S4 Ep25: “I voted for Donald Trump. My bad, fam.” (with Tim Miller)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Secret Podcast. I’m Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. And this week, we’re taking a walk down memory lane. But but the purpose. New followers of the Bulwark may not know that I also do a lot of political advocacy work, namely trying to beat Donald Trump and candidates like him.

And in twenty nineteen, I was formally on a mission to see Trump defeated. We wondered whether we could find someone to challenge him in the Republican primary. But as I started doing focus groups, and those were some of the first ones I ever did, I realized that Republican voters were not actually interested in an alternative to Donald Trump. They, in fact, liked him. So my attention turned to the general election, and the campaign we ended up with was called Republican voters against Trump.

And we utilized video testimonials that came in from Republicans around the country talking about why they wouldn’t vote for Trump again. We ended up with over a thousand of these videos and did close to forty million dollars in out the door advertising in battleground states by the time the dust had settled. Unfortunately, Trump remains part of our public life. So we just launched the second iteration of Republican voters against Trump because I had shut it down after twenty twenty because I thought I wouldn’t need it again. This time, specifically, we have a hundred video testimonials from former Trump voters across country who refused to vote for him again in twenty twenty four.

To reflect on what we did in twenty twenty and how our team and the Biden campaign, Can best be Trump this November and capitalize on recent good news? My guest today is the Bulwark own Tim Miller the host of the daily bulwark podcast and the political director of Republican voters against Trump back in twenty twenty. Tim, buddy, thanks for being here.

I’m so happy to do this, to walk down memory lane, and I’m also happy that you are doing the advocacy Bulwark, and I can just podcast. This cycle because both of those are gonna be very important parts of the pastiche of the Never Trump effort of twenty twenty seven.

The podcasting is critical. It is critical. Remember when we were just both kids?

I do. Do you

guys know this, our listeners that we’ve known each other since we were it was, like, two thousand six when we first met.

Yeah. Well, you’re making a lot of mistakes. My judgment back then would not have wanted to listen to my life advice back in two thousand six. You know, the mailbag segments would have, I think, offered some pretty expect guidance to listeners. I feel like we’ve matured and grown together.

And, you know, we’re just trying to save our democracy now. It’s a little bit of a change from how we were behaving sixteen years ago. The times have called for, I think, some different obligations from us.

It’s true. And back in, like, twenty nineteen, You were living in Oakland, and we were doing one of those, like, avengers things where I was, like, flying out there to be, like, Tim, gotta get back in the game. Right? We gotta do this thing. We gotta do Republican voters against Trump.

You gotta join the Bulwark. And, you know, when you thought you were out, I pulled you back in.

That is true. That is true. I’m I’m worried that that might happen again in twenty twenty four. And these voters, god, love them. The Republican voters against Trump, I have such a special place in my heart for all those folks.

But even the context of that, when you came to see me in twenty nineteen, our initial plan, as you mentioned, was, like, going to Republican elites to recruit them and ask them to do the right thing.

That’s right.

And that was part of your avengers effort as well. And you recruited me too and that I was doing, and we were making a lot of phone calls to important men and women in the Republican Party asking them to step up and do the right thing. And most of them were like, nope. No. Thanks.

I’m not gonna do that. And so it was the rank and file, the real ones that actually did step up to the plate. And then eventually a handful of Trump officials, we should mention our lithia Troy, it was with new men, etcetera, that did ads as well. But the core of this was regular folks who had supported Trump and looked at what happened, and one just said, nope. I’m gonna say no, and I’m gonna have the courage to speak out and say no.

And some of them suffered real consequences, regular folk. And I had people that, you know, said that they’re in laws were upset at them. I think at least one person lost their job over Arjat, actually. Yeah. Who is that a Christian university?

Yeah. And I just I wanna say two things. One, why the testimonials, and a lot of it was because of the focus groups. We were We were breaking the internet every now and then with an ad, really hammering on trump, and then we’d show it to our swing groups and the focus groups maybe, like, everyone’s always attacking Trump and, like, well, it’s just all so nasty. You’re like, man, this is not persuasive to these swing voters.

Like, They were people who had voted for Trump, but who rated him as doing a very bad job. So that was our persuadable audience. As we were listening to them, though, talk about why they didn’t wanna vote for Trump again. We were like, this is the message. And you gave me this advice super early on.

I was like, You were like, you need to build a list. Like, you need an asset. You have to go find these people so that you, like, know where the disaffected Republicans are. And that was the very first thing that we did besides trying to think we were gonna primary Trump. But having the list and being able to say to people when you make these testimonials, Then we showed them to people in the focus groups, just real people saying, like, I’m a Christian.

I care about my family. I wouldn’t want my kids to act like this. I’m so sick of the tweeting. You show those to the people in the focus groups and they’d be like, yeah. That guy’s my spirit animal.

That’s how I feel.

Yep.

And that’s when we knew that we’d sort of crack the code on real persuasion. The Ted doc that I gave was literally about this. It was belt building a micro drive. How do you, like, allow them to maintain the Republican identity? Cause that was something that was clear both from the focus groups and from the people who were making the testimonials was that it was important to them to be a Republican.

They’d been Republicans their whole lives. They remembered who they first voted for and why they became a Republican and why it mattered to them and why this didn’t feel like a normal Republican time And it was them being Republicans that made them wanna reject Trump. And so Republican voters against Trump sort of was that microtribe. And the focus groups led us to the program, and it ended up being sort of a big program in twenty twenty. And then we had to start it back up again just recently that we and we did it in twenty twenty two.

We did Republican voters against Carrie Lake and republican voters against social walk. Early, we did it all over the country. This has sort of become our go to signature campaign because we think it’s really effective. But this time, we knew we needed Trump voters. People had actually voted for him because a lot of the Republicans, and maybe you can talk about this.

Like, they’ve become the Tim Miller Red Dog threats. Like, the people from twenty twenty were like, I’ve been a Republican my whole life. Lots of them never voted for Trump. Right? They were already gone.

Yeah. And these are a different category of people. Right? I mean, we’re really now subsecting and and dividing up, like, already this minority group, right, which is the Republicans who don’t like Donald Trump. Like, that’s already a pretty small group, but it’s significant.

Right? Like, these are the people that the reason why Carrie Lake isn’t the governor right now. And she’s only a pretend governor, right, but then they were key reasons why Joe Biden won Georgia, for example, in twenty twenty. So they matter But it’s important to kind of divide up the people that were, okay, I was a Republican my whole life, And in twenty sixteen, I like voted for Evan McMullen or Gary John said or wrote in Ronald Reagan or whatever because Donald Trump sickens me, but I can’t get around on Hillary. And then twenty twenty, I was, like, pretty excited vote for Joe Biden.

Right? These are, you know, what I call the red dog Democrats. Maybe they’re not Democrats forever, but they’re Democrats for now. And these people also voted for you know, Democrats and the congressional races and the midterms and also voted for Katie Hobbs and etcetera. Right?

So that group is super important. When we need to keep talking and make sure there’s not any backsliding, but the way that they talk about trump and the way that they talk about their evolution, is different than the way that people who voted for Trump at least once, and certainly the vote for trump twice talk about it. Right? Like, their reasoning for, you know, a lot of what they might offer, what I would say, for why I don’t like Donald Trump. Is that gonna resonate with somebody that voted for Trump twice?

Right. The whole permission structure concepts that you’ve been working on means that they need to now hear from people that thought more like they did. Maybe there’s something they liked about Trump. Right? I liked that he was anti politician or anti establishment, right, or I liked that he was more tough on the border But I now have come around of the fact that, you know, I did in like January six.

I don’t like the chaos. And so these types of voters while they’re kind of lumped into the same category, their rationale is different. And so that’s why I think the project you’re working on this time it’s so important to kind of elevate the voices of people that can really speak to these other trump voters who are kind of squishing the double hater. The what’s your favorite one? The epoxy on both their house or Trump voters?

Pocks on both their houses.

They need to hear from somebody that like them you know, wasn’t disgusted by Trump. Right. Like, you know, liked him but had concerns.

That’s right.

And how do you kind of motivate those people, nudge them to either do what Mike Pence did, which is something, right, a two time trump voter that this time doesn’t vote. That’s a plus one. That’s That’s a win. Alright? You know, we want them to vote for Biden, but, okay, that’s a net one for Biden.

Moving them all the way to Biden as a flip. Right? So that’s better. But, communicating with those people, they’re gonna need to hear different kinds of message and different kind of messengers.

That’s right. Okay. Now we’ve done all this preamble. And I wanna get into the the groups. But first, actually, I did wanna ask you about how you think the vibes are now compared to a few months ago.

Because one reason I had you on is to basically troll JBL because we’re finally starting to see some people say nice things about the economy. Really? JBL’s been too happy lately, and I can’t give them this one too. Yeah. But just generally, do you think, like, post state of the union, economy moving forward spring is in the air?

Like, is it morning in America or are the vibe still pretty dour?

Yeah. So I think that there’s one piece of good information out there on this and one that’s pretty concerning that I think we’re gonna keep monitoring and that you’re gonna have to keep focusing on in these groups. Which is you can definitely sense the way that people talk about the economy is different. Right? And you can sense it in these groups, And I can sense it in my casual focus groups at crawfish boils in Louisiana or with family or whatever.

Like, the sense that people are like, this economy is a disaster. Like, inflation is horrible. You know, this is killing me. You just hear less of that Right? And maybe in your two time trump voter groups, but even still then it’s more macro.

Right? It’s more like, oh, Biden screwed this up. The economy’s terrible inflation’s terrible. It’s less like. My experience is really terrible.

Right? And you can see this across all the polls. It’s starting to move. Both numbers are moving, but the my personal experience number of where people are like, either the economy is great for me or it’s okay or it’s bad. Like, there’s a lot of people moving to that.

It’s okay. Space. Right? Like, that number is bigger. I think that is encouraging.

And I think that was a necessary ingredient provided winning, by the way. So it’s good that that is a first step. But then there’s another necessary ingredient, which is that some of those people need to give Biden credit for it, or at least give him okay, marks on it. Right?

Yeah.

And that we’re not quite seeing in the numbers yet. You know, you’re maybe hearing a little bit from it in the group, so I on what your review is on that. We heard it a little bit in the one group we’re gonna talk about today. But, the Biden credit piece and What is keeping people from that? Again, is that just a delay?

Is there a lag on this? That’s very possible. We’ve seen that in the past, or is there something else about by then that is preventing people from wanting to give them credit, age, or whatever. So that, I think, is the thing to still monitor.

Yeah. Okay. I wanna start. We’re gonna go into the focus group vault.

Okay.

This is some of the focus group sound we heard throughout twenty twenty. Now in those days, our focus group screen was twenty sixteen, Trump voters who rated him as doing a very bad job. Like I said, so let’s listen to how they talked about Trump, from why they voted for him to how they were feeling about the state of the country, in the year twenty twenty.

He said all the right things. He’s like, you know, I’m gonna come in. I’m gonna get these career politicians out of here. We’re gonna do things in Washington a different way, and think you see the true personality of him coming out. But people don’t like him.

He kicks about if people say something against him, he kicks them out. Like, he just wants everyone to be like, yes, yes, mister Trump. Whatever you say, mister Trump, you know, I’m gonna go hold a Bible in front of a church just because I want a photo op I feel like every time that he tweets, it’s never anything good or it’s to discredit, you know, people that he’s hired for his own team.

In two thousand sixteen, he said I alone can fix the problem. Right? Those were his words. And I was I was really impressed by the amount of confidence that showed come, I believe it was in March. It was a thing in the rose garden.

And he says, I don’t take the responsibility. And I was like, Nuh-uh. That’s not. You’re the leader of this country. You have to take responsibility.

Is a lifelong Republican? That’s cross party a couple times voting, it’s foobar right now. No leadership at the top. Just thoroughly disappointed all the way down in my party and what I believe has become a cult of personality at this

point.

I don’t know, you know, if I one hundred percent love Biden, you know, I don’t know if all of these policies are gonna be great or any of that kind of thing. I just feel that as the president of the United States has let two hundred thousand people die and is acting like it’s not a big deal. I don’t think that person can be in control of the country anymore.

I can’t stand a disrespect that, President Trump’s, you know, puts on people. And, I can’t stand when he have people that don’t agree with him. He fires them. You can’t have only yes people around you.

Tim, go back. February. March twenty twenty. COVID was happening. I remember because it was my fortieth birthday, and I went to Vegas.

And I got that thing in right under the wire. I canceled the back half of the trip because I remember having to call people in California being like, oh, no. This, like, COVID thing sounds like it’s a real lady. So I’m gonna just fly back home.

Yeah.

Do you think we would have beaten Trump in twenty twenty if COVID hadn’t happened.

I don’t know. So I’m so two minds about it. On the one in COVID can help a lot of politicians. In a lot of countries, a lot of states. Like, people looked at their leader and was like, oh, okay.

This is somebody that’s taking this challenge seriously, and things aren’t great for me right now, but they seem to have their hands on the wheel. And they looked in Trump and were like, nope. So I don’t know. Right? Like, if you do these counterfactuals, right, like, you’d imagine a way that COVID would have helped them, And and you also have the, you know, George Floyd and all the Black Lives Matter stuff.

Like, all that happens in twenty twenty. Like, the campaign of twenty nineteen, the main issues would have been totally different. Right? So it’s it’s sort of hard to put yourself in that place.

Yeah.

I think that people forget. I mean, like, listening to that audio just right now, you know, the woman who brings up the quote of, like, Donald Trump saying, I don’t take responsibility. There’s a trump crazy gaffe every week. You’d be like kind of probably listening four years from now to people being like, remember when Trump said there’d be a bloodbath and you’re like, I guess kind of remember that. I don’t know.

Trump said been saying things every week. Right? And so to think that the salience of that, and the salience that had for voters, that they looked at him in this time of crisis and we’re like, no. You’re a disaster. You’re failing.

You wanna inject us with bleach. You’re not taking responsibility. I think that obviously really harmed him. And that that allowed us to gain new voters who are unsure of him. And so and given how close the election was, I think it’s very easy to imagine, like, that his mismanagement of COVID, like, was the decisive factor.

Yeah. You know, sometimes when I think back about or just now because we’re doing the gathering of the testimonials again, And, you know, we washed with over a hundred. But, like, one of the things that was funny about COVID is everybody made testimonials because they were bored off their gourds. People were just alone in their houses, trapped with their phones. And so, like, people made these videos, they were just pouring in.

I just wanna play one of my favorites from I think this one really encapsulates the kind of magic the raw underproduced testimonials can provide. Hi.

My name is Josh, and I live in North Sarah Longwell, and I voted for Donald Trump. My bad fam. Not my proudest moment. I will not be voting for him again. First time I’ve ever, ever in my life, I’m forty years old, first time I’ve ever voted for a democrat.

But, I mean, if Joe Biden drops out and The DNC runs a tomato can. I will vote for the tomato can because I believe the tomato can do less harm than our current president. So just wanted to for that out there. And if anybody sees this, you know, hope, hope everybody’s good. Bulwark Lives Matter.

Pleased them out.

Josh, the bug man, he was an exterminator, became famous for a little bit after that. And since, obviously, it’s evocative just listening to him talk, but also if you saw the video, he was also shirtless sitting on what looked like a high school bleachers, and I believe he was smoking a cigarette as he did it.

Maybe drinking a white cloth. Wasn’t he also drinking a white cloth?

I was something like that. I wonder if people hate Trump enough now that they would vote for a tomato can. Now I’m not calling Joe Biden a tomato can, but I sort of feel like you have to get Donald Trump to a place where the alternative is almost irrelevant. Right? Like, I’ll vote for whoever.

I just think about him saying, like, I don’t care who they put up because I will not vote for this man again. Do you think now that COVID’s not at the forefront. And, you know, I was debating Patrick Raffini for this thing called the monk debates. And the resolution was be it resolved. Donald Trump is a strong general election candidate.

He took the pro. I took the con. And I would say his strongest point that he made was the idea that the issue frame is just gonna be so different for voters in twenty twenty four. The issues are gonna be about immigration, the economy, and crime. Now, obviously, Democrats are gonna wanna make it about other things abortion.

Donald Trump. Do you think we can make it enough about Donald Trump that people are voting against him?

I think it’s very clarifying as to what the challenge is for the Democrats this time as to how to, like, get people to Josh back to that place mentally because it’s just not as visceral. By the way, Josh, I love you, fam. And, that was one of my favorites, many good ones. You know, the COVID thing, for example, I feel like the narrative on that has totally changed. And like four years later, people are kind of like, you know, the really big mistake was that we masked too much or whatever.

It is not as palpable for people. How big of a disaster Trump was in trying to handle that, you know, and how chaotic it was. And at the time, it really was. And I think at the time, people are like, again, like you said, isolating and social distancing, and they’re going, I the person that is in charge of this as a buffoon they felt it. Right?

It was like, I cannot look at this guy’s fucking clown ass press conferences again while I’m stuck here in my house. Like, this is crazy. And we don’t have that this time. And I do think that, like, getting people there is gonna require a campaign to remind everybody about And that’s why, you know, I’m like, oh, people have heard about January six. You know, they’re sick of hearing about it.

It’s like, no. No. People need to have, like, him and his craziness and the total nonsense of the Donald Trump years, like, in their face so that they could be like, oh, wait. This is what it will be like again. And that is where I do think that while we last time did less of the elite level stuff of Republican voters against Trump.

I do think we’re gonna need a little bit of more of that this time of the Trump officials you know, because they can speak to that more. They can refresh people’s memory. Like, there’s the Esper video from this weekend where I was like, no. I was with him. He wanted to shoot Americans in the street.

Like, that’s what he wanted. Yep. Like, people need to to be reminded of that kind of stuff in a very dramatic, compelling way. And I do not think that I kitchen table ads are like the way to change the issue frame. Like, you gotta make it about the threat of him and also abortion.

Yeah. Agree. To your point, Biden does have opportunities to improve perceptions of his age and of the economy. So here’s what we heard about the state of the country from a group of Trump to Biden voters the day after Biden’s most recent state of the union.

I’m pretty tied to the employment market as a headhunter, and, like, that’s really good. Although, other than two thousand twenty, it really hasn’t been that bad as far as, like, the unemployment rate and things like that. I live outside of Philadelphia to, like, a couple of miles outside of Philadelphia and, like, the crime rate is much, much better than it was. The news does still tend to focus on the scary stuff because I think it gets people to watch. So I think things are better in general.

I would say, we’re on a steady incline, economically. Towards the good. I mean, by the grace of god, my wife and I, we were able to build our home from the ground up last year, which was a great thing. But socially. I think we’re just we’re in a bad space because from the government down, just the spirit has infiltrated into everyone where if you don’t believe what I believe, I can’t talk to you,

I have concerns about, civility and honesty and politics. I get very frustrated that it seems like Congress can get nothing done that there’s no cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. Economically, I I don’t see things as bad. I think they’re stable and after coming off of COVID, that’s you know, a step in the right direction. So I tend to be hopeful.

Now, I wanna say, you do hear still in some of the flipper groups we’ve done recently, the Trump to Biden voters, people who voted for Biden in twenty twenty, you do still hear some catastrophizing about the economy, but it has started to shift. If you wanna get just a taste of what voters sounded like six months ago, we’re gonna link to an episode that we did with Amy Walter in the show notes, and you can go get a sense for how things have changed a little bit. Because this is like not a sentiment you would hear. This level of positivity It’s turning around. It’s looking better.

Crimes going down. Like, we are just starting to hear that. And I’ve said for a long time, voters are a lagging indicator. They’re not, like, Oh, the Wall Street Journal told me that the economy is good. So, like, they have to feel it in their lives.

Right.

And so I guess that’s what I was asking you before. Like, when you heard this set of voters? Did you think? Okay. Things are getting better for these guys, I guess.

So on the one hand, it was like a sense of relief. It’s like, okay. This is good. These folks are sounding like the Trump to biden voters that they are. My only one note of concern is that, like, okay, but these are Biden voters.

Right? Like, they’re swing voters. Yeah. But they’re swing voters that voted for Biden last time. He’s gonna need all of them or, like, a lot of them in order to offset some of the other groups you’ve been having recently.

The episode with Ashley Allison where y’all there’s a little bit of bleed among Bulwark male voters. Right? And so I think that it is encouraging that people are trying to talk that way. Absolutely, Biden needed that. Impressions of the economy to update, and it feels like things are moving that direction.

But you can’t do a full, I guess, victory lap just because Biden voters are starting to sound good about Biden again. That’s that’s like that’s like the entry level.

Totally.

Okay. That’s step one.

I agree with that. That’s the reason I bring up the Amy Walter episode because if you wanna go panic, there’s just a lot of backsliding among the people who voted for Trump and then voted for Biden, and it was hard for them to get there on Biden. And now they were very much like things are a disaster, the border, crime, the economy. And when I listen to this group, I’m like, alright. They’re getting there in the economy.

They’re getting there on crime. Like, you heard people talk about crime actively going down.

Yep.

He also heard some people be like, I live outside the city and, you know, it’s on the news all the time and I still feel like, you know, people are scared of the crime in the city.

Still concerns about age.

Still concerned about age and still concerns about immigration. But on the age question, even for people who just caught clips, of the state of the union, that had gone a long way. Let’s listen to how they talked about the state of the union.

I thought he was energized chocolate, and that’s one of my biggest complaints about him. You know, not the age so much. It’s just, you know, he’s not, like, an enthusiastic, energized guy. I mean, trump’s relatively the same age as him, but just comes off more energized. That’s why, you know, he made a couple of jabs at, like, Lindsey Graham, which comes off good in this like, day and age.

Like, he will work across. He has relationships with these folks. Like, you know, it’s not just me and my gang versus that gang, you know. So I liked that. I saw that a couple of times.

Sometimes you could tell he was going off script, which is good. He was, you know, flown in improv, which is good. He showing he’s confident

And they were talking about how it was, like, a campaign event. And I was thinking, okay. Well, what if that were, like, Donald Trump giving the same speech last night because he was the president, and I’m like, well, of course, it would have been a campaign event. It’s campaign year. So, yeah, it was like a campaign event at parts, but, like, so be it.

Like, I think his job was to sell himself and sell the strength of what’s he can offer So it didn’t bother me. Like, he does seem like he’s, like, hidden away in a basement or something, and they they, like, protect him from talking because they’re afraid he’s gonna, like, scammer or whatever. I think that I would have a different impression of the job he’s done if he sold himself better. Because when you look at a lot of the data and the accomplishments, To me, they seem pretty good.

If you have that opportunity to have that platform to have that kind of talk, you should take advantage of it. I mean, he would have been crazy not to. And if it had been Trump, it would have been way more campaign like. And it was the most that I’ve seen him be able to go off script that I can remember, but this to me felt like he was going all scripts. He was showing that he can do it, and he can do it well, which was a pretty good thing.

And, I mean, to me, that answers some of the questions that people were having. Or have made about him in the last couple of months.

He suffers from having a stutter. So a lot of times he stumbles over words, and it can be a little uncomfortable to listen to him. But I thought he sounded really sharp. He was very strong. He did go off script, but he was handling the hecklers really well.

I was just very impressed with him, actually. I think he mentioned his predecessor too many times. It probably was effective, but I think Trump’s state of the union speeches have been very similar.

I’ve been thinking that his health signaling is not the best, and he’s kinda not all the way there, but he kinda showed me that he’s very energized at the moment. And when he was able to go off script, he was able to get his point driven home instead of just going off and just staying out there in La la land.

So you said something a minute ago that I think is important. For us to linger on for a second, which is that we shouldn’t be celebrating because these people are already biden voters. But I gotta say, to the extent that we’re still eight months out, Biden’s first thing that he needed to do was kind of start to shore up

Right.

The people who were walking away from him. And so the fact that you hear so many of these voters saying, look, I had a lot of concerns about his health about his age. I mean, this dude, you didn’t, like, end it forever, but it did make a real difference to them. In terms of them feeling like, okay. Alright.

I also think people are starting to internalize that it’s gonna be Trump and Biden. And I think that that level of acceptance is important. But have you been surprised with the economy kinda bouncing back I’m going down. The voters seem Biden b sharp. Why aren’t we seeing more of a shift in polling?

Do you think?

I keep saying I’m late until four twenty before I start to panic. I just think that there is lag on this, right, from Haley, even still, right, state of the union happens, and then it’s like the next poll is gonna heal a couple days later. Right? Like, it just it takes time. Right?

It’s not like we’re insta polling, you know.

Right.

So I’m not panicked about that yet. You would think so. Shoring up these folks is an important part. I thought it was interesting from that segment. And sometimes this happens in focus groups where people glom onto one specific idea, you know, that somebody else mentioned.

But Yeah. I think that that’s telling though that that’s sticky then. And in this one, it was this off script. Yeah. He was going off script and he was capable of going off script.

And to me, if I’m listening to that, it’s on the Biden people, I’m like, he needs to be out there more, more, more, more, and not speech it. Like, like, more in interviews, more, like, demonstrating this. The other thing that it says to me is, like, that he’s gonna have to I know there’s a big mixed views on that among Biden Advisors and Biden supporters, but how do you assuage those people’s concerns once and for all debating him and showing that you can do that. Obviously, that carries us at associated risks, and Trump is an insane person. So, you know, I think that it’s not a cut and dry thing, but To me, that was another thing that I I would have taken away from that.

So, again, it’s good. Moving more people out the double hater approximates their house or category into the hate Trump Biden’s fine category. That’s important.

Yes. It’s

an important step of what is coming over the next six months. Yes.

And I

think it’s encouraging that we’re seeing some signs that that step is starting to have.

Yes. Just on the debate thing, there was this clip that went around recently a couple days ago about Biden. He’s got these handlers on him. Right? He’s like, Biden is trying to stop and talk to the press or a gaggle or whatever, and his handlers are like, no.

He cannot talk to you. And these guys are gonna have to let Biden be by because to your point that you just made about the off script and how they all noticed it, Yeah. They all know he can read a teleprompter wildly.

Right.

It is the sparring with people. It is when he smiles It’s when he looks like a human that they can relate to.

Right.

And

he is gonna have to do that with people.

Yeah. The handle thing is tough because I watched that and I was like, I’ve been there. I’ve been that person. Like, you’re supposed to be somewhere at a time, and you’re pulling a guy, and I’ve been the one who’s been like, Jeff. Alright.

Like, that’s last question, we gotta go. We gotta roll. Sorry, guys. No questions right now. The look back, and that’s the environment that they’re at right now, where Yeah.

Where looking like you’re protecting him or babying him even worse, right, is like the worst that you can do, right? And so That’s right. Despite the fact that I think the probably what’s happening there is a pretty normal thing that is something that probably wouldn’t look bad if whatever. And Whitmer’s handlers were doing that to her outside of the state of the state in Michigan or something just because, like, nobody is Thanks to dredge and Whitmer is in the basement. And I’m just saying that it’s fair that some people think that Joe Biden is in the basement and not capable But some people do think that.

And so you have to live in the real world and do things that put him in the best light given those concerns.

Yeah. And I would, like, let his handlers be like, sir, we’ve gotta keep moving, and then I would let Biden.

Say no?

Yeah. No. I wanna talk to them. And then do it. And, like, they can choreograph that.

Just really disrupt this narrative. Biden wants to talk to anyone who wants to talk to

him. Yeah.

He’s gonna have to do that. Is what people wanna see. They wanna know he’s up to it. Yep. Sorry.

That’s what campaigns are about. Alright. So I’ve got this formulation around. The voters have been going through the five stages of Greece. Right?

Like anger about having it be this rematch and bargaining. They’re trying to get third parties or swap out Kamela or whatever. Joe Biden steps down. And then depression I don’t know how many stages of grief there are, but whatever the point is, I think we’re at acceptance. K?

Acceptance. And once you get to acceptance, you start to grapple with the choice. Really? Biden versus Trump. No fantasies, no off ramps.

So let’s hear how some of these flippers talked about their concerns about Biden and then how they got passed. Them.

I tend to think, oh my god. He’s aged so much, which really doesn’t have a whole lot to do with his mental capacity. Because a lot of people walk like that when you get that age. I am concerned about it, and you hear about how he mixes up certain things, and I don’t tend to worry about it so much because I think that he surrounds himself with really good people. So do you have to remember all of that, or can you not just make a mistake here and there.

It’s not like he’s making the mistake as he’s taking action, doing something. He’s always gonna have someone around him helping

I do think Joe Biden, he has the good intentions. I think he’s a genuinely, like, good person at least from everything I could see, and and it’s not perfect. But I feel at least, like, it’s not, like, the constant craziness Or if there is constant craziness, like, he doesn’t have any control over fixing it, but he’s not the cause of it, whereas Donald Trump would have been, like, the cause of the craziness.

What he talks about is retribution and revenge and all of that scares me. That’s crazy that he’s gonna go after people. And you know, what about the work that needs to be done for the country? He’s not thinking about that. So, I mean, I don’t think he has a whole lot of conviction behind any policies, but you think maybe the Republicans can steer him in the right way, but he is gonna be so focused on other things that I really think it’s gonna be detrimental to the country, and nothing will get done.

He, announced he wants to be a dictator and then, you know, sort of walk that back to say just on the first day. I think he’s gonna use his power against his political opponents. I think he’s gonna realize that he’s accountable to no one that he can get away with whatever he wants.

My thing is with him is he has this if you’re not with me, you’re against me and what I say goes, especially for people even in his corner, if if they, like, turn if they don’t agree with him, he’s don’t he’s like off with your head. With this whole dictator mentality, I can’t deal with it at all. And then for us that live here in the state of Georgia, I think what got me the most, you are a bold faced liar saying that you did not call our secretary of state and asked him to find eleven thousand votes till to this day, he will say that he didn’t do that. When you’ve got the phone call right there. I mean and then you’ve got people that that’ll sit here and say that he didn’t do that.

You know, that was interesting. The last guy who was in Georgia. I’ve been feeling like Georgia might be gone for Biden this time. Primarily because of the slide with black voters and black voters just matter so much in Georgia, but maybe that’s wrong. Maybe because the Hey.

Go find me eleven thousand votes cases. So top of mind there. And trump he’s done worse than Georgia than just about anywhere else. But how are you thinking about Georgia this cycle?

Yeah. Just really quick. And, before Georgia, I this is a sophisticated group.

It is.

You know, that’s noteworthy, but it’s, like, that is good that these people are thinking like they are. About Trump and about how his advisors are around him and his lies. It’s the job of campaigns, like when you’re working on like, trickle that down to the next layer of people who are kind of like those people who don’t watch the news as much. Right? Yes.

So it’s a good step, but I I was just something that struck me listening to it. This guy in Georgia. I don’t know if Georgia’s gone. And there’s some things that are working in in Biden’s favor in Georgia, right, which are just the state demographics. Right.

Like, we now have four more years of people moving into Atlanta from Blue States. Right? We have four more years of you know, the Atlanta suburbs growing. And four more years of, let’s just say, at, like, old traditional Republicans dying. Right?

So I think that there’s been some positive movement there, you know, warnock wins during the midterms. The question is, is this bleed with black voters among people that are gonna vote. Right? And can you still work and do maximize turnout among black voters that are still with you? I wouldn’t toss George Al, with the bathwater.

I do think that, like, the trial and all this stuff and Foddy Willis, and it’s, like, all on the news, it’s hard to exactly know how everything is gonna shake out there. But I think the other thing is, like, when people start to focus, which was how you frame this question, when people start to focus on this choice, In Georgia is where people saw the negative consequences of Trump stop the steal stuff the most out of any state Right? Cause they have that runoff in Georgia that went to January fifth. So all these people know it. They have Republican elected officials in the state who said that he’s lying, that he’s wrong.

And now he’s running on this and calling the people hostage it. Right? Could that have more salience in Georgia? Because it’s around the news. I hope so.

The countervailing thing that that is, like, Brian Kemp endorsed Trump. So thanks for nothing, Brian Kemp.

Yeah. Anyway, At the state of the union, when Joe Biden talked about Lake and Riley in the speech, would he, like, talked to Lake and Riley’s parents, and we did. He went off script and, like, address them directly? But that’s what a big, big story down in Georgia. So this is where I’ll make the Patrick Ruffini case again.

Lost shiver.

I know. And this is why I started where we did. COVID and how Trump handled COVID. Was very much on the minds of swing voters back in twenty twenty. And now in twenty twenty four, there’s a lot of talk about immigration.

And people are upset with Joe Biden about immigration. And you hear a lot of, you know, the mayor of New York and Lots of other places talking about, hey, it’s a huge problem. Like, we can’t handle it. States that tried to handle it humane ways feel overrun and that they don’t have the money to do it, And it comes up so often. Like, the thing is is when people catastrophize about Biden and they say, Biden’s the worst president of my lifetime.

The world is just terrible. And the country is falling apart. It’s a disaster. I’m always like, is it a disaster? Like, things look okay.

Economy’s doing well. Crimes’s going down. COVID’s not a thing anymore. The weather’s nice. They’re talking about immigration though.

And so, like, doesn’t Biden have to do something? Like, he can’t just go to the border. And, obviously, he can go on offense about He did this. He did it during the state of the union, but the fact that Republicans won’t do anything about it and he tried. I still don’t think that’s gonna be enough.

Or I don’t know. What are you saying? Yeah.

I think it’s probably not gonna be enough. I take what you’re saying. This is not a criticism, but, like, the premise of the idea that immigration is COVID has some holes to it. Right? I mean, just in the sense that COVID impacted every single person’s life.

I’m not saying it’s COVID. I’m just saying that that’s what I feel like is gonna be the dominant issue.

And I take that point. I just think that the salience of it is different because it’s not COVID. Right? Like, not everybody has of immigrants in their neighborhoods. Right?

I mean, there is some real life impact as with my family this weekend, available in Denver, which is a sanctuary city. Like, you can see the effects of this in Denver. Like, there are a lot of Venezuelan, asylees that are, like, offering to wash windows and stuff. I’m sorry. Like, there’s a noticeable difference.

So there is some palpable difference in some people’s lives, but that’s the degree of COVID. So I I do think he’s gonna need to do something. Combine and reposition this over the course of the year too. I’m trying to work on a compromised solution to this with Republicans. They’re refusing to do it.

Their solution is concentration camps. They’ve said it on videos. Do people want that? I don’t know. Maybe people do want that.

I kind of don’t think so. I kind of don’t think that the Trump Biden people are like so jazzed. About deportation camps.

Concentration camps is different from deportation camps.

Okay.

Sure. Deportation camps is still not great. Right? I mean, you think that people are very excited about a mass deportation and deportation camps and, like, the chaos will assume to that and then what Donald Trump in charge of it. If we’re scared to talk about that and make that case, because we’re worried that immigration a winning issue for for Republicans.

Maybe that’s right. I don’t know. Like, we need to test this out though and talk to these voters about that and see how they respond to it. I mean, to me, maybe I just have TDS, but to me, it’s like, the person who is incapable of running anything, who is a total chaos agent and a disaster, we’re gonna be putting him in charge of the biggest removal effort of humans. Somebody is cruel and hateful.

We’re gonna have him remove ten million people and put them on buses and put them into camps. I don’t think that that is red dogs are so keen on that, actually.

I think you might be right about red dogs, but I gotta say this I think this is the misread. With Democrats and forget my personal opinion. Like, people want the border to be secure. They want us to know who’s in the country. And a lot of it is very, like, I want immigrants to be here.

My family came here at this time. Where I’m married to so and so. My wife’s family, but they say people should come the right way. And that gets you an open conversation about what it means to come the right way. It’s actually not that hard to have that conversation, but, like, it’s the difference between asylum, and, you know, going through the immigration process, which is very long, in which most Americans have no sense of actually how hard it is.

And so, like, They want it solved. And this is where Trump, I think, has an advantage this time around, you know, where he can say, No. I’m gonna enforce stability. It feels like the world’s on fire. Like, the number of people in the focus groups were, like, were in two wars.

Donald Trump didn’t start any wars. There were no wars. And so, like, it’s I think there’s perception and there’s reality, but I think I just hear so much of where the reception is where I’m worried that people feel like internationally there’s chaos at the border there’s chaos and that Trump is the stability cannon. Because Trump will do something about immigration.

Yeah. And so I guess this is my question. Right? I’m talking about how to reframe it for these voters. So, like, how what is an argument that Biden can because I don’t know, by doing some remain in Mexico executive order, I maybe should do that right now.

But does that gonna fix impressions? Is that gonna change the way Fox talks about this? The way local news talks about this? Like, probably not. Right?

So to me, it’s like if if Trump’s pitch to people is Biden is the chaos candidate. I’m the order candidate. We are order. They are chaos. Okay?

Like, that’s gonna be the trump frame. Right? Yep. Like, is there a way to flip that and to speak to these people with Mill? Biden is trying to compromise.

Biden is trying to get to solutions. Trump is the one that wants this chaos that wants camps cooperation solutions versus chaos camps. I don’t I’m just spitballing right now. Like, year to the one that’s doing, our vet twenty twenty four. I’m just a commentator, but, like, I feel like that is how they’ve gotta work through how to think about this and how to talk about this, which is, like, they’re trying to find a solution and these other guys wanna do something that is very un American and that is not gonna actually solve the problem, and that it’s gonna create chaos in its own.

A Donald Trump effort to put together a organized deportation of ten million people, let me tell you. If you think that it’s chaos now, you haven’t seen fucking chaos. So you’ve watched that.

I do think Biden’s gotta figure out a way to to go on offense on the border. So I agree with that. I’m not sure. I agree that we’ve landed on exactly what that offense looks like.

That’s okay. That’s okay. That’s good. We can work through it.

Alright. Yeah. No rush. You know? No rush.

Only seven months away from a mad autalker. So, you know, maybe we should get on figuring that one out.

Yeah. Well, Tim Miller, thank you so much for joining the focus group.

This is why we hear the focus group. That’s why we do the focus group. To learn how these people are thinking about it Yeah. And hash through how we can talk about it.

That’s right. So thanks for doing this, buddy. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus Secret Podcast. And if you are a former Trump owner out there who thinks he shouldn’t hold office again, go to r v a t dot org to send us a testimonial. And if you aren’t, you can still visit our site and share a testimonial because you just never know who in your circle might need to hear it.

So one more housekeeping item, this is your fault, Tim. We might wait into mailbag questions on this podcast.

Why isn’t my fault?

Because you’re doing it, and it’s fun.

Oh, okay. Great.

So I think we should do it too. So if you have burning questions about the focus groups, how we do them, what we hear, you can email focus group at the bulwark dot com, and we may chat about a few of them in the coming weeks. Thanks for listening, and we will see you next week.