Was Biden's "Big Boy Presser" Enough?
2024-07-12 00:53:03
Pod Save America is a no-bullshit conversation about politics hosted by former Obama aides Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor. It cuts through the noise to break down the week’s news and helps people figure out what matters and how they can help. They’re regularly joined by journalists, activists, politicians, entertainers, and world leaders. You can watch on YouTube or listen to new episodes every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Ad-Free Pod Save America episodes available NOW through Friends of the Pod subscription. Head to crooked.com/friends to join today! For a transcript of an episode of Pod Save America, please email transcripts@crooked.com (edited)
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, the calls for Joe Biden to step aside now seem to be coming from inside the house. The Biden campaign is trying to convince Democrats that he still has a plausible path to victory, with a new memo and a visit by senior campaign officials to Capitol Hill.
And Donald Trump's VP pick could come at any moment, and he can't shut up about his potential running mates. But first, Dan, we are recording this right after President Biden wrapped up his much-anticipated post-NATO press conference. His big boy press conference, as they say. His big boy press conference, as it was called. It was taken live by all the networks, and it went for about 50 minutes.
It was quite late. It started at 7.30.. It was supposed to start at 6.30.. Here's some of what we heard from Biden. What concerns do you have about Vice President?
Harris's ability to beat Donald Trump. if she were at the top of the ticket? Look, I wouldn't.
have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president. I think she's not qualified to be president. So let's start there. The consideration is that I think I'm the most qualified person to run for president. I beat him once, and I will beat him again.
You mixed up Presidents.
Zelensky and Putin earlier today.
And you now have sort of your key allies, including the British prime minister, the president of France, and the German chancellor, having to step in and make excuses for you. on that. Officials here are saying off the record that your decline has become noticeable. Hasn't this now, frankly, become damaging for America's?
standing in the world? Thank you. Did you see any damage to our standing in my leading this conference? Have you seen a more successful conference? What do you think?
And the move to Putin, please. I was talking about Putin, and I said, and now, at the very end, I said here, I mean, Putin, I said, no, I'm sorry, Zelensky.
There's been reporting that you've acknowledged that you need to go to bed earlier and you're.
evening around eight. That's not true. Look, what I said was, instead of my every day, starting at seven and going to bed at midnight, it'd be smarter for me to pace myself a little more. Earlier explained confidence in your vice president. Yes.
If your team came back and showed you data that she would fare better against former President Donald Trump, would you reconsider your decision to stay in the race? No, unless they came back and said, there's no way you can win.
Me. No one's saying that.
No poll says that.
All right, we got the whispery voice. You're saying there's a chance. Dan, what'd you think?
It's a tough question, John, because in some ways it felt over in the first four minutes when he misspoke and referred to Kamala Harris as Vice President Trump, like that rocket around the internet. I'm positive. that will be what the vast majority of people who engage with this press conference at all see. The rest of the press conference was good in the sense that it looked very different than debate. It was by far his best, most engaged, unscripted performance since the debate.
He answered the foreign policy questions with real substance. He seemed to relish his conversation with David Sanger, the foreign policy correspondent for the New York Times. Just enjoy talking about the China-Russia, his engagement China-Russia.
But if you're judging it in terms of did he deliver a message against Trump, or even effective one for himself, he did okay on his economic message. And up until the very end on Trump, it was really sort of message-free, right? It was all performance, not message.
Yeah. So it's tough. Obviously, like you said, the Vice President Trump gaffe, the earlier when he called Zelensky Putin, right? Not good. People are going to see that, whatever.
Those actually, that does not bother me as much as he still doesn't have a message that is going to persuade people who are on the fence. He just couldn't frame the choice in the election. He's very knowledgeable about foreign policy issues. You watch that press conference and you're like, you know what? This guy, he can do the job right now.
And he clearly is deeply involved in these meetings. He's remembering conversations with leaders. So it's like, I think the pendulum swung too far in the direction of like, oh, is the guy, has he lost a step? Is he forgetful? I really don't think that is, that's not what worries me.
What worries me is that we don't have a presidential candidate who can communicate clearly and prosecute the case against Donald Trump clearly in a way that is going to make undecided voters, who are the voters who are going to decide this election, feel comfortable with them. And I just, I don't think, now it's a press conference, it's a press conference on foreign policy, right? So you've got to give him that. It's hard to just pivot to your economic message when you're talking about foreign policy and being asked about foreign policy. But I do think that some of the same issues he had in the Stephanopoulos interview, which is when he's asked questions about his age or his health or his presidency or his campaign, immediately becomes defensive.
He immediately goes to his record. He immediately talks about, you know, the critics said, I couldn't do this. And let me tell you about what the Nobel laureate said and this, and it's just, it is not, I don't think that's going to work very well with voters, but I don't know. Maybe, you know, if you're an average voter, maybe you tuned in and you saw him talking and going on about all that stuff. And you're like, yeah, I feel good.
Who knows?
Yeah. I think, you know, I agree with you that the vice president Trump, the Putin-Selensky thing, is not a big deal in the sense that it does not tell me anything or give me any.
concerns about his cognitive ability. Right. Yeah. Me personally, for sure.
Yes. But it is a political problem because every time he makes a misstatement, it rockets across the internet and therefore validates people's largest concern about him. And that feels, prior to the debate, that felt somewhat unfair. But in a post-debate world, that's where we're in, where every time the guy goes out and speaks, and he has been known because of a stutter, because he talks a lot, to make misstatements. Right.
That is something that's been true. That was true 15 years ago. It was true in his 1988 race. And in some ways, it's really endearing. It makes him seem like a normal person.
But now there's a new context to it that just adds political weight to every single one. People are going to flyspec every single thing he does. And that is a political problem. And it just is going forward.
Yeah. It was just really tough to follow. Like, I saw a lot of people on Twitter being like, this is great. This guy should have shown up at the debate. Like, I don't actually think that guy should have shown up at the debate.
I think he would have done better than he did at the debate if that guy had shown up. But I still don't think he would have prosecuted the case effectively. There was a lot of non-sequiturs, half-thoughts trailed off here and there. Like, it wasn't just a stutter thing, right? Like that, I don't hold against him at all.
But it's just, and he's just in such a defensive crouch, right? Which I understand. But also, like, I don't know. It gave me confidence that he can be president right now. It did not give me any more confidence that.
he can beat Donald Trump. I think that's fair. If that guy had shown up at the debate, he would have at least tied or beaten Trump on points. Would that have mattered? You know, how would persuasive that have been to the people, the 50 million people who watched, who are currently undecided?
I don't know. But it was so much, it was exponentially better in the debate. I think that's a fact. Was it great? I'm not going to say that, but it was much better.
I think it's tough. now. We're just like all grading him on a curve. You can tell even the reporters in the room, and especially some of the foreign reporters, like, Donald Trump, is a threat to democracy here and all over the world. And you can feel it.
You can feel the tension with even some of the foreign reporters and everyone else. Like, people want Joe Biden to succeed, you know? I mean, a lot of people want Joe Biden to succeed. And that's why it's like so tough to watch that. Because you're like, come on, man, get it out, get it out.
It's just hard for him to do.
It's just we're grading him on, there are two tests in each of these events, right? One is, does he have the capacity to be president, right? Is he pushing it against the, you know, what we've read a lot is reports about what he kind of can't do, the version of him that showed up at the debate, the version of him that you guys talked about seeing at that fundraiser. There was another version and that version showed up today. And then there's the question of, is he a good communicator with that stamina, capacity and communications chops to be able to come back from a somewhat significant deficit in this race?
And those questions are different, right? They're different. And they do, and they will interact with some, but I'm sure we'll get to in a second, how people feel about what they should say on the ticket. Yeah. And I don't think.
on the second question, I don't think he did anything tonight to allay those concerns. But what do you think about the political impact of tonight? Because it does seem like, like his team is clearly happy with it. His strongest supporters online are like people. owe Joe Biden the apology because this is so amazing.
And, but then even a lot of reporters sort of had the take that we did, which is he really demonstrated a command of foreign policy details and his record and what's going on in the world. So what do you think the sort of the political impact might be?
I think there's, we're really talking about small board politics, right? This is about the elected officials and influential people, donors and influential people in the party who may or may not call for him to get out of the race, to put additional pressure on him. And I think he probably bought himself a little bit of time with that group, right? They, this is a, don't want people, some of these people love Joe Biden. They, this is a very political, fraught decision that, you know, there was a, it comes with great risk to take the bolder choice here politically for the, for a lot of the frontline districts who think Biden's going to bring them down, but everyone else in the party is to undertake a risky change.
And they don't want to do that. And I think he gave people, he gave some people permission to hold back. Now we'll see what happens when Hakeem Jeffries talks to more of his frontline members. We'll see what happens when Senator Schumer talks to more of his members who were very worried about losing the Senate. But I do think if he had had a, a bad, a bad night, right?
Something like not debate bad, but ABC interview bad. I think he would have seen a flood tomorrow. I'm not sure we'll see a flood tomorrow. And he cleverly has an interview scheduled for Monday. So he might buy himself some time.
or, you know, everyone in politics pulls off the bandaid as slowly as humanly possible. And so you can see this giving them some.
reason to slow down. We did see one member of Congress, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Jim Himes, from Connecticut, calling him to step down after this press conference. It seems like his statement was written before the press conference. There was some news before the press conference that a number of House members, like had their statements ready and call on him to drop out. And they were ready to release those statements, no matter how the press.
conference went, which should tell you something. Do you think that Jim Hines, his press secretary, put it, did a scheduled send and then went to kickball match?
I hope so. I hope so. All right. Let's talk about where things are at the moment, then. So, in the hours before the press conference, we had about six more members of Congress calling Biden to suspend his campaign, now seven with with Jim Hines.
That makes 18 House Democrats, one senator. And then there's a few dozen others who've openly doubted his ability to win or said they're close or some sort of statement that seems like they're going to get to, calling on him to drop out, but are not sure yet. Notice also scooped that many members of the Congressional Black Caucus are saying privately that they want Biden to step down. There was news that the UAW is concerned that Joe Biden can't beat Trump and that they're thinking about next steps. He was asked about that at the press conference as well.
And he said, well, they just endorsed me. Did you know that? And yes, but he clearly was not apprised of that news. There's also a lot of speculation about what senior Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Obama are saying and doing behind the scenes. There was a CNN story right before we started recording that Pelosi and Obama have talked about this and that both of them have been acting more as a sounding board, not just for Joe Biden, but for worried members of the party.
That, of course, has been getting some angry pushback from the Biden folks, particularly with the Obama stuff. We're going to talk about that. But the biggest news of the day came from the New York Times, reporting that, quote, long time aides and advisors to Biden have become convinced that he will ultimately have to step aside, and they're trying to figure out how to craft a message that he'll listen to. Good luck with that. The Times had a second scoop that the Biden campaign is now in the field with a poll testing Kamala Harris against Trump.
Apparently, that's the first time they've done so. And NBC News had a big story of its own, which quoted three people involved in the Biden reelect campaign, saying the president can't win. One Biden advisor said he needs to drop out. He will never recover from this. Yikes.
Dan, what do you make of the Times and NBC stories? What do you think the state?
of play is right now? I think the state of play is that smart people in the Biden operation are looking at this and seeing where it's going, and that there are really two paths right now, because I think even with today's press conference, we should just come to the reality that there's kind of nothing Joe Biden can do to fully address the age issue. And truly both with that group of people within the party and the broader public. I'm not saying he can't win despite that, but that is just a fact. There's not a performance in his bag that is going to reach people and unring the bell of the debate.
That just cannot be undone. And so I think to some advisors looking at this are saying there are two paths. He steps aside and helps maybe get someone to defeat Trump and preserve his legacy, or he continues on what feels like a suicide mission where most of the party runs away from him for the next four months. Donors start sending all of their money to the House and the Senate. The energy in the party is not around trying to elect Biden, which many believe is a lost cause.
I'm not saying it is, but to create it, to take back the House and keep the Senate, create a bulwark against the Trump presidency where, you know, think about this. He wants to go to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, right? That is what they see as their path. Three of the most important Senate races are there. You have Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, and Alyssa Slotkin in Michigan.
What are they going to do? They're going to be running away from him the entire campaign unless there is a dramatic change in events. And that is just, it is uncomfortable. It is a death march, a painful, diminishing, undignified death march to a Trump presidency. And I think there are people who really care about Biden, who are beginning to think about how we can get him to avoid that outcome, because at least that's how it felt this morning, that that's where we were headed.
Assuming that Times report about the poll is true, do you think they're doing it, testing Kamala Harris against Trump, the Biden campaign, because they think it will bolster the for him staying in, or because they suspect she's running ahead of Biden, and this could be something to help Biden reconsider, which is basically what that reporter asked at the very end there?
I would like to believe that it is responsible people trying to explore all options here. I am worried, however, that since the gist of most of the Biden high command thus far has been to survive at all costs, that there's nothing that some of them at least would like more than a poll that shows her doing worse than Biden, that they can go send people because that they're according to that time story, they have been using that in discussions with donors and members of Congress and others, which is, yeah, Biden may be in trouble, but we're going to get. if Biden leaves, you're getting Kamala, and Kamala is definitely losing. And if they had a piece of data to prove that, I worry that some of them at least would use it. I don't think all of them, because I think some of these advisors who we just referenced, are trying to find the right path here.
And in in trying to understand the right path, you do want to know what Kamala Harris's prospects against Trump.
would be. Yeah. And they do seem to be. seems like their strategy is saying one, if it's not Biden, it has to be Kamala, there is no process where there's an open primary or convention or some other way for another potential candidate to win. And then to Kamala can't win.
Yeah. And so, and we, you know, some, some Biden advisors are saying that to reporters, they're pushing that around some of them as a way to sort of stop the, the groundswell of, of Democrats wanting Biden to drop out. What do you make of the drip, drip, drip of members coming out against Biden? Just, it's like a very weird, every couple hours, there's another statement. And like, do you think it's more?
do you think they think they're influencing Biden to drop out? that it's part of that effort? Or is it about their own races? Or is it about both? I think it's both right for some.
members who are either coming out in support of Biden, or against Biden, who are in safe districts. It doesn't matter what they say about. it's not going to affect their, their chance of winning reelection. And Biden's not going to bring them down in their district. So it's a, it's a very, it's a very safe and probably honest decision.
For some of these members in competitive districts, they feel they are getting their polls back. And their polls are bad, and they are bad. And this is the exact time, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of this week is when you would get a poll back that you put in the field on the Sunday after Fourth of July weekend. And they are seeing it and they are looking for distance. And I think do think, look, I don't talk, we don't talk to everyone in the party, but we talked to a lot of people in the party.
And there is an overwhelming consensus among the vast majority of people in the party who work on elections, that Joe Biden's chances of winning are quite long, and that he is likely to bring down the House and the Senate with them. And they would very much like him to withdraw. Those people may be right, they may be wrong. But that is how people feel. And there has been this huge chasm between what people are saying publicly and what they believe privately.
And they keep waiting for someone else to go ahead to do it, because no one wants to be the one who does it. But that is sort of where we are. And as more people do it, it's like the water is warm in this pool, hop in.
I just want to, like, because I'm sure that people who are following this story or listening to us, or just watching it unfold on Twitter and on their screens and on television, you know, don't quite understand this, because so many of these conversations are private. But it's not just like a majority of people we're talking to in the party. It's not like an overwhelming majority. I have not had one person that I've talked to, and we have both talked to so many people, of like, people, different ideological backgrounds, men, women, black, Latino, gays, like literally everyone we've ever worked with in democratic politics. I haven't had one person say to me, he should definitely stay in what it like, come on, this is crazy.
Like, he's the best shot that we have. No one has said that. No one has said that. And you can tell with some of these. And a lot of people are like, hey, thanks for what.
I'm glad you guys are speaking up, because we, you know, a lot of us can, and for good reason. A lot of these people have contracts. They're working there. It's their jobs, right? Like they can't speak up.
Like I get. I totally get that. I had one person who's connected with the campaign, like reach out to me. And I was like, Oh, I'm gonna get in trouble. And then they're like, the polls are really bad.
We got to get more of these bad polls out on television. Because that maybe that's the only way that Biden might reconsider, because I don't think he's getting the right information from his senior advisors. And he needs to see that some of the polls are really bad. Like that's that that's what we're.
here. So just just so, people and the other thing we're hearing is just like, I mean, these are rumors, but you hear them from everyone, which and I think it's sort of borne out by some of how Biden's approach this is he's not talking to people who think he should drop out. Yes,
you're not allowed to bring him bad information right now. Yes, he did not go to the House and.
the Senate caucus. He has not brought the House and the Senate down to meet with them. By which is a huge flag, because if there was one thing that Joe Biden we know loves to do, it's talk to members of Congress, pick up a phone, he'd call them, he'd have them down. That's what that's. that is his superpower.
And he has not done that. He is not seeing the polls, right? He's clearly seeing different polls. And he doesn't seem to believe polls anyway, as he said in this press conference today. And so that that that is sort of the situation that we are in.
But it is a stare. We've been in the staring match for two weeks, and we're still in this staring match. Ultimately,
it's up to Joe Biden. Well, let's talk about the timing here, because it so we have the Republican Convention next week. A lot of media attention will turn to. that starts on Monday. Like you said, Biden does have a sit down interview Monday night with Lester Holt.
And then we've got the Republican Convention, we've got. Trump will name his VP candidate. then, if not before, then, right, like we could have it Friday, we can Monday, Tuesday. And then after the Republican Convention, then we're getting pretty close to when the DNC wants to schedule this virtual roll call vote so that Joe Biden can get on the ballot in Ohio. Which seems like, even though they scheduled that before the debate, it does seem like convenient for them that they can officially nominate him well before the August convention so that they can finally close this conversation once and for all.
Like, do you think that Joe Biden can just run out the clock here? Well,
I do. I do think he can run out the clock. Absent a mass public revolt from elected Democrats, including the leaders of the House and the Senate. Yeah, there's, no one can force him to do this. There is no mechanism to do it.
Right. Oh, definitely. Yeah. And so if he, if he is committed under all scenarios to winning, if he needs to be proven that he can't win, which is what he said in the press conference, that is a test that cannot be met. People are going to say it's.
unlikely you can win. People can say, can bring data to him to say it looks like from the data that Kamala Harris has a better chance to win. or, or Gretchen Whitmer or whoever else, Josh Shapiro. They can show him all that data, but no one's going to show him data that says you can't win because he can't. Right.
Because, like, of course, it's possible for him to win.
Of course. Yeah. I mean, anything's, anything's possible. And so I like we'll see what happens in the press conference. He did make a slight pivot where he in the previous interviews, he said this conversation is over the very pugnacious, I think, pretty arrogant letter that they sent to Congress that addressed no concerns.
That was like, this is over. Shut up. Get on board. He did imply here. And it is, you know, it's hard to know, like, what is what is really sending a signal and what's just an answer, but that he believes he still had more concerns to a switch.
Right. And so it seemed like maybe that process what he got to ask the follow up, that scripts reporter at the end asked great questions, I would say. Really great question. And one of them was, does that mean the conversation is not over? And he didn't really answer it, but it was not, as he did not sound as definitive as he had before.
So I don't know whether that's a shift in his mentality or just a shift in his public attitude about it, because many people have pointed out, I mean, you guys like this a lot on Tuesday's pod that that that sort of attitude was turning off members of Congress was making the problem worse because it was angering them and how it was approaching. And so maybe he's. maybe I don't know whether he's changed his attitude or he's changed his his language around it.
So Joe Scarborough said this morning on Joe Biden's favorite television show, Morning Joe, that the Biden campaign told him that they think our old boss, Barack Obama, is orchestrating the push to get Biden to drop out. He also said Joe Biden is, quote, deeply resentful of his treatment under the Obama staff. And the New York Times wrote that Mr. Biden's advisers think that David Axelrod and the Pod Save America bros are, quote, operatives who worked for a cerebral, cool guy, president, and never understood the world, according to the scrappy kid from Scranton. Care.
to respond, my fellow elitist pod bro?
I would say I have tried.
to maintain a very even temper through this process. I have not been fighting people on Twitter. I have stopped looking. You know, yeah, you've been the best of all of us. You've been, or the worst one or two.
But I have. I have been the most. I've been the most offline of us, at least in terms of my public. So I've tried to do that because I find this situation very personally uncomfortable, because we know all the people who work on those campaigns. They are friends of ours.
We are still staffers at heart. Like I still to this day, and I always check in my head. I always think, like, how is what I'm saying? Like, doesn't change what I say, but I think about it was what I'm going to say, make the job of the people used to have my jobs harder. Right.
So to anger them, upset them the way people did that to me. But this, that New York Times piece, just pissed me off to no end, because the idea that we are doing this, that we are raising questions about whether Joe Biden can win purely out of personal animus, is so fucking infuriating. because I love Joe Biden. I grew up in Delaware. My first political experience in my life was meeting Joe Biden in second grade at a fair.
Right. Because I'm a fucking nerd. When I was 12, I followed his primary campaign because I thought it was really cool that someone from my state that I had met could be president of the United States. When I went to college in Washington, you know what first thing I did? Go intern for Joe Biden.
Right. It's always been incredibly decent and good to me. Like called me when I got it, when I got my first job in the White House. He visited me when I got promoted once. Just great to my family.
Love the guy. And it's just the way that the idea that this is somehow some personal attack on Joe Biden because he didn't go to an Ivy League school, or I don't understand Scranton, or we don't understand Scranton is just so infuriating. It's infuriating personally, but it's more infuriating because it explains why they have fucked up the response to this debate so bad. Because it's not about Joe Biden. It is not.
Everything is now about Joe Biden. It's people are mad at him. They don't get him. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And it's about this election, which Joe Biden himself has said is the most important election of our time, the democracy at stake.
And we can have a good faith disagreement without doing this. And then, just as a political operative, it's just the incompetence of spending your time fighting Patsy of America, David Axelrod, George Clooney, and the most popular figure and the most popular figure in the Democratic Party, at a time when you are struggling with.
voters is fucking insane. And again, and I don't, and I don't know who's doing it in the White House. And like, I, I believe firmly that it's not the people that, that we know are friends with, not just because they wouldn't do that to us, but because I think they're smarter than this, because this is, this is just like really stupid shit. And the reason we're bringing it up in the New York times is we know, because reporters are reaching out to us, that the Biden White House is, is just pushing around stuff on us. I had multiple calls from reporters today asking, saying that two White House sources told them that I wrote George Clooney's op-ed.
That's the rumor out there that a bunch of outlets were ready to go with. until they finally reach out for me. They think that I was writing George Clooney's op-ed. I mean, it was a very well written op-ed, so it's kind of a compliment. I know.
I probably should have just taken credit for it. But I'm like, guys, just don't, but my thing is, you do whatever you want to us. It's fine. Like you have bigger fucking fish to fry. That's the point.
Like, this is not, what are you, like, why are you spending time on us for? Go fucking, just beat Donald Trump. or like help your candidate, be on message and deliver a message. And it's also like, oh, we're all cerebral, blah, blah, blah. If he was the scrappy kid from Scranton, I'd be fucking thrilled.
We've been advocating that for a couple years now. Every time he does Scranton versus Park Ave and he talks about, like, you know, fighting for middle-class folks and working class folks. I love that, Joe Biden. The Joe Biden. I don't love talking about fucking NATO all the time.
Domestic NATO. Yeah. And just like doing like the ethereal democracy stuff. That's all. like, you know, rhetoric and nothing else.
Or he's just always talking about foreign policy. Like I want him to talk about middle-class stuff. He's good at that. That's who he is. The idea that, like they're doing this fucking Trump grievance bullshit, that like everyone's counting Joe Biden now, but it's just so silly.
It's so silly. It's just, and it's so.
counterproductive. They're so focused on remaining the nominee that they've lost the thread that the.
goal here is to be reelected president. They're just mad. And I get it. I'd be mad too. Yeah, I would hate us.
I'd hate us. I'd be very mad at us too. I'd be very mad at us too. I would try to prevent myself from doing something politically counterproductive for the campaign and the.
candidate through my anger. Like I might like, I might TP our house, right? Or put a flaming bag of dog shit on your front step. But I wouldn't make it a core part of our message of the New York.
times. Yeah, no, I don't think. I don't think taken on podcasters and elites as to morning Joe.
Again, again, the elites on their side are okay. All right. Two quick things before we go to break exciting announcement. next week, we'll have five straight episodes of pod save America. That's a new episode.
every day, Tuesday through Saturday, we'll be doing a rap show for every night of the Republican convention fun posting overnight. And then on Friday, the 19th, we will be live in Madison, Wisconsin for the democracy. or else tour with our pal Ben Wickler, chairman of the Wisconsin democratic party. head to crooked.com slash events to grab tickets now. Also, in case you haven't listened yet, killing justice from crooked media and the branch follows the reporting and legal fallout from the death of a prominent Indian judge.
host Ravi Gupta, our old friend and colleague, examines the conflicting evidence to answer how one man's death has become a magnet for the increasingly polarized politics in India. And what this means for the future of the world's democracy. You can binge all eight episodes now on Apple or Spotify for ad free episodes. You can join friends of the pod at crooked.com slash friends. Okay.
When we come back, we're going to talk about the Biden campaign strategy to weather the storm and the latest with Trump's VP search.
Let's give the Biden campaign it's due here and talk about their case that the president can still win. On Thursday morning, the campaign circulated a memo laying out Biden's path to victory. So they also sent three of Biden's closest advisors, General Malley, Dylan, campaign manager, Steve Rashetti and Mike Donilon, two of Biden's longest serving aides, uh, to Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Democrats. It must've been a fun meeting for them. And former Biden chief of staff, Ron Klain, sat down for an interview with Greg Sargent on his new Republic podcast.
So in the memo, the campaign acknowledges quote, real movement in their polling, including some movement from undecided voters to Trump. But they say most of the movement was driven by historically democratic constituencies moving to undecided. They argue in the memo that Biden can get those voters back, that they still have a path to 70, uh, though they're pretty much focused on Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. They said the Sunbelt states are not out of reach, but they still, they think that the blue wall is the path now. And they also say there's no indication from the data that any other candidate would do better than Biden against Trump.
And they maintain that the battlegrounds remain. quote, margin of error races, uh, though they didn't cite any specific data. This also came up in Ron Klain's interview with Greg Sargent. Uh, let's listen.
Look, I think the data would be if we were ahead and we aren't, I don't think this is something about like, Oh, I'm going to show you a bunch of numbers and the numbers are going to tell you I'm right. But I'll say the piece of data that is on the present side is he cares about people like me, shares my values, all those things he's doing very well in those metrics. I think that really matters. in the end. I think we live in an era kind of identity politics, character politics.
I think, though, Ron, what people want to hear is something a little more like this. We know we're down, we know we're struggling, in particular with these voter groups, and here's how we're going to get them back. Can you give us something more like that?
I think that we need to win the voters who have doubts about both candidates. And what I'd say is, in that respect, Trump is more like the incumbent, where, if you're at this stage in the game and you're not a Trump voter, we have doubts about voting, but I think if you're not a Trump voter, you're going to come home to Joe Biden.
So we don't know exactly what Jen and Steve and Mike said to the Democratic senators today, but Punchbowl reported that things got, quote, heated in the room, with senators saying they're, quote, being put in an untenable position, defending something that so many of their constituents felt was obvious. Dick Blumenthal, senator from Connecticut, was the only one to give a readout. The rest of them said they weren't supposed to talk. Blumenthal said in part, some of my concerns have been allayed, some have been deepened.
And he also said, quote, I need to see more data and analytics that show a path to victory. So I know you did a whole polar coaster on Biden's polling. that just dropped because I listened this morning. What do you make of the campaign's argument about the state of the race?
and why they can still win it? I think the memo was very telling, because they admit that they are behind. They admit that they have lost voters to Trump. And when you say the races in the battleground states and the three you need are in margin of error, it means you're behind within the margin of error. Because if they were winning, they would say it.
Of course. Yeah. And I think that's just important because so much of the conversation about what Joe Biden should do has to be based on a shared fundamental understanding of the state of the race. And for the first 10 days or so of this long conversation we've been a part of, there have been the people saying that the race is still a toss up, the race is still a toss up. This is the Biden campaign telling you that, while they believe they have a path to victory, they are behind, and that they have most likely an incredibly narrow path to get to do 70..
They may think they can still get there, but they were behind in every single battleground state.
And that is what these senators are seeing. And I think the Biden campaign polls, they could very well be more correct, but they are better than, in these battleground states, than a lot of the internal polls we're seeing. We have heard about polls with Biden down 10 in Pennsylvania, right? There was a public poll that has Biden down six in Wisconsin. These would be outside of the margin of error, unless it's a very small sample.
And so, yeah, they're in a tough spot. Can they get there? What I think the memo in Ron's interview is lacking, and I'm going to get back to Ron in a second, but is a path of how Biden actually does the persuasion, right? Like, yes, these are the voters you need. Yes, many of them are double haters.
They don't like Trump, but they also don't like Biden. Historically, and this is a historical election, but historically, the undecided voters tend to break against the incumbent. I don't know I buy that this time, necessarily, because Biden and Trump have 100% name ID, and they're kind of both incumbents. Two incumbents. Two incumbents.
But to Ron's point, if you weren't for Trump before, but if you weren't for Biden before, right? If you hadn't decided to vote against Trump already, what's going to make you do it? And also, if you weren't for Trump before,
it doesn't really fit with everything we've heard in focus groups of voters. We have heard focus groups of Trump-Biden voters, they voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 20, who say, I think I'm going to go back to Trump. I think if you were never for Trump, it would be hard to imagine you being for Trump for the first time, though I'm sure there's still some of those voters, but there was a good chunk of Trump-Biden voters in 2020.. And I think, from all the focus groups and all the polls, Biden's having some real trouble with those voters. I think the other thing that was telling in that memo is, so they acknowledge that they're behind.
They acknowledge that some of the voters have moved from undecided to Trump. And then some traditional democratic constituencies have moved from Biden to undecided, right? And they think they can get those back. So let's say, so. those are probably younger voters, Latino voters, probably some younger black men, right?
These are some of the constituencies that they've been having trouble with. Even if they have a plan to consolidate those voters, as they say is possible, give them that they can do this. They're still behind and they have still lost some of those voters to Trump post-debate. And so, like a lot of the memo was talking about how to get those traditional democratic constituencies back. But even if you get them back, I think you still have a couple.
points to make up. It kind of depends on how, what you believe the voter universe to be. If you think it is going to be a lower turnout election, then you may not need to do that. Then you can get there. Like.
this is why the likely voter screen matters so much in these polls. How tight is that screen? How, you know, and the tighter it gets, we know the better it is for Biden. But it's also the other way to think about this is people don't have to vote. They're not required to.
So moving to undecided, even if they're never going to Trump, the other option is not vote. A Biden voter who doesn't vote is a net gain of one for Trump. And so that's still a loss for Biden. And so who is ahead? Right, right.
It is, but Trump was ahead before. Trump is ahead by more. now. Impressions of Biden in the public polling are worse before. Like in that New York Times-Siena poll that came out after the debate, percentage of voters who thought he would, and I think it's always smart the way the New York Times asks the question, too old to be an effective president has gone up five points to 74% of voters.
Take that. And so he's just in a very, very tough position. And if we're being just- Biden said something in the press conference about how some, I think he said like four or five incumbent presidents had numbers worse than his at this point in the campaign.
I didn't know what he was talking about.
I mean, someone gave him that piece of information, I assume. I'd be curious to know what it is. To my knowledge, there's not-.
Couldn't be in modern times.
The polling's only been around for so long. If you go through the president, it's kind of hard to see what it is. But in my mind, I cannot think of a incumbent president in modern times who'd ever come back from being behind at this point in the race.
Yeah, I mean, the incumbent presidents that had approval ratings around Biden, approval ratings are Jimmy Carter and George H.
W. Bush, who went on to lose, both of them.
And both of their approval ratings were higher than Biden's. That's a little bit of a-. Our apples are just because of polarization, but-.
Right. But so let's get back to your point about like, so what would Biden have to do? How does Biden turn it around, right? Because if these impressions of Biden are worse than they were before the debate, if Trump is ahead, the campaign has spent all of June running tens of millions of dollars of ads in the swing states, largely unchallenged by Trump. They've outspent Trump through most of June.
That will not happen for the next couple of months.
It's worse than that. They've outspent him. since January. Trump has spent almost no money on air.
Since January. So their spending advantage on ads will disappear soon, and they might actually be outspent by the Trump campaign. And that has not moved the needle. We have talked a million times about. the central challenge of this campaign is getting voters' attention.
And now that this first debate happened, certainly got people's attention, not in a great way. Now they have the democratic convention, which, as we said before, is watched largely by partisans or people who have decided already.
And then Biden mentioned something about it at the press conference tonight. He mentioned something about, oh, at the next debate. And I'm, like, Donald Trump has already said, I don't want to put Joe through that again, which is of course, that's what you would do if you were Donald Trump. That is the smarter play for him. So I don't understand like how Biden is.
I'm just trying to see a path for him to go. change people's impressions of him in the next several months. You're going to have to get.
really lucky, right? Like the plan here is, hold on, make some improvements, have Joe Biden pitch a perfect game the rest of the way and have Trump implode in some way, shape or form.
Plus some good economic news, right? You're going to theoretically get a rate cut. in September, as Biden pointed out, inflation actually came down, prices came down for the first time since the pandemic. But yeah, it's very, very hard to see how you do that. These impressions have been locked in.
One thing I would say is, it's sort of funny, because yesterday, when it seemed like Biden had this thing locked up, he was going to be the nominee, I was like, you know what, I'm going to try to be constructive. I'm going to write a whole message box about what the path is, for. We're in a death spiral right now, with Biden in the race, which is, Democrats said, convince us that you've got what it takes to win and you can stay in the race. But then he didn't convince them and he stayed in the race anyway. And so now he's in the race and the Democrats are running away from him.
So it's like this death spiral. So I decided to write a message box about how should we get out of this death spiral? What should Biden do? And then I woke up this morning and then George Clee had an op-ed and it all fell apart. But one of the points I think we have to recognize is...
That I spent a lot of time on.
Yeah, that you worked. I mean, give me a fucking heads up, buddy.
It's like anyone who fucking knows me, knows I can't write anything longer than a fucking tweet. John, John, you wrote a book.
It just came out last month.
I did, I did. I needed three other people to do that.
That's right. One of the things is he's never going to solve the age problem. It's an unsolvable problem.
Nothing is solved. It's been the same this whole time. They spent all this money on ads. He had this great State of the Union. He's managed national crises.
He's got a lot of attention, like Ukraine and Gaza. Even if they've turned, especially Gaza has turned out to be a huge political problem. And it's never changed. It's just gotten worse over time. And you can't convince people that you shouldn't be concerned about an 82 year old signing up for four more years.
So I think what you're going to have to do, and with the one that you probably can't do, and this is like, this is a suboptimal approach. I want to be very clear about that.
Yeah, no, no, I'm sure. I'm just what. we're trying to be constructive and make the best case, because if he stays in, we're going to have to, we're all making it right. We're all going to have to try.
our hardest. Is he's going to have to run a rose garden campaign of sorts, right? He's like this idea that he should go out and like campaign 17 times a day and do these like huge press conferences and like restart the straight talk express like he's John McCain. That's a disaster, because he cannot, that's a test. He will fail.
He can't do that. He cannot do that. And the more he works.
on these, like in North Carolina and Wisconsin, he can do these like energetic rally, prompter speeches where he's better on, prompter than he is, just sort of taking questions and sitting down for interviews. But I don't know how well those get covered, right? Like, I don't know how those, how like low info voters, who is the exact people that he needs to consolidate are going to like.
catch those events. And to do, if you're going to undertake that strategy, there's a couple things you have to do. One, Biden and his team are going to have to be much smarter about getting attention like this. They have shied away a lot of times, for sort of, they've gotten better in recent months about trying to like seeking out conflict. That's how like seeking out that debate.
Oops. But it's like, like you're not, but this is the problem is like, they have a lot of creative, smart ideas about how to get attention, but all those ideas require Joe Biden and they don't want to use Joe Biden because they are worried that what happened at the debate will happen again. This is, but this has been their problem the whole time. Okay. So that's one.
I think two is.
Kamala Harris has to be everywhere. Yeah. Right. They have resisted putting her out there. Um, I think, for some ego reasons there, I think she, like the traditional VP candidate, is off Broadway, right?
They're in the secondary markets. They're not doing the big interviews. Kamala Harris should be everywhere, because even though the VP happens on the margins, like in terms of how people think about it, people are going to think very seriously about what role Kamala Harris is gonna play over the next four years of Joe Biden's real life. And she's the best messenger on the ticket by a factor of 1 million. And so, especially recently, she's been.
great. Like her events, if you've caught clips of her events, they're fantastic.
And what is she best at talking about? Abortion, democracy, the rule of law, with a convicted felon on the other side and the Supreme court, like the issues that, you know, like that? do that. And then the other thing. just, and I'll leave some of it for the message box.
I'll write one day when this conversation is over, but is, um, admit, you're behind, become the underdog. They grew the campaign at, I think this is Biden, not the campaign refuses to admit that. Cause what you want people to do is you want to focus them, focus like a laser on the idea that Donald Trump could be president states. And that, even if you don't like Biden, anything is too old. You got these two choices, and the, and the other one is fucking scary.
And so you have to put that in his mind. But if you keep saying, I'm going to win, I'm going to win like it's a toss up race, then that's not going to, you need people who don't love you. Don't think you should be president to vote for you, because they're so fucking scared of the other guy. And until you, until you center in their mind that he could win, you're going to fail at that.
task. Listen to the experts. The experts say that my economic plan is the best. Listen to the experts, not experts, 16. Nobel prize-winning economist.
Yeah. You can do it. You know what he should be? He should be the scrappy kid from Scranton. And I realized that's a very cerebral thing to say, but I think that's, that would be the, that's his best bet.
All right. Speaking of the, uh, the convention coming up, uh, as we were preparing to record this podcast, we got word that the RNC adopted a new rule that says Trump can announce his running mate at the last absolute minute, basically up to an hour before the delegates officially vote. So we may have to wait a bit longer, but who knows when, when he's going to announce that? on Wednesday, Trump went on, uh, Brian Kilmeade's, uh, Fox news radio show to talk about the leading contenders in depth. Let's listen on your vice president.
candidate. Word is that you won't pick.
JD Vance because of his facial hair. Is that, is that true? No, facial hair. I've never heard that.
What? number two, Doug Burgum, the thing that hurts young Abraham Lincoln, right? He's a, he's a handsome man. Uh, Doug, uh, Doug Burgum, uh, on abortion in North Dakota, he signed something legislation handed him. Does that hurt him?
It's an issue.
And lastly, Marco Rubio, Marco Rubio, and being from Florida, would that stop you from,
from picking him? No, but it does make it more complicated. You know, you do that and it makes it more complicated. There are people that don't have that complication. Now it's a fairly easily fixed, but you have to do something with delegates or there has to be a resignation, you know, care to do any tea leaf reading from, uh, from Mr.
Trump's comments. I mean, the best part of that.
by far is when Brian Kilmeade says that JD Vance is a handsome man. And then Trump rejects the notion. It says, ah, he's a nice guy.
Like he'll accept the beard.
He'll accept the idea that he is, that his beard is okay, but he will not accept the idea that he might be handsome, which he's not in Trump's defense. So no, no, that is true. That is true. So, really like, listen to this. It seems like Doug Burgum, who I have always had as the leading contender, is a no-go.
If you spend as much time and energy as Republicans doing, trying to lie about your abortion record with this absurd stuff in the platform, it seems like a weird choice to then pick someone who signed one of the most oppressive abortion bans in the country. And so the Marco Rubio thing doesn't sound like he's picking them. But then, if you, as I know you did, there is this incredible story by Tim Alberta and The Atlantic, where he had an ungodly amount of access to Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the Trump campaign honchos. And they just really unburdened themselves in a way that really should motivate all of us to defeat Donald Trump, because that will be a fun fucking read afterwards, because they are cocky as hell about how much, how Trump's going to easily win.
They're very cocky. Like I, yeah, I alternated between terrified and also like, this is pretty.
cocky. Yeah. I think terrified is the right approach, but that these people are also huge narcissists. But if you read that and what their targets are and how they're thinking about this election, it really would, based on that alone, it seems like that they would lean towards someone like Marco Rubio because they seem to be going for the kill shot. Their targets are young black men and Latinos.
And so if Marco Rubio is truly there, that would do it. Now, Don Jr. gave an interview somewhere that I heard, uh, exerted on Hacks, on Tap. And, uh, he, where he basically came out against Marco Rubio because he thought he was an establishment figure. that, uh, would be undermining Trump and would basically be like working back channels with the, with the.
rhinos to try to undermine the MAGA agenda. We also learned from Axios today that Don Jr. will now be speaking at the convention right before the VP nominee, and that his favorite is JD Vance. JD Vance is, like the MAGA favorite, right? Like true MAGA.
He's going to be the next one to lead the movement. He, he is a more articulate spokesperson for the, like the MAGA ideology, if you will, then certainly the Donald Trump, anyone's more articulate spokesman for, for anything than Donald Trump. But I thought that Bergen would be like the safer pick. The abortion thing is interesting. I thought he would be the safer pick just because it's like guy who won't overshadow Trump.
He, you know, like the wall street journal editorial board, is fine with them. Some of the Republicans that you were worried, that's probably the Haley Republicans are fine with Doug Burgum. He's rich. He could cut a check. Now that Donald Trump and his campaign think they are headed for a landslide, which they do according to that Tim Alberta piece, the piece, by the way, is called Joe Biden is a gift.
They said, they say that Joe Biden is a gift and they're like worried that he will drop out of the race because they have organized their entire campaign around beating him and think that they can do so soundly. Now that they think that they are heading for a big win, you could see them want to, maybe we'll take a chance on the VP and we'll pick JD Vance and, uh, you know, and we'll make it an all MAGA ticket or all super MAGA ticket, ultra MAGA, whatever you want to call it. And we'll go with who, Don jr in the, in the crew. Like,
I don't know. I could see that. Yeah. I just, I don't, JD Vance brings nothing to me politically. Absolutely nothing.
I agree. I think he's the worst choice politically of all that group. Other than I imagined, he would probably survive a debate.
Yeah. I think the MAGA faithful like him too. Yeah. But he doesn't need, he doesn't need that. Right.
Like. he needed Pence for like, he needed Pence to as validation of the evangelicals. He does not need JD Vance to validate him with.
MAGA voters. The smarter choice would be Rubio. You're right. It would be the smarter choice, but I don't know if they'll, I feel that they're, they're feeling good right now. So it's right.
Are they going to be risk adverse because they're up, or are they going to put the,
are they going to really push it? That's exactly right. Well, we shall see. could happen any moment. now.
That's our show for today. Next week's the Republican convention. Again, we're going to be.
taping the show every night. Get ready, Dan. I will be, I will be live. We will be live together every single night. Not live.
We will be in person together every single night.
Thank goodness. And then we'll, then we'll be flying to beautiful Milwaukee and Madison. It's going to be great. Everyone have a great weekend and we will talk to you next week. Bye, everyone.
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