She’s Not Like Other Debates

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level. I’m JBL here with my best friends. Sarah Longwell and Timothy Miller. We are coming at you live from debate week.

Can you can you feel the excitement? I feel like we’re at the beginning of a long forced march. That’s about the look

of a tan March.

I something like that. Yeah. Some terrible march where you’re being forced to to go through the desert with a bunch of people you don’t like and, not you. I mean, our Republican candidates and, like, that weird guy with the face, are we gonna have to see him? Thank god.

He didn’t make the debate stage. Perry, Perry.

He’s sad that we, your friend, Will Hurd, didn’t make the debate stage. You’ve just been one of the biggest advocates of the Will Hurs campaign.

Ask you guys about that. Does Wilhart stay in? And if Wilhart does stay in, does that mean he’s not as serious as we all thought?

Who knows? Maybe lightning will strike in a bottle in the fall.

He’ll stay in for a little bit.

Okay. He he’s not going to Iowa. Right? He’s not gonna make it to Iowa.

It depends on how cashiest. This is the thing JBL when you do this Iowa stuff and you’re like, Ron DeSantis is gonna drop out. Like, it’s it’s a money game. People have money. You’re gonna go all the way.

True.

I I don’t know that DeSantis is gonna have them. We’ll see. We’ll see how DeSantis does after the debate. So let’s let’s set the stage, and I will let you guys just go. First of all, I assume the debate is gonna take place.

I’m sure you guys have noted that Larry Elder has filed a lawsuit to prevent the debate for taking place because he says it has all been rigged and unfair. I guess in violation of some sacred debate law, somewhere in Wisconsin, does Wisconsin have to bait law?

I’m not sure. Who knows, though? Larry, can get a friendly judge? You know, probably and now that Jans are gonna say Witz is in there in Wisconsin, though. Probably probably not.

Probably won’t won’t get us fair of a hearing.

Maybe he could send sheriff Clark out there to to shut that whole debate down and just take we’re gonna shut this all down and we’ll figure out what the hell’s going on. Okay. So they’re going up on stage on Wednesday night. It’s gonna be eight. We had an eight pack, Scott DeSantis Haley Vivey, Christie Pence, Bergam, and AceA.

Acea snuck in under the wire. Good for you, buddy. Sarah Longwell me, what do we what what are the stakes? Are the stakes high? Are the stakes low?

Who has who has the most to gain? Who has the most to lose? Just I want to hear all of your thoughts. Please download your brain for us.

Mistakes are high for four people, four, this many. Four. They’re the most high for Ron DeSantis. Okay. Hold on.

I’m gonna walk you through it. Most high for Rhonda Santis because JBLs, like, were in during the last two weeks of the DeSantis campaign come sort of true if this debate is just horrible for him. Like, not not not your your your overreaching on the he won’t make it to Iowa, but you are correct in that he either revives himself with this or he dies after this. Like, if I mean, I guess he could maybe, like, comport himself modestly and stay the same, but it’s kind of make or break for him, highest stakes for him.

Sarah, is he gonna have to use his voice at this debate, or could he have a surrogate stand on who he would like Cerno Debersiak where he could tell and he could get James earl Jones or somebody like that. And he could say the words and James earl Jones would say would in his ear and James earl Jones Hold on. Gordon Freeman goes to die.

It is possible that we will get nothing from the Santa’s, but the horrifying sound of

his teeth grinding as he

listens, you know, just like that that the nails on the chalkboard of his teeth grinding as he has all the other candidates attack him. Okay. But hold on. So stake stakes two highest for, Viveq, Ramaswamy. And here’s why we got a lot of Viveq, curious people who are also DeSantis people.

Ron DeSantis is his moment. He either takes from DeSantis and becomes kind of the number two guy and has a big breakout moment or all the Vivic curious people get a real good look at him and go, actually forget that. That was like a mild flirtation, and I’m over it. Third, Tim Scott, who I think absolutely does not have a, majority pitch for Republican voters, but has a bit of a minority pitch. Again, he’s the one most likely to take over I think from DeSantis, if it’s not Vivic for like a solid thirteen percent, like, Tim Scott’s due for a I am now moving into third slash maybe second eventually and, like, have a play in Iowa.

I don’t know that I think Tim Scott’s got a national big picture play, but he’s sort of as a plain highlight.

It’s a medium steak. It’s a medium rare steak for Tim Scott. I mean, the stakes can’t be that high if he can’t win. Stakes are medium. No.

Hi.

Yeah. So here’s the thing. I mean, he’s like the last bastion hope for the donor class and the Normandy Republican class. And so, like, to the extent that there’s a revenge of the Normies that could play for a while, I think Tim Scott is in.

So the stakes are high for the rich guys funding Tim Scott’s campaign. The stakes are high for them.

Question for you here, Sarah. Could Tim Scott do well at the debate? By not getting involved in all this stuff? Like, could he just, like, step because nobody’s gonna attack Tim Scott? That would be a bad look.

Right. I could just say for some of my my white Republican candidate friends, could he just sort of, like, stay doing his mister positive, you know, jazz hands thing and let Vibek and Ron Dee go after each other?

Here’s the thing. I think he can to get himself a gentlemanly fifteen percent nationally. This is where I think that he could start taking from Pence, and this just brings me to my fourth person, which is Nikki Haley, because Nikki Haley, is was a great hope for many people. She’s been living in the three percent, and either Nikki Haley’s gonna pop or she’s not. For a bunch of them, right, who’ve been languishing and wanna be the successor, those are the people that I think have.

Like, Pence does not have a chance to do it. ASSA does not have a chance to do it. I guess I could make a case for Chris Christie who’s doing having, like, just a thing in New Hampshire, very, very located in New Hampshire. He could be. But he’s just every he’s just up there to, like, go kamikaze on people.

He’s just like a living human napalm situation. So I don’t know that I think there’s stakes for Christie. I think he might come out of it with a lot of conversation, but I don’t know about stakes. I think the other four have stakes.

Does Nikki have to go after Scott? I feel like that’s kinda her play. She has to go after DeSantis and Scott and try to no. No.

You people. Were you all were you all awake in during the twenty twelve and twenty sixteen campaigns? The people that got bumps afterwards. Were not the mister NICE guys. They were not the people that went after the other people on stage.

They are the people that did the best at performative live owning. When when Newt Gingrich shouted at the moderators and and put and gave them the what for. That’s when he that’s when he went up and skyrocketed up.

That was twenty twelve. Right?

Yeah. I guess, was there an exception. Ben Carson did kinda have a little moment. Maybe that the best, Tim Scott analogy, not race based, but I don’t I don’t remember him yelling at anybody. He was always a pretty calm setting.

So maybe that’s the best argument for that video.

If Herman Cain, same thing. Right?

Not exactly. Herman’s situation was a little bit different. But generally, the people that that had positive momentum coming out of debates. There was a big political article on this this week. And in Republican debates were people that had big moments demonstrating, oh, I can take out Obama.

Oh, I can take out the media. Oh, I can take out Biden. You know, the democratic debates were more you know, Liz Warren had the big debate when she took out Mike Bloomberg. That was more of a cross stage thing. I just don’t I don’t see I, like, Nikki and Tim Scott getting into a little slap fight.

I don’t know that that really helps either of them. You know, calling somebody out on the stage for getting cucked that might help. That might that might go over. So I don’t know. I I don’t I I disagree with Sarah.

I I think that they’re There’s no stakes for Tim Scott and Nikki Haley because I I don’t understand what’s happening in their campaign. They’re not running for president. So, if if someone told me what they were do, what their objective was, maybe I would say that there were stakes, but I have to understand the objective of their campaign. I don’t understand the objective of either their campaigns.

They’re running for vice president. That’s the same.

R. A. They really wanna be Donald Trump’s vice president. Nikki. I don’t think he’s the hilly wants to

be Tim Scottsha does. I think. I think he’s So here’s the thing. I think Nikki Haley wanted to be DeSantis vice president?

Yes. Sure. Sure. Okay. So I so I don’t know the point of her campaign, so I don’t know what the stakes are.

I I guess, like, like I said, the rich people giving tips got money they have some stakes because, it’s gonna, you know, they’re gonna watch their money burn live on TV. That’s not not really that fun.

Do they know that Tim Scott is running for VP?

I don’t know this is what I’m saying. I don’t know. Like, isn’t doesn’t that undermine the whole point? Isn’t the whole point of the rich donors who are normies who are funding Tim Scott? Don’t they not like Donald Trump?

Like, aren’t they funding him ostensibly because they want somebody else besides Donald Trump? So why are they funding his effort to be Donald Trump’s vice president? And get hung.

It’s the craziest of

the meg of people. Really, I genuinely don’t understand.

No. They don’t know. They don’t know what’s going on with voters, and they also don’t know that Tim Scott will happily be down Trump’s vice president. The second he locks up in operation. It can’t

be that stupid. Capitalism can’t be that inefficient.

I think capitalism can be that in I I think that they’re that stupid. I I but I again, I don’t know. So I don’t I don’t think they have any stakes really meaningfully. And so I I would have just made that list too. I I think Ron DeSantis and Vivic are the people for whom they have stakes.

And I I think, there’s a decent chance that DeSantis goes after Vivic the fake when that memo said and just gets mowed down. I I who else, I guess for Donald Trump, there may be some stakes, but I don’t know what.

Well, can I just let me push back on Tim a little bit? May I?

Please.

And and the reason your point about what was a breakout moment in previous debates. I think neglects the fact that, like, that person, the person who owns the lives, the fiercest won’t be in this debate. And so, like, we already have a front runner, a an extremely dominant front runner. And the reason that I include and Tim Scott is that what we have is a jockeying for second or third. We have a jockeying for movement.

We have a jockeying for any kind of dynamic shift that gives people a narrative that changes, from what it currently is, which is that it is Donald Trump in a two man race with Ron DeSantis. Now, Ron DeSantis is flailing This debate matters. If he flails more, that means somebody else has an opportunity to make become the two man person. And I don’t really think Nikki Haley’s actually in that position. I think my stakes for Nikki Haley is that I think that a will heard is like just wants people to know his name for future.

I think that Nikki Haley could end up getting out. Because she doesn’t want it to be Donald Trump, and she does wanna be part of a consolidation, maybe around ten Scott. I don’t know that I think she attacks him. I could be wrong about that. But but that would be my instinct.

And so I think the stakes for her are if she gets nothing out of this, I don’t know that she’s long for this race. It’s a lot of time to hang out now, for three percent.

Can I offer an opinion you’re not supposed to give on a political podcast? Where you’re trying to engage the audience. I think it’s possible that this debate doesn’t matter at all. Like is literally completely meaningless. With exception.

I I I guess DeSantis on

the margin. His money. It matters for DeSantis’ ability to continue raising money.

So if DeSantis is really good or really bad, it kinda matters. But if the sand is not really good or really bad, I think this debate is completely meaningless. I went back and looked. I was the communications director for one of the candidates on the last time that we had a Republican debate without Trump and that I would debate that he skipped when he pretended he was doing the veterans fundraiser and he’s gonna give the money to veterans that he never did. Good person that they nominated there.

Maybe that should have been the warning sign. I don’t know who listens to us. But, I I went back and I, like, read the articles. About that debate? Because I was like, what happened at that debate?

I don’t remember. And then I I refresh my memory, it was the one where Ted Cruz kinda starts off by saying, You’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re stupid. Okay. Now that that’s out of the way. We don’t have to to pretend like Donald Trump’s here anymore.

And, like, that was kind of was cheat, dorky, kind of funny. And that was literally the only thing I remember. I went through every other highlight. Like, nothing else. Even the Jet parts, I was like, I guess I remember having a back and forth about with Marco, but the substance of it was kind of meaningless.

It was boring. It was kind of boring without Trump there. And and I think it might be kind of boring, tonight. And, so I I I think that’s that’s where I’m at. I think there’s a chance it’s completely meaningless.

So let me push back on that too. And and here’s why that debate was what the third debate in a series of debates?

Even deeper. Even deeper,

like, six maybe. Okay. So there’ve been a ton of debates at this point, that point. This debate is important in us because it’s the first one. It is gonna set the tone for whatever the fall season, political season’s gonna look like.

Now where I agree with you is, like, that tone might be none of these clowns are gonna get within spitting distance to Trump because they’re all pathetic. Like, that may very well be, but we are gonna learn a lot. I think about who people are, how they’re setting up their strategies, you know, Ron DeSantis has rebooted his reboot and and then rebooted that. And so, you know, if we’re gonna see something from DeSantis that is different, it would be in this debate. And we’re also gonna see Trump getting booked the day after the debate.

And so another thing we’ll know is that it’s Yes. Surrendering. Look at cheese eating surrender monkey. He is. Isn’t that a Simpsons reference for you JBL?

Yes. He chuckled. Okay. Soft. It was a soft chuckle.

Yeah. That’s fine. He been your snake. So Trump surrenders, and does he own does that own the news cycle? The post debate news cycle?

And if it does, we learn that too. Right? There’s literally nothing these guys can say or do. That Trump won’t overshadow with his legal troubles, which I think also that would be my prediction that that’s what happens, but that is we’re gonna learn a lot. It’s my point.

Here’s the other thing, and and I would love to be wrong about this, but I I expect the first debate, you’re right about that. There’s something we said for it’s the first time we have to see everybody and test everybody. But conventional politicians, conventional Ron DeSantis. You know, what is your what is your mindset going in there? It’s a do no harm.

Like, let’s go in there. We’re not gonna go, you know, go crazy on Trump on debate one. They’re gonna

be by the sprint. Yeah. All that

and all that logic is totally wrong that I could see everybody except Chris Christie thinking that that is the right play. You know, and maybe maybe I’ll I’ll throw one little hit at Vive ache or one, you know, I’ll I’ll go after Biden. I’ll go after Biden hard, but I’m not gonna do anything. When the reality is, one of these guys needs to be Haymaker. Film.

You know, and if I if I’m Ron DeSantis comms director, I’m like, you need to go up there. And your first question, your first answer needs to be. I just wanna get this out of the way. I am not a puppet of those donors and that is the establishment that’s given me money.

I’m a governor of law. Not some weird set of gods with six arms, like some people.

You know, and I I, like, I would start immediately try it to start, separating myself from from the narrative, but I just don’t I I don’t I I would be surprised if that happens.

So let me let me pause with this thing. I’m my my temp synthesizing your your viewpoints. Great. The extent to which this debate matters is at two different meta levels. The first being the money supply for Ron DeSantis, which matters because if it is turned off, it reshapes the rest of the field.

In the second being, the question of whether or not a if the first debate without Trump winds up being meaningless, then it means that Trump ain’t gonna go to any of them. And this start looking more and more like a coronation. Fair?

Bear.

Look at that. You can bring people together.

It’s already looking like one. Yeah. Two poles. Two polls

I wanna talk about. I wanna talk about the seltzer poll.

We’re gonna ask you guys one thing. Yeah. You know, because we’ve had a running Chris Chris disagreement around around here. What do you think from Chris Christie? Because I kind of expect Chris Christie to go Tony Montana on everybody on that stage and actually demonstrate the point that I’ve been making from day one which is it might feel nice to have him out there because he says some that ain’t mean things about Donald Trump, but like towards the actual goal of helping somebody else become the nominee.

Maybe he’s harming it. And I think that there’s a decent chance that Chris Christie dominates the debate. He’s a pure alpha. Meanwhile, he has a twenty eight percent favorable rating. In the Iowa caucus poll.

Right? So Christy takes out DeSantis, makes him look like a bitch, takes out Vivic, makes him look like a fake, you know, maybe even throws, you know, some strays at Nikki Haley or Doug Bergam or something. And, you know, come out of the debate and all the mainstream media types. Christie. And Chris Christie’s poll numbers go up to twenty in New Hampshire.

In Iran, these instances go down to nine or eight. And then it’s like, great. Chris kissed we killed everybody else in the primary. I can. I can.

Just like you just like you did to Marco last time. And even though we we think it’s nice to have him around, like, actually three dimensionally chess, it might not be nice to have him there.

My view is if that is the case and Chris Christie is able to do it, then it will not represent any sort of net, subtraction because it means that none of these guys could have done it on their own anyway. Right? I mean, I I’m sorry. If Rhonda Sanchez can’t contend with Chris Christie, then he is never going to be able to contend with Donald Trump. True?

Yeah. Let me just add to that. I think it’s just like in the memo that we all saw from DeSantis. Right? The Chris Christie attacks that everybody knows are coming Ron DeSantis an opportunity for someone to fight with.

Right? He needs a foil because DeSantis is all about grimacing and getting all wound up too. So it is I think JBL’s right. Like, it’s on to Santus to handle himself in a way, and I think Christy Gibson that opportunity. The other thing I would say for Chris Christie is to your point, I think you could be.

Right? Cause it could go he could light up everybody on the stage. Or he could do what he’s done for much of his time in the press, which is he could spend most. He could turn every question into a let’s shit on trump. And then the real what he pushes back on everybody else is Why don’t you guys do this?

Are you running a race against him? You know, this is insane. We gotta fight for this party. Like, I can actually see him presenting more of a challenge than, just like eviscerating them each for their own personal foibles.

Alright. Can we move on to the two polls? I wanna do the short poll first in the sales repull second because I wanna spend some time in the sales repull. Sarah Longwell CBS poll that came out Sunday asking voters who they trust Republican voters, who they trust most in their information and showing Trump far above, not media, but even conservative media, far above their religious leaders, far above their friends and family, Did that poll inform or is it at all intention or dialogue with? The Republican triangle of doom.

Because that’s that’s what I thought. When I thought I looked at that, I thought this This poll suggests more cult than Triangle of doom, but maybe not. I don’t know. I haven’t really thought deeply about it. I I had wanted to talk with you about it.

That’s interesting and whether you think it contradicts triangle of doom. I don’t think it does. I only think that what it means is that you’re talking to Republican primary voters and just asking them each one right, each one of those things. And so a bunch of these people are, like, secular, not Chris. Right?

So, like, they’re not saying they’re pastor, but they still trust Trump. A bunch of them are saying whatever. People like me. Well, they don’t trust all their friends on social media, but they trust Trump. Like, I guess I sort of thought that this what it captured more than anything is is actually something different entirely, which is how do you beat Trump.

I often talk about the collective action problem as one of the things that allows Trump to maintain his hold. I would maybe say it’s a little bit intention with that slightly because even if a whole bunch of other people were saying Trump is bad, that would just be cause for the dismiss those other people. Now I also think as a counter factual, everybody speaking out against Trump at once has never been tried. And so we don’t know whether or not that might make some actual difference.

I tried for thirty six hours on January the afternoon of January six until the morning of January eighth. That was it. That was our experience with the

pull in front of you. Do you have the CBS in front of you?

I don’t. I’ll pull it up. You guys talk.

Yeah. Because the conservative media number was also pretty high. It was alarmingly high given that, hey, I’m not sure exactly what these people define as conservative media. But I think that I assume some of them, you know, are talking about Steve Vanon’s war room podcast and OAN and right side broadcasting news. And I also have another party just talking about Fox, but but, very high ratings, but Trump’s ratings higher than the conservative media rings.

The the thing about that poll and, you know, we can do the cult joke and it is a fucking cult, but the thing that It really just continues to parallel is that there’s three quarters of the party that just likes him. It’s for him. Yeah. His with him. Is trump.

Right? And so no matter how you ask the question, you can come at it from a different bunch of different angles. Like, you’re gonna get seventy to eighty percent. Saying, you know, sign me up for the Trump stakes.

Oh, yeah. I got in front of me. The question is, do you feel what they tell you is true? Trump, seventy one percent say yes. Friends and family, sixty three percent say yes.

Conservative media figures, fifty six percent. That’s a fair I mean, that’s a that’s a not inconsiderable drop and then religious leaders down to forty two percent. I mean, the those are not insignificant differentials. And especially the conservative media figure thing, that to me is that it’s only a fifty six percent. That’s not like media.

That’s not do you trust the news, which could be interpreted in any different ways. This is specifically conservative media figures, that’s really interesting.

This is what I don’t like about this question. Trump is a guy that they know and have a relationship with. Friends and family are a bunch of people. Pastors are a bunch of people and media figures are a bunch of people. So, like, Do they have in their head when they say that?

Like, actually, I think I like Alex Jones, but he’s full of shit. I don’t like take what he says seriously. Maybe.

My granddaughter Mashing She went to that highfalutin university. And I don’t trust her with her liberal BLM things. Right?

The conservative media side. Anyway, yeah, but it’s Sarah’s point is right. It’ll be it’d been more interesting if it was like Trump Tucker Fox, you know, like, give us a little bit more

little more detail. Yeah.

Before we get to sales, I have a third poll I’d like to share.

Done?

Do you guys happen to see moved down to Louisiana. I don’t know if you knew this. Since this poll caught my interest. Have you seen the NexStar Media? It’s a little local group pull of the Louisiana Republican primary.

Anybody caught that? Nope. Okay. I’m happy to be breaking news for you here. I’m gonna go in alphabetical order.

Doug Bergum zero. Chris Christie, one. Alright. Nice job. Ron DeSantis Ron DeSantis ten.

Nikie Haley, zero. My pants, two. Vive eight Ramaswamy, one. Tim Scott, one. Donald j Trump seventy five.

Seventy five. He’s winning by sixty five points in the Louisiana primary. I’m thinking about going down to the g o p convention. I haven’t given me a media pass yet, but I’m on on a on a kinda see that with my own eyes. Just one poll.

I don’t know. This kind of informs my my earlier comments about the stakes of the undercard for Louisiana primary voters, only Twenty five percent of them have their man or woman on the stage. And and not even that less than that, actually. Twenty five percent of them are either undecided or have their man or woman on the stage. Not great.

Maybe a little better in Iowa?

It’s still early. Anything can happen. You know, there’s a lot of time left. These early polls are meaningless.

Early.

Right? These are the all the things we say. Okay. Moving on, we do have another poll. The Iowa poll, the famous Selzer pull from the Des Moines register, and it is out.

And it is superficially, I think, pretty good for the rest of the field. We have Trump at forty two. Old putting fingers at nineteen. Tim Scott at nine. Sarah, would you like to give us the optimistic case from the selzer poll?

Yeah. Just that, Iowa is a little different from everywhere else. The voters are plan hand to hand combat. They meet most of these candidates. I think one of the other data points from that goal is how much, people were open.

Right? They had multiple people they were interested in, a lot of curiosity about people beyond Trump. I think that the only path is through Iowa. If somebody is able to come in close second or beat Trump in Iowa, that is literally the only little tiny path to defeating him. Like, you have to do it that way.

And the fact that he’s pulling worse there than everybody else is nice. That being said, that’s like me doing my best. To shine it up. Because I

can do better than that. I can do a little better. All of that is true. I got a little I got one factoid for you JBL. One factoid.

Are you ready for this? Mhmm. Donald Trump’s floor. Okay. Twenty eight.

Okay. He’s got forty two More than any GOP person, Canada has gotten in Iowa since Gerald Ford nineteen seventy six. But two thirds said that they’re sticking with them. That seems like a lot I granted, but that adds only twenty eight. So that puts his floor ballot number at twenty eight.

DeSantis If if you count his first choice, plus his second choice, I’m pretty sure that gets him up to thirty nine. Thirty eight thirty nine. That’s thirty thirty nine. So DeSantis’s ceiling. I mean, that’s not a ceiling, but DeSantis’s, you know, realistic high water mark of thirty nine is better than Trump’s floor of twenty eight.

True. Although, of course, it would have to include him getting a bunch of votes from people whose current first choice is Trump. Right. Cause you’re you’re including a second choice. And let let me let me explain why I think this is a deadly deadly number for the rest of the Republican field.

So while the top line numbers are pretty good for everybody else, once you dig into the actual data a little deeper. It gets very bad. First of all, seltzer notes that this is the largest lead for any Republican in the history of her poll. No. No Republican candidate has ever been this far ahead.

That’s in there. I have missed that fact. That’s not not George w.

Ceiling. Trump’s ceiling is the highest of any of the candidates. His his people who are who are his first and second choice, he’s at fifty two percent. People who are actively considering him are at sixty three percent. Trump’s favorability is the highest it has ever been in the history of the Iowa poll while he was running on it.

He is much more popular now than he was before, which is like before access Hollywood and stuff. Think about

that. Self selecting. There’s a self select element to that.

Fair enough. But here is the number which which I think is is scariest for the rest of the field. They ask the the the people They asked Cleatus what his what he was most looking forward to. And he said that the the percentage of of good and great Iowans, who said that they really want somebody who can beat Joe Biden was twenty nine percent. The percent of people who want somebody who really reflects their views, sixty five percent.

These people just wanna own the limbs. That’s a bad number.

It was a really good Shane Goldmacher. Article in New York Times about this. Part of this reasons, they think Joe Biden’s riddled with dementia. So why would they why would they care for

So this is, you know, I I look at these numbers and I just think, no way, man. Like, how are how are you guys gonna beat him. He’s his floor is higher than everybody else’s. His ceiling is higher than everybody else’s. People don’t care really about winning from beating Biden or not.

They like him more than they ever have before. And even within the context of this year, his numbers are going up relative to where they were. So directionally, he’s getting stronger and not weaker because of the indictments. So I look at all that and I just think, wait, I’m sorry. How is this supposed to happen?

And, you know, the truth is we are not that far away. We’re what’s twenty weeks. I mean, we’re the answer is, like, we’re actually not that far.

Here’s the only way it happens. It’s not an optimistic thing. It’s it’s not exactly fantasy, but it’s something approaching fantasy, which is there has to be like a complete total collapse. Like, something would have to happen some kind of exogenous event. Like, I I’m not sure And this is where the we come back to the debate thing, like, you need a wholesale dynamic shift, not a chipping away slowly.

Like, there’s not there’s not a way where, like, it has a lot of time to play out and, you know, slowly the retail politics of, Ron DeSantis is just so impressive that he’s able to start gaining momentum. And that little bit of momentum builds on itself, and he slowly overtakes trump. Like, it takes a total collapse of Trump, and it takes I mean, this is I had this conversation a thousand times with people. They’re like, well, couldn’t x y z happen to trump? And I’m like, maybe, who beats him?

Yeah. And, like, nobody really has it. You can’t beat something with nothing. This is, like, how I start all my serves. And the question is, like, who’s giving us something?

I’m just trying to remember this piece in the board today, on Tuesday. It’s so good. On this point.

Go to the bulwark dot com ding ding ding.

Sign up with the email list. What the point that he makes is even if what you just laid out just happened, Sarah. Right? Let’s say that DeSantis is awesome at the debate. Mhmm.

And let’s say that DeSantis takes out Chris Christie and shows, you know, the real putting fingers. You know, battle the put in fingers, just crushes them. And then let’s say that he then uses that momentum you know, to continue to gradually build in the polls, and he gets to Iowa, and he eeks out Donald Trump by a couple points in the caucus. And then Trump wins New Hampshire, Ron DeSantis gets endorsed by Nikki and Tim Scott, and and he eeks out Trump again in South Carolina. And then it’s super Tuesday and it’s kind of split and Trump wins Louisiana.

He’s learning by sixty five points, and and it’s a delegate fight, and Trump’s got court date to see if this picks up a little bit of momentum. What is Donald Trump gonna do then exactly? Where where what’s the end game here? I I is the end game that Donald Trump gives a gracious speech in Milwaukee endured, but, you know, passing the crown to Ron DeSantis? Like, has and have anybody even thought past what the next step would be?

I I don’t think so.

So this is this is the key point. And this is why, again, people in the Republican Party do not understand that they’re the hostages, I don’t think. As as Christian writes, it isn’t enough to beat Trump. Whoever the Republican Victor would be has to beat Trump and get Trump to concede. Because without Trump conceding, then the the party is lost.

Right? You know, everything falls apart because maybe Trump goes kamikaze or something else. Meanwhile, from Trump’s perspective, he knows that no matter how much they hate him, all the rest of these m efforts, are gonna absolutely concede and wind up endorsing him, right, with honorable exceptions of Ace Hutchison and, and maybe Chris Christie and maybe even well heard depending on the day of the week. And so this that asymmetry where, you know, he doesn’t give a crap about the future of the party and the health of the party, and he knows that they will all come on side with him. As as Tim and Christian say, like, what’s the end?

How how are you supposed to not only beat Trump, but get Trump concede to you. Yep. And I just don’t see that as possible. Agree or disagree I guess this is a real question. Do do you think that Christian is right that the concession is a necessary condition for beating Trump and having it be a real victory?

No. I think it is true that Trump will not concede. But I think that, you know, it will proceed the way that that the general election proceeded with Trump disputing the outcome. Right? Like, the normal process will go ahead, but you will live with Donald Trump running a shadow.

Like, he will either run as a third party or he will spend all his time torching to Santus and he would cripple any of them as a general election candidate.

Yeah.

But there’s no mechanism by which he take takes the nomination that he has

then the optimistic case, right, is that, like, he cut some deal with them where they promised to pardon him and all that, but then they’re carrying Trump’s baggage. And there’s just no clean way out of it. Out of the deal. Yeah. Anyway, that’s my positive positive spin.

Like, sixty three is I would have thought it would have been higher than sixty three, I guess.

We will close out with something really depressing. But before we get to that, we haven’t talked about, trump’s counter programming for Wednesday night. He is sitting down with Tucker. I guess they’ve already taped it. Unclear where this will air, whether it’ll be on Twitter or truth social or 4chan?

I don’t know. Do you guys have thoughts about this?

I’m interested in seeing, like, the the real polling is gonna be the numbers between what the undercard debate pulls and Tucker’s Twitter. Like, if if more people are watching Trump, than a network broadcast, or even if it’s like close, that will be a big win for him. It’s also a little bit of a risk Like, it’s a little bit of a risk that because Tucker’s stuff hasn’t been doing particularly well. And so if Trump can’t counter program effectively. I’m not sure that that, like, damages him so much, but it could be a storyline.

Were you guys surprised with this? Because low end. Yeah. I I felt the same thing. Why would he do why not just hold his own rally and have all the other cable nets — Yeah.

— come and cover it?

I’ve done a rally in rural Wisconsin and just had like a massive crowd at a high school football field in rural Wisconsin and been like this is where the action is. They’re all they’re all boring down in Milwaukee or something. I don’t know. It feels no energy. He’s also got a lot on his plate.

You know, and he has his he has to surrender again. You know, he’s got several. He’s got a lot of meetings with lawyers. He’s got several court dates ahead of him. So maybe logistically, might have created some challenges, you know, getting down to Atlanta.

Yeah. Both of the pre taped nature. Right? I mean, every everything about this feels a little weak to me. And again, if we if you want to be optimistic, it feels a little tired and a little like a guy who isn’t who isn’t able to move in for the kill here when he could really put everybody away.

Yeah. And is he gonna be licensed? It’s taped. The other thing that I’m being taped is he gonna be live bleeding? During or is he gonna be watching him?

So you know what I mean? Like that also is a weird situation. It’s gonna be, I think, hard for him to to not to resist live bleeding, then he would betray it. He’s watching the debate rather than himself. I don’t know.

Yeah. The whole thing he could’ve done he could’ve done a better job. So, yeah, maybe that’s the bowl case that he’s he’s losing his energy.

I wanna add to this that he does he is so far ahead, right, which gives him some certain advantages, but he’s starting to play not to lose a little bit. Right? Yeah. And that may work for him. And this is what I mean by like a wholesale shift.

Like, I think he’s a little scared. I saw that you saw this the one time in Iowa. Where he was gonna hold a rally and he pulled out because of the weather, and the weather ended up not being that bad. We’re like, you do get the sense he’s a little worried and not enough people that not enough people will show up for him to have it be the show of force, and so that he wants it to be optically. And as a result, he runs a little bit of the Joe Biden from his basement thing, which is like, I will tweet on truth social and stuff.

He’s also gonna get get weighed in Georgia. And so, you know, we might find out that he’s extremely obese, and it might be hard for him to like get around. You know, it it does seem like he’s spending a lot of time just mostly on a racing and yeah. That’s another He’ll be on a rack to consider.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Moving on. Well, this is boy, this is a great way to close the show.

We had a horrible hate crime over the weekend. Where, we had a guy who marched up to a store in California, got very angry, started yelling some stuff about how much he hated the gays, ripped down a gay pride flag, and then went inside and shot the woman who is a own the store and is the mother of nine. I don’t know what to say, man. It’s really, really bad. And the weirdness of of the right to try to make it about something else, is weird.

Tim, do you wanted to talk about this a little bit?

Yeah. I just felt like it was important to talk about. I mean, this woman, Lori Carlton, God lover, seems like she was a, I mean, obviously, like a mother of nine, I just the the tributes to her that have come in have been very moving. I’ve I’ve spent some time reading them. And, you know, I I sent out a tweet, a Zeat, whatever calling it on the other day.

It’s just like, here’s the link to her store, Magpie. There’s a store that she had a a pride flag up front of. In California. And, you know, I I didn’t see it go fund me. So it was, like, if you own a supporter, maybe buy buy a wallet or something from the store, buy a shirt.

And, I received many replies from people that are like, this is the MSM narrative. It was actually her brother that killed her. It was it was an interpersonal dispute. Like, we’re back to the Paul Pelosi thing. You know, it was, like, you know, in that case, it was the lover.

You know, like, this wasn’t a hate crimes, wasn’t about politics, It wasn’t domestic terrorism. And so I was like, I, you know, who knows? Right? Like, I wasn’t there. So, I was like, okay.

I just read one story. I was like, let me read the stories close I, you know, I went and read the stories. It’s like, no. There there are witnesses. They saw the guy come up.

They saw him make homophobic remarks. Screen.

He’s dirt. By the way, this is an important piece of context. He’s now dead because he got to shoot out with the police.

Yeah. Pulled based on. Pull the flag down. They saw him shoot her. And so, like, they knew what happened.

We saw what happened, and then, you know, obviously, now we the the police finally released his name earlier on Tuesday, and and you go to his feed, and it’s like, the gay the gay pride flag on fire, A lot of retweets of Dinesh DeSouza. He’s a GAB account. He loves Matt Walsh, the transphobic daily wire person. And so it’s like, it’s not subtle. What’s happening?

It’s not hard to figure out. You know, we don’t need our best detectives on the case here to know what happened. And yet, there is just this pathological need to, like, not accept that as true. Right. Among people on on the right so they can continue to advance the hateful, culture war shit.

And so, you know, I we don’t need to go around and around. We’ve done this show after Colorado Springs and after, you know, these, all these other ones. But, like, We are at a very hot time right now. Like, the rhetoric is very hot, and and we are an extremely well armed nation. And, like, this shit is gonna keep happening.

If if neither of those two underlying problems are resolved and and nobody on the right seems interested in addressing either of them. And that is why you get into these situations where, you know, you have this you have this conspiracy theory that pops up, or people don’t talk about it. Right? Like you hear nothing or or you hear a conspiracy theory. So Anyway, I wrote an article debunking it.

The other weird thing about it is that the conspiracy theory emanated from this website that, like, when you read it, it’s like, this doesn’t read like an English speaker. It doesn’t really read like AI, but but but it also it’s kind of a strange thing just that they like, where would have been made up from? Right? So so it also is dystopian in the sense of how how do you untangle all that? Right?

Like, was this an AI account? Was this a a nefarious actor? Is this just an idiot with a, you know, a a a a major

in Macedonia, look

right. Yeah. Clicks.

Yeah. Anyway, it’s all it’s all terrible and people should just be better to each other. I guess. I mean, that’s I don’t have anything else. To say about it, except that it does strike me that things could get a lot worse before they get better.

Yeah. The only thing I’ll say is just on the responsibility of politicians, it used to be that politicians had a sense of being there to tamp down the you know, the crazy and their supporters. Right? They didn’t want their people flying off the handle. They get lots of mail.

They know they got a lot of people who are not right. And it just there used to be this just sense of decency of, like, it is my responsibility as the person with the megaphone to make sure that I am constantly counseling forbearance. I’m just, you know, lowering the temperature. And these guys have no interest in lowering the temperature. Everything they do is an attempt to raise the temperature, which I think is flagrantly irresponsible.

And really does just speak to the depths of we’re dealing with a new breed of politician who does not care about the temperature.

And I think on the on the on the gay stuff, This is obviously on trans. There are specific issues that that are, you know, being thought about and litigated argued about. But I I you do now see this pivot in in right wing spaces. Like, where it isn’t really about policy, actually. It is about it is about the whole nature of being prideful and being so open about this and that is wrong.

And that our culture needs to reverse to more to more of a trad culture. Right? And it’s not like, oh, I have a specific list of policy proposals. But it’s like, it is speaking about how, you know, the cultural acceptance and and promotion and and pridefulness around gay, gay, and trans rights issues is the problem in itself. And when that happens, right, I just think that is is uniquely more dangerous to the to the listener.

Right? Because if you’re if you’re a person that can go off the handle, You’re like, I can resolve this actually in my community by giving people that are that are being too prideful to what for. Right? If the if the if the issue is in the policy space, you know, you feel like, okay. Well, maybe I’ll just support my candidate and hopefully we’ll you know, whatever reform gay marriage laws or whatever.

But, but like that, this is that’s another thing that is that is a difference and and that is increased getting increasingly hot in conservative media world.

A reminder, this is an off year. We’re not even at, the actual fever pitch of an election. Great. Great. I’m sure it’s all gonna be fine.

Alright. Good show, long show, an interminable show. Special thank you to Sebastian. For saving this show, because we had technical problems throughout. Sarah was good to see you.

Tim was good to see you. Enjoy the debate, everybody. I will be doing live React without either of you tonight. I will be live, on the YouTube machine. And then I will be doing another Thursday night Bulwark on Thursday night after this.

I’m just I’m I’m doing all of the things. I believe I have me and Tom Nichals, Wednesday night at eleven PM. So, guys, take care. Be nice to each other out

there. Bye.

Bye.