Trump's Shooting Upends 2024

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

I'm Jon Leavitt.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Tommy Vitor.

Well, quite a bit has happened since Friday's show, and absolutely none of it has been good. Donald Trump was shot in an assassination attempt at a campaign rally. His hand-picked judge threw out his classified documents case. He picked MAGA heir J.D. Vance as his running mate on the opening day of the Republican Convention.

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

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

I was driving back from a trip with my daughter, and the last text before I got in the car was from Tommy. It said shots fired at a Trump rally, which I thought just there were shots at the rally, and not someone had shot at Trump. And then I didn't look at my phone for an hour and a half. I got home to one million texts, mostly from you guys, about everything that happened. I couldn't believe that someone had shot at Trump.

I just sort of felt sick. I was like, what is going to happen now?

Yeah. I felt sick. I really did. That was my instant reaction. I felt sick.

Good worry. Good concern.

And the other-.

Because that was the right, yeah.

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

Probably because you want it to be.

You want it to be, and you expect it to be, because there's so much misinformation. There's so much sensationalism out there. So at first, oh, it's just an airsoft gun. Oh, it was shrapnel from a teleprompter. Oh, it wasn't actually a shooting, right?

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

Yeah. The idea that an elevated position 140 yards away with a sight line, a direct sight line to the candidate, was not covered by someone somehow is shocking to me. I mean, there might've been... So, Secret Service, there's a bunch of different parts of it. There's PPD, who are the men and women around the president, the personal protective detail for the president.

And that's been true for a while.

Yeah. I mean, it was true when we were in the bottom. I mean, even though we knew a lot of Secret Service did an incredible job, but I was at the White House when the guy made it into the White House, the guy who jumped the fence.

Yeah, that's right.

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

So after the shock passed and it was clear Trump was okay, the first understandable reaction from a lot of folks in politics and media was that, you know, everyone needs to tone down the rhetoric and lower the temperature of the political debate in this country. Biden said as much a number of times over the weekend. Trump himself posted UNITE AMERICA in all caps, and he did a print interview with Selena Zito of the Washington Examiner where he said he tore up the draft of his convention speech. that, he said, was the original draft, was a humdinger and was rewriting it about bringing the country together. Axios ran a piece Sunday evening about how Trump advisers are planning a more unifying convention.

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

Covid. Covid was last time. Remember the beginning of Covid?

Even that lasted like six seconds, right? Yeah.

The first six seconds of his first press conference.

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

Oh, yeah. There's that too. Well, that was later. That was when he had. Oh, yeah.

And then there's the point being whether it was our collective near-death experience or his personal near-death experience, and we have yet to see a fucking change.

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

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

Well, it already says like, what does unity mean? It means dropping all the charges against me. Right. Of course. He's given up the game pretty quickly.

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

Very much so.

Getting out of jail.

Yeah. And again, like you said, already, in this campaign, he has said, I mean, every day has said something that would sink any other candidate for office and it just completely makes him unfit to hold the office. Just want to put that out there, but relative to Trump and what people expect of Trump, it's been a little different. What do you guys think about the whole? Democrats can't call him a threat to democracy anymore thing?

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

Tommy, go ahead.

No, that's a good point. I mean, I also think like politics is how we resolve differences without resorting to violence. and those debates are inevitably going to get emotional and heated at times, and they should, because that's our release valve. That's how we settle differences. But that said, like there are limits.

Donald Trump told his supporters to beat the shit out of protesters at his rallies. He has amplified calls for violence. Remember the video of one of his supporters? This was after George Floyd's murder. And one of his supporters said in a video, the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.

and put them in the car, rough up suspects.

He, of course, sent a mob of his armed supporters. He knew they were armed. We know this now. He sent them to the Capitol so they could intimidate our representatives into throwing out our votes. He refused to do anything to stop the violence.

Also, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. He's a threat to freedom. For all those reasons. But also, don't, you, don't take my word for it. He says it himself.

Yeah. Liz Cheney, military tribunal.

He has talked about jailing his opponents. He has talked about-.

Is that how democracy works? Is that not a threat to democracy? I guess that's just democracy, right? Military tribunals for Liz Cheney? Yeah.

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

And, by the way, one of the reasons that's actually important is because it gives to allow this act of violence to dictate what we can or cannot say, even when it is true, is to give power to this person and potentially to inspire people in the future to think they have the power at any moment to change the landscape of American politics. The reason, like I am very, look, if people want to say, oh, this is an opportunity for all of us to come together and turn down the rhetoric. Great. That's fine. But the reason we talk about the danger posed by violent rhetoric is not because it creates some miasma of risk, that it's because it, it can inspire people.

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

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

And even worse, he's joked about and, and mocked when there has been violence, like the attack on Paul Pelosi or the attempted kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer, right? All of that was something that either they didn't, they, they claim is some sort of false flag, or, or make fun of or mock claim. He was, he was, it was a lover's quarrel, right? When this guy was, when, when Paul Pelosi is like nearly beaten to death.

Or when his VP was almost hung, he was cool with that too.

That was very, very cool. with that apparently.

So swap them out.

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

It's the cover of Time?

Oh yeah. Oh, my God. Well, I mean, both candidates did do lengthy interviews with Time. Oh, I know.

I know.

Even though, even though you're shitting all over the magazine.

The polls in the 1986 election just shifted six points.

Anyway, we all know the picture now. We all know the picture. Everyone who's listening to this. And a lot of people are like, oh, that's it. It's over.

I mean, that person is a defeatist idiot. And I, please just don't talk to the press. If you have those thoughts, keep them inside your head. Like Donald Trump's instinct, he has some political genius in him. We have to be honest.

Yeah. Go to Politico, you know. Dan, what do you think?

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

Amazing.

The polls moved like about a point and a half. In front of 50 million people, Joe Biden had the worst debate performance of any presidential candidate in modern history. The polls moved two and a half points. The idea that this will dramatically shift the race is absurd. It belies everything we have seen to date.

And he was seriously wounded. Yes.

And it was a different era where you would get, with much less polarization, where you would get Democrats and independents who did not like Reagan to approve of him in a moment like that. Right. You saw that up until just a few presidents ago. It does matter, I think, that this happened in Pennsylvania, the single most important state in both Biden and Trump's electoral college calculus. But the race is basically where it was before.

It's very hard to untangle this.

Because you're going to have a convention bounce, which is usually two to three points. We'd be surprised it was that big this time around, because the race is so steady. But happening at the same time, those are usually very temporary. So we're never... Trump may go up in the polls in the next week.

Yeah. There's polling, and then there's just trying to think about the person who is like, I think I'm going to vote for Joe Biden. But then Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt and put his fist up in the air. I have a hard time imagining that person saying, I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. now.

I think if they're going after young men, they're going after men like 18 to 29.

I think you had to have.

I think that is.

Also, by the way, it's an open.

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

Yeah. I would have been thinking about a second gunman myself before I got up there and Jersey shored it. But, you know, I guess what works for you, Don.

Maybe. Yeah. Yeah.

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

Don, is there a place that people who would take you up on your call to action could go to undertake such activities?

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

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

It was unclear from the quote. It was a story about both, so it was sort of all mixed up.

Well, it seems like Clarence Thomas gave her an idea. I don't think it has to be more complicated than that. She had not thought of that before. Clarence Thomas gave her a roadmap for what she could do to get out of this. She's like, well, I better copy his work.

In his dissent in the immunity case. that came out, what, two weeks ago? So she saw that, read it, and was like, ooh.

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

She's also, though, been, she's been playing this game where she didn't want to give Jack Smith anything to appeal to the 11th Circuit and then ask that she be removed from the case, which, like, it, really has to be pretty extreme. He can now, like, so. a lot of the legal nerds think this is getting overturned for sure, like that, she's not going to be able to throw it out, but they think it's now possible for her to get booted from the case for doing this. Not probable, but possible. So it's a little risky.

Do you see Matt Gaetz's tweet? He said, future Supreme Court justice canon.

Good troll. Solid troll. Good troll and possibly a solid prediction.

Yeah. Yeah. And also, future middle judge decider. Choose the swing vote. Choose the swing vote.

Anyway.

Ah, I shouldn't go on.

Speaking of way too young MAGA leaders, the other huge news on Monday was Trump's announcement that his running mate will be J.

That's Tommy's Weekend dad band.

That's a cover band called Six Wire, and they're just shredding it.

He's always doing the research. I did do a Google just now. Okay, what do you guys think about the Vance pic? What's your take on why Trump took a pass on our boy, Doug Burgum, little Marco Rubio, and dozens of others in favor of J.D.? Dan?

Well, I think in the interview that Trump did that you and I talked about on the pod last week, Trump kind of answered these questions. Doug Burgum, it was the abortion legislation in North Dakota. They have gone to great lengths to try to essentially lie about what their abortion plans are and their abortion policy is, so that takes Doug Burgum off. Marco Rubio, one, the Florida residency thing, I think was probably a little bit complicated. Also, he doesn't like Marco Rubio.

Marco Rubio talks good game now, but a couple years from now, you're going to have to hang him. That's what he's thinking. Really? Right?

Is he a good hang?

He's not a good hang. He's a good hang. J.D. Vance is a good hang. Pod title.

J.

Can we put in the civility alert, please? Civility alert.

Guys, guys, can we please lower the temperature? Lower the temperature.

What have you done to lower the temperature?

So you think it was process of elimination then?

It was process of elimination, because there's no good political argument for J.

I would say two things. I think one. ... I think one thing he does do is he signals to a certain set of rich Republicans or libertarian types that Trump's fully on board with their program, and then I think the second thing is J.D. Vance can articulate ...

My thought on the political aspect, I don't think it's about necessarily winning a state or even winning the election. First of all, I think J.D. Vance is a pick Trump made because he is confident that he is ahead, and so he felt like he could take a little bit more of a risk. We'll see whether that's right, but if you read Tim Alberta's interview in The Atlantic with Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, a very long interview, he spent a lot of time with them about their strategy, their running the Trump campaign, and they basically say in that interview that they don't care that much about losing suburban women to either Dobbs or Trump's character, things like that, and that they are going after younger voters, particularly younger working class men, white, black, Latino, and when you talk to these younger working class men, when you listen to them ... I just thought about this because we did our wilderness focus groups with a whole bunch of young people a couple weeks ago all over the place, and what do they talk about?

I also wonder. Donald Trump Jr. is extremely close to J.D. Vance, and it's interesting. We make fun of the Trump relationship with his children because he's a narcissist and only cares about himself, but I do think having your son constantly in your ear about this one person and his charisma and his political abilities is probably powerful.

didn't land there. Also, he put all that time in with Tiffany. That was stupid.

I do think also the Don Jr. piece of it, too, is Don Jr. is loyal, and he's saying, this is our guy. Yeah. Burgum, maybe, but Rubio's never going to be your good hang.

Close listeners of the pod would know that I already brought up this long interview and everyone made fun of it before.

Oh, yeah. I remember that. Love and I specifically made fun of it.

Well, first of all.

And Tommy brought it up literally three minutes ago.

Did you bring it up on the pod? You said, do the...

Jill Biden over here. I didn't say that.

I didn't say the name. I didn't say the name. But first of all, I think we should embrace Republican politics in which hypocrisy is a sign of strength. But anyway, you go through that interview and he is articulating a populist economic message. and, as a reminder, too, that when Donald Trump wins in 2017, the biggest worry was that he would pursue a more economically populist agenda, and instead he embraced repealing Obamacare and tax cuts for corporations and the kind of Paul Ryan style of governance, and it was to our benefit.

of Trumpism. Look, just in simple terms, he's got a compelling personal story like Hillbilly. Elegy was a good book. It just was. I enjoyed reading it.

Glenn Close and Amumu.

Hollywood loved me until I came out for Trump. And then Trump can point to how J.D. Vance used to criticize him, but he came to love him and now he bent the knee. So I think there's a compelling story there. The one thing that's just worth pointing out is that the Washington Post had a good analysis of J.D.

And Tim Ryan.

Yeah, and Tim Ryan.

I got a lot of credit to Tim Ryan there.

Well, you know, it was Ohio. I mean, he basically ran, J.D. ran even with Trump.

I think, John, you were right that this is a pick that is made from a confident view of the Trump standing in the race. I just think it is more about what J.D. Vance does after they win, not what J.D. Vance could do to help them win. Because if they were really trying to go for the kill shot here, you really would pick Rubio or Tim Scott or Byron Dallas.

That's the kind of thing that could be a permanent realignment. I think their view is probably, again, no idea if it's right or wrong. Their view is just because he picks a black or Latino candidate does not mean that's going to make it easier to get younger black and Latino men. Like that. it's just as possible with a younger white man like J.D.

Yeah. I just think J.D. Vance is the pick you make if you want to turn the MAGA agenda into an actual policy agenda, which is why he's so scary. Right. I think I said this.

Have you read this? Ross Duthat column?

Oh, he writes for The Times, right?

Did you talk to J.

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

I don't care. No one does.

That's his fault.

I didn't name him.

I think it's Douthat.

Yeah. I think that's correct. Sure, Douthat.

That's correct. You're right.

I thought that J.

So the Biden campaign statement about J.

If you do the hypocrisy thing, wherever you are, I'm going to come and find you, because it is the least effective message possible.

Are you just threatening the audience?

Turn the temperature down.

Turn the temperature down, Dan.

Get that alarm going. I'm going to find you to give you a hug. Where's the red head alert?

They already played it earlier. Dan's putting a bullseye on those kinds of talking points.

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

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

Hypocrisy is about the person. Policies are about the people they affect, right? Hypocrisy is about the person's values, what they represent, it's about their story. And, by the way, J.D. Vance is very happy to talk about this and how he evolved in Donald Trump and how it actually came to realize that Trump was the vehicle for taking on the villains that he talks about in Hillbilly Elegy.

We should at least say that J.

Yes. His position this week is prayers up for Hitler. So we should just be clear about that. That's where he's at.

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

Ron Johnson apparently called democratic policies a clear and present danger to the nation. Then he was asked by a reporter, hey, what happened to the unity message? He goes, oh, that was actually the old pre-unity speech that was loaded into the prompter. They accidentally loaded the division speech, not my unity speech.

You know, they accidentally loaded in what we all believe, not what we think.

Oh, inside thoughts.

We're doing this because we want to win. They want unity, we want to give them unity. This is also true. November, then, no more unity.

Well, then there'll only be unity.

Yeah, unity, yes. That's a scary kind of unity. But this is also, I think, why the post-assassination attempt turned down the temperature. conversation is kind of twisted, because that's a good example of just right-wing rhetoric has become completely divorced from reality, even when it's not inciting direct or even indirect violence. It is ascribing views, policies, and outcomes to Democrats in ways that just are not true.

I didn't get to see a lot of the convention. Did the unity thing work out? It was great.

It was awesome. It was a good time.

I was just sort of prepping for the show. No, it didn't work.

I mean, let me put it this way.

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

Well, they cut a big finish, which was burning Nancy Pelosi in effigies.

But for unity, I thought she was just going to be like CrossFit.

Nothing really stuck out at me as either super unifying or like really mean.

I mean, some pretty gross, disgusting attacks on trans people.

I didn't see that.

From Marjorie Taylor Greene, I missed that.

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

They did do that.

But I didn't really hear, I don't know. Nothing too exciting, that first, this first night, right?

I'm shocked that the night where the primetime major speaker was Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn.

I was waiting for like a big reveal.

Sort of a tough hit on Glenn Youngkin.

Oh yeah, he was there too.

Well, I mean, he had to open for Marsha Blackburn.

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

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

I didn't say crosshairs, I was talking about focus on it. Look, the truth of the matter was, what I guess I was talking about at the time was, there's very little focus on Trump's agenda.

Yeah, the term is bullseye.

I didn't say crosshairs, I meant focus on him. Focus on what he's doing. Focus on his policies. Focus on the number of lies he told in the debate. There's a whole range of things.

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

Love it. Yeah, I mean, I think Dan is... What Dan is saying, I obviously agree with. I think he did all the things that he was supposed to do. I think what is, I think, so troubling in moments like this is the best you can hope for from President Biden is that he does no damage rather than going out there and, I think, doing anything particularly inspiring or excellent.

I kind of want to separate what he did, basically, from the shooting on Saturday through Sunday night in the interviews. I think those are two separate things. Yes, of course. There's a long history of presidents rising to rhetorical heights in times like this. Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing.

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

Yes. Sunday night was not that. I thought the message was appropriate and fine. Like, yes, he stumbled over some words, but he did fine. He did fine.

He landed the plane in the Oval Office address.

The interview, less good.

A few bumps on the way down.

Well, I can say-.

Not on the Oval Office, but, you know.

I mean, I really like Lester Holt, but I felt the questions at the top that suggested that Biden's rhetoric had anything to do with the shooter felt pretty baseless and unfair. And I could see why Biden was annoyed at those questions in particular. But the frustration really came through. And I think I counted two or three times where he kind of got annoyed and defensive and lashed back at Lester and was like, why aren't you guys covering Trump's lies? Why aren't you covering this?

The question about the bullseye is an extremely annoying question. And what would have been the very easy answer is like, what do you mean? I was talking about putting the focus on Donald Trump, right? That's what I said about his policies. I said it at a fundraiser with a bunch of people.

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

Yeah. Well, Lester also asked Biden about the debate and the calls for him to step aside. Let's listen to some of that.

Last TV interview, you were asked if you had watched the debate. Your answer was, I don't think so, no. Have you since seen it?

I've seen pieces of it. I've not watched the whole debate.

The reason I ask, because I guess the question is, are you all on the same page? Are you seeing what they saw, which was moments of, frankly, that appeared to be, you appeared to be confused.

Lester, look, why don't you guys ever talk about the 18, the 28 lies, he told?

I just asked a question because the idea that you may or may not have seen.

what some of these other folks have seen, you're not on the same. I'd have to say I was there.

We have, we have reported many of the issues that came up during that debate.

No, you haven't. We'll provide you with them. God love you. Okay.

But if, if the opportunity came up to do one between now and then,

is there, is there a sense of wanting to get back on the horse?

I'm on the horse. Where have you been?

I've done 22 major events at thousands of people, overwhelming crowds, a lot happening. A lot is happening. Tommy, what'd you think of the, uh, what'd you think of the interview?

I think, I mean, I think Lester's question, are you seeing? what they saw is kind of the core question that a lot of people are asking about the election generally. Like is, does, does Joe Biden know how bad the debate was? Or does he really think it was 90 minutes that didn't go? well, but four great years of policy, is Biden seeing the bad polling that's out there?

There's another part in that, in towards the end of the interview, where Biden says, when he talks about the events he's doing, I'm, I'm out there proving to people that I have my faculties. So I have my faculties, and it's, it's sad to see. it's because if that's the threshold, right, if that's what he's out there proving, and we have, that, that's a man, that's not enough. It's a massive problem, right? The fact that we all, that, that, that he doesn't respond.

Dan, I keep trying to think about like, when you're advising a president or presidential candidate and they keep screwing things up in interviews, right? Like, let's put the like age coherence question aside. Let's just talk about his message, right? So you see, after the first couple of times, he's getting very defensive. He only talks about his, I'm the guy who did this.

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

Yeah.

It's like, there have been multiple stories. There's one in the Washington Post tonight about Biden shrinking his circle of advisors. Some of the people who we know, we even know the people on the inside of the circle, and they're all very smart. But I think that there is a process to manage the president here. Right.

Right.

Because there is just no basis in research, strategy, or recent political history to suggest the approach he has taken to answering the questions. Put aside the delivery. Right. Let's just say he's delivered the...

That's what I wanted to do. Let's just put that aside.

The answers are almost a masterclass in how not to persuade a swing voter. Right. And that is just, he is making the election all about himself. And there is, everyone knows, in the strategic imperative of their campaign, when they say is what they have to do is why they had that early debate in the first place, was to try to shift the focus to Trump, to make it about Trump. And Biden has been incapable of doing it.

It was one of the best speeches he's delivered in many months.

Yeah. And both in delivery and content. Yes. It had a proactive, really impressive, very progressive second term agenda. It put the focus on Trump.

The word is focus.

The word is focus. And it used his age as a asset, right? He took it on with some humility and handled it. And that is not translating off the prompter.

But that to me, that was what I was, that's why I brought up the future. Because what you want is for Joe Biden to take the speech he gives, right? That everyone's reviewing and saying, finally, he's doing it. He's making the case he needs to make. Get in front of Lester Holt and says, Lester Holt, people are worried about what you're going to do, what's going to happen in the next four years, whether you're up to it.

He is in a.

Truly a nightmare. He is a nightmare.

I mean, he did these Zoom calls with a bunch of members of Congress. All the reports are they went quite poorly. Quite poorly. And people are raising concerns.

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

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

And I think it's challenging when the people closest to you, and it's a very small circle, are telling you potentially what you want to hear. I remember a story in the 2004 campaign. Barack Obama went to some event. We're running into Alan Keyes at the time. We're winning by 30 points, 40 points, right?

I don't care that you're up 30.

They hate you for days.

But you're like, I'm just going to do it because it's the important thing to do. And look, I'm not saying... We don't know. Like, it could be happening and Biden could just be saying, fuck you. I don't care.

I just.

We know all of these people. I know we know them. There's... I'd like to sort of...

Well, there's some reporting that, like some of his closest aides are saying that they don't believe in polling. And maybe that's where kind of the rejection of polling language are coming from. That's what I'm specifically talking about.

But even then, like I read that today and it said, like.

Some of the best in the Democratic Party. on the payroll, especially in a general election. You get like... This is what... Kerry and Obama, you get, like a collection of five or six pollsters.

I think that they are managing Joe Biden's moods right now. I think he is a very prideful person. And I imagine this debate knocked him for a loop. He also hates to be called old. He has prides himself...

With Biden. Right.

So you got to.

I do remember that when there was.

I remember that. It was so funny.

I did just.

Well, there was a lot of discussion over the weekend. It does this sort of stop the conversation about whether Biden should step aside in favor of Kamala Harris or another candidate,

He obviously did not have some dramatic improvement as a candidate or stay in the race since the shooting, like nothing changed there. But something did change in terms of how people, how things happen in Washington, even before the shooting. In my head, my sort of deadline for whether Biden would stay in the race was today, was Monday, that if he could make it through the weekend to make it to the Republican convention and the VP nomination, that he would have survived long enough, because these things have momentum and momentum peters out. And it's just people, there were. people were feeling pressure because the media was focused on this intently.

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

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

I also, look, I don't know that Joe Biden can be, like, pushed out of the race, right? It seems like he can't. But I do wonder what happens in the quiet. I mean, look, I just, I don't know if I'm using this term correctly, but taking the under on Dan's point, that, of course, Joe Biden has to be defiant. The second he is not defiant, the second he leaves any opening to the idea that he might not be in the race, is the moment he's going to have to step down.

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

Not even close. The over-under would be, like, it would be, like, over-under, yeah.

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

Yes, yes, yes.

So that's why, wouldn't I then take the under?

No, no, no, different effect. But that's about the spread? The under is... What's the spread?

Okay, we've gone on for an hour. Long enough.

People love this shit.

Again, just another backless assertion.

Which advisors around Lovett will tell him the truth? Hey guys, hey guys. Is he getting good information?

This is the kind of rhetoric.

How many podcasts have to come to you publicly?

I will not step down. Axios says Pelosi wants you to shut the fuck up.

I will finish the job.

That is our show for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow with reactions to all the latest. And night two of the Republican National Convention. What a good time we have coming up this week, boys. Yeah.

The best is yet to come.

Remember that?

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