Trump or Death

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level. I’m JBL here with my best friends. Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller.

This is, a little green room joke.

How are you guys?

That couldn’t be better.

I’m so glad to

hear that. Happy to be here with you too. It’s nice to meet him.

It’s nice to meet him. Yeah.

Alright. So listen, we had some big news. We’re recording on Wednesday morning, and we had an election in Ohio. Yesterday around issue one, and I want to, Sarah, please take note. I want to give voters a lot of credit.

For understanding the weird byzantine nature of what this election was actually about. Because issue one is about abortion And it says nothing anywhere about abortion in it. This was a ballot initiative put forward in order to raise the threshold of votes required to amend the state constitution.

Are you reading that? Are you reading that scripture?

No. No. No. I am speaking speaking from

—

Okay.

—

from my deep understanding of,

of

things. And it was put forward as a hey by by Republicans, this is a way to keep deep pocketed rich people from having the ability to go and push through constitutional amendments to the state constitution on, on just a strict majority basis. And other people said, no. This is about them stopping us from doing a state constitutional amendment, putting some limits on laws regulating abortion because Ohio now is a very restrictive I would say this is what we always say voters don’t care about process. The entire thing here is process.

This is nothing but process. And somehow, Ohio voters were able to figure out what the score was on this?

Well, those they got a little assist from the secretary of state. I Frank Larose. Yeah. Who’d, who had the who had the own goal of a lifetime among Republicans who said video of him saying this is one hundred percent about keeping a radical pro abortion amendment out of our constitution. One hundred percent.

So not a lot of subtlety there from Franklin Rose in the gaffe of gaffe of the year from the Ohio Secretary of State.

But still, we’re talking about a state secretary of state. Right? This is, the people people don’t know who that person is, even though they’ve probably voted for him before. He’s pretty

well known in Ohio. Yeah. And he he he’s he’s, you know It’s still. Yeah. Frank Larose, though, is an interesting guy in that.

He was sort of an originally, like, he was good on the election not being stolen and then like slowly backslid sort of over time, and got trumpier and like kind of like decided to plant his flag on this?

Well, let me let me just run off the numbers here, then I’m gonna want you guys to talk about it. So the no vote, which is essentially the pro choice vote, wins by fifteen points fourteen points, fifty seven to to forty three. But what’s really interesting is the actual raw vote totals because the no vote got almost as many

votes as Tim Ryan did in

his his actual midterm election year super high dollar center race.

So the turnout for this was way, way high, which shows

that like a lot of people in

Ohio understood what this weird ballot initiative was about and sussed out, like which position meant which, and then came out to actually vote about it. Kind of interesting, Sarah? Yeah. It’s interesting. I do wonder if

when something is complicated like this, that it sort of benefits the side that has a lot of college educated suburban voters, who

Oh, if I said that, you’d be mad at me, Sarah.

No. I think this is true. Right? That there’s this, like, the crowd that is following politics and that tends to be the people who are the most pro choice. I think there’s just some overlap there.

Tim, did I say a thing? Could I just say a bad thing, or is it

I totally I totally agree. I’m sorry. Does that make you a bad face?

No. I don’t know. I just

Oh, sorry.

You know, I don’t like what JBL accuses me of of being, like, you

know, oh, no. You like

it when JBL says necessary. You sound like me? No.

You did not say a bad thing. You know, who did say a bad thing kind of on this point? And not really a bad thing at all. It’s just a little bit of humor is, is Madaglacias tweeted something big take basically to your that was your point right there, but a little, maybe a little less gingerly. And he wrote the, conservative position on abortion is unpopular, but the other thing Republicans need to accept is that there are weirdly time election gimmick now plays into the hands of Democrats, highly educated neurotic base.

Some people didn’t love the word neurotic there, but his point is right. You both of your points are right. You know what, no matter how gingerly we need to, you know, talk around the language here, we spend a lot of time. On Secret Podcast. And what we’re talking about, the the areas where Republicans have structural advantages because of the nature of their coalition.

And that the this trade that I’ve read, the Red Dog trade that actually helped Republicans in a lot of ways. Right? Because it it overemphasized working class folks in these states that have greater power in the electoral college and then the senate. Right?

It’s this tyranny minority element.

And and that’s true. Republicans have gained that that structural advantage. The Democrats have gained back this structural advantage, right, which is that their coalition is much more reliable now, and particularly in these offs cycle elections. You have to be paying attention. You gotta be reading

your local The Wisconsin judicial election is another good example of this. Who it

is? College educated moms, angry moms in the suburbs, they vote. Right? Red dogs, people that paid attention to politics enough to lead. Right?

We vote. Older black folks. They vote, you know, the long habit of voting through through church or, you know, when their rights were actually on the ballot. Right? And so, like, they have this coalition now is that is much more reliable that does help in these sorts of things.

An insane turnout yesterday for this really arcane ballot mission.

So, Sarah, I’m I’m sorry. We got derailed with with the your the point here, but what what do you make of it?

So because I

I mean, it seems like it’s a big deal. No? Well, I mean Am I making too much of it?

Well, no. It’s a big deal in the sense that it is there’s two reasons it’s a big deal. One is this is Ohio where basically Democrats haven’t had like, Sherrod Brown, they cling to him as, like, the one stronghold for Democrats there at all, and everybody’s pretty worried about his senate race this time around because Tim Ryan was about as good a candidate as you were gonna get in Ohio and he got crushed by an absolute, like, loser of a JD Vance that lots of people didn’t even like. So that’s one of the reasons it’s a big deal. The other reason it’s a big deal is it’s There is nowhere, Kansas, Ohio where these abortion referendums haven’t gone the pro choice way.

And so I think just the cumulative nature of that says something that, like, even in these pretty definitively red states, you put abortion on the ballot, it’s gonna go poorly for Republicans, and that obviously has then political implications. I mean, you know, if I were Democrats, And this is like what happened in Michigan. Right? When you put an abortion ballot measure on during an election, it does wonders both for your turnout and also, make schemes out the swing voters from voting for the Republican because it increases the salience of the abortion issue.

Kinda like gay marriage in the two thousand and four Relay. Right? Was that, was that the year that Bush put a lot of state level gay marriage initiatives on, right, to help his turnout.

Yeah. I think there’s something to that. I don’t the question is are these people that are turning out they’re probably presidential turnout voters too. Right? So I don’t know how much it really helps in a presidential.

I I think it does really help in this off cycle. Elections. I also just think that the Republicans, and and maybe eventually they’ll wake up to this so that I kind of doubt it. There’s just this hubris about their position on abortion, particularly in these red states, about this, about believing that it’s more popular than it is. And I and, you know, this is something that Democrats have had to deal impact.

Right? Like these activists who are like convinced that the Green New Deal would actually be popular if they put it in place. So to fund the police would actually be popular. Right? Like Republicans are now like really dealing with this on these cultural issues, which is that particularly an abortion that it’s like if if people just, you know, if if we just were able to get it out there, like, this would be a winner, and it’s like, It’s not a winner.

Right? It’s it’s just it’s not that that’s very hard to push the Republican activists off of particularly ones in red states. I feel like they’re this is their moment to shine, you know, and and also particularly, you know, after, you know, years and years of, it it’s it’s hard to then move say, oh, we need to moderate and and deal with Democrats on this thing after we’ve been calling them baby killers and mass murderers for, like, a half century, right? Like, they’ve they’ve sort of boxed themselves in on this a little bit.

I mean, can you telescope out to twenty twenty four? And does this mean anything? You know, either at the national level or in Ohio itself. Right? I mean, because that’s the question is is salience, right, Sarah?

Like, how much do people really think, like, hey, actually, this issue right now is actually on the ballot with this choice.

Yeah. You want me to tell you something that will terrify you?

Please. I love being terrified early in the morning.

If Ron DeSantis, who is his chances of being the nominee are are are sinking fast. But if Ron DeSantis were the nominee, I think abortion would be a massive issue in the race, and I think it would be so important I think if trump’s the nominee, he mitigates this, no problem, and, the fact that he is seen as a relative moderate on abortion probably helps him because and it and it takes it defangs Democrats’ ability to use it as what I think is is the pretty motivate. I think it worked wonders in twenty twenty two against a bunch of the weirdo candidates, the Blake Masters the Tim Michaels, like, the Tudor Dixons, the people who took these really extreme position on abortion, I think that was a big part of why there was even among high Republican turnout persuadable voters voted against them, seeing them as too extreme, I think Trump won’t have that problem.

Mean, I was on a podcast, like, a year ago with a couple people who kept saying over and over, you people who think that Trump will be easier to beat and therefore think that you want him are crazy. And, oh, look at you guys. It’s this podcast. Oh, yes.

It’s this podcast. Yeah.

That’s just fine. Right again.

It matters on the margins. I just I don’t I I agree with everything Sarah said, but I think and it’s I think it’s important just to say. Working class women, you know, just generally speaking, non college women. You know what I mean? I, like, I I think that there are certain, gonna be certain categories, younger voter turnout younger voter deciding that they wanna vote for Biden instead of Cornell West.

Right? Like, I I think that, like, there’s certain areas on the margins where where this is gonna matter, even even against Trump. But, but maybe not as much as as people would hope. I I was watching a clip of Bill Clinton held bill these days to see older than our two presidential nominees. He’s looking rough.

But in in his in his age, why isn’t Bill Clinton still is a good political analyst? And he was like, I remember the Colorado year of two thousand where where my buddy Al lost to George Bush by eight points And we won the background check, valid initiative by seventeen points. And, like, made us all think that we could win on guns. And then the next cycle was, like, actually, people disagreed with you on the background check issue, but they were afraid of you on other, another things. And I I think that there’s, like, there is a little bit of that element Like, I saw a little bit some some buoyancy among my, liberal friends on Twitter on on threads, which Sarah isn’t on yet.

Get on thread, Sarah Longwell, like, We could win Ohio now. Like, where I go.

And it’s like okay. Yeah.

I I do I think it’s gonna matter on the margins, but but you know, there is an element of this where the ballot initiative is a different animal.

Alright. This this puts things in perspective. Thank you Sebastian. Bill Clinton, who is president in the early nineteen nineties, is younger than both of the guys who will be the presidential nominees this year.

Wow. I really thought he was eighty two. I that’s that’s something else. Seventy six.

Was president of full generation ago, and he’s still younger, then the guys are gonna be

our neighbors. I haven’t even hit puberty when Bill Clinton was president. I remember remember not even knowing what they were talking about blowjobs. And, you know, I was like, what is, you know, I was a Catholic school boy.

Oh, so many jokes here, Tim, so many jokes.

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Okay. Tim has returned from the Midwest from the friendly confines of Iowa, and you went and you saw Ron DeSantis, and you were one of the tens of people to show up to his his cattle call. Was that actually a cattle call?

It was an actual cattle. I went to several events. I drove around the state. Do we have time for a quick aside about my driving? Or should we just move it around to Santa?

Save it for the end.

I’d had to do a lot of driving as as as long time as the o g next level listeners know I’m a very I’m a very bad driver. I know to do a lot of driving around Iowa this weekend, but, my first event was with Ron DeSantis in a this is where My first campaign no. Maybe my second or third campaign was for an Iowa candidate, and he was a farmer. And I got out there And I was a Sarah Longwell know I was in my fake glasses and in my khakis and my loafers, and I got out there on the farm, and we’re, you know, like, we’re supposed to be taping a video, and I’m You need to get up on the thing with the hooks. It’s like I know no farm words.

You know, we’re in some kind of place where there’s a little I went to a place where there’s a literal cattle call and then we went to a figurative cattle call. At the literal cattle call, the first stop, Tama, Iowa, where there is a good casino, if you’re ever rolling through there. I lost some money there, in the mid aughts. I would go in. And at first, I thought it was just like a meet and greet.

Because they’re only like eight or nine people. There’s sometimes candidates do that. You know, they stop by the local made right and, you know, have a coffee and shake a few hands of people sitting there. I thought that’s what what it might be. And and because we’re all sitting there.

And then they open up the venue where, you know, where, this actual barn and and usher us in. I was like, oh, that’s interesting. And I go in there. And I’m like, I think the event’s starting soon. And I start counting the people.

And I’m not good at crowd estimates, but in this case, I was able to actually count. Hard count. There were that few. I did I did a hard count. There were forty four attendees.

There were umpteen paid staff in security. Ron DeSantis came up to this event in a five car motorcade. I hear I hear that he’s cutting down on costs. There’s a five he he attended the event with forty four people in a five car motorcade. And, I was like, oh, I don’t know about this.

So I went to the top of the of the little venue and took a photo, which I saved till the end, because I didn’t want the Santa’s people to be mad They said they might do a press conference. They didn’t. And so, as soon as he left, I sent out the picture, which I’m a little embarrassed to admit also Trump bleeded. And it was on the front of drugs.

Ron DeSantis for

I didn’t I don’t I don’t mean to have offer any aid and and comfort to Donald Trump. So I was upset about that, but it was on the the pictures everywhere. But it was like, what’s not my fault? I mean, it’s it’s, like, you had this event here. I mean, this was a a place that holds, like, a hundred fifty people, two hours later.

The same day I went to see Vivek in a much smaller town in a much more remote part of Iowa with triple the crowd.

So, again, crowd counts aren’t everything,

but, like, this you guys scheduled Like, this is your this is a just a fuck up as a campaign, and and he’s now changed the campaign manager since then. But, I don’t know if it’s her fault that nobody’s excited, but I just I gotta say the contrast in presentation. Again, there’s many things that go into why people vote for folks. Joe Biden had a plenty of empty events where his presentation was very so I received many texts from my political friends. Like, these Joe Biden events are are sad, you know, four years ago.

But that said. Vive ache is like one thousand times a better performer than Ron DeSantis. Just just judging him, just purely on performance in this kind of setting, these small these rooms. And it’s like Nikola Yokic versus Sarah Longwell. Sarah was really good.

It was

an okay basketball player.

Do I have to be the one who’s not

good here? I’m sorry. I’m just saying. You were, like, it’s not like Rhonda Sanders is terrible. You he was Captain of his high school basketball team, but Vivic is out there by comparison much, much, much better, completely different level.

So there’s that. The attendees there, many of the Vivic attendees there were Trump people. This is another interesting thing. The scientists people were self selecting. And this is where I wanna get to your focus group Sarah, but it would there weren’t a lot of people who are like, I’m a trump person.

I’m also here to see DeSantis. It tended to be people who are like, I’m playing the field. I like Ron DeSantis. Just anecdotally through I talked to. At the Vivic thing, there are a lot of people that are like, I like mister Trump.

But, you know, this guy, this guy’s making some sense too. I’m interested in this guy. Right? So, then the next day, they there’s an act a cattle call where all the candidates speak. And DeSantis is, again, he’s fine.

It’s okay. He gets applause. It’s not horror. It’s not wasn’t like Ace’s speech. God love him.

Poor asa talked about respecting the Department of Justice. To crickets. I mean, you could make

a plausible line. Wait. These are law and order of people.

You know, you hear the you hear the utensil cling in the background after and, Nikki Haley then gave a talk about, protecting Ukraine. Again, Good. Agree. Very tepid response. Ron DeSantis didn’t have that either a nice response, but then Vivic goes out there and does his ten true

the ten commandments of Vivay. God is real, and men are men, and women are women. And Can you

tell them it was Mish knew who was real?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, we bottle fuels help us. And people are like, whoo.

Whoo. You know, so it’s just

it was a very different setting. So I I, like, It was hard to come away from it was from anything other than that. So I I could go on I had a lot of time in the car, like I said, so I had a lot of time to think about takes. So I could go on for hours, but that that that would top line.

Sarah, first question I have is for you. I have been told that, gas is so expensive. People can’t and drive over to see their friends.

And

yet the DeSantis campaign can afford to gas guzzle five vehicles.

I assume none of which were EVs or

hybrids. Timothy. I’m not sure if you got a chance.

There were three SUVs. There were three SUVs, a bus and a and then a and then a sedan.

Yep. They can afford to to guzzle five of these things all over. It sounds like Joe Biden’s America is working for the DeSantis campaign. No?

I have several DeSantis things to say. So One of them is you announce a big reset. You fire a quarter or, like, what? How many of his staff? A third

of your staff? A dozen, then it’s a third.

Than remember.

We we did we did like the rolling layoffs.

You’re in the death spiral news cycle. Do you at that point fire your campaign director and get another death spiral process story? Why?

Yes. Why not inspire her in the first time. Right? Do it all at the same time.

Wow. What is this? What are they they they are I mean, this is this is the amateur move of allowing this many negative process stories on staff shake ups is insane.

I have to shut up Ben Parker in the Bulwark Slack, which you only get to be a member of if you’re part of the founding, elite, elements of the The champagne tier.

The champagne tier is

so exclusive.

It’s not even on the website. Yeah. And You have to email me directly.

And and and we’ve whoever put in the link to to the firing news to Santa’s Fire’s Campaign Manager and Ben Parker goes. He’s getting a divorce.

But this is

so this is classic. I

I’m I’m

giving you something from today’s triad before it has gone out. My buddy, Crystal Liza, wrote about this yesterday. You see this in baseball all the time. You have a a team which in the preseason was expected to be setting the world on fire, and then it turns out that They are five games under five hundred, and they look terrible. And so what do they do?

They fire the manager. Why do you fire the manager of a team because you can’t fire the players and can’t fire the GM who built the team. The only person you can fire is the manager. And so you do that in order to make it look like, you know, guys, could you play harder? Could you hit more balls?

And that’s what this is. Right? You can’t replace the candidate. You can’t replace the candidate’s wife. And so you fire the campaign manager.

And don’t know. Did you guys see the the video of him yesterday doing the

Yeah. Yeah.

You can’t take a good picture of him.

I I

just can’t to say this, by the way. I was with him for two days, and I I swore. Like, like, people think I’m trolling him. And I’m like, I’m just I I I got my little iPhone camera out, and I took I took probably ten pictures around DeSantis of, like, up close and personal. And I got one good one.

Like, therefore, you know, if this was Instagram and I was and I was his Campaign staff. You’re batting one for ten. And I hear this. Look, I’m not I’m not a model. You know, I so Oh, Tim, don’t sell

yourself short.

Look at you.

I’m not gonna stop. Some people are more photogenic than others. Ron, you can’t take a good picture, Ron. Ron’s just standing there. He looks angry.

Remember, Hillary was gonna Hillary Hill couldn’t be elected president because her laugh was a Ron DeSantis laugh is terrifying. And, it’s Again, like, you know, you can you can clip three bad seconds of anybody, but the number of three bad seconds that there are of Rhonda Santa’s laughing is, like, in infinite

You know, I was talking to a reporter about, how much voters like authenticity and, you know, and how it’s tough because DeSantis is like he looks really wooden and awkward. And she was like, well, what if he’s authentically awkward? And he’s authentically bad with people? Like, why don’t they like that? And I was like, Yeah.

You have to be like authentic, but, like, you also have to be authentically likable. Like, it can’t be like, I’m authentically a weirdo.

No. You can be authentically her mudgeingly the way like dull was. Yeah. Right? You can’t be authentically weird.

I think that’s, like, weird and off putting. Is different than curmudgeonly a mom.

Yeah. And some people are authentically uncomfortable in their own skin. Yeah. Yep. But that’s a that’s just not politics is not for you then.

Right.

Presidential politics, at least. You know? And and so, I I think that that that is well.

So here’s the thing.

I wanna talk about the brochure, but let me just ask you this back on this point. But, you know, people really liked him and found him engaging for a long time. It’s a thing he did in Florida. Where he was owning the press and he was yelling at people. And then going on Fox News, like, he has been capable of doing this for a long time.

And I I What did what do you think has made it so impossible for him? Like, does he have the political yips, or does he is is he like the national stage is so different from the local stage and he just can’t control things the same way? Like, why can’t he perform even remotely at the level that he was performing before?

I have a thought on this. I I think he does have a little bit of the and then I I think both those things are true under the national stage is different. The thing is, though, is that with Trump in the race, he can’t do the alpha thing. Like, that was the thing that worked for him. Like, I’m a dick.

I’m gonna yell at this twenty four year old local NBC reporter and tell them why they’re stupid. And I’m gonna yell at them at a call Fauci and elf And and, like, that was what worked for him. And that’s what people resonated with. It’s hard for him to do that when Trump is alpha ing him on the same stage. So to speak metaphorically.

And

and so now you put them in this situation that’s unnatural. I was talking to all these reporters about this in Iowa. I was I was on the McCain

campaign when McCain fired everybody and then did the, oh, we’re gonna do these small events like the one I went to in Teema. McCain loved

that. That was like his wheelhouse. He reveled in it. He hated the big stuff.

He wasn’t good at big speeches. Like, he wasn’t he liked work in the room.

He’s a little curmudgeonly, but he’s

like, I’m gonna win this

on the witness bastard over. Like, that was McCain’s wheelhouse. Right? That’s not

Ron DeSantis’ wheelhouse. He doesn’t wanna meet these people.

And it’s like the the the reset is like,

oh, we’re gonna get him in all these small rooms and let Ron be Ron. It makes

no sense.

Have they met Ron? Have they met Ron?

It’s just it’s like it’s just like

the strategy should be going back to that.

Right? Like, he should be having press conferences and yelling at the embeds.

I don’t know if that would work, but

that would at least be in his wheelhouse. Let him

be a decent

people they hate.

Yeah. This is not in his wheelhouse. What one other and I wanna hear what you heard from the folks group. It’s just one other observation from the rope. At the actual cattle call in Cedar Rapids.

It was the local congresswoman Ashley Henson who’s like one of the quote unquote closet normals. I think, you know, she voted the right way on a house thing, like most people haven’t heard of her. Okay. So she’s hosting this cattle call as a way to boost her, you know, campaign coffers. So all these guys come, not trump.

But, this event, like, it was really weird to be in there because all of the Iowa delegation speaks. So the governor speaks Kim Reynolds. Chuck Grassley speaks. The other congressional people

who all are kinda are

kind of nondescript, all speak. Doug Bergam talks. Like, all these

people talk. Nobody even talks about Trump. I I they have this cattle call and, like, Trump isn’t isn’t mentioned. Like, I we’re an hour in and I go up to two

of the reporters because I’m like, am I just looking at Twitter too much by

half paying attention? I was like, has anyone even talked about Trump, and and they were like, no. No one’s who mentioned it. And it is so strange. It just shows that even now eight years in these guys have figured out how to navigate it.

Right? Like he is just this complete alpha Apex

predator that’s overtaking everything in

the news. He’s winning the primary in a

landslide don’t know how to talk about them.

And, you know, I as I wrote about it in the triad, I talked I I went up to people on trump shirts, and I was like, do you think this is weird? And and it was just like,

asking JBL about watches. You know? Like, I did, I could, like, I

I I didn’t even have to do anything. It’s just like, I

asked them, do you think it’s weird that people aren’t aren’t talking more about Trump, and it’s just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, one lady, it’s like, was there on January sixth, and she’s my best friend at the end. She’s coming up to me. And she’s like, thank you for listening to me. I know you might not be one of us.

I’ve been at least you understand where we where we go one, we go all soon. Right? Yeah.

Wanna have us.

But I just think that that whole experience

despite being a kind of hallucinatory and bizarre as if you’re on a different planet, I I just again speaks to the problem that all these guys have. It’s like they they just they’ve made this deal with Trump and don’t know how to handle them and so you can’t be a dominant force. You can’t be winning

people over except for that. And and I’m sure you can now only who you have heard about the focus groups except

for that, not insignificant, not zero. But clear minority part of

the party. Alright, Sarah. What do you got?

So here’s my best thing, which is we have done two focus groups over the last two weeks. We do one a week. And two time trump voters. And

Can we say really quick before he tells us when does the actual podcast come back? People ask me about this a lot.

Is coming back after Labor Day. We’ll be back early September. We’re coming back.

People want it. So

I don’t I just I just

I don’t have an answer. I’m like, that’s Sarah’s deal, you know. I’m not.

Yeah. No. We’ll be back in September, and we’ll and I’ll go through the summer that I watched the voters turn on Ron DeSantis slowly at first and then all at once. And in these last two groups, when asked, who do people want to see Be the nominee. Trump walks away with six people.

There’s one for Tim Scott, one for Nikki Haley, and one for ViveKramaswamy, And there are zero for Ron DeSantis, and it is the second focus group in a row where no one has mentioned Ron DeSantis as someone they’re interested in for president. In the first group, we were even we were even like, if it’s not Trump, who would you like to see be the nominee? And they were like, oh, I really loved Tim Scott. It was like five people who wanted Tim Scott. Vivek they were talking about.

Someone, they were mad at Bergam for some eminent domain things, but, like, they were tracking. They were following stuff.

Yeah.

Did two Iowa peoples, two South Carolina people, as early states. And, no one wants to stay at this. And when we asked about the Santa, we have to bring him up. Why not to Santis? People are like, one guy is like, he’s fine.

I like him. He’s fine. Another guy’s like, yeah, little wooden. It’s a little wooden. This this group this time, one woman was like, I think he’s part of the deep state.

Like, I can’t can’t trust this guy. And I just think, and like We

could argue with that maybe in front of the deep state.

I Maybe

he’s in the he was he was like Guantanamo. You at

the Bush Republic guy. She

thought Harvard Law.

Because someone was paying him because he’s not the guy he used to be. Like, this is the thing. There’s this sense among voters too that, like, oh, I liked him before, but he’s really dropped off.

They have no idea what they mean. They don’t even know what that means. Right? Like, what what my favorite off? Was it his legislative agenda in in the final four weeks

in the terms?

Is that what

it was?

That they’re in passions of him has gotten that he’s like not as good as they thought.

Trump doesn’t like him anymore. And so, like, I can’t like my

favorite deep state combo from my time when I was at the Vivay event. I talked to a guy in the back and he, like, sounded normal for like two minutes. I’m sure you get this Sarah Longwell like, this guy just seems kinda like my cool. You know, maybe a little a little too much time with Fox, but, you know, kind of normal. He he was using regular English.

And then all of a sudden it’s like, you know what, what I really think though is that I think Trump is still in control of the military. And he starts going on about this for a while. And I was like, okay. Okay. Then we get to the end and I was like, alright.

Well, that’s good to know. Well, just in case, like, Trump, something happens to Trump, who is your second choice any guys. I think this guy, he points a bit Vivek. I don’t know if he knew his name. And so I went up to Vivek’s press gal, and I was like, good news.

The guy that thinks Trump’s still run as the nukes. You’re a second choice. So you’re a second choice.

So you

feel good about that. Wow. What else have you found? I wanna learn more.

One of

the other things, you know, as as people have, moved more and more toward Trump, which, you know, as I’ve said, was not the case eight months ago. Was not the case. But now, I mean, he’s so dominant. Now one of the things that everybody says, and I I I wanna tell JBL this. Partly because it’ll make his head explode, but also because I think it’s important for him to understand how people think about Trump.

Give me a second. Give me a second to cleanse, cleansing breath.

Okay. Almost universally, including the people who wanna vote for somebody else, they all think Trump was a great president that he did a great job that the economy was awesome. They do not remember COVID, but they think that, like, he deserves another chance because he was crushing it. And I I think that that is something that I’ve heard so much more and that, you know, sometimes when you start to hear things over and over from people, you realize like it’s a thing people say to each other It’s like a universal truth to Trump voters. Regardless of whether or not they wanna move on from Trump or they’re maybe Trump or they like him, Scott.

It is taken as faith that Donald Trump was a great president who did great things for this country. He did a great job. And so, you know, when you think that, and you start to see Trump, and he looks okay. And like I say, keep saying, you cannot beat something with nothing and nothing’s what this field has given you. That’s how you wind up with Trump again.

God, guys, he’s so dominant.

I have some questions.

Yeah. Sure.

The wall, are they happy with the way the wall was built?

Nobody cares about the wall. I mean, they they care they care, like, they care about he has tough talk on immigration. They’re like they’re like immigrants aren’t pouring over the border.

Rural broadband. And the places where they are, where rural broadband is now being brought to them courtesy of Joe Biden It’s that?

I have a law answer for you. On Vivick’s dump, he’s talking about militarizing the border and actually killing people. And that That was a crowd pleaser. That was better than anything DeSantis had to offer, as far as crowd reaction is concerned. So they might, so they care, or they just kind of They’re they’re upgrading.

The killing migrants, which is, you know, Trump also suggested, like, just start shooting them in the legs.

Mhmm.

But also, like, Ron DeSantis when he was talking about the he’s gonna come in and he’s gonna clean house, whatever he just starts slit in throats. There’s something a little unnerving about the rhetoric from some of these candidates. I’ve gotta say.

New Pearl clutchers with your, you know, so long as they’ve got good conservative policies, what does it really matter if they’re okay. That’s why

Tim started wearing his pearls. He needed something to clutch.

I have a lot of things to clutch these days.

That is amazing to me, Sarah, And, so I guess what you’re saying is Mike Pence making the debate stage doesn’t really matter.

Before we get to Pence, here’s what I wanna I I think it is worth we’re so negative. I I just I always I just want to Trump is so dominant. All this is true. Humans are complicated though. And are yeah.

And there are a lot of people, like,

like, there

are a lot

of people. Are they so simple that we can’t believe it? And so we create complex motivations to explain the dollars.

Okay. I’m not I’m about to I’m not about to go David Brooks on you. Okay. I’m not. I’m just saying that when you hear when you talk to them, there there is obviously a group of people like the ladies that I spoke to at the at the cattle call who are trump trump or death, you know, trump or death for a certain number of people.

Okay. There is a big group though that’s kind of the the I don’t know which ones of the all of the holes that you could point in the in trump that they would agree with some. Right? And this is right. And, you get this in in focus groups there too.

Right? Some of the, like, yeah, I didn’t love this. I didn’t love that or the the other thing, or we could have done better on here that. Right? Like, But he’s still just kind of at a gut level.

You know, that it’s you gotta move people off of him.

Better than all the rest, man. You gotta have somebody else who people are thinking, yeah. That person. And nobody feels that way. I gotta say there’s a little, there’s a little Tim Scott Momentum in these groups.

Like, one of these groups had the South Carolina people. Like, five people went for Tim Scott.

Tell me more.

He just got

eight figures from Larry Ellison.

Right? Think they’re

Why not Scott? Why couldn’t he happen?

I think he can have a little moment where I think he could become the second place. I think he could be the one getting thirteen, fourteen, fifteen percent. Do I think Tim Scott can challenge Donald Trump for this party? I do not.

Tim Scott’s not happening. I wrote an article about this. You guys can read it if you want. We don’t I don’t need to rehash it. But, He can’t get the Magga people.

The thing that worked about DeSantis for a while was that he when he was close to Trump is that he was getting some Magas And then some establishment nominees were like, I guess I’ll go along with this guy because anything but Trump. Right? He was able to to get from both groups. Tim scout’s never gonna give me these maggus. Okay.

He’s never gonna he’s not he’s not. I may be one in a group or not zero, but come on.

The insanity of the people who went around saying, look, Trump has thirty five percent of the base who will never vote for anybody but him. But that’s only thirty five percent. Like, I if you have thirty five percent of any pie that will not touch anybody else under any circumstances, you are impossible to beat. Right? The nature of the support matters.

This is what people never understood for show around with the trump support. Right? That all things being equal, having a slice of the pie that is till the death with you versus a slice of the pie that likes you and is with you in the same size. The magnitude of the support matters.

I agree with that. I agree. I agree that the depth of Trump’s support is really important. What I don’t agree with is that the idea that if DeSantis had been a different candidate, like a good one, that there’s also at least thirty five percent that wanted to move on from Trump. And then there’s your middle maybe trumpers.

And if he had decided to consolidate the move on from trumpers and been their guy and shown real strength against Trump, and been able to pull over the the maybe trumpers. Like, I just I just don’t believe that there wasn’t a path for somebody to beat Trump. I just don’t think any of these candidates are capable of doing it.

I agree with Sarah. There’s one other thing though that is worth saying that it’s like and Sarah talks more rich that I do. So maybe I I I have this business idea, Sarah, which is I want a couple of rich people to come to me and say, Hey. I’m planning on spending eight figures on these various political activities, and I want you to tell me if any of them are hopeless. And if you do, then I’ll give you two percent of the money that I was gonna spend.

And I was like, I think I I I got I would I would like that job because Larry Ellison Like, the stupidest thing I have ever could ever think of is spending thirty five million dollars on Tim Scott ads. Okay. TV ads

in a this presidential race? Like, this is ludicrous. Like, who’s getting convinced by this? You think that people are just sitting around watching Fox who love Donald Trump, who’ve known him for nine years, see one ad of Tim Scott being like, I love America, and

I grew up with this. Dollars buys you a lot of rotations.

K. They see a hundred ads. Like, they know Donald Trump. They know Tim Scott. These ads They could work in other things, but Tim Scott bio ads.

I it’s it is hissing money away. You might as well just start a fucking bonfire on your island. And just burn the money or, you know, give it to the indigenous people of the island. Like, Tim Scott, pro, Tim Scott ads are totally worthless in a presidential primary.

Worse than that? Tim Scott is gonna be one of the first guys to endorse Trump. Like, when when this is all over, Tim Scott is there is zero point zero zero percent chance that Tim Scott will withhold his endorsement or say anything like, yeah, I just don’t think we can do this again.

Yeah. Because Tim Scott’s gonna be Trump’s vice president.

Very possibly.

My money is on VP Tim Scott.

Unless it’s Vivek, v p, Vivek. Oh, base Some

doesn’t want somebody with his own shtick.

At least. I know, man.

Elise.

Elise. Oh, boy. If she doesn’t get a hardest hit. Can we talk about women’s sports? Over the weekend, the US women’s national soccer team was defeated in an enormous upset.

In the Women’s World Cup by Sweden, the woke European socialists of Sweden in a shootout in which the Sainted Meghan Rapenow, grabbed the bed. I don’t care about soccer at all. And to the extent that I care about soccer, I actually always root against the US teams, both the men

and women’s teams.

I know I’m gonna get so mad during this conversation. I we’ve had thought about this before. We’ve thought about this the last World Cup. Been doing this now long enough that you and I, yeah, it was a nightmare the worst about it. And your hatred for Megan Rapino, you should see a doctor about

it. Doctor hatred I had not thought about Meghan Rapino, Rapino, Rapino.

I

hadn’t thought about her. She hadn’t crossed my mind in, like, four years. All I will say is that the people who really do care about the sanctity of women’s

sports were

weirdly erotically excited by these particular women athletes losing. And I thought that was a little sauce.

Yeah. The Donald Trump, who, you know, we gotta be really concerned about, yeah, protecting women’s sports, whatever. The problem is is that, you get the cross cutting of the fact that this soccer team is viewed as woke because they kneeled last time around. Megor Rapino’s still on the team. I gotta say just purely.

Did you guys watch this game? Neither of you are watching

this game. Sonso. No. No. No.

I’m sorry.

Okay. Well, that’ll be kicks. Quite exciting. Megan Rapino missing is like, that’s it. That is brutal.

I’m not sure why I’m not sure why.

She’s old. Age comes for all of us. Right?

Yes. It’s not. She was a great. She was a great. It was it’s just one one and, you know, I think it was great to stay on the team as an elder statesman, but they were playing her.

She’s thirty eight, which by the way is

—

In soccer years.

—

in soccer years

is — Seventy.

—

so and she’s, like, a legend, but still, I cannot. What a heart breaker it was.

But you up at three AM watching that thing?

No. So I did get up early though. And caught, like, the, like, the last part of the game.

You were there just for the crushing defeat?

Yeah. I was. I was. And I have been getting up early. We the we had some friends.

We did a six AM watch of the we just you start the game. You don’t look at your phone. You don’t know the score, and then you get up and you watch you start the game. Super fun. Anyway, the hypocrisy’s brazen and blatant.

And also but, like, also, like, this is the national team. Right? They’re representing America. So it’s also just an anti patriotic. Like, we support our American teams.

Make America great again, except for the parts of America we don’t like. And that part of those parts of America must be destroyed. Right? I mean, this is the this is the heart of what is fascistic about the manga movement, though. Right?

It’s it’s that there are real Americans, and there are not real Americans. Who are in fact traitors and and enemies. Right?

Trump and his people also, like, let’s just, like, mainly hate women. And, like, want them to be in beauty pageants, not be athletes, and obviously have many sexual assaults, issues against women, as well as many of the people Trump surrounds himself with, like Rudy Giuliani. Like, these are not people who like women. The only time they talk about protecting women in sports is when it serves them politically to cast out another out group, which is trans people. And I can have a whole we can have a good faith conversation about the transports issue that would be different, but, like, their motives are very clear because we know how they deal with women’s sports in the rest of their lives, which is that they don’t care about them.

Because you never see them say anything positive about women’s sports. Actually, no, I always think about the, and I don’t care about soccer, but, the basketball thing. Right? Like, it’s like, the only time you ever see women’s basketball, WNBA brought up in conservative environments is to make fun of it as to, you know, do what I did about the Ron DeSantis event. Nobody goes to this W NBA game, and There was this amazing, a black guy on the on her name.

She went to Oregon, women’s college basketball player who who knows in the pros. And, she She set the all time record on a three point competition. It’s just like this, it was an amazing video about a month ago. It’s amazing.

That’s Yeah.

It was, like, way it was better when Steph Curryrie you know, could do or or any minute. It was it was absolutely unbelievable. She made like twenty six out of twenty seven after missing the first one. And the three point competition You don’t see these guys being like, oh, this is awesome meme lord. You know, like, I laser eyes, you know, they they don’t do that.

Like, they only bring up women’s sports if if they’re talking about how we end up need to protect them from Leah Thomas or insulting, you know, the WMBA or the US women’s national team. And the whole thing is it’s like, among some of our friends in the National Review crowd, there was a comment that, like, oh, they bring it on themselves because they were the ones the injected politics in. For the US women’s national team. They’re the ones that brought up politics. And it’s like, maybe.

Okay. Maybe they’re they’re a little too political. I think everybody should be able to speak for themselves in a free country, but the Trump’s response woke equals failure,

nice shot Megan, the

USA is going to hell, Magga. Okay. I know we’re just belaboring the point here. There is no equivalent of this. There is no world in which Tim Tbow throws a game winning interception at some international competition.

And Joe Biden is like, Christian Jonathan Last equals failure. Nice throw, tebow, loser.

You know, like, I nobody at behaves like this, right, except for him. Anyway, the

I that is the element of this that’s just so gross. It’s so outside the pale. And anytime that you know, you you kind of give aid and comfort to that argument. I I think it just speaks to this, the total degradation of where the movement is right now.

Let me let me put a bow on this because we gotta get out of here. Tim, you did a little rant about my friend, David Brooks’ column in the New York Times last week in which David Brooks was trying to put himself inside the minds of Maga voters and really understand what makes them tick and be sympathetic to them And Nicholas Grossman and regular Bulwark contributor tweeted or threaded out something the other day saying, Hey, I’m looking around trying to find the mirror image version of those pieces. Like, where is there in conservative manga world? People saying, hey, let’s try to understand the minds of Biden voters. Like, what what is it that’s bringing them to get to there?

And how can we understand that? And understand our own culpability in maybe pushing them to that instead of embracing the great manga, free market, conservative principles, which have made this country great. And I don’t believe that Nicholas has found any of those columns yet. Right? And this is another one of those asymmetries

maybe more apt comparison is like the Black Lives Matter protest. Right? Like, let’s try, like, conserve. Like, let’s try to have the best faith view of the of the protests — Which is even

if you think they’re wrong.

—

try to understand, like, what what brought them here? And, this is another one of the asymmetries. And it’s that, like, I am sorry. I would love to both size this, but one side is basically healthy, but not meaning perfect, like, has a lot of problems and is wrong about a bunch of things. But is wrong in in healthy ways.

One side is like toxic and unhealthy. So alright. Good show. Long show. Sarah Longwell show.

Sure.

It was very it’s they’re all long. Feels long. I feel like I was really in my best behavior today and should get a gold star.

You don’t always do a gold star.

We will be back on Sunday with a Sunday show, and it’s gonna be a great show.

Wonky. We’re getting wonky. Many people

are saying some of the best shows ever, our our Sunday shows. And, that that How

great was Amanda? How lovely is Amanda Shires?

That was really It

was the only time I’ve been nervous, actually. I had no idea who she was. You but she was so nervous. And she’s so amazing, and her music’s so amazing. She’s such a sweetheart, and, that Sebastian gets credit for editing out.

I had like three just booths. Just like in the middle of that where I set a name, totally long, and I was just all nervous. And, but, I I think we pulled it out.

Alright, Sarah Longwell, I will see you guys on Sunday.

Bye.

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