Transcript

Let Veeping Dogs Die · Politix

0:00
SPEAKER_01: If I went to them as a reporter and I was like,
0:03
SPEAKER_01: if Donald Trump seeks a third term in office while you're his vice president,
0:07
SPEAKER_01: will you support him?
0:08
SPEAKER_01: And if they say, yes, I will, because of the Russia scam, they stole his first term from him.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't count.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: That person would almost definitely end up Donald Trump's VP.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: Hey, everyone.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: You're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: With the news in a bit of a holding pattern this week,
0:30
SPEAKER_01: we're going to look ahead a bit to the question of whether and when Donald Trump
0:34
SPEAKER_01: and Joe Biden will or should debate,
0:38
SPEAKER_01: and also to who Donald Trump will select as a running mate.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: And we're also going to have a civil war, maybe.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about that.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoy the conversation.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: And if you want to hear the whole thing, you can upgrade your subscription to paid at politics.fm.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, welcome to the Politics Podcast.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm Brian Boitler.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: And I'm Matthew Iglesias.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: This week...
1:04
SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden told Howard Stern last week that he does expect to debate Donald Trump at
1:09
SPEAKER_01: some point before the election.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: So is this a good idea?
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Should he accept Trump's anytime, anyplace challenge?
1:18
SPEAKER_01: Then Trump's potential running mates all seem incredibly flawed.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: And some,
1:22
SPEAKER_01: like dog murderer Kristi Noem,
1:25
SPEAKER_01: seem to be actively anti-courting Donald Trump,
1:28
SPEAKER_01: like they want him to choose someone else.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: He did try to have his last vice president murdered.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there is a big disincentive to being Donald Trump's running mate, it turns out.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: So we'll look at the veep stakes through the lens of what Trump's actual goals are.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: Is it picking an heir or picking an accomplice?
1:49
SPEAKER_01: And then finally,
1:50
SPEAKER_01: we'll assess whether this mess we're in with,
1:54
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:54
SPEAKER_01: vice presidents who might get killed and Donald Trump kind of really loving
1:58
SPEAKER_01: political violence,
1:59
SPEAKER_01: whether this all kind of ends with yet more January 6s or worse,
2:04
SPEAKER_01: and whether,
2:06
SPEAKER_01: you know,
2:06
SPEAKER_01: a political violence-drenched Trump future would look like the scenes from the
2:11
SPEAKER_01: newish movie Civil War.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: So first, though, Matt, debate.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: Yay or nay?
2:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I am pro.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm pro debating.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: One thing in particular that I think Trump has done well is he has positioned
2:27
SPEAKER_00: himself as the guy who wants to debate.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Right?
2:31
SPEAKER_00: Like, he was out there.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: He was, like, anytime, anywhere.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: But I'm,
2:34
SPEAKER_00: like,
2:34
SPEAKER_00: quite sure that if Joe Biden said tomorrow,
2:39
SPEAKER_00: like,
2:39
SPEAKER_00: yes,
2:39
SPEAKER_00: Chris Hayes should moderate a debate next afternoon.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: Like, Trump wouldn't actually say that, right?
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: He is bluffing, for sure.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: So, whatever, right?
2:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, there's going to have to be a negotiation for there to be a debate.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, two things.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: Like, one is, like, Biden is down in the polls, right?
2:59
SPEAKER_00: Right.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: And I do think that debate wise,
3:02
SPEAKER_00: he is acting a little bit the way you expect an incumbent president with a lead to act.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Right.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: Which is like if you look at the history of presidential debates,
3:14
SPEAKER_00: they were on and off for a long time because typically the candidate who was up
3:18
SPEAKER_00: like wouldn't want to debate.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: And then we eventually established this kind of strong norm that you have to do debates.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: So like George H.W.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Bush debated Michael Dukakis, even though that was 100% downside for him.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: In those circumstances,
3:31
SPEAKER_00: similarly,
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Bill Clinton debated Bob Dole,
3:33
SPEAKER_00: but it was just like,
3:35
SPEAKER_00: that was just like a freebie for the Dole campaign,
3:37
SPEAKER_00: right?
3:37
SPEAKER_00: Clinton was crushing him and he was president, could have blown it off, but he did it.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: Norms are slipping for many reasons that we know,
3:44
SPEAKER_00: some of which have to do with Donald Trump,
3:46
SPEAKER_00: some of which have to do with the structure of the media.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: Biden could certainly get away with not debating Trump, you know, if he wants to.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: He could give all different kinds of reasons.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: But the fact is,
3:56
SPEAKER_00: is that even the most optimistic look that I get in the polls,
4:01
SPEAKER_00: you know,
4:01
SPEAKER_00: Biden is at best tied nationally and down slightly in the key swing states.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: There's more pessimistic polling than that out for him.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: And he specifically faces this, I think, very overblown kind of age narrative.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: And,
4:20
SPEAKER_00: like,
4:21
SPEAKER_00: you know,
4:21
SPEAKER_00: the best way to dispel that is to put himself out there as ready,
4:27
SPEAKER_00: willing,
4:28
SPEAKER_00: and able to debate Donald Trump,
4:30
SPEAKER_00: and then they can talk about the terms under which that happens.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, just this morning, like, Trump finally did an interview about
4:40
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, he refers to the IDF as the Israel Defense Fund in the course of that.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: That's so funny, I had missed that.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's like, okay.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: This is with Time Magazine, right?
4:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: And this is a classic gaffe in the genuine sense of like,
5:00
SPEAKER_00: the least important possible thing about the Israel-Palestine conflict is like,
5:05
SPEAKER_00: what does IDF stand for?
5:08
SPEAKER_00: But like-
5:09
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to know this stuff as president.
5:12
SPEAKER_00: If there is a narrative about your mental acuity out there and you fuck up
5:16
SPEAKER_00: something like that,
5:17
SPEAKER_00: you know,
5:17
SPEAKER_00: people will leap on it.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: And like the fact is that like Donald Trump is almost as old as Joe Biden says this.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: nonsense all the time and is notoriously lazy and ignorant about these kinds of things.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: And when you get him speaking about issues, he just fucks up all the time.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: His debate performances in 2016 and 2020 were not impressive.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: He's a charismatic guy,
5:44
SPEAKER_00: but he doesn't know what he's talking about and can't sustain any long-form engagement.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think you want to get him up there.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
5:51
SPEAKER_01: there is there is a sense,
5:52
SPEAKER_01: I think,
5:53
SPEAKER_01: in which Joe Biden is acting like a front runner when he's kind of the underdog and
5:58
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump is benefiting from underdog perceptions,
6:02
SPEAKER_01: even though he's winning.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: And so he gets to simultaneously lead in the polls and be like, and I'm going to I want to debate.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
6:11
SPEAKER_01: And it does make me kind of wonder,
6:14
SPEAKER_01: beyond just getting into Joe Biden's head and mind-fucking everyone and making
6:18
SPEAKER_01: Biden seem weak,
6:19
SPEAKER_01: what the game is there.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: Because the people around him must also know that his presence in public can be a
6:26
SPEAKER_01: pretty big liability for him.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: From Biden's perspective, I have a couple thoughts about this.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: One is that part of me would like for him to
6:37
SPEAKER_01: refuse the debate,
6:38
SPEAKER_01: but in a way that's kind of consistent with the new ways that he's scolding
6:44
SPEAKER_01: mainstream media.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: It's like,
6:45
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to debate him for the same reason that I think that you guys
6:49
SPEAKER_01: shouldn't just repeat his lies in your newspapers.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: He's incapable of telling the truth, as you know.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: And so there's no upside for me to be on a debate stage with him where he will lie
7:00
SPEAKER_01: about me and I'll have to spend my whole time correcting his lies.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: And it's the same reason why I think that all of your coverage of this election and
7:08
SPEAKER_01: the last election and the election before that are bullshit.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know if that's like the wise.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: It would be very cathartic for me to hear him do that.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: But.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: But if he's going to agree to debate, I mean, he has.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: So I think he needs to have two things in mind.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: One is like...
7:31
SPEAKER_01: He should go in with like a goal in mind that isn't the typical goal of an
7:36
SPEAKER_01: incumbent president debating because it's not going to be – you remember when Obama
7:42
SPEAKER_01: debated Mitt Romney and like got really badly wrong-footed in the first debate
7:47
SPEAKER_01: because Mitt Romney just like did a 180 on whether he was going to cut taxes.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: And like all Obama had done was –
7:55
SPEAKER_01: master Mitt Romney's agenda and then prepare to run against it.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: And then Romney was like, psych, that's not my agenda.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: And like, I think that a lot of democratic debate prep still proceeds in that direction.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: And he needs to, if he's going to stand on the stage with Donald Trump.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: have different objectives in mind and then he should like he should make good on
8:17
SPEAKER_01: the criticisms that he's been peddling recently like at the white house
8:22
SPEAKER_01: correspondence dinner on saturday and i think through sources to politico of
8:27
SPEAKER_01: mainstream political news in general and say fine look like we know that donald
8:31
SPEAKER_01: trump is only comfortable debating on fox news or outlets further to the right
8:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to insist for my debate then that we do it on like the Smart List podcast
8:41
SPEAKER_01: or the politics.fm podcast or Pod Save America or whatever as a way of saying the
8:48
SPEAKER_01: mainstream media is not to us what Fox News is to you.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: Like we have real beef with how they're doing things.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: And to prove the point,
8:57
SPEAKER_01: we're going to show you what it would look like if Democrats really did have a cozy
9:01
SPEAKER_01: relationship with like a propaganda outlet.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I agree with that.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: The other thing I would say, this happened while I was on vacation.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was like a small but telling thing,
9:13
SPEAKER_00: which is like the White House communications team needs to back up Joe Biden when
9:20
SPEAKER_00: he speaks extemporaneously.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Because what happens when people speak extemporaneously,
9:26
SPEAKER_00: regardless of their age,
9:28
SPEAKER_00: is that they sometimes say things that are not what you would say if you wrote it
9:33
SPEAKER_00: down and then reread your draft and edited the draft and then showed it to three
9:38
SPEAKER_00: other people and then put out the press release.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: We all know this, right?
9:43
SPEAKER_00: While I was in Jamaica...
9:47
SPEAKER_00: Biden told a story about his uncle.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: And he said that his uncle went down during World War II in an area where there
9:56
SPEAKER_00: were a lot of cannibals and the body was never recovered.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: And people from the press wrote this up as like,
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Loopy old man Joe Biden said that his uncle was eaten by cannibals.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: And there's all these stories in the media.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: It's like, why is Joe Biden saying that his uncle was eaten by cannibals, et cetera, et cetera.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: And then I looked at what happened in the White House briefing room when Corinne
10:21
SPEAKER_00: Jean-Pierre got questions about this.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: And she kept pivoting back to Biden's attack point,
10:27
SPEAKER_00: which is Trump's disrespect for veterans versus Biden and the PACT Act,
10:33
SPEAKER_00: et cetera,
10:33
SPEAKER_00: et cetera,
10:33
SPEAKER_00: et cetera.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: But what she never said in the course of this extended back and forth with the
10:39
SPEAKER_00: journalist asking angry questions is that New Guinea,
10:44
SPEAKER_00: where Biden's uncle's plane went down –
10:47
SPEAKER_00: in fact, had cannibalism in the mid-20th century.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Like,
10:51
SPEAKER_00: a Nobel Prize for medicine was won by somebody who discovered that this brain
10:56
SPEAKER_00: disease that had been spreading around New Guinea was caused by cannibalism,
11:01
SPEAKER_00: which was widespread in New Guinea.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Now, to be clear, I am not saying that Joe Biden's uncle was eaten by cannibals.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: The cannibalism in question happened as a part of funerary rites and wouldn't have
11:13
SPEAKER_00: been done to a downed American airman.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: But like the thing that Biden said- It's Kuru, right?
11:19
SPEAKER_01: Kuru is the name of it?
11:20
SPEAKER_00: Kuru, yes.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's mad human disease instead of mad cow disease.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: The thing that Biden said was true.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: And like in a traditional presidency-
11:32
SPEAKER_00: If the president says something that's a little bit goofy and people call him out,
11:37
SPEAKER_00: but the goofy thing he said is literally true,
11:41
SPEAKER_00: you get an aggressive defense from the press team that's like,
11:45
SPEAKER_00: this thing is true.
11:46
SPEAKER_00: You guys made something up,
11:49
SPEAKER_00: attributed it to Biden,
11:50
SPEAKER_00: and then debunked this thing he never said because you're lying.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: Now, unfortunately, it's like not that politically correct to talk about Kuru.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: The prime minister of Papua New Guinea objected to Biden bringing this up, et cetera, et cetera.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: What if Joe Biden's – was it his uncle?
12:10
SPEAKER_01: What if his uncle gave Kuru to some – Sure, yeah.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: He's responsible for the whole thing.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it's just like –
12:17
SPEAKER_00: There was another version of this earlier where Biden said something about how he's
12:23
SPEAKER_00: not personally thrilled with abortion,
12:24
SPEAKER_00: but he thinks the Supreme Court got it right in Roe v.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Wade.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: And then his staff is just younger and less Catholic than he is and didn't want to
12:34
SPEAKER_00: inhabit the mind of an 80-year-old Catholic guy who's also pro-choice.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: But it's like,
12:43
SPEAKER_00: Have the operation working well.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like you got to put your guy out there with good talking points, good messages.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: And then you also just have to accept that like the nature of life is that
12:54
SPEAKER_00: sometimes what somebody says off the cuff is like not what you would have put out
12:58
SPEAKER_00: in a vetted statement.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: And then like you need to do the defense.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: I feel like there's been this weird regression.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: People have never seen CJ Craig out there on fake television pretending to agree
13:13
SPEAKER_00: with whatever Jed Bartlett just said yesterday.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: That's the job.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Everyone's got to psych themselves up.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: I have a few thoughts about this.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: One,
13:22
SPEAKER_01: like the,
13:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:23
SPEAKER_01: the impolitic thing to mention is that there's been reporting in the New York Post,
13:27
SPEAKER_01: but I think it's credible that like the White House wanted to fire Karine
13:31
SPEAKER_01: Jean-Pierre because there's consensus among Biden's inner circle that she's not
13:36
SPEAKER_01: very good at the job.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: But also there's like an optics issue with firing the first black female White House press secretary.
13:46
SPEAKER_01: And so they've been trying, they tried to like,
13:49
SPEAKER_01: nudge her politely or encourage her to consider you know and it didn't work no they
13:54
SPEAKER_00: they tried to get her at like a job yeah yes like like induce her out you know and
13:59
SPEAKER_01: it didn't work and um and so maybe that's part of the problem but i'm also like
14:04
SPEAKER_01: just listening to you talk about this reminded of what tim miller said to us when
14:09
SPEAKER_01: we i forget which half of the hour it was but um
14:13
SPEAKER_01: Where in Republican politics, like the research arm of the party is considered pretty elite.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: Like that's where you go if you want to make a big impact and rise through the
14:23
SPEAKER_01: ranks to be considered like a top shelf operator.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: Whereas in Democratic politics,
14:29
SPEAKER_01: it's like the speechwriters and the people who are florid and intellectual and whatever,
14:33
SPEAKER_01: that they have that track.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: And it may, I mean, like you remember the corn pop when Joe Biden was like, yes, I was a lifeguard.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: And I'd gotten to a like tussle with this kid who went by corn pop, who everyone was scared of.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: And I went to my car and I got my chain and stood up to corn pop for bullying the other kids.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: And like everyone laughed at him.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: And then it like, I think it was Andrew Kaczynski.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: Uh, then I think Buzz, he's CNN now.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: CNN, uh, was like, uh,
15:05
SPEAKER_01: went through the archive and found Corn Pop's obituary.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: And like, it was just a true story.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: But I'm not certain that the people who work for Joe Biden knew it was a true story,
15:15
SPEAKER_01: nor did they know whether there was any truth to Biden's story about his uncle
15:21
SPEAKER_01: going down near Papua New Guinea,
15:22
SPEAKER_01: where there were a lot of cannibals.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: And like, it may just be like, not just bad news,
15:29
SPEAKER_01: communication in in in the like the strategic sense of how do we back up our boss
15:33
SPEAKER_01: but in the like in the nuts and bolts sense of like we didn't do our homework and
15:37
SPEAKER_01: so we don't know what to say about this
15:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, there's something to that, right?
15:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it relates to a kind of, you know, there's a question of ethics.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: There's a question of specific personalities.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
15:50
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to get like too,
15:51
SPEAKER_00: too deep into the weeds of like staffing level gossip,
15:55
SPEAKER_00: but I feel like- No,
15:56
SPEAKER_01: let's do the gossip.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: This is a cynical money grab.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: We need to juice this.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, so Jean-Pierre, right?
16:03
SPEAKER_00: does not have a background as a campaign operative, like at all, right?
16:09
SPEAKER_00: If you just look at her resume.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: And the guy they've been trying to sort of like layer in, John Kirby, right?
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Who like does a lot of the tough questions in the briefing room because they seem
16:23
SPEAKER_00: to not have confidence in Jean-Pierre.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's also, he's like the national security spokesperson, I am.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's what I mean.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: So he's a national security guy.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: So the sort of structure of it that they've come up with is like,
16:37
SPEAKER_00: well,
16:37
SPEAKER_00: he's there,
16:39
SPEAKER_00: which makes sense because like the White House message on diplomatic things is like
16:43
SPEAKER_00: very nuanced and specific and stuff like that.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: But neither of them is like a wartime conciliary.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: Right.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: right, in that kind of sense.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Like, they're not people who, like, worked on winning Senate campaigns in tough battleground states.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're not, like, campaign operatives.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Now,
17:06
SPEAKER_00: technically,
17:07
SPEAKER_00: it's not the campaign,
17:08
SPEAKER_00: but,
17:09
SPEAKER_00: like,
17:09
SPEAKER_00: you're the incumbent president running for re-election as press secretary.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's, in effect, a campaign job.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: right?
17:17
SPEAKER_00: And they're just like not staffed up for that.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: Whereas Andrew Bates from the,
17:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:24
SPEAKER_00: spokespersoning team,
17:25
SPEAKER_00: I think he's one of the deputy press secretaries.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: He like was with the Biden campaign through the primaries, right?
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Like if anybody pushed the truth about corn pop out there, it was him.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: Because like, it's campaign work.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
17:41
SPEAKER_00: Like, like cleaning up
17:44
SPEAKER_00: slightly overstated anecdotes from fundraisers,
17:48
SPEAKER_00: or to the point where we started,
17:49
SPEAKER_00: you get in a debate,
17:50
SPEAKER_00: right?
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Both sides are going to get their zingers in.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: Both of these guys are probably going to make some gaffes.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: After the debate,
17:59
SPEAKER_00: you need to come in and be like,
18:01
SPEAKER_00: the other guy's gaffes were disqualifying and explain away your guy's gaffes.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: It's war.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: And part of doing the debate,
18:10
SPEAKER_00: part of posturing to be eager for the debate,
18:13
SPEAKER_00: is just getting yourself excited to do that work.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: You know,
18:18
SPEAKER_00: like we're going to go in there,
18:20
SPEAKER_00: some shit's going to happen,
18:22
SPEAKER_00: and then we're going to like wage the battle over it.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like there's been like a consistent lack of enthusiasm for like,
18:34
SPEAKER_00: The defending Joe Biden as like a person and like a guy who says stuff as opposed
18:41
SPEAKER_00: to whatever the vagaries of like the progressive agenda are.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of that is just like, you know, his base in the primary was like old people.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: And that's like not,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: there's not a lot of like 70 year olds working in campaign spokesperson jobs.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: So they're fishing in a little bit thin waters for like the true Biden enthusiasts.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: Just bring James Carville in to be the White House.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: No, but I mean, it's like, that's what you got to do.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, like this whole debate thing, I feel like it like it projects a certain amount of
19:12
SPEAKER_00: cowardice, some of which maybe is about age or whatever else.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of it, I feel like you just witness it in the whole operation, that it's not fully ready to go.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: So this whole Carew thing is not important, but exactly its unimportance struck me as telling.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: Because it has nothing to do with
19:39
SPEAKER_00: the grand purpose of the Democratic Party,
19:41
SPEAKER_00: whether or not there's cannibalism in New Guinea in the 1940s.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: But it happens to be true.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: And if your guy says something that's true, you got to get out there.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: So I feel like we're circling around a consensus here that he should probably do the debates.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: If he's going to do them, he needs to surround himself by people who have a clear and coherent sense of
20:05
SPEAKER_01: what like a good communication strategy against Trump would be.
20:08
SPEAKER_01: A shameless will to power.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: He might need like to retool his overall communications and strategy shop.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: And like you want to displace Biden's historically diverse staff and replace them
20:25
SPEAKER_01: with a bunch of white dudes.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, I sit at old people, uh, of all, of all races and ethnicities.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: Um,
20:33
SPEAKER_00: you know,
20:34
SPEAKER_00: I,
20:34
SPEAKER_00: I read this thing in the post about the optics and like,
20:37
SPEAKER_00: I see where they're coming from,
20:38
SPEAKER_00: but it's like also really bad optics to have a press secretary who there's like all
20:44
SPEAKER_00: these leaks about how you have confidence in your press secretary.
20:47
SPEAKER_00: Like that's terrible optics.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, also bad optics killing your dog.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's switch.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's a way to do a synthesis here where it's like,
20:58
SPEAKER_01: who is Vladimir Putin going to be more scared of?
21:01
SPEAKER_01: The guy who doesn't have the nuts to fire his press secretary or the lady who killed her puppy?
21:08
SPEAKER_01: But then it turns out, like, now that I'm thinking about it, Putin also hates dogs.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: So he's just going to like Kristi Noem anyway.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Kristi Noem murdered a 14-month-old puppy and bragged about it.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: And we're kind of at a loss to explain why anyone thought this would be a good idea.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: And the only way a lot of us can make sense of it is...
21:29
SPEAKER_01: to presuppose,
21:31
SPEAKER_01: which we did even before this story came out,
21:33
SPEAKER_01: that she in particular is maybe trying to get herself removed from consideration to
21:38
SPEAKER_01: be Donald Trump's running mate.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: Prior to this, she also cut an infomercial type ad for a dentist in Texas.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: She is the governor of South Dakota.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't make much sense.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: She's like the serving governor, so she presumably has some stuff to attend to.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: But it's, you know, there's like, there is a veep stakes happening.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: It's like generally covered in a very stupid way.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: And we aren't here to like suggest we have a much smarter way to cover it.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: But I do think that this question of whether Trump's conduct is leaving him with
22:16
SPEAKER_01: thin talent to select from and they are wary of serving with him and his objectives
22:23
SPEAKER_01: in selecting a running mate are just,
22:25
SPEAKER_01: extremely strange because of who he is um that um like we're not it's like unclear
22:34
SPEAKER_01: who he can get what they would provide him other than like money maybe um and um
22:42
SPEAKER_01: and like what what he's like what he actually wants let's back this up a little bit
22:46
SPEAKER_00: okay so christy gnome if you don't know
22:49
SPEAKER_00: is a governor of South Dakota.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: She was first elected in 2018.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Before that, she was in the House of Representatives.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: She was kind of a backbencher, but she had...
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Been in the House since 2010.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: So she is somebody who,
23:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
23:05
SPEAKER_00: was just like in politics before Trump was,
23:09
SPEAKER_00: but who got on the Trump bandwagon,
23:12
SPEAKER_00: you know,
23:12
SPEAKER_00: pretty early.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: Ran in the 2018 midterms as a like sort of Trump-ish candidate when COVID struck
23:20
SPEAKER_00: and governors from both parties were signing mask mandates on the recommendation of
23:25
SPEAKER_00: the CDC.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: She refused to do so.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she was the governor of the Sturgis motorcycle rally where everyone got COVID, right?
23:32
SPEAKER_00: You know,
23:33
SPEAKER_00: she's also,
23:36
SPEAKER_00: for someone who was first elected to Congress in 2010,
23:40
SPEAKER_00: is relatively young at the age of 52.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: She's also, I think we can say without being canceled, she's a nice looking person.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: She's pretty, yeah.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: And so there has been a lot of
23:51
SPEAKER_00: buzz around her as a Trump VP, you know, for a year or more, right?
23:57
SPEAKER_00: With a sense that,
23:58
SPEAKER_00: like,
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Trump likes Noam,
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Trump likes Noam's looks,
24:01
SPEAKER_00: Trump likes the idea of a woman VP,
24:04
SPEAKER_00: that he thinks that that will—I think he rightly thinks that,
24:07
SPEAKER_00: like,
24:07
SPEAKER_00: women have a high level of avulsion to Trump.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: and that having a sort of prominent woman validator would help him sand the edges
24:17
SPEAKER_00: off some of that kind of opposition.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: And she seemed like she was interested in the job.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: She's someone who has been happy to be seen as a Trump ally,
24:28
SPEAKER_00: who there was no buzz out there that's like,
24:31
SPEAKER_00: she's secretly annoyed about whatever,
24:33
SPEAKER_00: whatever.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: And this sudden lurch toward the Texas infomercials and the dog killing and stuff,
24:42
SPEAKER_00: is indicative of someone who is dropping her further aspirations and wants to not
24:49
SPEAKER_00: be vice president and go make money somewhere,
24:51
SPEAKER_00: right?
24:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what it seems like.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: The question is whether this is about Trump.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: I do want to say about her because I think that other VP candidates are showing
25:01
SPEAKER_01: similar ambivalence,
25:02
SPEAKER_01: although not nearly as extreme.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: But there is some – I mean, is it – I think it was fairly credible, like –
25:11
SPEAKER_01: tabloid-esque gossip about her having had an extramarital affair with Corey Lewandowski.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that never got fully resolved,
25:22
SPEAKER_01: and there's always some degree of rat-fucking and backstabbing going on with this
25:27
SPEAKER_01: group of people that that...
25:31
SPEAKER_01: That might be part of the story here that we're just not seeing on the surface.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: But so the larger context that I think,
25:38
SPEAKER_00: not about Trump,
25:39
SPEAKER_00: right,
25:39
SPEAKER_00: is since the whatever amendment passed barring presidents from running for a third term,
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: 17th?
25:49
SPEAKER_00: It's some kind of fucking amendment.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: So Eisenhower served two terms, and then his vice president became the GOP nominee.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Kennedy was murdered.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: Lyndon Johnson took over, got reelected.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: He did not run in 68, but Hubert Humphrey became the Democratic nominee.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: It must have been much later than the 17th.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: Go on.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Nixon served, and then it was Ford.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: That was sort of a complicated situation.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: Jimmy Carter only served one term,
26:19
SPEAKER_00: but his vice president,
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Walter Mondale,
26:21
SPEAKER_00: became the Democratic nominee in 84.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Ronald Reagan served two terms.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: His VP became the Republican nominee and won.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: Bill Clinton served two terms.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: His VP became the Democratic nominee and lost.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: You had Bush, Cheney, then Cheney did not run for president.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: You had Joe Biden was Obama's VP.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: He didn't run in 2016, but obviously did run later in 2020.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: You've never had somebody doing the Trump thing coming for a second non-consecutive term.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: But
26:57
SPEAKER_01: It would seem like... No, well, we did have that once.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: Did what's-his-name have the same VP both times?
27:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, no, no.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: So Cleveland ran, but that was before... Before they had running mates where you pit, yeah.
27:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, no, no.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: Cleveland wasn't term-limited.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: when he won his second term, right?
27:17
SPEAKER_00: So Trump would be coming in and would be term-limited on day one with presumably
27:26
SPEAKER_00: his VP pick as the heir apparent.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, not necessarily.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: You have these cases.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: I mean, both Bush and Obama tried to deliberately pick VPs who were too old to run for president.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: In Bush's case, that worked.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: In Obama's case...
27:44
SPEAKER_00: We just wound up with an old guy as president.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: But it seems like not necessarily more consequential than an average VP pick,
27:55
SPEAKER_00: but like a shortening of the time span so that you will see it very,
27:59
SPEAKER_00: very closely.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: And under normal circumstances,
28:04
SPEAKER_00: I think this would make for very intense competition to become Trump's VP,
28:09
SPEAKER_00: because you would be really positioning yourself for 2028 to
28:14
SPEAKER_00: Except Trump,
28:16
SPEAKER_00: literally,
28:17
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
28:17
SPEAKER_00: I say it like it's a joke,
28:18
SPEAKER_00: but Trump tried to get an unruly mob to pressure Mike Pence into breaking the law
28:27
SPEAKER_00: and stealing the election.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: And Pence and Trump had a very serious falling out over this topic.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: And it has put any potential recipient of that job in a difficult position.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: You would want that job because you're going to be Trump's successor.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: But everybody,
28:50
SPEAKER_00: including many elites who are backing Trump,
28:53
SPEAKER_00: knows that he is a crook who kind of sort of wants to be a dictator.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't sound like a super appealing job.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Well,
29:02
SPEAKER_01: and that's why I feel like that's why we hear less and less about the kinds of
29:06
SPEAKER_01: people who you would normally think of as like top shelf Republican running mate material.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: Like there was I got to assume it was always just kind of Trump being a troll,
29:18
SPEAKER_01: but like the Marco Rubio was on his list.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: I think he just likes picking on Marco Rubio a lot,
29:23
SPEAKER_01: and Marco Rubio has got an infinite appetite for being picked on by Trump.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: And then Tim Scott, who like...
29:31
SPEAKER_01: I think,
29:31
SPEAKER_01: pretended to have a girlfriend for a few weeks in order to make himself seem like
29:36
SPEAKER_01: an acceptable pick for a Republican vice president.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: But now it's like they're talking about Doug Burgum,
29:46
SPEAKER_01: who was like the weird guy on the debate stage in the Republican pseudo primary
29:50
SPEAKER_01: that just ended,
29:52
SPEAKER_01: the governor of North Dakota who
29:55
SPEAKER_01: Scans is slightly weird, but otherwise mostly normal.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: I think like Republican...
30:03
SPEAKER_01: of the planes of the 1990s.
30:05
SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
30:06
SPEAKER_01: Like that, that kind of, well, the thing about is that he's loaded.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: Apparently is rich.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: He has a net worth of, uh, he's, he's, he's not quite fortune 500, but he's a billionaire.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: He's like a 1 billion billionaire.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but this would both, um, let Trump bail out his campaign.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I assume Trump could, would like steal his running mates money, uh,
30:34
SPEAKER_00: He would get Burgum to give money to the campaign,
30:40
SPEAKER_00: but then the campaign would spend all this money at Trump's hotels.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: He'd be tunneling the money right out of Burgum's pocket into his pocket.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
30:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't think either of us is really well positioned to know,
30:52
SPEAKER_01: and maybe we should just do a little reporting on this question,
30:55
SPEAKER_01: but are all of these incentive problems and these...
31:01
SPEAKER_01: I would like to think that if I was in Kristi Noem's shoes or Doug Burgum's shoes,
31:07
SPEAKER_01: that like somebody I trusted would be raising these concerns to me in a like – even
31:14
SPEAKER_01: if only as like a devil's advocate.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: Before you get too excited about the possibility, keep in mind he might try to have you killed.
31:20
SPEAKER_01: Keep in mind he might try to steal your money.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: Or like are Republicans so up their own asses about like information –
31:30
SPEAKER_01: like so like pickled by Fox News that they don't actually think of Trump in those
31:36
SPEAKER_01: terms or they think that like even speaking about that in private is a potential
31:42
SPEAKER_01: liability for them because like
31:45
SPEAKER_01: They're really obvious and important factors in any kind of decision like this.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: Like,
31:52
SPEAKER_01: you wouldn't buy a house from,
31:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:54
SPEAKER_01: that like,
31:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:56
SPEAKER_01: they said,
31:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:58
SPEAKER_01: you can bring an inspector in,
31:59
SPEAKER_01: but we'll pick the inspector,
32:00
SPEAKER_01: right?
32:01
SPEAKER_01: That's like a...
32:03
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know a little bit about... I don't want to call it Burgum World because it's North Dakota.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: So it's a very small operation.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: But he's a housing supply guy.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: So I know a little bit about his life and times as an actual governor.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: You know...
32:27
SPEAKER_00: He was willing to spend a lot of money on his presidential campaign,
32:31
SPEAKER_00: unlike a clearly doomed presidential campaign by any reasonable standards.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: He really wanted to take a flyer on it.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: To make the debate stage,
32:42
SPEAKER_00: one of the ways to qualify for the debate stage was to raise a certain amount of
32:46
SPEAKER_00: small-dollar contributions.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: So he had this scam where he would give you $20 if you made a $5 contribution to his campaign.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: Which worked.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: That should be illegal.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: I think next time they will write the rules more strictly.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: But that's just to say that he would really like to have higher office.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: He has very clear ambitions to politics.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: He does not
33:12
SPEAKER_00: He's not tempted to try to make money as a Fox News host rather than be a politician.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: He wants politics.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: He's willing to spend money.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: He's willing to exploit weird loopholes in the rules to spend his money to get
33:28
SPEAKER_00: himself forward in national politics.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: So I think that he could, eyes open...
33:36
SPEAKER_00: set himself up for Donald Trump to pocket some of his money if he believes that
33:42
SPEAKER_00: that will genuinely set himself up to become president of the United States,
33:46
SPEAKER_00: right?
33:47
SPEAKER_00: But then that's the question.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but then he might still end up getting killed.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, I think that's the known unknown.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: None of the reporting that I've seen about Trump's VP situation
34:01
SPEAKER_00: has had like a paragraph where it's like,
34:04
SPEAKER_00: Trump is aware that whoever he selects would be the prohibitive favorite for 2028
34:08
SPEAKER_00: and is carefully,
34:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
34:11
SPEAKER_00: scanning their commitment to his signature.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: Of course, it's not like Trump to be earnest about these things.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: And often VPs are selected for reasons other than the principal thinks they would
34:22
SPEAKER_00: make a great future nominee for their party.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: But it's like, it doesn't appear to be...
34:31
SPEAKER_00: What I think is,
34:31
SPEAKER_00: like,
34:31
SPEAKER_00: the most obvious thing about the Trump veep stakes—the reason I feel like it's
34:35
SPEAKER_00: worth discussing Trump veep stakes in May,
34:38
SPEAKER_00: right,
34:38
SPEAKER_00: which is early,
34:39
SPEAKER_00: is just that,
34:40
SPEAKER_00: like,
34:41
SPEAKER_00: we're picking—if constitutional government survives—
34:46
SPEAKER_00: for more years of Donald Trump.
34:48
SPEAKER_01: This is where I want to take the conversation.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: This person should be Trump's successor, right?
34:54
SPEAKER_00: And a really clear,
34:56
SPEAKER_00: reassuring thing for Trump to do about the continuity of constitutional government
35:01
SPEAKER_00: would be to be like,
35:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm taking this really seriously because it would be unusual to be serving a second
35:07
SPEAKER_00: non-consecutive term.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: I'd be a lame duck on day one.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: I want someone who's going to pick up the baton and run for it while I go golfing.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: And instead, it's not on the radar at all.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: So I don't want to say that this means Trump has an incredibly well-worked-out plan
35:26
SPEAKER_00: to cancel the Constitution and remain in power.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't not have that.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: No,
35:33
SPEAKER_01: but I think that I could deliver somebody in the Republican Party the VP slot if I
35:42
SPEAKER_01: went to them as a reporter and I was like,
35:46
SPEAKER_01: if Donald Trump seeks a third term in office while you're his vice president, will you support him?
35:51
SPEAKER_01: And if they say, yes, I will, because of the Russia scam, they stole his first term from him.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't count.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: So he gets another bite at the apple.
35:59
SPEAKER_01: Like that person would almost definitely end up Donald Trump's VP, right?
36:05
SPEAKER_01: Like we're kind of not sure what to make of Donald Trump's threat to constitutional government.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: But like, I think intuitively we both know that if,
36:15
SPEAKER_01: Kristi Noem or Doug Burgum or Tim Scott said,
36:19
SPEAKER_01: I will side with Trump if he decides that for whatever reason he's entitled to run
36:26
SPEAKER_01: for a third time because of the deep state unfairness to him in 2017 through 2021,
36:32
SPEAKER_01: right?
36:33
SPEAKER_01: Trump would pick them, I think.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: And I just think that that suggests that he's not like,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: It's not just that he doesn't want somebody like breathing down his neck and
36:45
SPEAKER_01: waiting to throw him under the bus the way I think Obama was worried that Hillary
36:48
SPEAKER_01: Clinton might do if he picked her.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: It's that he wants an accomplice all the way through, like –
36:56
SPEAKER_01: To the point where if he decides in 2027 that he has too much legal jeopardy and he
37:05
SPEAKER_01: wants to be president again,
37:07
SPEAKER_01: or he wants Donald Trump Jr.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: to be president, that the person –
37:12
SPEAKER_01: who is his actual vice president, will have already committed to letting him write the new rules.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: And so I just feel like that's the story.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: Like it's not – and also maybe stealing Doug Berkham's money.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, also the pattern that you see in certain Latin American countries or in Russia, right?
37:33
SPEAKER_00: When you have the mix of –
37:37
SPEAKER_00: What do you call it?
37:38
SPEAKER_00: Democratic backsliding and term limits.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: What you tend to see is like the authoritarian will try to install some kind of puppet as his successor.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: Dmitry Medvedev's term in Russia was like an unusually egregious kind of example of this.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: But there's a lot of it in Latin American countries in particular,
38:02
SPEAKER_00: which have a lot of experience with this kind of thing,
38:04
SPEAKER_00: unfortunately.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: And so that would be the question, right?
38:10
SPEAKER_00: Can Trump find somebody who will let him keep running the party?
38:20
SPEAKER_00: and the movement, and therefore the country, even if he's not in the Oval Office anymore.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: Maybe he should get Mike Johnson to be vice president.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: Right.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, that would be— Kevin McCarthy, honestly, I feel like was closer to this model.
38:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's true.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: During McCarthy's brief speakership, he was constantly flying to Mar-a-Lago to consult with the actual—
38:47
SPEAKER_00: Leader of the House GOP caucus, right?
38:52
SPEAKER_00: Even though Trump held no office, right?
38:54
SPEAKER_00: So you can have a world in which your truth social posts are running the government
39:02
SPEAKER_00: without holding a formal office,
39:05
SPEAKER_00: but you need to pick somebody who's weak.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: Right.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: You need to select a puppet.
39:12
SPEAKER_00: You probably don't want to select a billionaire tech company founder and governor
39:19
SPEAKER_00: who's actually super obscure,
39:22
SPEAKER_00: but who thinks of himself as an incredibly accomplished person who's just waiting
39:27
SPEAKER_00: to go to the national stage.
39:28
SPEAKER_01: Except that he's thirsty,
39:30
SPEAKER_01: and he keeps proving he's thirsty by spending more money,
39:33
SPEAKER_01: including by being willing,
39:34
SPEAKER_01: apparently,
39:34
SPEAKER_01: to give it all to Donald Trump.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: And that might do it, but yes.
39:37
SPEAKER_00: But I'm very annoyed that,
39:41
SPEAKER_00: like...
39:43
SPEAKER_00: I just feel like the coverage of this...
39:45
SPEAKER_00: It's not just that it hasn't been...
39:46
SPEAKER_00: The thing that political media is usually good at is just,
39:52
SPEAKER_00: like,
39:52
SPEAKER_00: dishy gossip.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:17
SPEAKER_00: So it's like, this is an unusual situation.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: And like, what's cooking?
40:21
SPEAKER_00: Like, who's talking about this?
40:23
SPEAKER_00: Like, what's going on?
40:25
SPEAKER_00: Like,
40:25
SPEAKER_00: it's an important – this is like the sweet spot of like substantively significant
40:31
SPEAKER_00: and also just random gossip.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: And like, this is like what journalism should be excelling at.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: Politics has – Politics FM, the podcast, has had
40:42
SPEAKER_01: Huge success recently.
40:43
SPEAKER_01: Our guest two weeks ago,
40:45
SPEAKER_01: Rebecca Roife,
40:46
SPEAKER_01: kind of turned her appearance into a New York Times op-ed on how the Alvin Bragg
40:51
SPEAKER_01: hush money case is good.
40:53
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to deploy similar clout
40:58
SPEAKER_01: on the assumption that some campaign reporters are going to be listening to this,
41:01
SPEAKER_01: that they should just ask,
41:02
SPEAKER_01: like,
41:04
SPEAKER_01: the people who are on Trump's shortlist,
41:06
SPEAKER_01: are you worried that he might try to have you killed?
41:08
SPEAKER_01: Are you worried that he might try to take your money?
41:10
SPEAKER_01: And would you support him if he decided to throw out the 22nd Amendment and seek a third term?
41:17
SPEAKER_01: And just see what they say.
41:18
SPEAKER_01: And then if Trump goes and picks the person who's like,
41:21
SPEAKER_01: yes,
41:21
SPEAKER_01: the Constitution sucks and Donald Trump should be king,
41:25
SPEAKER_01: that will be an important story.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: And I would like it to be out there.
41:29
SPEAKER_01: And then if he does become – run for a third term,
41:36
SPEAKER_01: then we're in the molten core terrain of the new Civil War movie.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: But before we actually talk about that, I should probably –
41:47
SPEAKER_01: Put up the paywall and tell people who aren't paid subscribers that if you want to
41:52
SPEAKER_01: hear the rest of the conversation,
41:53
SPEAKER_01: you can go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: We need your Burgum bucks.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
41:59
SPEAKER_01: if Doug Burgum's listening,
42:00
SPEAKER_01: look,
42:00
SPEAKER_01: we will make this whole podcast free if Doug Burgum just cuts us a check for a
42:06
SPEAKER_01: million dollars.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: We're ready.