How Biden Can Handle the Age Thing

And later, former Representative Mondaire Jones stops by the studio to talk about the dysfunctional Congress. he's trying to get back to, how control of the House might hinge on New York races like his, and tomorrow's big special election to replace George Santos. But first, just as the president was dealing with the fallout from Robert Herr's characterization of him as a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory, Donald Trump popped up at a rally in South Carolina to remind everyone he's an elderly man with a poor memory who doesn't mean well at all. And that right now, it looks like the choice in this election is between old versus crazy. And I've called for cognitive tests.

I actually think anybody running for president should have tests. I think, and I pass them every time. Dr. Ronny Jackson gave me the first one. Where's her husband?

Oh, he's away. He's away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he?

He's gone. He knew. They asked me that question. One of the presidents of a big country stood up, said, well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said, no, I would not protect you.

In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. Sir, sir, could you imagine? Imagine the meeting where a president of another country said, sir, sir, sir, Mr. Trump, sir.

Yeah, definitely happened. Definitely. Definitely happened. Just like that. Trump was when she was saying she there, he was referring to, of course, to Nikki Haley.

She's been mocking her husband, who was deployed. And then he was telling the story about NATO. Tommy, this isn't the first time Trump has threatened to abandon our allies. It sure seems like the most alarming comments he's made on this. Can you help people understand the history of his beef with NATO?

I can't believe I'm saying that phrase and why what?

That's not what Trump is talking about. Trump has been going on and on for years about an agreement among the allies to spend two percent of GDP on their own defense by 2024.. The idea is to make a significant but consistent investment in all these countries into your own defense, but is one that is proportional to your own capacity. So, but here's the key part to understand is this is countries, let's say France, agreeing to spend two percent of GDP on its own military, on its own troops, on its own tanks, on its own baguettes, whatever they do over there, however, they defend themselves.

we're the largest economy in the world. We spend well over two percent of GDP on defense. That's a political decision. Obviously, it all doesn't go towards defense in Europe, but we are the heart of NATO. So the.

the second beef he's had with NATO is around something called Article 5, which is the collective defense principle. It's the, it's the backbone of NATO, which says an attack on one NATO ally is an attack on all. NATO has invoked Article 5 only one time. That was after 9-11 in our defense. So in 2016 and 17,, Trump was out there calling NATO obsolete.

He suggested that Article 5 was conditional, meaning that only countries that hit their defense spending targets would get help were they to be attacked. Right. Since then, a lot has changed. Russia, as you've invaded Ukraine, a debate that kind of felt like an esoteric, theoretical conversation got really real. And so in the South Carolina speech, Trump is telling this totally, you know, real story, felt like a transcript at times.

But he added that not only would he, you know, not only is he yelling at countries for not spending enough on defense, he said he would encourage Russia to invade countries that don't spend two percent of GDP on defense. So that is what's new from this event in South Carolina. It's not at all funny to countries in Eastern Europe who think that in a couple of years, Russia will probably test a NATO country. And they're also very nervously watching Russia ramp up their own military spending. They're getting weapons from North Korea.

They're getting weapons from Iran. So this is very real for a bunch of folks in Europe.

S. will jump in. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was trying to think it was like Article five.

It's a bit like a defibrillator. You know, you're glad it's there on the wall, but if you're using it, something's gone terribly wrong. That's exactly right. And it does like the. we're going to talk about it.

But like people trying to play this down. Oh, this is just Trump. This is just how Trump talks. How you talk about this is really important. It is really important that the president show resolve in this, in part to avoid a conflict.

But deterrence and wars have started.

Let's listen. Donald Trump is not a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. He doesn't talk like a traditional politician. And we've already been through this. Now you think people had to figure it out by now.

What he's basically saying is, if you see the comments, he said NATO was broke or busted until he took over because people weren't paying their dues. And then he told the story about how he used leverage to get people to step up to the plate and become more active in NATO. He's not the first American president. In fact, virtually every American president at some point in some way has complained about other countries in NATO not doing enough. Yeah.

I mean, that's true that other presidents have complained, but other presidents haven't said, hey, Russia, do whatever you want to the.

. He was president four years. You don't get to play the, oh, he's just kind of green. He's not an expert. He talks like a working man card at this point.

And then he goes out there.

And it's like, but wait, I think he might've. And then you go back and look at it. in June of 2020, he announces that we were going to withdraw starting 10,000 troops out of Germany, which was universally criticized by the foreign policy, by foreign policy experts. Richard Haass. Richard Haass probably, and Republicans and Democrats.

And it was reversed by Joe Biden.

You tried to quit the Senate. You clearly hate being there. Just quit. Go, do something else.

I mean, go, do something else. You're a sad coward.

So. Nikki Haley, proving that she hasn't yet become a Marco Rubio, hit Trump pretty hard on both denigrating her husband's military service, I hope so, and on his NATO comments. Let's listen. He said that NATO, that if any of those countries aren't paying their fair share, that not only would he not defend them, but that he would encourage Putin to take over them. Putin kills his opponents.

He just put every military member at risk and every one of our allies at risk just by saying something at a rally like that. That's the danger. And then he goes and mocks my husband's military service. But when he did that, it was a pattern. It started with the fact that he has continued to call military members suckers and losers.

He went to Arlington National Cemetery and said, why did they do this? What was in it for them? You can't have a commander in chief that doesn't understand what made this country great. So what do you guys make of Haley's response? Is she veering towards 2016, Chris Christie, or 2024?

Chris Christie? How's she going to end up here? I think she's on Ben LeBolt's talkers. Do you think she's on the talkers list? Do you think she's been RT-ing the?

You know, the traditional Republicans who want a muscular foreign policy, people who think Trump is not temperamentally fit for the job. I like it. I just can't tell. Is she? I?

And yet he's out there now being like, ah, he didn't mean it. He's not a count. He's not a dweeb on the council on foreign relations. He's a real guy. Uh, so, so, uh, so, who knows?

But I would say, like Trump has already, she should, she should decline to endorse him. I don't expect her to endorse Joe Biden. She, here's why she should decline to endorse Donald Trump. He has already said she's banned from the MAGA camp. She's already getting swatted death threats.

Like she doesn't have a future in this Trump Republican party. And I'm not sure that her endorsing Trump is going to change that. So.

And I love that. The truth will set you free. Look at Marco Rubio.

Don't be Marco.

You don't have to. You do a pod called like, uh, you know, no boundaries. I don't know. The duty to fight. I couldn't.

How much do you guys think that Biden and the campaign should focus on this? I mean, I think they should focus on it a lot in our,

Which is part of it. Uh, I was looking at some polling. There's some Pew polling, 62% of Americans view NATO favorably. in 91% of them view Russia unfavorably. So this is Trump's position.

here is not a popular one. saying, Hey Russia, come steamroll, you know,

That's a, that's a, that's Richard Haass territory. Cause my first.

by now, I, of course, would expect that number among Republicans to go down, but it was, it's good to see that it was September.

. Yeah. My, my view on it is, I do think that, like, I think Donald Trump gets applause when he says these kinds of things as rallies. I think he's happier talking about trying to get Europe to pay more for NATO than he is certainly talking about his various and sundry indictments or abortion. But I do think it's like a proof point of Trump's chaos and danger.

And just a reminder that this is the kind of unhinged shit you get from him to, to, because I do think our big challenge is, especially if people not paying that close attention is it's very easy to kind of forget the, the details of what it was like to live under four years of this kind of chaos.

But I think, beyond that kind of meta national narrative, I know the Biden campaign is going to try to drive the story in swing States with big, like Eastern European populations or people with Eastern European ancestry. The hope is that someone who has, you know, a bunch of family in Poland will care more about this than your average voter. So hopefully that works. It also kind of folds into Biden's defense or response, at least to attacks on his age, which are like, I took this train ride into Ukraine. I took this trip to Israel.

So I don't know. I think they want to fight on this ground.

He will, people who've worked for him. He throws everyone under the bus because all he cares about is himself. And he's a crazy narcissist. And Haley nailed the message. Yeah, she's good.

She's good. I'm always like Nikki Haley. Biden should go out there and just pop off on this one.

All right. So right now Biden and the rest of the democratic party are spending much more time than they'd like dealing with the follow-up from special counsel Robert Herr's report on the president's possession of classified documents while he was out of office. Herr concluded that quote, no criminal charges are warranted, but also claimed that Biden couldn't remember details like when he was vice president or when his son Bo died, which led to Biden holding a press conference on Thursday night where he became understandably emotional and angry. Let's listen. I know there's some attention paid to some language and report about my recollection of events.

There's even referenced that I don't remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business. President Biden, something the special counsel said in his report is that one of the reasons you were not charged is because, in his description, you are a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. I'm well-meaning and I'm an elderly man and I know what the hell I'm doing.

I've been president and I put this country back on its feet. I don't need his recommendation. How bad is your memory? And can you continue as president? My memory is so bad.

I can let you speak. For months, when you were asked about your age, you would respond with the words, watch me. While many American people have been watching and they have expressed concerns about your age. That is your judgment. That is your judgment.

That is not the judgment of the press. They express concerns about your mental acuity. They say that you were too old. Mr. President, in December, you told me that you believe there are many other Democrats who could defeat Donald Trump.

So why does it have to be you now? What is your answer to that question? Because I'm the most qualified person in this country to be president of the United States and finish the job I started. Okay, so, before we get to the press conference, what's your take on the report itself? Dan and I talked about this just very briefly on Thursday, right after it.

And then, second, there is a debate about Biden's age and fitness for office. that was already happening. This just kicked it up and focused the media's attention on it in a very damaging way via this DOJ report. Yeah, I mean, it's a Biden cleared.

There's one that jumped out at me, which is, it says, Mr. Biden has long seen himself as a historical figure. He considered running for president as early as 1980. He believed his record during decades at the Senate made him worthy of the presidency. He kept records to quote, cite, as evidence that he was a man of presidential timber.

And look, it doesn't matter. This report is more personal than what the report should have been. It is a particularly patronizing...

They're all like this.

So that's my sort of way of describing the whole report, which is incredibly damaging, because those aspersions hit the biggest vulnerability he has as a person, not just politically, but like a legitimate concern about his age.

And he realizes, like you said, that there's all this pressure, right? Because Trump was charged. And so what he ends up doing is he pulls like a reverse bill bar. Remember, bill bar takes the Mueller report. And, even though the Mueller report is incredibly damning for Donald Trump, he writes this summary at the front.

that's like fully exonerated. Herr does the opposite. And he does a quote at the beginning. that's like, you know, and this is the quote that most media outlets ran with in addition to the memory parts, was that evidence that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials. But the report also says that there was not sufficient evidence of that, that there was also evidence Biden did not retain or disclose classified info, willfully or intentionally.

And that quote, in addition to the shortage of evidence, there are other innocent explanations for the documents. So, like that, we cannot refute. And over and over again, the report, you keep going. The evidence does not show that when Mr. Biden shared certain info with his ghostwriter that he knew it was classified.

The evidence does not establish that Mr. Biden willfully disclosed national defense information to his.

And I think Biden saying it's closed is his way of kind of trying to end this conversation. Like the document retention policies, I don't think are nearly as important as what he wrote about memory. That's what we'll end up being stuck with. The report also goes, spends a fair amount of time talking about the ways in which Donald Trump and Joe Biden did were different. Yeah.

Which I also think is really important. All right. So document stuff aside,

It sounded like Biden did something wrong and willfully held onto this classified information. The righteous indignation around Bo's death, I think, was powerful, but some of it was just kind of chippy and angry and not great. Like the response to Peter Ducey's followup question that we heard just now. when Biden says, my memory is so bad, I let you speak. Funny line.

I like that. We chuckled. the press corps chuckle, but I don't think most, you know, that's like the most insider of insiders response. I don't think most people understand what he's talking about. If you're watching, he gives a lot of kind of clipped, angry sounding answers to fair questions, like about his age, his answer to the last question.

Those concerns have predated Robert her. They have predated anything Trump has said, Republicans and said, it is not just about people who see like out of context clips or, or that the Republicans put out, or crazy tech talks or whatever else. If you watch Joe Biden speak, oftentimes, he sounds frail and he sounds more frail than he used to, even in 2019 and 2020.. Now that may, and I think doesn't have anything to do with how sharp he is mentally, but the voice sounds frail and he shuffles more because of the arthritis in his back. So, for most people in the country who are just watching him be president, what do they see when they turn on the television?

They see the shuffle and they hear him, and he is, he's swallowing a lot more of his words. Now, obviously he's had a stutter, but it doesn't sound like the stutter did even in 2020.. He's just soft spoken and quiet every once in a while. He's feisty, like he was in the press conference, and he's sharp. He like sat down.

I remember that interview with John Harwood that he did. He sat down for a long time. He was very sharp in that interview too, but I don't know if it's when he gets tired or not. It is, he is mumbly, and I think that has an effect on people. that is apart from whatever the media says, whatever Republicans say.

If everyone, if the New York Times and everyone else stopped covering this issue tomorrow and never mentioned his age again, guarantee you, the concerns would still be there among people because they have been for the last.

people characterizing the joke he made at Too Deucy was better than how he made the joke himself. You know, it, he, even in that moment, seems quite old. And my view on this right now is like, he's gotta be out there. He's gotta be out there more, but these are not going to be clean wins, because he's gonna, I think, reassure some people while at the same time his age is showing even on his best days. Uh, there was a moment, I don't know if we have the clip, but there was a moment he made a joke about it, I think today.

Uh, and to me, this is, he's made a joke like this in the past. This, to me, is the most reassuring and best version of Joe Biden. talking about this. We have.

I do remember that.

It's great. It's great. It was great. I think, a version of a joke.

And it's more than half of Democrats. So I really think that it is the reason that the, the spin and the fury from people that it, this is like a media concoction and it's Hillary's emails all over again, just really. And I understand why people think that cause it's PT. I'm getting the PTSD from 2016, for sure, but it's different. Like when Hillary first ran for office, 80% of voters didn't express concerns about her document retention policies, right?

When Joe Biden decided he was going to run for president again, after saying in the first campaign that he was going to be a bridge to the next generation, polls from then on showed that people were concerned about his age. And that was.

those polls also show that most people worry that Joe Biden is ineffective as president. I think that that is a, that is a standard for age. It is also a stand in for not really knowing how much he's gotten done, so that when Joe Biden says, you know, watch me, or I've, you know, why, why is it, why am I running again? I'm running cause I got, did a lot of good. I, my competence is revealed by my, by my presidency, and I've earned a second term to finish the job.

I, that, that argument is easier to make when the country is educated about your achievements.

And then, since Afghanistan, it's been a string of, as the world starts spinning out of control, they think, does this guy have what it takes to make sure that we are safe and secure and the economy, like all that kind of stuff. And that, and so when world events seem like they are overtaking him and he's not out there enough forcefully, that's, what's getting people. You all come crawling back to the world.

Republicans are going to call him in.

Thanks to getting to work in government. You get to get questioned by the FBI occasionally.

Absolutely. No, there, if you don't remember, you say you don't remember. And if you want to have a good time, YouTube, the TMZ video of little Wayne's deposition from 2012.. Classic. But so it's hard to tell for me to tell, not having read the transcripts, whether Biden actually wasn't remembering things, or this is a prosecutor fucking him for saying, I don't recall.

I don't recall a bunch.

He knows the date. The report says that he forgot the year. How many times, like, do you guys remember exactly when we started critical media? What year? What year?

I guess, like, how long have we been doing it? Like years are tough. Years are not to like, excuse the whole thing. But again, I don't think I personally do not think Biden's problems are that he's forgetting things, right? Like everyone around him says he's super sharp, says that like, he's, he's totally with it.

I've had that experience in the last couple of years, the time that I saw him, like, I get it. The problem is we keep hearing this from people who know him and have worked with him. Even Republicans are saying that he's still sharp, right? There's a quote from Kevin McCarthy saying he was super sharp. Everyone's saying that, but then when people see him on television, they're seeing something different.

And, you know, two things can be true. One being that that Joe Biden is, while not, as, his days are not as long and he has not as much energy as he used to have, fit to continue being president, by all accounts of people who work with him day in and day out, while seeming too old and frail for the job. And Donald Trump is the opposite. He is more energetic and he is loud and seems up to, you.

And there would be as much as we all think, Oh, well, if only a Josh superior or Gretchen Whitmer or whatever, first of all, none of them are polling better than Joe Biden against Donald Trump. There hasn't been that many polls, and maybe that's because people don't know them yet. Very possible. But again, it is not like the alternative path is without risks right now. So that's going through Joe Biden's mind.

So he could either, he could either step aside. If he does not, then it is up to him to prove to people day in and day out that he is as sharp as ever. And that means doing every interview. That means going out there and speaking more. That means it's just like they, the Superbowl interview thing, I get it.

They were going to do with like a short four minute.

But that, that's why it's more incumbent upon him to go out there as much as possible.

Like once you've decided that someone is too old or something, does that impression change? I don't know that we're all going to find out, but that, so that that's, you know, there's a question of whether you can kind of assuage people's concerns about it. One thing you probably can do is make another set of issues more salient to them as voters when they go into the voting booth. And I think that's about talking about your record, talking about the economy, talking about what you do in a second term. I don't think a lot of the focus from Democrats right now is on this sort of whataboutism, Trump is old too, Trump forgets shit too.

And I do think the Biden folks have done a good job of surfacing Trump's verbal gaffes, times. he's looked and sounding confused, the South Carolina event that we led the show with. But I think you have to be careful that you're not making the debate feel like two bad choices. only. You have to be sure to be pushing sort of the affirmative message for Biden's.

But like, the biggest problem with Donald Trump is not that he's old and forgetful. It's that he is crazy and dangerous. And that is what people already believe about him. Even the people who voted for him and then decided not to vote for him. When you ask why they didn't, it wasn't because, oh, he was getting on in years and flubbing things.

It was, oh, because he said crazy shit, like the NATO comment that could really put us all in danger. And so when Donald Trump says something in an event, I'd rather the response be like, and this is what this could mean for the American people if he becomes president again, then, oh, see, he's great. He's old, too. He forgets, too.

I mean, it's not a mistake. It's.

They're equating it with wisdom and experience. I think that's good, too. I think he has to acknowledge people's concerns. I think you have to really and stop being defensive. Like, I think they need to stop making it about like.

Biden versus the media, Biden versus the people who've underestimated him, Biden, even. Biden versus Trump. It is about his vision versus Trump's vision, what he wants to do for people and what Trump would do to people. Right. And if the race just becomes Biden versus Trump and two old men going back and forth each other and yelling each other, like it's it's.

it's not only going to hurt Biden's cause, it's going to, like, help the cause of a third party. It's got every day he's out there. He's got to be talking about, like people, why he's trying to fight for people. He's got to be angry on behalf of people and not on behalf of himself. And I, just like the yelling at the media, yelling at like people underestimate.

It's just. I don't think it's effective. It might be warranted, for sure. I would do it. I'd be.

And to me, like, that's why what he did today was so excellent. He seems, first of all, he looks good. He's confident. He's, he's back on his heel. He's not, he's not leaning forward, kind of pointing.

And then there was Trump after New Hampshire, when he was being angry and defensive and yelling about.

I don't know how you, I mean, like,

Or do I think it highlights a liability everyone is very concerned about? I think it's the latter for sure. And so the logic for Joe Biden to pursue reelection has not changed. He didn't persuade him to not seek reelection two years ago. You're not going to persuade him after.

that could have been true, but age was just too big of a liability for him to surmount. And we will look back on this moment and say, wow, it sure was obvious. That's what the polls were saying. It's Joe Biden's job to prove those polls wrong, even if he has a legitimate frustration with the way in which he is constantly surrounded by an unhelpful.

Marianne Amir and sorry. Oh, my gosh. Who's who dropped out of the way? We haven't covered it.

Oh, well, OK. Yeah. So, yeah, they stood up and it didn't go well for them. Right. But like the people who would have been real contenders could have been real contenders, a Josh Shapiro, Gretchen, where they didn't run.

So, like, I don't know, like what else was going to happen anyway. So that's where.

I mean, first of all, after the Super Bowl, don't you get to be a little spoon after you won.

And I was sort of I was wondering about it. I actually don't know your culture. I've never, I've never been there. Curious, huh? I was curious.

They were. they look like they were having a good time. Afterwards, they were. they were. they were dancing to.

it's in a love story club. If you don't have.

He's like, we get it to like, play something else.

I think she's probably tired. She she did her show in Tokyo, flew to Vegas, did like when did she sleep? Those guys are gonna party till Tuesday.

I think she's fine. I think she's fine. There's a better. you don't think she's in premium? No,

I'm be 11.

. Are you behind me? Actually, I'm be 11.. Oh, my friend, ice. She's, she's actually be 10..

So you're buying me the spice. We're boarding. Anyway, are we done? Okay.

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hysteria has a series called this fucking guy, where they roast the men who deserve it most. Tommy has a show with Brian Tyler Cohen called liberal tears. Yeah, which is basically just now.

Joining us here in studio to talk about New York politics, the 2024 campaign and his own race for Congress, former representative and current candidate, Mondaire Jones. Welcome back. Thanks for having me. It's great to be in the stew. Yeah, good to have you here.

So we've been talking about every Democrats favorite topic. right now, Joe Biden's age. You're on the campaign trail right.

What's your level of concern? Zero. Okay. With respect to the president's age, I have no concerns, because he has been the most accomplished president in modern history, despite his age. And I know that he can continue to do the job because he's already been doing it.

I happen to have worked very closely with him on a number of matters. And I got to tell you, man, it's been really frustrating to see.

media, which are just wholly unprepared, as far as I can tell, to meet this moment, focus on his age, which is not very different from that of Donald Trump, by the way, over all of the crazy shit that Donald Trump does and says every single day, and to the threats that he and the extreme MAGA Republicans who have taken over this Republican party pose to this country in this most important election of our lifetimes that we're approaching.

It's a really big concern. So how do you think we should be addressing it? How should the Biden campaign be addressing it? I think this election is about.

We cut child poverty in half for a time. And we just got data a few months ago, showing yet again, that child poverty is a policy choice. We kept our small businesses open. I was a freshman member of Congress. And I was able to bring hundreds of millions of dollars for schools, housing, and healthcare to the 17th Congressional District of New York.

And then, again, as a freshman member of Congress, I was able to bring progressives and conservative Democrats together, and we passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill that is now law, and now tens of billions of dollars are coming to my home state of New York. So it was really cool to be able to be part of a functioning majority of people who actually cared about government, working for the people and who, unlike our Republican colleagues, are not there to dismantle the government and maybe have it work only to the extent that they're.

Do you think there's.

. I mean,

It's why, by the way, they don't talk about economics when they're running for office. They use fear tactics. They talk about the border and they talk about crime. They don't want to talk about their deeply unpopular economic policies. I mean, imagine if folks found out that my Republican opponent, Mike Lawler, would rather raise prescription drug prices for people on Medicare, like my grandmother, rather than lower them, which is exactly what his position is as an opponent of the Inflation Reduction Act.

These are people who also obviously want to pass a national abortion ban. And frankly, to the extent that people are concerned that Joe Biden's not going to hold on to the White House, it's even more important that we take back the House in Congress so that.

So it goes over to the House. Mike Turner, who's chaired the Intel Committee, said he thinks that if Mike Johnson allows Ukraine funding to get a vote, Democrats will protect him from a motion to vacate. Do you think they will? And do you think they?

Look, I don't think that Democrats should be in the business of doing any political favors for Republicans who are trying to make life harder for the American people and for our allies abroad. You're talking to a guy who cares very deeply about international issues. I traveled the world in the spring of 2022 to rally support among our allies for the free people of Ukraine. And that was a successful trip. And to see Republicans unify nearly in their opposition to helping Ukrainians beat back the ambitions of a madman who would basically restore the Soviet order and who is very hostile to us here in America.

And whose victory would embolden even more significant threats to America like China. It has been distressing, to put it mildly. I mean, this is supposed to have been the party of national security, but it's a cult. There's nothing conservative about the shit that they do. If that were the case, they would be accepting and working in good faith to pass now bipartisan border security legislation that they had been clamoring for for the past year until Donald Trump said, you know, nevermind.

I want to use the border crisis in the fall campaign.

What's happening?

just in the nick of time, you've got folks like Tom Suozzi, who I believe is going to win back. I don't want to call the Santos seat, because before it was the Santos seat, it was the Suozzi seat for many years. So he's going to win back his seat, I think, in the 3rd Congressional District of New York. I'm going to win back my seat in the 17th Congressional District, with the help of anyone of good conscience, I think, who wants to see us protect basic freedoms in this country, continue to cut costs, and, yes, save democracy itself. And we've got great candidates throughout the Hudson Valley and elsewhere on Long Island and New York State.

I expect that whatever polling folks are seeing today is not going to be predictive of the environment in November. I'm smart enough to know that the next nine months will be like 18 different lifetimes in politics. And so I know that folks are really down on the polling when it comes to the current president versus the former twice-impeached, serially indicted former president. But I just don't think that that's helpful beyond saying, get out there, knock on doors, communicate with people, and explain the stakes in this election.

And not just among Republicans, but Democrats and independents. I actually think that it has been a strategic error for Democrats who care about border security and who care about, yes, creating a pathway to citizenship for otherwise law-abiding 11 million-plus undocumented people here in America. I think that it has been a strategic error for a lot of folks who have appointed themselves spokespersons on this issue to not talk more about the need to secure the border. It is intuitive to the average person that we ought to have a secure border.

It's such a cynical move for Republicans, like my opponent, Mike Lawler, to talk about the migrant crisis impacting New York State in particular when it was the Republican governors of Texas and Florida who visited that upon us. But the fact is, it is now, I think, more proximate to people, both literally and mentally, given the constraints.

that cities and states like New York and New York City have. The federal government has to solve this issue. And part of that, of course, is making sure that my home state of New York has the resources, the financial resources, to deal with this migrant crisis. But that's a Band-Aid solution. We have to do comprehensive immigration reform if we're going to stop seeing ultimately just the volume, frankly, of folks illegally crossing the border who are.

He has voted against a gun regulation intended to keep us all safer from this uniquely American problem of mass shootings, even as he complains about public safety, which is so hypocritical. He opposes an assault weapons ban, and, of course, would never vote for a Speaker of the House who would bring a universal background checks bill to the floor. He is a career political operative who has worked to elect, not just once but twice, Donald Trump, and who has recently said that he would be supporting him again in the general election if he's the nominee. Well, guess what? Donald Trump's going to be the nominee.

And folks both need to know about that, and when they hear about it, are appalled. And this is a district that Joe Biden won by 10 points. I think he'll win by an even larger margin, because Donald Trump is even more unhinged and dangerous than he was the last time he ran for the presidency. And I will say just in the nick of time, because we are going to need to come together as a nation, not just a party, but as people of good conscience. And I mean, Republicans who are recognizing that this is not going to be the party that it once was, and that President Biden is the safer, more responsible choice in the November election.

Let's talk about bringing people together.

You think you're better than us? I cannot. The fucking attitude that you get from Westchester and upstate people, if someone even deigns to suggest they're from Long Island. I'm not from Long Island.

But the Lower Hudson Valley is a special place.

By the way, I do think Tom Suozzi is going to crush it.

And that's the argument, by the way. It's like, to the extent there are a handful of people who even pretend to be moderate in the House Republican Conference, they are clearly unable to rein in the extremism of their party. And the most important decision that one makes, in this case, multiple times last year in a caucus or a conference, as they say on the Republican side in the House, is to vote for speaker. And you have a speaker of the House who is the most extreme radical speaker in the history of American government, who wants to do all of these crazy things. And he now seems to be like the average sort of median House Republican, Senate Republican in terms of the extremism.

It's Mike Johnson or worse. They weren't getting better than Kevin McCarthy. It just keeps getting worse. Mondaire Jones, thank you so much for stopping by and good luck in the race.

. Long Island... People in Long Island are mad because it's a long, slender piece of land, with the two highways, all right? And that sucks.

Thanks.

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