Trump Returns to the Scene of the Crime

It was Trump's first trip to the U.

S. Capitol since he urged a mob of violent extremists to prevent the certification of the election he lost. And boy, did he get a hero's welcome from many of the same House and Senate Republicans who fled for their lives on January 6th. And at the time, many blamed Donald Trump. But even though they've decided to forgive and forget, the Biden campaign wanted to make sure the rest of us don't.

Here's the ad they released timed Trump's visit. On January 6th, Donald Trump lit a fire in this country. 140 officers were injured. The siege lasted for seven hours. Stoking the flames of division and hate, now he's pouring gasoline.

They were unbelievable patriots. Pledging to pardon the extremists who tried to overthrow our government. We will give them pardons. Inciting them to try again. There is nothing more sacred than our democracy.

But Donald Trump's ready to burn it all down. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message. What a good time to plug our book, Democracy or Else, which is on sale.

You can pre-order it right now, and it'll be released a week from Tuesday.

He didn't actually go in the Capitol, we should say, but he was on Capitol Hill. I mean, that is wild.

I think they legitimately believe that he is their hero and that he did not try to murder them.

It worked, right? We are doing it.

You're welcome. Biden campaign. I, you know, what's interesting to me is I think that this will ramp up at the end. I do, certainly for the segment of voters that Sarah Longland and I spent a lot of time talking about on Wednesday's pod, these former Republicans, two-time Trump voters, Trump-Biden voters, who are very uncomfortable with Donald Trump, specifically because of January 6th. You want that in their mind.

And the question is, how are you going to make that breakthrough at the end? Right? Because it's going to have to be more than just ads, right? There's going to have to be a full bore, surround, sound style campaign to bring people back into that moment, to remember what they were thinking on that day. That day when most Republicans, hardcore Republicans, turned away from Trump on that day for a brief, fleeting period of time, but they did.

And can you get people back there through high-profile events, surrogates, ads, could you take out a 30 minute spot, right? Or, if I have a 30 minute YouTube documentary, like you really sort of need your version of the Michael Moore, Iraq war documentary that ran 2004.. You need something like that to bring people into that moment, to be more than just some digital and television spots. Although you should run those and they will run those.

Primary audience is certainly the voters that Sarah's talking about, the two-time Trump voters who are now sick of Trump. I also think, we've heard Biden mentioned January 6th now at the NAACP event, where he said, does anyone doubt, if these were, if the protesters were black, that Donald Trump wouldn't have sent in the National Guard to put them down, which he refused to send any help at all. So I think that there is, for some voters, I think voters who are tuned out, voters who maybe aren't too happy with Joe Biden, who aren't sure if they're going to vote. I think reminding them of the kind of, not just like, hey, this happened January 6th, but this is the kind of violence that Donald Trump has incited. This is the kind of chaos that he's incited.

And why would you think that he's not going to do that again?

Trump called Milwaukee, the swing state city that's hosting the Republican convention, a quote, horrible city. He referred to the Justice Department as dirty bastards. He complained about Taylor Swift not endorsing him. He said Nancy Pelosi's daughter once told him that if things had been different, he and Nancy would be perfect together.

And he once again praised one of his favorite make-believe friends.

Instead, it's just like, not entirely sure what that meant there. But I'm sure there was a reason why he mentioned a fictional serial killer in a meeting with congressional Republicans.

I think the mayor has already said something about it.

It's going to be great.

You just dust off the playbook. You leap into action. You get the mayor out there. You get Congress people. I'm sure they're getting small business.

There's going to be an ad on Milwaukee radio by the end of the day. There's going to be a bunch of like small business people and veterans from Milwaukee talking about just... I love it. It's great. Hammer him for it.

Is it going to really matter that much? Probably not. But can you make it slightly uncomfortable for a few minutes? Can you, just as a way to like, throw some grist in the mill during the Republican convention in Milwaukee? Absolutely.

So he was talking about the crime. And then someone else was like, oh no, he was talking about how they stole the election in Milwaukee in 2020.. I was like, none of this is making it better, you dipshits.

It's funny, but like, this is how Trump views cities in America. now, right? Like. he knows that cities are full of Democrats and Democrats don't like them. And so every city has to be a hell hole.

that's crime ridden and dirty. He says it about DC. He says it about Chicago, Milwaukee. Doesn't matter if it's a swing state city or not. He just sees every urban area where there are Democratic voters that do not like him.

He wants to turn the rest of the country against. And, by the way, this is part of his plan that he wants to send the National Guard into the cities. He wants to invoke the Insurrection Act and send the army into these cities to fight crime and to deport immigrants. And he wants to have police do mandatory stop and frisk. Like this is his agenda.

This is how he actually feels about cities. So it is funny and a traditional politics thing, but it's also the guy deeply hates cities right now.

And it has, yes, it is amusing in this weird context, but it has some knock on effects down the line. that about policy and Trump's actions that it can be very damaging to the people who live in those cities, regardless of what he called them.

He said very complimentary things about all of us. We had sustained applause. He said, I'm doing a very good job. I mean, we're grateful for that.

So, judging from that North Korean propaganda clip, it seems like Trump doesn't have to worry too much about support from Republicans in Congress. What do you think was the purpose of these meetings? I know they're traditional, like the nominee goes to Capitol Hill, meets with the members of their party and whatever. But is it like coordinating message and strategy? Is it just Trump telling stories and everyone gets to fawn all over him and tell him how wonderful he is?

He wants to be there. He was in town anyway for this business roundtable event where he's meeting with CEOs. So you might as well swing by there, have Marjorie, Taylor Greene and others. throw some adulation your way. Get to kind of lord your dominance over people like Mitch McConnell and some other senators you hate.

It seems like a real win-win for him. I don't think there was... It didn't sound like there was a lot of message coordination going on there in any way, shape or form.

It does seem like from all the coverage. overall, he's playing really nice with Republicans, even the Republicans who he's fought with in the past. He met with Mitch McConnell and by all accounts, they had like a cordial meeting with Mitch McConnell. And he endorsed Larry Hogan for Senate after Larry Hogan told people to respect the verdict, and Trump's senior advisor, Chris Lisovita, like, tweeted at Larry Hogan that his campaign is over. But Trump today said he was endorsing Larry Hogan, which, by the way, was an endorsement that then Larry Hogan said he's not really accepting.

He's like, yeah, I'm not endorsing Donald Trump. I'm not voting for him. Sounds like he really wants to win this thing, huh? Yeah, they all do.

Sam Brown, Tim Sheehy. These are not great candidates, but they're not Dr. Oz and Hershel Walker either, right? They have lost enough time to look at the Senate level that they are being very ruthlessly strategic about who their candidates are. And Trump has, you know, I don't think these people are political geniuses, but he has people around him who are steering him towards being smarter about this, like endorsing Larry Hogan.

I'm sure Mitch McConnell asked him to do it. It's an easy yes. And he wants that Senate seat, right? And he's been convinced he has a chance. And it's also true that nothing focuses the mind like the chance of spending the rest of your life in prison.

He wants to keep his ass out of jail.

One is he becomes president of the United States and he's got to do a lot of, theoretically, do a lot of work. Or he just goes back to playing golf every day. 20 has to keep doing the hard job, or goes back to playing golf every day. Now it's get back in the White House or go to prison, right? It's not.

get back in the White House and go back to playing golf, right? And so, yeah, that's obviously going to focus your mind, right? The stakes are incredibly high for him in a way they've never really been before. He's really always had, in all of his businesses and all of his politics, all of his life, he's had a giant, probably gold-plated, safety net underneath him. And now he does not.

Are we just.

. It just is happening by coincidence that that's also the court whereby the president could pardon himself?

that's like only designed to make Donald Trump happy, but I don't know if it's the best politics for them beyond getting in with Trump or beyond making Trump happy and, you know, making Fox News viewers happy. Like, why do this?

In Congress, the Republicans in Congress, instead of doing anything to help you, are trying to overturn Trump's conviction. They tried to overturn the election form when he lost that, and now they're trying to overturn the conviction. This is what the Republicans in Congress are for. This is what they do.

So it feels like they missed a few edits, missed a few deletions in the transcript. What is this?

They're just looking for the audio so they can have another news cycle and run ads, right?

But with my political hack hat on, if were I in the White House, I would be screaming that we find a reason not to release this, because we know from the transcript that there are moments that are not awesome, right? And which is what happened to anyone under the age of you talk for five hours straight.

The right's all doing it. So just imagine what would happen if five or however many hours of audio of the president came out. What would be done with that? It's not just the Maga Super PACs and Trump would put in ads. Think of all of the TikTok videos that would be deceptively cut from this.

It would be a disaster, right? In an unfair way.

I know Merrick Garland's a straight shooter. I know he's no politics, Merrick Garland, but I don't think he's going to be like, ah, unfortunately, I do have to prosecute myself.

We got to have the tapes. If only they released the tapes, then we would see that the Biden crime family would be, you know, all the crimes would be uncovered and blah, blah, blah. It's fucking ridiculous.

The meetings were closed to the press, but the Biden campaign did jump on the opportunity to use the occasion to pick a fight on the economy. They dropped another new ad called No One, in English and Spanish. Let's listen. When I was a young man, my family left our hometown so dad could find a decent job. I know what it's like to struggle.

I know many American families are fighting every day to get by. That's why no one, especially a billionaire like Donald Trump, will stop me from fighting the lower cost for food and rent, because hardworking families deserve a chance to get ahead. Now. that's an economic message. There we go.

What do you think?

Bidenomics. Biden, boom. All of that.

We've talked about this poll many times. Blueprint, the Democratic research firm, looked at Trump's biggest vulnerabilities, like voters' biggest concerns with Trump, and Trump giving tax cuts to rich people like himself, raised high up there, particularly with working class and non-college educated voters. Very powerful. The voters were losing. It also understands that Democrats focus so much in our economic messaging discussion around policy, right?

What are we going to do? What are they going to do? And that's not really what this is about. All economic discussions in a campaign, and, frankly, all policy discussion in a campaign, ultimately are not about what's in the white paper. It's about whether you're giving voters a sense of if you're going to fight for them or not, right?

That is the core question in the election. And Trump is winning on that question right now, but he's winning by a lot smaller margin than he is on the broader question of who do you trust in the economy. And so this is a soft underbelly for Biden to go after. And being seen as someone who fights also goes right at other core concerns around age and energy and capacity, right? Because it shows these fighters, like, this is exactly what they should be doing.

I love it. I want to see more of it. It's gradually released today. I hope it is a theme that runs through their advertising around the economy for the rest of time.

It's not, it's not working with people. People are not feeling it. And so now they have really pivoted to talking about. people are struggling. I'm going to fight for you.

He is not. He is the billionaire. I am the guy from Scranton. I am going to fight hard. I've been, and that's where you can, by the way, for proof points in that argument, you can start talking about your accomplishments over the last four years within that context.

You know that I'm going to fight for you and I'm going to be on your side, because I've already done X, Y and Z. And if you give me another four years, I'm going to finish the job by doing these other things. Right. So, like that, I think and I think he can also. I would bet that in, and they've started to do this as well.

But I bet in the next couple of months he will also have, like corporate villains and not just Donald Trump. Right. That it's like these companies that are price gouging. Some of them were at the CEO, the business roundtable today, where, you know, Donald Trump was like, give me a, give me campaign donations and I'll cut your taxes. That's what he.

that's what he reportedly told all the CEOs is like lower taxes and lower regulations. But you just got to donate to my campaign. He already did that with the oil companies. He's that with the oil companies is like, give me, give me, cut me a big check and I'll make sure that you get a whole bunch of tax breaks and subsidies for the oil companies. So I think this is like a very powerful message.

And it's how I mean, I would imagine, again, that, as they're thinking about the debate, they're probably circling one moment where Biden can really drive home that Trump is going to fight for rich people and Biden is going to fight for everyone else. Yeah.

Right. That is just incredibly unpopular. It's incredibly powerful. It's what you're going to do. And I think you're right.

Let's pick some corporate villains, right? Like, I hate the term shrinkflation. Like, I don't think it's a one that should come out of the president's mouth.

They're just going to go to higher CEO pay, more money in the pockets of wealthy investors. Like, there's just like such a rich vein to tap here. And I suspect, I hope, very much hope and expect that's what they'll do in the debate too.

like, you know, the, the, the Chinese made cars, right? Like, you know, Biden's doing some stuff like that too. That is, every, every item that even has a part in it that's made somewhere else. He wants to slap a tax on that. And then he wants to get rid of the income tax.

So the income tax is paid mostly by really rich people. And so the rich people, rich people in this country now would have to pay no tax. 40% of people in this country pay no federal income tax because they don't make enough money to do it, or they pay negative because they get like a tax credit. So those people would suddenly have a huge tax bill because they'd be paying the higher prices for all of these goods that are now going to be taxed more under Donald Trump's all tariff policy. While rich people don't have to pay any fucking income tax at all.

We'll have more money and the extra price increases won't bother them at all. It's wild.

And he wants himself to pay less and he wants himself to stay out of jail. He wants him to, it's a lot. It's just, there's a good, there's a good message here, Dan. There's a good message. We just got to get, we just got to start repeating it and making sure it breaks through to all the people who aren't paying any attention right now.

Thursdays in June are Supreme Court opinion days. And while, as of this recording, we still haven't had a ruling on Trump's presidential immunity claim. We did get a long anticipated opinion in the case FDA versus Hippocratic Alliance. This is the case challenging the FDA's approval of Mifepristone, the main drug used in medication abortion. Good news is that the court unanimously held the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which is basically a consortium of anti-abortion.

medical professionals, did not have standing to bring the case in the first place, which is what legal experts expected to happen. So abortion medication will remain legal in the states where abortion is legal, but there will almost certainly be other legal challenges to abortion medication from some of these same groups, from other groups, from Republican attorneys general and red states. And they may have more standing than this group. And so we could, you know, the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits here. It just said that they didn't have standing to bring the case.

So there will almost certainly be other legal challenges. And if Trump wins, he'll still be able to try to take executive actions or change regulations that could restrict access to abortion medication nationwide, even in states where abortion is legal. So that's the Supreme Court decision. Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate on the same day blocked a bill that would protect access to IVF. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski were the only Republicans that voted with all the Democrats to protect IVF.

That was the same voting coalition that voted to protect contraception. All the rest of the Republicans, if we remember, voted to block a bill that would protect access to contraception. Now they have voted to block a bill that would protect access to IVF. This comes after the Southern Baptist Convention, which represents the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, voted to oppose IVF on Wednesday. So it certainly seems like conservatives, anti-abortion activists, they are not taking dobs as a win.

They want a national abortion ban. They want to ban abortion medication. And they're going after contraception and IVF. So I guess it's good that the court did what legal experts expected it to do in this case. But it seems like the fight is far from over, right?

They waited for dobs. They took a pass on a whole bunch of other poorly written state laws or with plaintiffs with questionable standing, and waited for a law where they make the decision. And they could have written in their opinions. They could have said something about the Comstock Act. that would have sent a warning sign to a future Trump administration that they can't use the Comstock Act to ban the nationwide distribution of these drugs.

But they did, right? They left it. We don't know what's going to happen here. There is no, like, we must remain vigilant. This issue remains a live issue.

And I think it's for Democrats. The point here is to make that it's going to require a President, Joe Biden, to protect access to these sorts of drugs, protect access to these sorts of reproductive freedoms.

There was also a poll, Gallup asked this question, and there are a record high percentage of voters who told Gallup that they are single issue abortion voters in this election. And three-fourths of those are pro-choice voters.

And it's one, these are ads that can be run later on, like, especially when I do this, but something Sarah said to me in Wednesday's pod that I think is just really worth honing in on, which is, when she gets a group of people together and she asks them what issues they care about, abortion doesn't come up. Doesn't matter. the group, could be two top Trump voters, could be disaffected. Biden voters, abortion rarely is brought up. But when you bring abortion up, people get very intense, very focused, very angry about Dobbs.

And so what the message to Democrats there is, is you have to keep bringing it up. You have to keep it front of mind, which is why this number is no longer true, but why, as of a few months ago, 90% of the ads the Biden campaign had run mentioned abortion. Right? Is it, and so everything you can do, right? Senate votes, press conferences, ads, talking about it, talking about the convention, bringing it up in the debate.

Like, that's really going to be a really important moment. It's one where Biden's going to have to be very comfortable doing it, doing it sort of proudly and aggressively. Just every opportunity to bring it up is critically important, because voters have to know, like, think about Arizona, right? Where you're going to have a initiative on the ballot. and you can either, if voting for Trump and voting to protect abortion rights, you're canceling your votes out in that state.

Right? If you really want to protect abortion rights, you've got to vote for Joe Biden.

So you can imagine they're going to be running ads. They're going to be out on the trail saying, yeah, of course we support contraception. Of course we support IVF. Of course we support exceptions for rape and incest and life and health of the mother. And we just want this issue to go to the states, and it's Democrats who are extreme.

How do you think that has been? Do you think that's been effective so far? Do you think, does it worry you, that message? Like how?

So we have to push back, have to be aggressive, call them out on it, force their hand. But they have yet to find any words, right, that undo the damage done by Dobbs. politically, right? 15-week ban, 12-week ban, leave it to the states. None of those have, as of yet, proven to be some sort of salve for the political wound that was Dobbs.

He is right now on his second Europe trip of the week. Dan, you would have never let this happen in the White House. Two trips to... Two foreign trips in the middle of a campaign? I mean, he.

obviously.

. The D-Day Normandy trip was a big trip. It was a... He used it for speech, defending democracies. That was important.

And I guess, wisely, they didn't want him to stay in Europe for the G7, because then he would have been in Europe this whole week or the whole last week too. I don't know what day it is. So he came back to the US. Now he's back in Italy for the G7. And then he's flying here to Los Angeles for this fundraiser with Obama on this weekend.

I mean, the poor.

I mean, I frankly thought he should have stayed in Europe and gone to see the Phillies play in London, which would have been a phenomenal OTR, because the Phillies and the Mets were playing in London over the weekend.

. Look, the Biden team picked this debate time. They picked June. They obviously knew they had these foreign trips on there. So I am incredibly confident that, expectations, management from both candidates, aside, that when they picked June, they had already blocked out what would be the times in which you would prep.

Now, having said all of that, and you know this better than anyone else, prepping an incumbent president for a debate is brutal. And it's not just that. the president has had everyone in the room stand up every time they've walked in for the last four years, which makes you less willing to be told to be pithier by some whippersnappers. But it's also you just have so much on your mind, right? It's just like you're dealing with so much stuff.

Like you would, in debate prep, the president would go from a meeting where intelligence reps would tell him about the most serious threats to the U.

S. homeland and then go into a meeting to practice one-liners with Mitt Romney. It's hard to be focused like that in a way that you don't have to worry about in a campaign in the same way.

And we tell all the stories about what it was like in 2012, prepping Obama. I went back. I mean, I had forgotten some of the stuff until I was like prepping for the episode, but there's some good stories and some stories that were tough to tell again. But yeah, no, I think. And then, on the Trump side of it, the Trump campaign told Axios they're planning zero prep, zero prep.

Here's the quote from Jason Miller. Trump does not, quote, need to be programmed by staff, and he will demonstrate, quote, elite stamina like he does at rallies. They're just not, they're not playing the expectations game. What are they doing?

For those of you who aren't audio only, it's a, it's a thick binder.

I would give Biden, just like, a couple moments that they want to get out in that debate. Like, make sure, you know, if it's, if it's January 6th, then who's for you on the economy and something else, whatever it may be. Just like, have those, have? like, get the style down. Here's how you should approach Trump.

Here's how you should handle when he lies. Here's how you should handle when he yells at you about this. And then, just like, sort of, let him go.

Well, that's our show for today. And, by the way, Democracy or Else, look at this book. Look at this beautiful hardcover book. Here's the deal. I saw that on Amazon, you know, who's ahead of us on the list?

I'm like the, the political humor list, Bill Maher. Come on, come on. We don't want Bill Maher ahead of us. That's ridiculous.

So you'll be helping actually save democracy. We don't just think you're going to save democracy by reading the book, though. That will help too. There's lots of great advice in here. It's from very smart people who aren't just us.

It's also really funny.

So we have quite a ways to go. Donate directly to the fund or pick up items from our new Pride or Else collection and let Cricut do it for you, with a portion of proceeds going directly to the fund. Learn more at Cricut.com slash Pride. All right, everyone, have a good weekend and we will see you next week.

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