting and safeguarding
• 51:35
  Speaker 10: American democracy, then this is not the strategy one would
• 51:39
  Speaker 10: choose to do that. If you're so interested in doing that,
• 51:42
  Speaker 10: you would work to make President Biden and influence President
• 51:46
  Speaker 10: Biden and his agenda to be a pro-democracy agenda, which
• 51:50
  Speaker 10: is exactly what many of us across the Democratic coalition
• 51:53
  Speaker 10: have been doing the last couple of years. And it's
• 51:56
  Speaker 10: been effective. You've seen him govern in a very bipartisan fashion,
• 52:00
  Speaker 10: in a very moderate fashion. and use the leverage and
• 52:05
  Speaker 10: the power of his office to ensure that government delivers
• 52:08
  Speaker 10: for people. So I just don't buy it. And I
• 52:11
  Speaker 10: think the most generous interpretation of no-label strategy is that
• 52:15
  Speaker 10: they're ill-advised. But the other version is they're not telling
• 52:21
  Speaker 10: the truth. I'm not quite sure why they're actually running
• 52:25
  Speaker 10: this campaign because every strategic reason they're putting out there
• 52:30
  Speaker 10: doesn't pass muster.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: Well, let's dig into the polling a little bit. You know,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Nancy also argues, you know, the polling that shows them
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: spoiling the race for Trump, spoiling the race in favor
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: of Trump, actually just shows that they have a solid
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: floor in the polling and that they will grow from there.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: So their argument is we're not a spoiler. We can
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: win this thing. We don't even have candidates yet. Once
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: we get candidates, there's enough voters who'd be interested that
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: we could actually win this thing. Matt, what is... What
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: does your polling say about that? And what's the general
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: argument that makes you guys believe that that is dead wrong?
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: Well, every poll that we've seen on this, including the
• 53:10
  Speaker 5: no labels poll, shows the exact same thing. Either Biden
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: is narrowly ahead in a two way race with Trump
• 53:18
  Speaker 5: or it's basically tied within the margin of error. That's
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: what their poll showed. That's what the prime group poll
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: that came out last week showed. That's what all the
• 53:25
  Speaker 5: public polling shows. And then their poll shows that when
• 53:29
  Speaker 5: you add a third party candidate, in their case, it
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: was an unnamed independent moderate. So kind of a pony
• 53:37
  Speaker 5: or a unicorn or whatever you want to make of that.
• 53:40
  Speaker 5: That candidate ends up in a distant third place with
• 53:44
  Speaker 5: about 20% of the vote. That's what the prime group found.
• 53:47
  Speaker 5: That's what the public polling finds. And that is going
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: to be the high watermark because, of course, if you
• 53:53
  Speaker 5: tell someone, would you like to vote for someone unnamed
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: who is an independent moderate? That sounds a lot better
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: than here's a person with lots of flaws who've done
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: lots of things in their career that you don't like.
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: And maybe you like Bernie and maybe you like Joe Manchin.
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: And you have this fantasy in your head of what
• 54:09
  Speaker 5: that person may be like. So the support is at
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: a high point. When you don't name the candidate, it
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: goes down from there. No label says the opposite. They
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: say it goes up from there. And here's how they
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: do it. In their poll, they come in a distant third,
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: but they say, okay, but there's 18% of the voters undecided,
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: and we're going to win 70% of the undecideds. That's
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: what they say, which is insane. That has never happened.
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: And then they say, We're also going to win 4%
• 54:39
  Speaker 5: to 5% of the Trump voters and 4% to 5%
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: of the Biden voters. That is to say people who
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: pick Trump or Biden in a three-way race a year
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: and a half before the election. So all of that
• 54:50
  Speaker 5: is bananas. Not a single pollster worth their salt would
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: ever suggest that that is possible. And that is the
• 54:59
  Speaker 5: basis for their entire case.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: It also seems like even if they won every single
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: swing state that's competitive... in order for a third party
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: ticket to win the presidency, they would need to win
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: either deep blue states or deep red states, which is
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: pretty impossible considering that partisans tend to vote for their party.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: And if you have a state where the majority of
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: the electorate favors Democrats or favors Republicans, it's very hard
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: to win a state like that, right?
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: I'll just have one more comment on this and turn
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: to Ron. But if you haven't seen it, I beg
• 55:39
  Speaker 5: you to look at the map that they put out,
• 55:42
  Speaker 5: the electoral college map. Everybody can create their own maps now.
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: They put one out. They put their states in gold.
• 55:48
  Speaker 5: And to your point, the problem for them is if
• 55:51
  Speaker 5: they win all the swing states and they win all
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: the states decided by 10 points or less in 2020,
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: that gets them to 187 electoral votes, which means they're way,
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: way short of 270. And Even though that in and
• 56:04
  Speaker 5: of itself is a fantasy, then they get into real
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: wish casting, like they're going to win Delaware, Joe Biden's state.
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: They're going to win Hawaii and Rhode Island and Illinois,
• 56:15
  Speaker 5: states that Joe Biden won by 30 points or more.
• 56:17
  Speaker 5: They're going to win Alaska that Trump won by 20
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: points or more. So it is, if you know anything
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: about politics, their map is laughable on its face. No
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: independent analyst will even dignify it with a response because
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: it's so crazy.
• 56:30
  Speaker 10: To Matt's point, he's basically something that I've been astonished
• 56:35
  Speaker 10: by is just imagine bringing this strategic proposal into any
• 56:40
  Speaker 10: election room in the country, you'd be laughed out in
• 56:44
  Speaker 10: a second. And so I'm trying to imagine why is
• 56:46
  Speaker 10: this being taken so seriously? And I think the only
• 56:49
  Speaker 10: reason is because they have tens of millions of dollars
• 56:51
  Speaker 10: behind them. but I think it is an ill-advised effort.
• 56:54
  Speaker 10: It is not strategic. Yes, we want more choice in
• 56:57
  Speaker 10: this country. Yes, we want democracy to thrive in this country.
• 57:01
  Speaker 10: This is not the strategic way to do it. And
• 57:03
  Speaker 10: the only reason this is actually a threat is because
• 57:05
  Speaker 10: there's some donors in a room that they've convinced this
• 57:08
  Speaker 10: is a smart strategy, or there are donors in a
• 57:12
  Speaker 10: room that actually want to sway the election to Donald Trump.
• 57:15
  Speaker 10: Either way, this is a mess and we have to
• 57:17
  Speaker 10: stop it.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: Ronna, um, No labels put out a policy platform over
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: the weekend. And of course, they've got this town hall
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: with Huntsman and Manchin. Do you all plan on making
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: an argument that no labels policies, their platform and their
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: potential candidates would be bad for the country? Or are
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: you mainly focused on the argument that no labels can't win?
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: And I ask that because for voters, just telling people, oh,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: if you if you vote for these candidates who maybe
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: you're interested in or want to give a shot, We
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: have polling. We're experts. We have polling that says that
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: they're not going to win and that we're just going
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: to throw the election to Trump. Or do you tell them,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: by the way, this is what no label stands for.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: This is the positions they've taken. And by the way,
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: these are the candidates they've chosen. How do you think
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: about that?
• 58:05
  Speaker 10: I think it's both. So first of all, on their agenda,
• 58:08
  Speaker 10: number one is that they just made it up. They
• 58:10
  Speaker 10: went in a room in D.C. and they created this
• 58:13
  Speaker 10: policy agenda. It's not tied to actual real people on
• 58:17
  Speaker 10: the ground. They don't have a membership base. They don't
• 58:19
  Speaker 10: have really any genuine connections to voters in this country beyond,
• 58:23
  Speaker 10: you know, polls developed by consultants. So this is a
• 58:28
  Speaker 10: fictitious agenda they've created. And once they actually, if they
• 58:32
  Speaker 10: get to the point where they actually name candidates, those candidates,
• 58:35
  Speaker 10: as they have said themselves, will develop their own agenda.
• 58:38
  Speaker 10: Number two, If you want a bipartisan agenda that most
• 58:42
  Speaker 10: Americans can agree on, look at President Biden's agenda. I mean,
• 58:48
  Speaker 10: he has passed dozens of bipartisan bills across the policy
• 58:53
  Speaker 10: spectrum from gun violence prevention reform to the CHIPS Act,
• 58:58
  Speaker 10: to the PACT Act, to the bipartisan infrastructure bill. And
• 59:01
  Speaker 10: he's leveraged the power of his office through reconciliation to
• 59:05
  Speaker 10: provide some of the most sweeping green jobs and climate
• 59:09
  Speaker 10: friendly legislation. that this country will ever see that will
• 59:13
  Speaker 10: really reconstruct the economic and build the economic infrastructure across
• 59:16
  Speaker 10: this country in communities that have been under-resourced for decades.
• 59:20
  Speaker 10: So I don't know what policy agenda they're going to
• 59:24
  Speaker 10: be creating, but the one they presented today It's not
• 59:28
  Speaker 10: based in reality. It's not based in the current Congress
• 59:31
  Speaker 10: that this president has and what's viable. It's not based
• 59:34
  Speaker 10: on the number of votes that they can get in
• 59:36
  Speaker 10: the House or the Senate. It's just based on a
• 59:38
  Speaker 10: wish list that right now I think just really has
• 59:41
  Speaker 10: no bearing or no relevance to the discussion.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: It also completely skips taking a position on abortion, which
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: was one of the most important issues for voters in
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: the midterms. Ronna, what do you make of that?
• 59:55
  Speaker 10: Well, look, abortion is one of the most, if not
• 59:59
  Speaker 10: the most, mobilizing factors in the 2022 election. It will
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 10: be one of the most mobilizing factors in the 2024 election.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 10: And I think at the end of the day, we
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 10: live in a two-party system. There will be two major
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 10: parties contesting for power in the presidential election, and Joe
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 10: Biden has made his position clear that he believes it
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 10: should be the right of women and people that can
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 10: get pregnant to decide what happens to their own bodies.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 10: And that's the position that most Americans approve of.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Have either of your organizations done polling on the most
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: effective argument to voters against no labels and what they're
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: trying to do?
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: We haven't done that because, to tell you the truth,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 5: this isn't a conversation happening with the broad electorate. It
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 5: is among people interested enough in politics to listen to
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: this podcast or watch MSNBC to some extent, but mostly
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: this is happening among the donor class and the people
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: around no labels who might end up on their ticket.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 5: So we haven't done anything around that, but I will say,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 5: first of all, I very much agree with everything Rana
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 5: just said. But the other thing to your question about
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: that voter out there who says, eh, don't tell me
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: about the polls. I'm going to decide based on what
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 5: I feel. I think it's just vitally important that we
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: make one distinction. If you hate Joe Biden and Donald
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: Trump so much that you cannot bring yourself to vote
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 5: for either of them, okay, recognize what you're doing. You're
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: issuing a protest vote. You're voting for somebody who isn't
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 5: going to be president, but you just can't stomach the
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: two guys from the major parties. And that's a perfectly
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 5: legitimate thing to do if that is where your politics
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 5: take you. However, If you're voting for somebody because you
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 5: love this agenda they put out, not only is it fake,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: as Rana just pointed out, it isn't going to be
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 5: the agenda of the president because there is zero chance
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: that person will be present. So we just have to
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: make sure voters understand what they're doing.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: So no labels keeps claiming that they don't want to
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: be a spoiler. They don't want Trump elected and that
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: they will drop their plans if it looks like they'll
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: hand the race to Trump. Matt, do you have any
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: idea what their criteria is for making that decision? And
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: when would they decide that?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 5: So they have articulated about nine different criteria, many of
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: them conflicting. What they have said is, if Joe Biden
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 5: is way, way out ahead, we will not run a candidate. Now,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: no one's been way, way out ahead in a presidential
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: race since 1988. So that isn't going to happen. Second
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 5: thing they've said is, well, if Ron DeSantis is the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: nominee of the Republican Party, we won't run. Well, that's clarifying.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: Then they seem to really like Ron DeSantis and Republicans. Third,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: they've said, if it doesn't look like it's happening in
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: August of 2024, we won't run. That's impossible because they
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 5: won't control the candidate at that point. And in fact,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 5: early voting starts in September. So their candidate's name is
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: going to be on those ballots, whether they want it
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 5: or not. But the big one they've said is they're
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 5: going to do a big poll in March of next
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: year after Super Tuesday in the Republican primaries. And that
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: poll will determine whether they go forward or not. Now,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 5: we don't know why they would do that because spring
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: polling is notoriously bad. Spring polling showed Barack Obama losing
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 5: in 2012. Spring polling has showed all kinds of results
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 5: that did not happen. And it is especially bad with
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 5: third-party candidates. Ross Perot was leading the race in the
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: spring before the 1992 election. He ended up winning zero states. So,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: We don't understand any of those criteria.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: Rana, you were mentioning this earlier, but how much do
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: we know about the people behind No Labels and the
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: people funding that organization? And are those answers part of
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: the argument you're making to donors, political strategists, and other
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: political nerds?
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 10: Well, first of all, I'll say we don't know enough.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 10: But what we have found out is not that promising.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 10: It's very concerning. We know that the very notorious Harlan Crowe,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 10: the right-wing donor to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 10: given to no labels. We know that donors associated with
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 10: Jared Kushner and Ron DeSantis have given to no labels.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 10: And We know that there are a number of folks
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 10: that were on the more Democratic side that were associated
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 10: with no labels that are now dropping off either publicly
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 10: or quietly. So they may not be donors, but we
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 10: know members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, this caucus of
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 10: Democrats and Republicans that want to come together to do
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 10: bipartisan work over the last two years. Many of the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 10: folks associated with Problem Solvers Caucus have come out and saying,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 10: we denounce this effort at a third party presidential ticket.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 10: This is not what we're talking about. We're talking about
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 10: creating a bipartisan governance structure. So I think all signs
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 10: point to. this effort is much far, much more leaning
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 10: in the Republican direction. But we are digging in to
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 10: see who is behind it. And that is really important.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 10: And if anything, all that we're finding time and time again,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 10: it's just raising more eyebrows.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: And Ronna, I mean, they also endorsed Trump in 2016,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: I believe, right? No labels did?
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 10: I'm not sure, Matt. Is that true?
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 5: Well, it depends on what you mean by endorsed. But yeah,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 5: sort of. They held an event in New Hampshire in
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 5: 2016 where they gave him, I'm not making this up,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 5: the problem solver seal of approval.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: That's what it was.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 7: I remember that.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: Beyond parody.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, well, that raises a question. And Ronna, you
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: sort of got to this earlier too. Do you think
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: these people believe what they're selling or are they actually
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: malign actors? Okay.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 10: So I like to.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 10: Give people the benefit of the doubt. That's generally my
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 10: orientation in life. But when you look at their polling,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 10: you look at their strategy, you look at the facts
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 10: at hand, there is no way you could deduce that
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 10: their intention is truly what they're saying it is, which
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 10: is to advance democracy and give voters a choice. It
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 10: doesn't add up. It makes no sense. And so it
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 10: just leads me to believe there is an ulterior motive
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 10: here that we don't know. And all we can surmise
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 10: is that they actually are OK with swinging the election
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 10: towards Donald Trump. So it sounds like to me they'd
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 10: rather have their third party candidate and they're just hoping
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 10: they win through a wish and a prayer because the
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 10: strategy isn't there. And if they don't, they're fine with
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 10: Donald Trump being president. That's not what most folks think.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 10: are signing up for. And that's not what they wanted
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 10: in 2020. It's not what most voters wanted in 2022.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 10: And it sure as heck won't be what they want
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 10: in 2024.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: Matt, I want to talk a little bit about what
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: both your organizations are trying to do here, because I
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: take your point that it's too early in the process
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: to be delivering a message to voters since, you know,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: they're not on the ballot yet everywhere. Are you guys
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: trying to shame no labels? Are you trying to get
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: prominent political leaders to speak out against no labels? Are
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: there any big names who haven't yet, who you'd like
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: to take a stand? What's sort of the goal of
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: this effort?
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 5: What we really need to do ultimately is ensure that
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 5: credible candidates don't agree to run on their ballot line,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 5: because we're not going to be able to separate them
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 5: from their money. They're very, very good at raising money,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 5: and they already raised a whole bunch of it. And
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 5: it's a free country. If you have enough money, You
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: can buy your way onto ballots because you can hire
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 5: people to gather petitions and do it the right way,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: and they're going to be on the ballot. The only
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 5: thing we can do is try to convince the people
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 5: like Joe Manchin and Larry Hogan and others who are
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: toying with us, try to convince them that this would
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: be a terrible way to end a very successful political career.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 5: You don't want to go, Joe Manchin, just remember what
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 5: Joe Manchin has done. He won statewide twice in a
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 5: state that voted for Trump by 39 points two times.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 5: So they went Trump by 39, Manchin, Trump by 39.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 5: That's pretty amazing. What he doesn't want to do is
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 5: end up as a Jill Stein level loser getting 3%
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 5: of the vote. And that's what we really need to
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 5: convince him and everybody else who's thinking about this. Even
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 5: if they don't care, as Rana says, if they're not
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: motivated by the fact that reelecting Donald Trump would be
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: a catastrophe. Maybe they're motivated by the fact that they
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 5: will go down in history as a loser.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I know Joe Manchin's a huge fan of this podcast,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: so I hope he's listening to this episode. Rana, is
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: there anything that people listening can do to help?
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, I'm going to make a shameless plug,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 10: but you can go to moveon.org slash no labels and
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 10: sign up there. We are doing early work around educating
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 10: millions of move-on across the country around what no labels
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 10: is trying to do. Because I do think it's a story,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 10: if you're not paying attention, that you could buy.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 5: I mean.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 10: You could buy this as a legitimate third party candidate. Finally, finally,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 10: we've got a third party candidate that really can win.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 10: But what we're telling, we're showing the data to our members.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 10: We're showing basically everything Matt went through in terms of
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 10: their strategy. It doesn't add up. So that's super important.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 10: And we'll also be calling on members of Congress and U.S.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 10: senators to denounce this effort and doing much, much more.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 10: So folks can sign up with moveon.org slash no labels.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 10: And that's where folks across the country can take action
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 10: to stop them in their tracks.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: Matt, No Labels is currently on the ballot in Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Utah,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: and I think the scariest state because it's the closest, Arizona.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: Where else are they getting close to getting on the
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: ballot or, in your opinion, likely to get on the ballot?
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 5: We don't know exactly. All we know is anecdotally where
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 5: someone is intercepted by a ballot signature gatherer. But I
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 5: can tell you that we know they're actively gathering in
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 5: Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, obviously in the swing states.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 5: We know from looking at their map where they feel
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 5: like they have to win. I don't think they're going
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 5: to try to get on the ballot in small, super
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 5: red states like Idaho because they won't win there. And
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: it's whatever, three electoral votes. But they're going to be
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 5: actively trying to get on pretty much everywhere under the law.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 5: And remember, the laws vary by state. But under state laws,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 5: they can do this ahead of having a nominee vote.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 5: in 35 states. There are 15 others where they have
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 5: to have nominated someone to kind of be a political
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 5: party first. But the other thing I think to remember
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 5: about what No Labels is doing is they're doing this
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 5: as a 501c4 organization. And that means that they do
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 5: not have to disclose their donors. As Rana said, their
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 5: donors are secret. The donors can give in unlimited amounts.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 5: And they're competing against the Democratic and Republican parties who
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 5: have to disclose their donors. And their donors can only
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 5: give up to $ 2, 900. So they are gaming the system
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 5: And they're doing it very effectively. So I think they're
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 5: going to be on in a lot of places.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: Last question for you. You know, you work for an
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: organization that, you know, has for a long time tried
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: to chart a middle path between progressives and conservatives. Has
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: it been hard to turn around and make an argument like,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: don't trust these people when the ideological thrust of what
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: they're trying to do is roughly in line with what
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: you guys have tried to do for so long?
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, our middle path really isn't between the
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 5: left and conservatives. It's just kind of a center-left approach.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 5: And since the right has lost its bloody mind, then
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 5: they haven't been really relevant to us in a long time.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 5: But yes, the answer is yes. One of the people
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 5: that Rahana was hinting at who has left no labels
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 5: is a guy named Bill Galston. He's one of the
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 5: kind of intellectual forefathers of the center-left movement. He worked
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 5: very closely with President Clinton. And The people who run
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 5: no labels were our allies and our friends, and it's
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 5: been very difficult for us to take this public fight
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 5: with them. But we think that there's nothing more important,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 5: and we are proud to be allied with people all
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 5: across the spectrum who are standing up in opposition to this.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: And Rana, last question to you. And I know you're
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: familiar with this probably because of MoveOn and the constituency
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: that you all represent. How concerned are you about the
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: Cornel West third party candidacy as a potential Green Party candidate?
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 10: You know, we love Cornel. We've worked with him for years.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 10: I think he's a wonderful person, good intentions. Cornel doesn't
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 10: have 70 million plus dollars behind him. Cornel knows how
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 10: presidential politics works. At the end of the day, he's
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 10: going to do the right thing. And really, we're really
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 10: focused on no labels third party candidate because he's These
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 10: guys are serious. They're driving a very dangerous strategy for
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 10: this country. They're doing a lot of damage, even though
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 10: they're not on the ticket yet or on a ballot yet.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 10: And that's where we're focused.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: Rana, Matt, thank you so much for joining Pod Save
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: America and for the work you're doing trying to avoid
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: this catastrophe. So appreciate it.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 10: Thank you for having us.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, quick thing before we go. The most anticipated movie
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: of the summer that's not about a nuclear bomb is
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: out this week. Barbie. And since everything is politics all
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: the time, the trailer has already caused quite a stir.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: In it, a map of Barbie World showed a nine-dotted
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: line coming off of China.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 8: It's eight dots in the screen. It's eight dots. The
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 8: non-dotted line is what they claimed it is.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: You were supposed to put together this segment. show the
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: map this is your responsibility correct me leave all.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: Of this in i want to see the map anyway
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: this go ahead let's see the map and then i
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: counted eight two but it was hard to tell if
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: it was just from far away yeah we don't know.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: So this map has prompted um republicans from ted cruz
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: to marshal blackburn to accuse the movie of cozying up
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: with the communist party of china so so.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 8: I saw the reports about the conservatives claiming that this
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 8: was a communist map before I saw the map. And
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 8: they basically say that Warner Brothers has included the nine
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 8: dotted line.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: Tommy, can you explain what this is? The nine dash line.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: Nine dash line.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: It is how China draws a map in the South
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: China Sea where they claim to own about.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: All of the territory, essentially.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: Like a thousand miles off of their coast, they draw
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: this dotted line to claim all this territory. And everyone
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: else in the world, especially the Vietnamese, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: and Brunei, say, no, that's not the case. This line
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: takes our territory and gives it to China and violates
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: our sovereignty.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 8: It looks like, remember when Trump drew the hurricane line
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 8: further away? It actually, it looked, it just sort of
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 8: like dips all the way down. So anyway, the conservatives
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 8: claim that they've put the nine dash line on this
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 8: map because there's a dotted line that leaves a cartoon
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 8: map of Asia on the screen that But I really
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 8: think it is drawn in such a way as to
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 8: truly make it unclear if they were trying to do
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 8: it or not.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a couple other dotted lines on the map
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: as well. Is Greenland complaining about the one that's going
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: to Canada? I mean, that's the response. Or the one
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: that seems to be going from, I don't know, Columbia to,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: is that Florida?
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: There's also no Europe on this one. What are we doing?
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: What is happening?
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: Well, it's not just Republicans that were mad. The Vietnamese
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: said they were investigating the issue. They're kind of trying
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: to punch back.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: Are they banning the movie in Vietnam?
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: They're going to blur it.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: They talked about banning it. They're going to blur it,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: I think. Yeah. But like, this has happened before.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: In 2019, there was an ESPN broadcast that showed a
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: map of China that included the nine dash line.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: And people were like, why is this happening?
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: And obviously Disney has a lot of movies they want
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: to have aired in China. So there's all this kowtowing
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: to the Chinese Communist Party, even by US media organizations
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: that want access.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: So that would be the motivation for actually doing this.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: Including it.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 7: Oh yeah.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 8: Well, there's also, I mean, like there was a, there
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 8: was a kerfuffle over the new Top Gun movie because
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 8: they changed the back of Tom Cruise's jacket. I saw
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 8: Mission Impossible and 10 out of 10, my thetans loved
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 8: every moment of it, but there's a moment where they
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 8: refer to this villain that's attacking countries all over the
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 8: world and they refer to Australoasia instead of actually referring
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 8: to China, I believe.
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: It's a little strange.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: I've never heard of it.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, my favorite example of this is from 2021
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: when John Cena recorded an apology to the Chinese people
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: because he referred to Taiwan as a country. The quote was,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: Taiwan is the first country to watch Fast and Furious 9.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: That led to him having to record this hostage video
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: that I think he did in Mandarin, maybe.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, no, he did. And it was very uncomfortable.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: Let me read you guys a quote from it.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 3: I must say right now, it's very, very, very, very, very,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: very important, Sina said. I love and respect China and
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: Chinese people. I'm very, very sorry for my mistake.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: So there's some real groveling when you screw up and
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: maybe get locked out of the Chinese market.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 8: I will say this is a very funny map to
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 8: be upset about, though.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's, it's, you guys going to see Barbie?
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: Uh, I, I have my Oppenheimer tickets. I don't yet
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: have my Barbie tickets.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: You know, my, my last shot to really see a
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: movie in the theater when Emily and Charlie were away
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: was this weekend. And I, I really hoped it was
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: the weekend. I just missed it by a week.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: You should go see Mission Impossible.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: Uh, I almost, I almost, I almost did, but I
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: didn't want to support that Scientologist.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 8: Um, I'm going to see Oppenheimer in, I had to
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 8: go to one of the theaters that had the 11
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 8: mile IMAX, um, It's 70 millimeters IMAX. And the movie
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 8: is so long that the actual film is 11 miles
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 8: long at the Chinese theater. They had to like build
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 8: a bigger projector area.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: To, to show it.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 8: And I just, I just think it's amazing that Christopher
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 8: Nolan has somehow managed to, I'm ignoring it. I just
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 8: somehow managed to convince a studio to give him like
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 8: a hundred million dollars to make a three hour biopic. Also,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 8: it's really funny. It's about the, obviously the creation of
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 8: the nuclear bomb. They don't, um, He said all the
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 8: effects are practical. And it's like, I'm sorry, did you
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 8: go to North Korea? He's like, it's all practical effects.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 8: Did you do a nuke test?
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: Is that a term for not digitally?
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they didn't add.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: I think they blew up some stuff, but it's actual explosions.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: I don't yet believe Christopher Nolan has achieved a nuclear bomb.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: I do not think his nuclear program.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: Has gone far enough.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: I look forward to his apology. if he did. He's very, very, very, very,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: very sorry. Very, very sorry. Okay, well. I'll see Barbie.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: It seems fun. I'm probably going to wait until it's
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: at home, though. It does seem fun. I'm in. Whenever
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: I can. All right. Thanks to Ronna Epting and Matt
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: Bennett for joining us today. We will be on Discord
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: Tuesday night for the Trump Town Hall and we'll talk
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: to you again on Thursday. Pod Save America is a
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: producers are Andy Gardner Bernstein and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Jordan Cantor is our sound
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: engineer with audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Madeline Herringer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Mia Kelman, Ben Hefko, and David Toles.
• 1:19:38
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• 1:19:45
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