Trump Wins Another Debate

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Jon Lovett.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

We just watched the second Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan Library in California, right here in the state of California. That was quite a debate, quite a debate, guys. If you missed the debate, which I hope you did. Here's just a flavor of what it was like. And I will say something.

Well, I was interrupted by a lot of people here and I want to be respectful because I believe these are good people.

You were respectful last debate, but I do not believe in these....

We're sitting here in the Reagan Library in the honor of Ronald Reagan's Library, if I may tim. From one admirer of Ronald Reagan to another, from one admirer of Reagan.

To another, we cannot sit here and violate Reagan's 11th commandment.

Let's have a policy debate, let's have a policy debate, let's have a policy debate. And the right answer is we need to declare independence from China, and I will see that through.

It's worse than I remember.

Excuse.

We should point out that that was one of the more exciting parts of the debate.

Yeah, it was a real slog.

General impressions Dan.

Watch it, I like him.

We're a little punchy here, it's late at night, we're tired, we're bored, we're drinking.

I want to read you a statement about the debate.

Okay.

Tonight's GOP debate was as boring and inconsequential as the first debate, and nothing that was said will change. The dynamics of the primary contest being dominated by President Trump. The RNC should immediately put an end to any further primary debates, agree with the Trump campaign senior advisor Chris Lesovita.

This is like when somebody reads something from the Unabomber manifesto and it's like, it was the unabomber. Now, how do you feel?

I haven't agreed with any statement tonight more than that.

Yeah, what a waste of fucking time. I mean, we'll get to Nikki, Haley. Nikki Haley seemed to have a plan and actually do something while she was standing there.

For two hours again on Earth, too. I mean, it's like when there's like another Republican primary and with the people that were on the stage.

No, I'm not defending it.

Robert Costa, a reporter at CBS, tweeted Lots of angst tonight. Among my top GOP sources about this debate, donors concerned flurry of texts, questions about where this race goes from here. They wonder, Can anybody have a breakout moment? No, the answer is no.

Do you want to go from here here? Here we are where we have been for months, with Donald Trump winning easily and no one trying to beat him.

It was wild, like there was a little more. They leaned in a little harder on the Trump attacks tonight.

On one thing, him not being at the debate, the absolute stupidest thing in the world. Donald Trump was found guilty of fraud yesterday. No one mentioned it. He threatened to kill the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff this weekend.

No one mentioned it didn't come up, moderator didn't bring it up.

Several of them know personally.

Yeah, for like, a second, for a second, he said. I wish he was at the debate to defend his comments.

Right, right, right.

And their favorite thing? They all go after him on an adding to the debt. This is the to the Republicans on that stage. The worst sin that Donald Trump committed in four years as president is that he was, uh, he was a little profligate, yeah.

Is that? Is that why those people were trying to rip the cop's limb from limb? Was it the deficit of the out-of-years? Is that what it was? I didn't know what it was.

So let's go through candidate by candidate. It was a terrible debate, like there was nothing, nothing really interesting about it.

Ron Keep listening.

Keep listening well, we'll get into it. RON DESANTIS Uh, first of all, it took, uh, I counted 16 minutes into the debate. uh, for Ron DESantis to even speak. It didn't even seem like he was there.

And then best 60 minutes he's had in months.

And then finally, finally, he spoke, and this is what he said Where's Joe Biden?

He's completely missing in action from leadership.

And you know who else is missing in action?

Donald Trump is missing in action. He should be on this stage tonight, he owes it to you to defend his record. Where they added 7.8 trillion to the debt.

So that was, that was Ron's big moment. What'd you guys think about Ron DeSantis tonight?

Huh.

It's just it's nothing, it's just nothing.

This guy no one has, no one has told him in debate prep to fix the face stuff.

I don't think it's fixable.

Or the voice can't fix the face, can't fix the voice.

Well, none of those. Thank you. That's a first of all. It's a hard thing, just, I mean, these people in the debate prep with Ron DeSantis. He may not be a person, but maybe they are, and it's a tough thing to bring up.

Every single answer he finishes, he just sits there and he gives this weird, weird half grin, half smirking for the camera. It's very uncomfortable.

Well, they're all very rehearsed, his cadence is very rehearsed, even that Joe Biden line was all very rehearsed. And they all of them have this way of speaking in these debates. Tim Scott does it.

And it just doesn't work. We're going to turn up the heat and turn America around.

And see, that was one that worked. I'm really glad you brought it up. That's a good example of how it can work. Famously in Iowa in 2007, 16 years ago before the iPhone, it was a really good moment.

I think you are correct that a lot of them do that. But DESantis is the worst. There's like, way too much alliteration. All of it sound canned, like Trump's attack on DESantis is that he is a like of Washington, he's part of the swamp.

Yeah, and it's. It is really effective, too, because all Ron DESantis wants to do is sit in a room and work really hard. On the sentence. He's going to reuse to rebut the argument that he pre-planned everything he says and sounds like an automaton and he can't get out of it.

And he just, and he had all. His strategy tonight was he kept going after the D.C. elites. Like someone must've told him, you gotta be, you gotta get your outsider status back. So he every single answer, he hit the D.C. elites. What was that all about?

You know, who people don't think is a D.C. elite, Donald Trump?

Right, that's why it's just a weird.

This is true of every single person. Donald Trump is up by 30 points in Iowa and 30 points in New Hampshire. But in the the CBS poll that came out yesterday, 80 of the voters in both of those states are open to someone other than Trump. And no one tried to do anything about that dynamic.

It's like, I think they don't know why, people, why, that many people are open to someone besides Trump, like they haven't figured out.

They haven't tried, they haven't tried a single argument. Yeah, they haven't. The idea is the idea that....

Yeah.

It's it's insane, just if I don't think any of them want to win, but they think that they've decided they can't win. And they're trying to just navigate the land, the plane of their failing campaign in a way that maximizes their position in a Trump Republican party.

Or they believe that nothing they can do can change the fundamentals of this race. So they want to be there as the first among fucking duds. In case something changes in the criminal process, in the in the race, that's outside of their control.

Unless he dies, that's it, they're just waiting in case he dies, they want to be there. I think that there's like nothing.

I mean, the trial's not starting until after all, the delegates are allocated, right at the most optimistic case.

I mean, do we think a conviction at this point would sway the Republican electorate? I doubt it.

If these people knew what would sway the Republican electorate, they'd be doing it.

Also, by the way, as they're all doing this Donald Trump earlier, we're going to play a clip of his speech in a bit. But a part of his speech in Detroit. He said that none of the people running he would pick as vice president.

It's just incredible these people are picking these little fights with each other. Tim Scott's going after Nikki Haley's, Nikki Haley's going after Vivek, Vivek is going after Chris Christie. Meanwhile, Trump's in South Carolina. You hear about this.

Unstoppable, a Republican consultant who is supporting Ron DeSantis said to Semaphore before the debate. If he doesn't do well here, in my opinion, he's got to drop out. If he doesn't want to be embarrassed, do you think he did well enough not to drop out?

I think that's a time machine question.

Yeah, he was. I will say this about Ron DeSantis, he was better than last debate, but he still sucked. He still was not like the best at this debate.

As long as he's Ron DeSantis, he's going to suck, he doesn't. It's not there, he does not have it.

And I think part of his problem was he. And we'll talk about Nikki Haley next. But she's sort of stealing the mantle of the non-trump alternative from him. Or at least, that field has become too crowded now, and Ron DESantis does not look like he is in second. Like look. According to polls, he's still second place nationally, and depending on which early state poll you look at in early states. But he certainly didn't act like that or seem like that on the stage tonight.

Yeah, that's sort of what I mean, though. When I say that, I feel like, you know, it's not going to do anything, but at least it's. It seems like she had some sort of goal for what she was going to do in the debate. You know, I do think she's taken that mantle. I think she was feisty in a way that Chris Christie wasn't right. Like, I think she actually was the only one to do something with that time.

Let's hear some of Nikki Haley's feistiness from tonight.

We could have, and what you've got. I honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say. Because I can't believe. Ron DESantis is against fracking, he's against drilling, he's been against you. Did it every. He always talks about what happens on day one, you better watch out, because what happens on day two is when you're in trouble. I appreciate Tim.

Of that, literally put $50,000 on curtains, curtains. do your homework, Tim, Because Obama bought those curtains. did you send them back? It's in the press.

Did you send them back? Did you get a gift receipt for those fucking curtains or not, Nikki? They take the credit, they'll take the credit.

The Curtains exchange was one of the dumbest exchanges of an otherwise very dumb debate.

Two people, two people in single digits in the polls, argue each other over a curtain purchase from the State Department in 2017.

That's what that was about the beginning of that clip. When she said, I am dumber every time I hear you speak was about Vivek Ramaswamy, which was I wanted to cheer. When she said that, I think because he is extremely annoying. She was feisty, went after a bunch of other candidates. But I also think that her answers were solid answers. She seemed like she commanded the stage more than almost anyone else.

Tell us what you liked about Nikki Haley.

Yes, she came ahead of the stage more than Doug Burgum. You are correct.

Then what is it, what is it a plan?

Well, it is a plan.

I'm curious.

What she is doing, Nate Cohen, I thought, wrote about this very smartly in the New York Times this morning. Is she's appealing to a faction of Republicans? She is appealing specifically to the non-Trump vote? She's not doing it by attacking Trump, but she's trying to be the normal, bush-like Republican, traditional Republican. Desantis problem is, he has no constituency because he's trying to just be a worse version of Trump, and the Trump voters are very happy with Trump. So why would they do that?

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

And I think she genuinely hates the fake. That was sincere. That's the only moment of sincerity on that. And I think that's one thing that brought them all together. And maybe America.

Yeah, because there was a moment when she.

Like, they're flooding their torpedo tubes.

Right, yeah, and some of it has to do with business in China. I don't know, they all hate China. That's all they talked about all night. When one of them attacked him on China. Suddenly, like, four different candidates on stage were just like, China, this China, that China....

I also dislike China. Yes, that was also something I was going to do. That's something that my parents were going to do.

He likes China, I don't, he likes China, he has a history with China, I don't.

I'd like to interrupt, to say that was something that I was going to also say. That was something I plan to do about now, and I'm going to do it now. Am I doing it? I'm not doing it now? Got it?

Vivek Ramaswamy Who? I think in the first debate, I was like, he's extremely annoying. But maybe there's the part of the Republican base that likes Donald Trump would like what Vivek Ramaswamy is selling tonight. I cannot imagine why any human being of any political persuasion would enjoy spending any time with Vivek Ramaswamy. He's the most annoying, yeah.

Here's my takeaway.

Smarmy.

I missed the first debate because I was on vacation and that was my time and you couldn't have it. But so this was my first time seeing him in this kind of a forum. And it is a testament to the fucking charisma vacuum. Don't have it, Tomatom losers that are on that stage that anyone thinks this guy has any charisma he is.

Yeah, he's, he's less robotic than Desantis, but just as annoying, maybe more so.

He's annoying in a different way.

Different way, like, just like Smarmy know it all kind of way.

You were. I don't know if we're going to play the clip, but there was this. The moment where he was talking about how I'm here to listen. I came to listen and learn. And right before, right before, Nikki Haley fucking destroyed.

Him.

Body them, and it does seem like there must be some feedback they're getting about how unappealing and kind of man-splaining this guy is.

I think there was a thought because he really did dominate the stage the last time. He was the only person who, like, drove a narrative who he had most of the speaking time. He people were responding to him, which felt out of, completely out of nowhere, given the fact that most of the Americans had never seen him before that moment. And I think there was a sense that, oh, is he going to be the breakout candidate from this debate? And he did not.

People, I guess, I guess those voters were correct.

I mean, some of the voters are not always right. And he went into this debate with a plan to try to sand down the edges of that annoyingness. Which is why he did not when people came after him. That's why he, instead of fighting back as he did last time, he was just like Ronald Reagan. 11th Commandment Policy debate. And then he did that completely rehearsed routine about saying that he would listen to people and get advice from older people and all of this.

Do you think that his polls might be affected by the fact that he has the hairstyle of your third pick for a DJ for a bar mitzvah?

His hair is gets bigger with every debate.

The fuck is that?

He um.

I didn't really land that joke.

Just.

Kind of got stuck in the middle. Leave it at it, I don't care.

He, Uh, this is free. He had a lot, he talked a lot about kids and social media. It was a big, big problem of his.

That's his response.

I'm going to book him on offline.

That's his response to being on TikTok. He's the only Republican kid on TikTok. Oh yeah, and so he's gotten a lot of crap for that.

He also talked about getting drugs on Snapchat, Yeah.

Yeah, there's a fentanyl, baby, yeah.

One one just small, somewhat serious point, which is, it is really despicable that Dana Perino decided that one thing she wanted to get out of this debate was some kind of pledge from each of the candidates. To pass a federal law to require, I guess, teachers and school nurses to out kids to parents, if those kids come to those teachers and tell them that they're gay or trans, or or non-binary, or what, have you that? That's what she viewed as a really interesting and exciting way to make the most of this debate. To get some kind of yes or no answer on this, on this bigoted question.

She pegged the question off an answer that Christy gave to Stuart Varney, one of the co-moderators, like just last week, which is wild.

And she, it's the only question that she followed up on, like 12 times, like she tried to pin Doug Burgum down repeatedly on it.

Like, that's one of her, that's what she thinks is. The most important thing she can do on this forum is try to shift the Republican Party to the right on the issue of of trans.

And gay kids? That's giving her, uh, I think, more credit than she deserves on having any kind of strategy. Because all three moderators just were like bowled over by the candidates, they were like interrupted all the time, they couldn't get a word. It was, it was wild.

All right.

I want to ask Governor DESantis, you love it? I think that was a great line that you gave him. I don't know what everyone's talking about, I think you did it.

Yeah, I mean, look, it was sort of a we did it. It was sort of like how the Cars monster, you know, we kind of worked on it together. Some of it was his, I don't remember, it was all ducking.

It was a great moment.

And then it lands on Donald, fucking duck, what's going on?

Who are in these debate prep sessions? With Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, all of them Donald Duck, and he is, oh, the Donald Duck line. They're all like, Yeah, yes, sir, that's great.

I mean, before we came in here, I decided to do a little prep. So I clicked on a news article from NBC News. That was six takeaways from the debate, and one number three was Chris Christie. Got Donald Duck trending on Twitter?

It was, I think it was a good moment for him too. We were all like, Oh, this is a good moment, this was a good hit and we're like, here we go.

He had some energy. How does it end? He's burly in the debate.

He's looking at the camera. It was like it was like, all right now, that's the Chris Christie that I fell in love with.

It was just, yeah, then he had another, you know, he hit Trump for not building the wall. He's about, Trump's going to say he's going to build the wall and have Mexico pay for it. But he only built 52 miles, and if Mexico knew it had only been 52 miles, maybe they would have paid for it.

It's on its way to something.

It's on its way.

Is it 2017? Like, what is happening?

It's again, again, just cut to an insurrectionist, being like, only 52 miles.

Tim Scott Tim Scott got a got. His note from the last debate was you didn't say anything, you were too quiet.

We've looked at some of the cross tabs after your performance. In the first debate, our view is just strategically, we think you should speak, and obviously that may not help. We're probably not confident that speaking will have as much of an effect as we'd like, but it's the only thing we can do on a debate stage.

He did speak, he did speak a lot more of this debate, but he Tim Scott kind of did. A I'm going to give different parts of my stump speech, you know? And someone obviously told him, You know, you're lean on your personal story, that's where you're inspiring, your hope message, all that kind of stuff. So he sort of did a lot of rhetoric around there, but often it didn't make sense with the question that was asked to him.

Why are you running for president? I still don't know.

Well, he got the first question, which was about the economy, and I literally looked at my computer. I looked up and it was talking about fentanyl on the border.

Yeah, he did that, he did that a lot. They a lot of them just sort of pivoted to another question or topic that they wanted to talk about.

And not not the topics that might be easier, more or more conducive to a good moment for them. There was one moment where Dana Perino's best moment was. I think it was Pence who went on some tangent and she's like, I believe the question was about healthcare.

Yeah, yeah, it was about. It was about healthcare. And his answer was I would pursue the federal death penalty for anyone involved in a mass.

Shooting expedited death penalties for mass shootings? Yeah.

That'll, that'll do it.

That's healthcare, that's his healthcare plan. Yep.

Hey, why didn't we think of that?

So Mike Pence was at the debate. He tested out some jokes again. Uh, he had one terribly lame line about, You know, Joe Biden shouldn't be on the picket line, he should be on the unemployment line. And no one laughed.

A lot of people want to hang, but not whiff, he's struggling with the whiff.

So at one point, Chris Christie's talking about teachers unions, and he's railing against teachers unions, speaking of railing.

Yeah, go on.

So and then he a really sort of gross attack on Joe Biden. He says, Oh well, Joe Biden's sleeping with a member of the teachers union. Because Dr. Jill Biden, the First Lady of the United States, is a teacher and a member of a teacher's union.

I don't think it's that gross that man fucks his wife.

What's the problem?

Well, it's just like it's the first Lady, and you're just like he's sleeping with a member of the teachers union. I know you're a Christie fan.

Firstly, what? listen, listen, this is we're going to be whatever, whatever comes next.

Is going to be edited out.

I think if more people thought Joe Biden was fucking Jill Biden, maybe these age problems wouldn't be as big of a deal in the polls. Okay, how about that?

Okay, that's a fair point, that's a fair point anyway. Well, Mike Pence heard that and said, I got to get on on this.

So here I mean in the debate, Jesus, what are you talking about? You sound crazy.

Well, let's listen to what he said, let's listen to what he said. Chris, you mentioned the president's situation.

I my wife, uh, isn't a member of the teachers Union, but I got to admit I've. I've been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years. And um, I feel, you know what?

You know what, great, great, this is great. Look at these people.

And then we finally come to Doug Bergen, my guy Doug. He was wild, I don't know what else to say about him. He, he, like, interrupted a lot again. Someone must've told him, Sir, you didn't speak much last debate.

And it was like he kept doing this thing of, like, I'm sorry, but I just have to interrupt to say what. Nobody's willing to say. A different version of what you've all been saying. I'm Doug Burgum, you got Burgum.

So just to wrap this up, uh, one of Dana Prino's last question, I think it was her last question, was a little wild. Here's, here's a. Here's what she asked for to wrap up the debate. If you all stay in the race, former President Donald Trump wins the nomination. None of you have indicated that you're dropping out, so which one of you on stage tonight should be voted off the island?

There was a process by which they came up with this idea, they ran it by large groups of people, and it made it to the debate stage.

And you know what, like Chris Christie, he gave it a he gave it the old college drive.

He had to be called out because he did not volunteer at Stuart and Varney. He had to come back to him later and say, I saw you writing something down, What did you write down?

No, this was so, you have to understand. So what happens is Dana Prino starts this question. And as Reid pointed out before we recorded, it's on its way to actually an important point. Which is, if you all stay in the race, Donald Trump is the nominee. None of you can. If all of you are here, none of you can can succeed. What is the process by which any one of you is going to be the one to take on Trump?

Some version of that, she also said, like, and you're all down, like, 40 points, you. Does anyone have a strategy to win?

But then she turned it to this now write someone's name down and gave Ron DeSantis his best and most human moment of the night. Which is like, I'm not going to do that, that's not fair, everybody put on suits.

When I would have simply said, Doug, doug, Burgum.

But what's funny is, what's funny is as that's happening. Chris Christie's writing down a name, and he's like, I agree, we shouldn't be writing it on any names.

And he's like, You, Governor Christie, you've written something down, tell us.

No, I didn't. no, I didn't. I didn't write it. I wrote down, uh, I wrote down, uh terrorism, uh Chinese communists.

Yeah, and then he said, You know, Doug, uh, Donald Trump shouldn't be on the island and blah, blah, blah. And then then someone interrupted him, Vivek again.

Yeah, Vivek came in.

He was like, I think Trump was great, I love Trump, Donald Trump.

And then they're like, That's it, that's how we're ending it.

Which actually was, Yeah, that's yeah, you guys think this, uh, debate moves the needle at all for anyone? Maybe Nikki Haley creeps up a little bit, maybe she, maybe she captures some of that.

She gets to the tweens.

Some of that Ron Desantis, some of the Ron Desantis voters go to Nikki.

Yeah.

Maybe some of the Tim Scott voters, maybe some of the Mike Pence, the two Mike Pence voters.

Let me let me, uh, hold on, let me just let me, let me, let me, let me get myself on a cable news panel for a second, you ready for a second? ready for this? yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the titles for Dan's message Box tomorrow.

No, I got to rewrite it.

Anyway, all right, let's talk about, let's talk about Donald Trump. Sure, uh, who is, you know, the likely Republican nominee at this point?

But your leadership should endorse me, and I will not say a bad thing about them again. And they will have done their job. If they endorse me, they will have the easiest labor leadership job anywhere in the country. If you could speak to Sean, he's listening right now, I'm sure Sean endorsed Trump. And you can take a nice two month vacation.

So, uh, here's what Sean Fain, the uh head of the UAW, had to say.

I find a pathetic irony that the former president is going to hold a rally for union members at a non-union business. I see no point in meeting with him because I don't think the man has any. Has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for. He serves a billionaire class, and that's what's wrong with this country.

So there you have it.

You're saying there's a chance.

Really thirsty? Uh, the Detroit news was there, and um, they interviewed some people in the crowd, uh. One person in the crowd had a sign that said union members for Trump. They interviewed her and she said she was not a union member. And then another person had a sign that said auto workers for Trump, and they interviewed him.

This is encouraging their fellow auto workers to be for Trump.

That's true.

That's malicious, as you suggest.

Uh, what'd you guys think of the Trump speech?

There's plenty to make fun of. I think that, like, it's interesting watching Trump speak and then go into that debate. He is trying to make this argument to try to peel off some share of Biden voters in these states. And I think we should take it seriously. The argument that, basically, you know, EVs are bad for the Midwest.

So I think the question is like, how do Democrats and Biden make sure that he doesn't get away with that?

It's a great question.

So we fly in, we find another drink in for Dan.

I think, Lovett, you, Lovett's point is you have to wade through. We watched the whole speech, which no one else is going to do.

And it was on Newsmax only. Yes, and by the way, so you all know.

And by the way, midway through on Newsmax, they did a picture and picture of a fucking fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani's legal defense fund.

A picture of him up there looked like he was dead, yeah.

They're just going to. When he died, they just crossed it out and write Memorial Fund.

Yeah, they, they, they alternated between that picture. And then please buy a gold coin, yeah.

Just buy gold, and if you buy gold, you'll get, uh, take control of your finances, was the slogan for the gold company. Okay, physical gold. They make it very clear.

Bob Menendez called him up.

Um, but if you watch the whole speech, there's a ton of insanity in there but buried in there. Which is what most people will see either through clips that are shared or, more likely, in the billions of dollars of ads. That Trump's campaign and Republican super Pacs air is a very potent grievance message targeted at workers who've been left behind in this economy. Now, Trump doesn't mention that he is someone who was the most anti-worker president in American history who passed a tax cut. That most of that offense went to the rich and encouraged, and led to the more offshoring of American jobs. Who got rid of overtime pay for 8 million Americans, costing them more than a billion dollars in wages? So he has a record there, but what we have to take very seriously is he is speaking in a language of populism that works in an environment where people are very unhappy. And all of the polling shows that we are in a very fertile environment for that sort of economic nationalism and populism. If it doesn't, it doesn't match up to his record, obviously. But the only people who are going to make sure that that is known is us, right.

With the exception of Tim Scott, who was like, Yeah, you're asking for too much. That's what I have to say.

But even he walked away from his own.

I also think you can just tell he's just so much more comfortable in the role of challenger than he was as incumbent. Right? Because his whole message, people would call him like a feral genius. But it's pretty easy.

Who calls him that?

You know, all the annoying people?

And hold him responsible for the problems he is claiming to be the one who he can solve.

And he will get us right back into that. I mean, we just got to. That's why, like, every time, it's also why Donald Trump doesn't ever talk about a second-term agenda. All he talks about is like, you're pissed about that.

Right? But where they are signaling anything around his agenda, it is a lower corporate tax rate. To get that out there and to just sort of shore up those interests and remind everybody that, yeah, yeah, I'm going to talk kooky on the stump, but you can count on me when the chips are down.

So Joe Biden, earlier than Trump, I think the day before, did go and become the first U.

Gave up a lot.

And the companies were in trouble, but now they're doing incredibly well.

And guess what?

You should be doing incredibly well, too. You deserve what you've earned, and you've earned a hell of a lot more than you're getting paid now. Pretty big deal that he joined a picket line.

Yeah, real fuck you to the writers, but they're out there for months. Well, you don't like suits, you don't think the suits. People should get a little taste of this Netflix action.

Joe Biden should have come to Hollywood.

Yeah.

And just hung out outside Netflix.

Yeah.

Just like.

I think that these room minimums.

I think it's great that he went, I think it's a big deal. It was like, that's where he should be, both physically. But also that's the best message, right? That he's going to be the guy who's fighting for workers. And again, it doesn't have to be....

I also think it's like, we're watching this debate and they all just go back to, like, Where's Joe Biden? He's in the basement, it's like, Hey man, everybody's watching the news. He just got back from a foreign trip, he's at the UAW.

One other thing happened, Dan, that you alluded to at the top of the show. Yesterday, a New York State Supreme Court justice ruled that Donald Trump committed fraud by exaggerating his wealth and the value of his assets on financial forms. Basically, Trump and his companies used the false information to. They got better terms on loans, insurance rates, taxes, and this happened. This was a summary judgment from a judge. This is all before the fraud trial actually begins.

No one watching the Republican debate because no one mentioned it. The fact that the guy is running to be in charge of the federal budget and he was just accused of fraud seems like a relevant piece of information you could share with voters. I mean, just to add a little more detail here about, like, how big a deal this is, as we've talked about before. Your attorney general, Letitia James, charged Trump with these crimes that was headed to trial. She filed a motion that said the evidence of Trump's fraud is so obvious it's not even worth having the trial over.

And there's, of course, like, you know, Eric Trump and Donald Trump, too. In his statement, well, the judge said that Mar-a-Lago was worth this much, and that couldn't be what really happened. Here is like, when Trump wanted to lower his taxes, he would claim a low valuation for a property. When he wanted to get cheap loans, he would inflate the valuation. So basically, what he was doing is he was just changing the valuation, depending on whether he wanted loans or whether he wanted to pay lower taxes.

And some of this wasn't just subjective, like how much is Mar-a-Lago worth? He lied about things like the square footage of various apartments, right? These are things that don't change. Yeah, I do.

Do you think Biden should like, does the Biden campaign do anything with that?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, they don't have to do it right now. But over the course of time, it's a bit like. I think that a core part of their message is going to be about that. We don't want to return to the chaos and corruption of Trump. And you're going to have to make that case. And a judge finding him guilty of fraud for inflating his assets by $2 billion.

Seems like after a jury in New York found him liable for raping Eugene Carroll.

Part of it is is that Trump is not in this for you, he's in it for himself and his rich friends. And this is a piece of evidence to that, right.

That is key because during his speech today, he was like, You know, Joe Biden crooked. Joe is just out there enriching himself. Because he, like, makes up stories about, you know, Biden, China money and all that kind of stuff. So he said that he's like, but I'm in it to help you, because so he knows.

He said, I'm in it to enrich you, not myself, right?

I didn't need to do this, I was having so much fun living my life and I just did this for you. Now I'm getting the shit kicked out of me, but now I'm here.

Meanwhile, but you're doing it to stay at a fucking jail, man.

Well, now that's a thing I think, look, one one thing that comes across. I think it was true in the in the in the Meet the Press interview, it was true in the rally that we watched. He's running. The threat of prison hangs over him, sharpens the senses.

Yeah, it's made him a little more disciplined in his message.

It has, but I will say, like, yeah, there's political implications for the fact that they just found that we can go right to the damages phase. For the fact that he's a fraud, sure, they're coming for his money and he's been lying about his worth this whole time, and that that has to be genuinely terrifying for him.

Like, that is the only way out is winning.

I honestly think that. Like if he had to choose between being rich and wearing a jumpsuit, right? Like coming out of going to jail and coming out rich. Or losing all that he has, I don't think that's a close call for him.

I don't think he wants either.

Well, I would, I would, in fairness.

No, and look, he's, I should say, he's a little more disciplined. He's also still talking about windmills and whales and confusing jeb bush and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, that's also true, that's also part of it.

He really, but he's got the thing, he's sort of got this. The 16 message, which is me against the establishment, on behalf of you, right? That was sort of the message and it was all bullshit and stuff like that. But that's what he did in 16 and then in 20, he was sort of like in a rabbit hole of fucking, you know, right wing YouTube comments.

Uh, and sort of specific flourishes, right, right. This was a bit more like the speech today was a bit more sort of a clean. The parts were the parts that were. The message around the working class, basically take that kind of broader message that he was doing for a long time. And he basically says, like, I have been fighting for years to take on the elites on behalf of the working class, which is a change.

Is happening in. This is a much, much, much more fertile political environment for Trump's message than it was in 2016 2016. Economy was doing fine, people weren't particularly grumpy. Trump largely won because of complacency and a sense that things were were fine after two, eight years of Obama.

And we shouldn't overstate like, and they don't like Donald Trump, most people don't like Trump.

They didn't hit more people. Donald Trump For all the crap about Joe Biden's favorable ratings, they are better than Donald Trump's for most working class people.

This isn't working like we should just get all that out there. But again, an election in 2020 that was decided by 40,000 votes across three states. It doesn't take much, it doesn't take much.

Yeah, yeah, don't go to the Reagan Library unless you have to, that's an old saying in my house.

Yeah, I think, uh, I think he won that one. We do have a few housekeeping notes before we go before you fill up your fall calendar with apple picking.

Jesus Christ, I love it when you read the house.

Usually, I try to read it first.

That was good.

You don't need that many apples. Also Pods of America's going on tour. There it is. We'll be in D.C. Louisville, Cleveland, New Orleans, San Diego and San Jose. Make sure to get those tickets before they sell out.

This is great to live on.

The Apple thing to cricket?

4, p.

Okay, love it, just learned it, love it. You're gonna have to be on the discord.

Here's the thing, here's the thing. It was a it was a hate watch, but we did it together, yeah, and that was nice.

I love the way we just throw around discord as a, as a term, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's.

A group chat for the if you're old like us to group chat, that's all you need. All right, everyone. Uh, we will, uh, I guess what we got in it. We got an impeachment hearing on Thursday and then the the government, uh, may be shut down by the next time.

Bye everyone.

Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo. Our associate producer is Farrah Safari, writing support from Hallie Kiefer. Reed Cherlin is our executive producer. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.