Trump Is So Beatable

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

I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

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

Technically a five-day convention. Congratulations, sir.

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

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

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

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

Man.

Wow.

What a personal anecdote. Sorry about that.

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

I'm the Trump of this podcast.

We've always, on some level, known that to be true.

You said it.

I don't want to sound glib, but it's really late, and we've been drinking. It's very hard to make a speech about narrowly avoiding getting assassinated boring, but he managed to do it somehow. A friend of ours described it as if a second grader were telling a story about a horrifying incident.

As I was listening to it, it's really, he's somehow making, even though it's obviously a story about the assassination attempt on him. I went into the speech thinking that's going to be a really, even for Trump, that's going to be a moving moment telling this story. He somehow made it even more narcissistic than you would imagine. At one point, he was in the crowd, and there were all these shots, and the crowd didn't leave. You know why the crowd didn't leave?

It was like the Secret Service had guns and told them not to leave. That's why they didn't leave, man.

It was wild.

You just delivered that with way more emotion than he did. He told that story as if I was telling a story to my three-year-old to get him to fall asleep in bed. It was that same cadence. So weird. It was bizarre.

Yeah. I just think it's stories saying that he's had some sort of spiritual awakening notwithstanding. The man has no interior life, and that did not change, and so he drew no lessons from it. He learned nothing about violence in America, the danger posed by guns, the rhetoric in our country.

At least nothing that we heard in the speech.

Nothing that we heard in the speech.

Perhaps there's something floating around in there. I don't want to assign motivation to the man, but nothing we heard tonight.

I'm only going by what I heard. I will say, I think we're pretty jaded, and also we were following the story very closely. I do think that was one of the most interesting things we've ever heard. It was ultimately the most boring version, but it was the most interesting part of an otherwise very, very boring version.

See, what happened to him is-.

What happened is interesting, but show, don't tell. The image of you avoiding the bullet, getting cut, punching your fist, is on the screen. You don't have to describe how you clenched your fist and punched.

In mind-numbing detail that you described that picture. that was in seven versions arrayed around his head on the big screen.

On the Minecraft big boards.

He tells that story, and you think, okay, that's- Then he ends it by walking over to hug the uniform of the man who was killed, the firefighter who was killed in the shooting. Then we're like 30 minutes into the speech, and then he starts acknowledgments. Then he starts narrating what happened throughout the night. He's talking about Dana White, who introduced him. He's talking about Hulk Hogan.

We must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement, which is what's been happening in our country lately at a level that nobody has ever seen before. In that spirit, the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy.

thing just boom, boom, boom.

If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States, think of it, the 10 worst, added them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done. I'm only going to use the term once, Biden. I'm not going to use the name anymore, just one time. We don't have fierce people. We have people that are a lot less than fierce, except when it comes to cheating on elections and a couple of other things, then they're fierce, then they're fierce.

I am trying to buy your vote.

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

Went somewhere with his wife. Italy.

Dana White said it publicly.

It was Italy. Okay. There you go. Yeah. He wouldn't say it was Italy.

He wouldn't say why.

You might think that we're going on about this. He went on for a couple of minutes, at least, about just Dana White and his travel plans.

Eventually acknowledges all the members of his family and then gets to JD Vance, so we get a couple of shots of Usha looking absolutely fucking miserable, like Usha, I think, could pull up a chair and be the fifth host of this show, if I remember right. And then he just went into his stump. So it really was an assassination attempt, Topper, into not even that much of a revised version of his stump speech.

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

Not a clue.

Yeah, Dan.

I mean, I really thought there was going to be a plan.

Me too.

I mean, there has been all this talk and some of it warranted about how much better this version of the Trump campaign has been and how much, and I use, I swear, I'm doing this on a curve, but how much more disciplined Trump has been throughout this, like he doesn't want to go to prison. Right. And it's either he wins and doesn't go to prison or he loses and goes to prison. And so he has been more focused than in previous efforts. But this speech was fucking insane.

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

The rest of the convention was incredibly disciplined. They made even the most, the craziest of MAGA freaks kind of tow some sort of line. There was no discussion of the 2020 election throughout four slash. five days of this convention now. Did all of this.

It was like a long rotary club speech.

It was crazy. It was, it was, he was honestly doing like open mic night at Mar-a-Lago. It was insane.

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

Yeah. I think that, I think that's right. I think people like us, who are sickos, who watched the full speech, are like, what was that? You know, people in the hall are probably wondering, Tim Alberta, a great reporter at the Atlantic, was tweeting that, even like the diehards in the front row were like, look at their phones, wondering when it was going to be over. However, I think most people turned it off.

analysis of what happened tonight would be undecided voters. If like, if the whole, this is his flock thing, that's not going to work with anyone who's not already voting for Donald Trump, right? But if you're an undecided voter, you probably turned off the speech 20 or 30 minutes in, if you made it that long, maybe you thought that the assassination attempt story that he told was, you know, moving, charming, whatever. But I do think that for him, and I started thinking about this today because he definitely feels so confident that he is winning. I mean, he just, this whole convention, when he was sitting there, he just exudes this confidence that he hasn't had in a while, that, like, I am winning this race.

I do think he's like running on a post. in his mind. The, all the talk from inside the campaign and the spin that, you know, he's had. this, he's different. It's going to be more subdued.

If Democrats can launch a better campaign, the, they had two goals with this convention, right? What he said really wasn't going to matter that much. It was, would he seem more normal, right? The whole point of the convention, all the humanizing stories, Dana White, reading the texts that Trump sent him, the granddaughter, all those things was about. making Trump seem more normal, make him acceptable to more voters.

I will say the only.

He took half his annex too many.

I'll tell you, I'll just say it, which is that what I thought is, I don't know if, when you get shot in the ear, if you get a full weeks of Tylenol plus codeine, that was my question. And I'm just going to leave that question out there.

Many people are wondering.

Just to bring people behind the scenes here. for 96 minutes, Lovett was debating whether to tweet that. So he's just sitting out all his week.

After some careful consideration, he decided to just say it.

It's like all the love talk, the meandering acknowledgments. Yes, it's very Trump, but if there is a new and serene Trump, I do think it came in a little bottle.

I don't know. Before we move on.

Also, it wasn't a bullet. No, I'm kidding. I don't believe that. That's Blue Anon stuff. That's not true.

Before we move on, other primetime speakers, not anyone worth mentioning, Eric Trump was sort of angry. Kid Rock sounded kind of crazy. Dana White was there.

Tucker Carlson was actually.

Oh, Tucker Carlson was early on and was sort of, he told a personal story. that I think.

really worked in the room. I don't know about people back home, but it works in the room.

Yeah. Tucker Carlson is the one where I was. like, I was, I thought that JD Vance would be that kind of scary, and JD Vance's speech sucked.

And I'm, like, Tucker Carlson's, the one. you, by the way, Trump, I think, detailed Dana White's.

travel woes before getting to JD Vance, but then, but there was also Hulk Hogan, who sounded like this. So all you criminals, all you lowlifes, all you scumbags, all you drug dealers, and all you crooked politicians need to answer one question, brother.

brother?

Well, I mean, Mitt Romney will run from them and Mike Pence will try to escape before he be hung, and Nancy Pelosi will call the vice president and there'll be a long-term investigation. Can I just tell you, even just hearing that clip, because now we're hearing it a second time, it really does light up the kid in me who saw Hulk Hogan after American Gladiators. I still, I saw No Holds Barred was a movie I was too young to see when it was on television. And we got to get Stone Cold. Steve Austin.

That is something like a consultant would say in a democratic campaign meeting after this convention.

What's a rice bucket challenge?

Oh, you don't want Stone Cold.

You don't want Stone Cold. Okay. So you're going to say.

I was Googling during the convention.

You're saying you don't want Stone Cold. You don't want Stone Cold, Steve Austin at the democratic convention. You just want Lin-Manuel Miranda. You want the cast of fucking sups.

I want Stone Cold, Steve Austin. That was my joke.

Yeah, it was literally Tommy's tweet. I know. Absolute joke theft.

I took it to theft. I took it to sups.

Dan, do you have something smart to say?

Oh, please. Oh, please. Like Obama once said, I am my best joke writer.

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

He ripped his shirt.

It was so cool.

Fuck. And for the people who are pointing out some of the terrible things Hulk Hogan has done in his life. Yes, he would very.

And Kid Rock. And Dan Hoy.

He used the N word. It was very public. It was awful. The Gawker trial came out.

It was a night for angry divorce debts. 100%.

I think most people probably won't even know that.

You tweeted this. We're all trapped in the 80s. All right. Well, I was going to say, let's take a step back and talk about the convention as a whole, now that it's over. Dan, you kind of talked about this already, but the overall strategy message of the convention seemed to be, hey, Trump is not as scary as you think.

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

And Donald Trump never mentioned it once.

And there was no fight about it. In a normal convention, there would have been a platform, fight about it. There would have been speakers. No one. No one did it.

It's not a betrayal to turn on your friends and say you love Big Brother. The actual betrayal is having Big Brother in your heart. And you feel like, at this convention, even the Republicans that once gritted their teeth and said they were for Trump, you can feel them having persuaded themselves to believe that this is actually the way. It's not just that the old guard has been cast aside, though a lot of them have. It's that they didn't just relent in their words.

J.

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

The convention did not. Trump's speech did. It is a reminder that we want people to see Donald Trump. And I really haven't seen Donald Trump at all in this campaign, particularly over the last three weeks, as the focus has been, understandably so, on President Biden.

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

Yeah. What you got from this convention is they do not want to talk about abortion. They do not want to talk about any of the policies and proposals in Project 2025. They don't want to talk about their tax cuts for the rich, with the exception of, as you mentioned last night, Steve Scalise. They just don't want to talk about any of these things that aren't popular.

Also, there are moments in this convention where you have someone staying up there and being like, Donald Trump, shall be a champion for our values, and the blood and spirit of this country shall reign supreme. We will have a country again that is the first in all the land. I can just picture even a George W. Bush calling something, saying this is some weird shit, or Barack Obama making a funny joke. Hey guys, your job is to pave roads and send out the social security checks.

That brings us to the drama surrounding the Democratic nominee for president, which has really overshadowed the Republican convention this week. Here's the latest from the New York Times. Quote, several people close to President Biden said on Thursday that they believe he has begun to accept the idea that he may not be able to win in November and may have to drop out of the race, though he has not yet made up his mind. The Times story matches all the other reporting, as well as everything we're hearing. Two senior House Democrats told CBS they expect Biden to make his decision within three to five days.

I mean, I think it was what Seth Moulton told me earlier this week, which is that people who were worried about Biden's candidacy became even more worried after the assassination attempt and felt more urgency to move quickly. And then, on top of that, it seems clear that a bunch of polling came back. I think Jon Tester coming out and being the second U.S. senator to call for a change at the top of the ticket tells you a lot, because he's one of the most vulnerable senators up this cycle. And it probably tells you where the polling is in Montana.

I think what happened is a lot of people try to do this privately. We know that Hakeem Jeffries talked to Biden on Friday night. Schumer talked to him on Saturday, just hours before the assassination attempt. At some point in that same period, Nancy Pelosi spoke to him at least once. They tried to do it privately.

Yeah, and we recorded last night.

As we do every night.

I know, right? And while we were recording, or right after, there was that story that Nancy Pelosi, I think the New York Times ran this story, and then CNN ran a version of the story as well, that Nancy Pelosi got on the phone with Biden, and then, when Biden started saying, oh, well, there's Paul, show me winning, and she was like, get Mike Donilon on the phone. Mike Donilon is Biden's closest communications messaging advisor. And she was like, show me the polls. Show me the polls.

Yeah, we don't know what happened after that moment, either. The story sort of ends there.

Can you just imagine Biden trying to conference in Mike Donilon from his beach house in Rehoboth?

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

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

And I think, like, I have come to not agree with that, but I think it is completely fair and a completely fair.

Because no one knows what's going to happen. We just do not know. And unfortunately, you have to make the decision now. It has to happen in the next couple of weeks. It ultimately has to happen, really, in the next 72 to 96 hours to maximize the opportunity to have the upside that may be available in a second candidate, but it's a total unknown.

And I also do think that, like, we are now at the point where so many people have come out against Joe Biden being nominee, wanting him to step aside, that it is hard to imagine a Democratic convention under these circumstances that leads to, like, a Joe Biden sent off.

I mostly agree with that. I think it's not clear in public opinion yet that ultimately, people... The number of Democrats who think Joe Biden is too old has gone up, but it was really high before, and it's only gone up a few points. I think it's like five points in the New York Times poll. But the point you're making is very important, which is, imagine the campaign going forward after this, right?

And look, this is awful and sad and shitty for Biden, his family, his staff, the entire party. No one is happy about this. No one wanted to be spending the summer arguing about this while we are currently losing to Donald Trump, but we are losing to Donald Trump. And I think the RNC crystallized that reality for Democrats. And no one thinks, to your point, Dan, that Biden stepping aside will guarantee a win against Trump at all.

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

Well, I'm maxed out, Dan, so I can't do that.

Just kidding. For the general too?

I could do the victory fund. But just so people know the data behind these anxieties, the Wall Street Journal reported today that a research firm called Blue Rose Research found President Biden losing in all the swing states behind or even in New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Mexico, Virginia, and Maine, and leading by only 2.9% in New Jersey. So that is like- Not good. That is like panic button numbers.

Not good, people. Not good.

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

It's like, we should beat this guy.

We should fucking beat this guy.

It's embarrassing if we lose to this guy.

I thought he was pretty good.

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

He did.

Lowering the temperature.

Rhetorically. Rhetorically.

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

Our borders are Kamala Harris. That means so bad. And we have enough bad.

We need some good. We need goodness.

Democrats, led by borders, are Kamala Harris, have allowed millions of illegal migrants.

to invade our country.

President Trump did the job that Kamala won't and Joe Biden simply can't. If we have four more years of Biden or a single day of Harris, our country will be badly worse.

off.

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

Kamala Harris is not much further behind.

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

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

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

I'd love to get her name wrong.

Love it. Just a bunch of loons. I'm not even going to talk about who. Maybe you recognize them. Maybe you didn't.

Well, she's the vice president to the stepping down president. She, in the polls that we've seen, and these should be taken with a grain of salt, she is the, by far, the first choice of Democratic primary voters. Now, the Democratic primary voters don't have to say they'd be delegates, but that would be better to them. Logistically, Kamala Harris would be able to, most campaign finance lawyers believe, simply take over the existing Biden campaign operation, including the $91 million they had in the bank as of the last period. So that solves a lot.

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

Thank you for that question. You and ITY, you've got to let them know. I think she could get tagged with questions about Biden's mental acuity. And the Republican line on this is that there's been a cover up. So she could get pulled into that debate.

Yeah. I guess there's a scenario that seems unlikely from all the reporting, but who knows, where. if Biden steps aside and doesn't explicitly endorse Kamala Harris. And then, again, it's all up to other potential Democratic candidates to jump in. If then they jump in, he hasn't explicitly endorsed her.

Donald Trump is coming to silence this podcast. You can hear the sirens in the back.

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

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

But I do think, Tommy, to your point, the way the race would change if it's Kamala Harris versus Trump is they will try to tag her with the unpopularity Biden had, not just due to his age, but incumbency. Right. So some of Biden's unpopularity, a lot of it is probably due to his age, but some of it is due fairly or not. And we would say not to perceptions of how he's managed the economy. Right.

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

I mean, just listen to her in the clip we just played. Right. Imagine that in three states a day, five days a week. Right. A full bore campaign.

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

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

And like, to your Dan's point, like, if Biden remains president, there will be a push, I think, to get Biden to step down.

But I think that's stupid. No, no. He should stay. Absolutely.

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

Here's the other big difference, too, because I can see people who want Biden to stay in could say, well, Biden, when he's on prompter at those events, like we said, his speech in Michigan was quite good. Like, he can do that for the rest of the time. Yeah, perhaps. But the big difference with a new candidate is I really don't think we're getting another debate if Joe Biden stays in the race. Like, Trump has already said, I don't want to put him through that again.

OK.

I know. I'm just trying. No, I know. I know. I'm playing the devil's advocate for the Biden side.

We've because we've had two geriatric candidates running against each other for a couple of years now, we've lost the thread of what a normal campaign looks like. Yeah. Right. But you're running for president. You wake up in the morning and she can do interviews.

Right.

This is my point. Right.

What are we talking about?

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

But think about this. Like, we've all we've all been on the road with a presidential candidate. You wake up in the morning, you do drive time radio in place at battleground markets across the country. Right. Then you get up, you go to a first rally.

That's good stuff.

Right. Then you do another one.

You get really mad at your staff for scheduling. You do.

But that's what you have to do. And then you do a third rally. You were doing fundraising calls in the car, on the plane. Like, there's a. there's a cadence to this that Donald Trump cannot keep up with.

Yeah.

We have to take advantage of those opportunities if he gives them to us. But those opportunities will be there. in a way, they are not in a race with Biden.

But also and Biden is rightly proud of his many legislative accomplishments as president. She can run on the popular accomplishments because she's part of that administration. But she also wasn't like. she can have some kind of distance, whereas she is the future and she is younger and she was the vice president. So she doesn't have to own everything.

There's just a lot to stand up there, with a popular governor or popular senator behind in front of a big sign that says the future on it. Yeah. Just pick a VP.

She could pick it. Gretchen Whitmer or or Governor Shapiro would be sheer.

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

What if she picked Mike Pence to be her VP?

That's also a possibility.

No, it's a brain.

Or Hulk Hogan. OK, we've talked enough. We're done. It's, it's past midnight.

You could have said that three years ago.

I know. I know.

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

Exactly. Let's close with this. We don't know what comes next. Biden, anyone else, but winning in November, after the shit we saw this week, and especially tonight, is more important than ever, not just at the top of the ticket, but all the way down. That's why we have Votes Save America's Anxiety Relief Program.

Oh, my God. Tell us. Stop. More of this shit.

Tonight.

So much content.

What are we, CNN?

It's 12 before a.