Donald Trump: Bible Salesman

Yesterday, he and Vice President Harris were in North Carolina to talk about health care and point out that, if elected, Donald Trump would repeal the Affordable Care Act, kicking millions of people off their health care. And it seems like, just maybe, all that good work is starting to pay off. There have been a number of polls in the last couple of weeks that have shown Joe Biden with a slight lead. And then yesterday, the Bloomberg Morning Consult swing state poll showed Biden making gains everywhere and pulling into a virtual tie in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, three pretty important states. Now, a lot of the data nerds and party poopers are saying this might just be statistical noise.

Sarah, what do you think? Do you think Joe Biden has a little wind at his back right now?

People seeing a little bit more of Biden. They're also seeing a little bit more of Donald Trump, right? This is what happens now, when people have to enter the acceptance phase of their five stages of grief over the fact that these two are running again against each other. And once you hit acceptance, right, you start having to make real choices. And you realize that you can't sort of.

I listen to a lot of voters in the camp of, but Nikki Haley could still pull it out. Something could still happen. And once you hit the point of like, nope, guys, it is Trump again. I do think, and have always thought, that that would start to shift the dynamic, because, look, a lot of these voters aren't that pumped about Biden, but they're really not pumped about Donald Trump. And so I just.

that's what I think we're starting to see is a very slow. But ultimately, I do think my hope is obviously that this is the way it starts trending. And look, movement when the movement is consistent. And this is where I have not been willing to dismiss the polls that we've been seeing that show bad news for Joe Biden, because they are directionally consistent. And we're starting to see a directionally consistent shift.

So that's how I take it. Yeah, look,

. Democrats who are ideologically aligned with him, who are currently not supporting him in polls, either because they're saying they're not going to vote, they are open to third party candidates, or whatever reason, right, they're just not happy. And so those are the people you win back first. That's how you get this back to a very close race. The one other thing I think is important is prior to the State of the Union, I think it's hard for people be probably people like listen to this podcast, or listen to your podcast or read the things we write to just realize how absent politics is for most people's lives, and particularly Joe Biden.

Joe Biden has just been. people don't see him. They don't hear from him. He's just not really part of the conversation. to the extent politics is breaking through.

It's largely about Trump, right, Trump winning primaries or Trump getting indicted for things and surviving it or whatever else. And since the State of the Union, Joe Biden gave a speech for 30 million people to see, he's been in the battleground states. he's been making news, attacking Trump, going after him, and they're running a million dollars of ads in a lot of these states a week. And so that just that helps, right, there's not. there has been this, just like cyclone force winds of negative Biden conversation.

And now there's some pushback. And that's got to help somewhat with with some voters, right, who are favorably aligned to Biden. And so, like, you're not going to, one State of the Union is not going to win this thing. But it's good progress. It's been a while since we've seen progress.

So that that is great. How much of this do you think is related to the economy? Are you hearing anything in your focus groups that show people are that the dark clouds are starting to part? What do you think? Yeah, so, green shoots, I won't.

They say that about Kamala Harris, to this idea of they are invisible. I don't see them. That has been, I think, a big problem. And it is allowed sort of the dimension narrative to fester when people only see Joe Biden in Republican sort of montages of him looking old and feeble. And I think that is what the State of the Union really did.

It cleared that dementia bar, started and Joe Biden being out there. That really helps. So people are seeing him. And then there's the economy. So what people have said in the focus groups now for months is they really catastrophize about the economy.

The opening question in every focus group I do is just how do you think things are going in the country? And people tend to say pretty bad. And it's almost entirely related to the cost of food, the cost of gas, cost of rent and the cost of trying to purchase a home. But in the last handful of groups that we've done and we do at least one a week, sometimes two, you're hearing a lot more, especially from swing voters. And these tend to be these college educated suburban voters starting to say things like, I don't know, I feel like it's starting to get better.

And that is. that's like. that's where Biden should be. Not, the economy is amazing. Not, you guys don't feel the hit of inflation.

You guys don't feel the hit of higher prices. But, hey, we're turning things around. It is getting better. Let's continue that momentum. And so that's the main green shoots I've seen.

Yeah, I think.

every time there were good jobs numbers. It was just like a lot of Democrats, not just the president. He was actually better than most, but we're sort of missing where voters were. And I think there's been this alignment of better messaging from Democrats and Biden in particular, to sort of say, look where we started. Look how bad things were when I got here.

Look how much progress we've made. And the other guy is going to take us back. And then people being more open to that because they are feeling optimistic. Like the numbers are still terrible. Right.

I just saw a Navigator poll that came out today, I think, that showed, you know, two thirds of the country is still pessimistic. Right. And that's improvement. Like that's that, like that's how bad things have been. But just the idea that we're headed towards recession, the number of people saying that is going way down.

The people who say we're in recession is going way down. The number of people who say that we are losing jobs, which is obviously factually absurd, is coming down. So there is just, I think, a little more openness to this progress message, which is what is just much better than triumph. And I think that is. that has been good for them.

And I think it's starting to help a little bit. All of this is on the margins. Right. Like that's all we're talking about here. But people are, I sort of you know, you say, the five stages of grief when it comes to dealing with sort of coming to acceptance and making your decision in the election.

I sort of feel like there are these various. there are a lot of voters who do not want Donald Trump to be president. And there's, like, various obstacles that are preventing them from taking the action to stop Donald Trump from being president. And one of those is immense frustration, anger on the economy. And when that just that hurdle tumbles down a little bit, that helps, Joe Biden.

I think that's.

And part of that is and look, I'm not an economist, and so I'm not going to go deep on this. But there are some of the economic indicators, like unemployment, which should be it's just boom times for Biden on unemployment. But there are other things, like the high interest rates, which maybe don't get thought of as much when people, economists, are thinking about how the economy looks. But it is keeping people from leveling up their homes. It is impacting people's choices.

And so that genuinely has, you know, some real impacts. But there's also, like Donald Trump, when he had, when his, when the economy was doing anything good, he would run out and all of his surrogates would do the same thing. And they would be like, best economy for black people, best economy for women. Hey, buddy, how's your 401k doing? And they would just pump in the positive vibes.

And I do think that Democrats really worry about saying anything about the economy that might strike, as, you know, out of touch with where voters are. And so they do a lot of sort of hand wringing. But there is a way and I think you just you said it for Biden to really, you know, say, look, we're moving in the right direction. Let's talk about where we were. That allows him to be optimistic and start putting out those good vibes.

Look, we're going in the right direction. Look how we're moving. And you've got to send your surrogates out there with a positive message, because you can have an impact on vibes. Part of what I hear in the focus groups and people are like, I feel like it's getting better. Some of it's because voters are a lagging indicator in terms of how the economy affects their real lives.

And so they start to feel certain things themselves and start to say it feels better. But they also just hear economic news, like in the world, like, and Republicans were pumping the negative vibes about the economy so hard. And I think that Democrats countering that and Joe Biden starting to push that out and drive those narratives is really important, because you got to be on the vibes as well.

traumatic economic experience with the Great Recession. One day things are great. The next thing, their house is underwater, right? And millions of people have lost their jobs. And even if you had your job, and you had your house, you were still locked into that house for as far as you could see, you know, how you thought you were lucky enough to own a home, how you thought of your net worth had gone way down because housing prices had collapsed.

And you were afraid you're gonna lose your job, right. And so you hit just this very hard thing about trying, you know, it was very easy for Trump, at a time of incredibly low unemployment, zero interest rates and no inflation, to say those things. It's Biden's obviously not in that position right now. And Trump had as annoying as it is, this, you know, bullshit business person, patina, because of the celebrity apprentice that gave him some additional credibility. I think the right thing for Biden here is what he's saying is just like, we're making progress, right?

And the other guy is going to make it worse. And you know, he's gonna make it worse, because he wants to get more tax cuts to the rich, to pay for cuts to Social Security, right? And just like, leave it that way. But I think that is. there was just too much triumphalism.

And then we switched to too much numerism. And I think we've kind of gotten to the Goldilocks version of economic messaging now. And it's pretty good. Yeah, great. Okay.

On Monday, New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Marchand announced that Trump's hush money trial will begin on April 15.

. The former president seems to be taking it great. He spent much of the last two days ranting about how unfair it is comparing himself to Jesus and to pay his legal bills. He is now hawking Bibles in partnership with country star Lee Greenwood. Yes, that's actually happening.

Let's take a listen. All Americans need.

Religion is so important. It's so missing, but it's going to come back and it's going to come back strong, just like our country is going to come back strong.

They're soft GOP voters. They're Nikki Haley voters. Those are the people where they like listen to the news and it grinds their gears that this guy is such a fake and a phony. But in terms of like, his base or in terms of the majority, this is where Donald Trump, you talk about the celebrity thing. This was the big thing that I missed.

And until I started doing focus groups all the time, I didn't understand just how much the celebrity just, that's the Teflon part, because people expect him to sell stuff. They expect him to be fake on these things. They don't think for a second that he's religious, but they think that he is fighting for them if they're religious. They think he is injecting this into the conversation, putting religion back. I hear people unironically say that Donald Trump brought religion back all the time, his two-time Trump voters.

And that is, like you. look at it, we look at it and think, man, this is so shameless. Not only, first of all, guys, the Bibles are free most places. Like, if you want to get your hands on a Bible, you go to a church and they'll give you one. Like.

if you want the Book of Mormon, they'll just come to your house and give you one. Like. these are the kinds of books that people give away for free. But this one comes with, I don't know if you saw this, it comes with the Constitution and the Pledge of Allegiance, all sort of the Declaration of Independence. They're in there too.

And so, you know, instead of separation of church and state, you can now get sort of the church-state bundle for $59.

99 from Donald Trump. I mean, yeah, this is a very important point you're making,

He's selling his books, he's showing up in comics, he's everywhere. But the celebrity thing also helps him, and I remember just being so struck by this in an episode of the Focus Group podcast that you did a while back, on. like the religious voters, they don't think he's religious, but they think he fights for them. And then voters who are more socially liberal think that Donald Trump is also socially liberal, like them. I mean, I think I remember you saying that voters will, when talking about abortion and focus groups, about Trump, will laugh at the idea that he's actually anti-choice and will volunteer that he paid for abortions.

probably, right? Like that, he's getting it both ways here. Now I do, like. this is, his base is never going to leave him. And people, and I think the other thing that liberals, myself included, often miss with Trump is that a lot of his voters are in on the shtick, right?

They get it, right? They're not, they're not being, they're not, like, as you said, they're not running around thinking, oh, he's a true Bible believer, and then we're going to unmask him as not being a Bible believer and the evangelicals are going to back away from him, you know? That's just not how it is. But the way that I think we can use this to argue is that, it's like, I've come to think that just one of the best arguments about Trump is just he's in it for himself, right? He's not in it for you, right?

He wants to get out of, he's running for president, get out of his legal troubles to reward himself and his rich friends and make a bunch of money and seek vengeance on his enemies, right? And here's one example, is he's just selling sht to you all the time, right? And the fact that he's raising money to pay his legal bills is another example of that. But it's not that all people are going to be like, oh my god, he's just a cheesy salesperson who doesn't really believe in God, like. that's not the argument here.

But if we get to laugh about it, great. But let's get to, now, let's get to the more, the more serious part of this stuff, Sarah. Trump is obviously worried. Whenever he starts like rage-truthing all the time and playing victim, it's clear that he is, he's evincing some insecurity about his position. You talk to more voters, probably than anyone else in politics in recent years, and particularly that's exact voters that Donald Trump can't afford to lose.

How big a deal are these trials and a potential conviction in this specific trial for Trump?

And they would like him to run the economy in such a way that they get to be rich. And so I think he's genuinely freaked out because even if he makes this sale, which it seems like Jeff Yass and other Republican billionaires are lining up to try to help make happen, to get him out of these financial problems, I'm not sure he can sell, like his stock is up, you know, for this, the true social stuff, but I'm not sure that he can sell it in time to make his bond. So I do think he's worried about the financial stuff. I also think,

I think they're been banking on the fact that once he's the presumptive nominee,

that the judges are going to start to get really icked out by prosecuting and trying a guy who is running for president. It's never happened before. We've never been here before. And I do think they thought at some point, that's why the delay tactics are all about getting people to be like, we're getting so close to an election. He's now the Republican presumptive nominee.

You put gag orders on him. Any of this stuff now suddenly comes with a big tinge of, hey, you are keeping him from talking to voters. This is a threat to democracy. I'm not sure that the judges are blinking the way that they thought they would. in terms of, they seem to just be moving forward and they're trying to delay, and it's working to some degree, but also, like, it looks, like the New York thing, could, you know, is going to start on April 15th.

And so I do, and they're, these, look, I've always felt a couple of different ways about the Stormy Daniels trial. It is an election interference trial. It's about passing bad checks. It's about hush money. But also, you know, when everybody's talking about porn stars and you got two old dudes and Donald Trump gets to be talking about porn stars.

I do think that that sort of helps him with a certain amount of voters because it seems like such an unserious case, but he does have to be worried about these swing voters who, for whom convictions and by legal convictions make a difference. And look, there's a lot of, people have been polled on this and there's roughly 30% of Republicans who say that if Trump gets convicted of a crime, that makes them less likely to vote for him or they won't vote for him if he's convicted from a crime. Now that number is way too high because once the conservative media, right-wing media starts working on him, that number is going to go way down. But his baggage with swing voters has always been a huge problem. The indictments are a problem for him.

with these voters. I talk to them all the time. And so, you know, this is where, and there's analysis, I've been on TV with people and they've been, they're failing to make the turn between the analysis with base voters where the legal troubles help him endlessly. That is true. Rally around Trump effect, very, very real.

But everybody's saying, oh, well, if you convict him, you know, the Americans are going to elect him. That is not true. They're, especially the college educated suburban swing voters, they still have a lot of faith in the legal system. And if Donald Trump is convicted, it is going to hurt him. So I do think he is worried both about like just the sheer volume of the penalties that could be headed his way.

Now, look, he's not going to jail before the election. He's not, uh, there's, there's a bunch of these cases in which, like the docs case, that's not going to go before the election. Like there's the January 6th case. It's not going to go before.

Like I, these are complicated.

Uh, and then he is trying to raise money to pay the legal fees for the courtrooms. Uh, and for right now he can feel okay about that, because he's been running hot in the polls, but as things start to shift, uh, if they start to shift, which I, as we talked about earlier, I think they're starting to turn just a little bit. You will see him start to freak out more because he can't do the things. He doesn't have enough money right now to hold his big rallies because they're expensive to put on. Don't throw your phones in the ocean.

It's too late. The phones are gone. So there's.

What's.

And so I think some people might be a little bit tapped out, uh, certainly, with big donors, they know they're footing his legal bills. Uh, they just do. And so there's a lot of people who don't want to put his legal bills. Uh, that's like not how they want their money to be spent. Um, and so I think, and look, go get your phones out of the ocean.

Cause I'm going to say something that's going to make you feel good that I even hesitate to say, because I don't like to be overly optimistic, because I'm not a poll denier. I do think that people have been super tired. Um, like there's real fatigue among the voters. But when I saw that 20% of self-identified Republicans in Arizona still turned up to vote for Nikki Haley, uh, even though she wasn't on the ballot and Donald Trump was the nominee, people are sitting around being like, I'm not, I know who these guys are. I don't care about, I don't like Joe Biden.

He doesn't get, he doesn't get my mark when I'm doing approval ratings, but you give me, just tell me when the Tuesday is when I get to go vote against Donald Trump. Cause I want to go vote against Donald Trump. And so I think that there is, I think there remains, intense enthusiasm from people to keep Donald Trump out of office. Uh, and I think that the enthusiasm to put Donald Trump in office, uh, has been waning. Like, I just think people are, I don't think he's got the, look, he's got his hardcore people.

They're in there. They're good. He can win any primary he wants, but, like, can he get people to keep shipping in, uh, their tenders? I mean, you aren't on these Republican lists. I don't know if you get them, but I, because I have given to Republicans in the past, I cannot get off the Trump texts, and his texts are insane.

It's like, they're taking Trump tower from me. Uh, and they're just like, they're bananas. And at some point you run into a ceiling of how many people that that appeals to. And look, I could, what could also happen is that there's a lot of people who just go, I'm going to vote for Trump. I don't care about all the nonsense.

I just want the economy to be good. And I think he won't get us into wars. There are a lot of people like that, a lot of people like that. Uh, but I don't think they want to give Donald Trump money. I don't think people are as invested in him winning.

I think he's going to have an enthusiasm problem as time goes on. And I think that the Democrats, it's not that Joe Biden's going to have enthusiasm for him, but I think the enthusiasm to vote against Donald Trump is still there. I just don't think it's people can sustain it all the time the way they could last time.

You're right about, you know, the rich people who don't want to give their money. Like he's going to have enough money to run this race. I think that's an important, Biden will have more money and his money will be more valuable because Biden will certainly have, as Democrats often do, will have more money on the hard side of the campaign side, where your dollars can go further than all these super PAC dollars. But there is, there is something happening there that Donald Trump, while winning a race under 91 felony indictments or being, you know, ahead in the RCP polling, however you want to characterize it, is not able to raise even a good amount, a great, a good amount of money, let alone a great amount of money like that. I think that is notable and does speak to something, because it, what kept him, what kept him afloat before, was the five and $10 donations.

And that is a proxy for something, right? It really is. It's not the billionaire money that doesn't tell you a ton other than maybe how some billionaires feel about their tax rates or their level of political engagement. The small dollar stuff does say something and usually correlates to, you know, some measure of enthusiasm and success in the race. All right, a couple of quick things before we go to break.

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Moving on here, it's been three weeks since Nikki Haley dropped out of the primary, and the New York Times reports that Trump has yet to even call her or even court her supporters. And it should be said that though she's out of the race, she's managed to pull in a pretty big number of votes in the primaries, which could end up making a difference in the tight race between Trump and Biden. I know it's very on brand for a guy who thinks the biggest asshole always wins, but are you surprised that even Trump is being this stubborn about Nikki?

They feel like those people hate them, those people drag them down. And so they want to push, actively push them out as a show in order to pick up more Hispanic voters, Black voters, other, you know, the sort of, there's this weird, unholy alliance with kind of the barstool sports, bro, heterodox, you know, whatever. the, the Elons, the- Joe Rogan. Yeah, the Joe Rogan, that's exactly right. Okay.

So I think that this is on purpose. I think that, like the idea that, like Nikki Haley, was ever going to be his vice president, I don't think that was there. I do think they want to do something about suburban women. Like, I do think they might give that some thought at some point, but right now, I'm not surprised he hasn't called her. And if, I understand why she did this, but like, if she thinks he's going to come groveling to her, I think that is not going to happen.

And my hope is, is that Nikki Haley learned through the process of running that she didn't understand the Republican party or its voters and where they are now. And that now that she does, she opts, she understands that she doesn't have a future in the Republican party because people like her don't. And, just like Mike Pence, she opts not to endorse him.

But it, you know, for all the talk of how much, you know, smarter and more savvy and more professional. the Chris LaCivita, Susie Wiles version of the campaign, of this campaign is than the, you know, freaking dregs of the Fox news green room who ran the last two. It does seem insane, in a race that you lost by 50,000 votes over three states, to specifically say, you don't want those votes, as Trump has done in the past, and to not try to get them on board. It is, I mean, it is, it is so self-defeating. Is it on brand for Trump?

Yes. You know, is there a world in which they think there, I don't think there's a zero sum between trying to win over some people who voted for Trump in 2016 and didn't vote for him in 2020 and maybe voted for Nikki Haley in the primary, and also trying to activate some set of new voters through, you know, as you say, barstool, sort of toxic internet stuff or whatever, whatever it is, right? Like you can go find some other voters or, but you don't have to stick your thumb in the eye of someone who is getting, whose vote, you know, is getting 30% of the vote and 20% even after being out of the race. Like that seems like some voters who would try to get. So I think that's.

Yeah, but it's, yeah, that's fair. You know,

I'm sure you've run into a lot of them in your focus groups, or maybe not a lot of them, given how the primary went, but some of them, and can, can they really make a difference in the selection? Yeah, of.

They're the same ones, like God bless them for not having to follow everything. Um, and then there's, then there's the college educated suburban set, right? These are Romney voters. These are McCain voters. These joy, they liked George W.

Bush. They tend to be, um, you know, they're, they, they like low taxes and they're also kind of social moderates. Uh, and they follow the news sort of a generally, they're kind of like New York times, wall street journal, uh, regular news followers, and they've never liked Donald Trump. Uh, and I think that that 30%, so, and I read Nate Cone's piece today about Georgia. And I think that there's a difference in different states where you saw the mobilization of the anti-Trump coalition and where there was just kind of a vote.

Um, right. Like I think that, um, where Nikki Haley in New Hampshire and in South Carolina, where she had a chance to mobilize voters, uh, the self-ID'd Republican voters who voted for her were roughly 30%. It's very similar to the percentage of voters who do not think that the election was stolen, Republican voters who do not think the election was stolen and who say that they won't vote for Trump if he's convicted for a crime, with a crime. I have been kind of obsessed with this 30% number because I do think that that is the percentage of people who want to move on from Trump. And I think some percentage of those people are going to vote for Trump.

They're Republicans and they're going to go home and they read the wall street journal and they are persuaded by the argument that Democrats are worse. That is one subset of that 30%. Another subset already voted for Joe Biden. However, that doesn't mean that they weren't important. They voted for Joe Biden, not because they're Democrats.

They voted for Joe Biden because they hate Trump. And, as you noted earlier, holding onto that coalition is like step number one, because I've watched some of these people in the focus groups backslide, right? They've, who have voted for Biden because they hated Trump, but now they're like, Oh, the economy is so bad. I might just close my eyes, turn off the news and, you know, support Donald Trump. So that's another kind.

And then you've got the Nikki Haley voters that I call the double haters, the double doubters or the pox on both their housers, right? Again, right-leaning, independent, soft GOP voters. They're not Democrats. They're not Democrats. And that makes them want to support a Republican if you give them a good one, but they also will not vote for these extreme Republican candidates.

They won't vote for Blake Masters. They won't vote for Carrie Lake. They won't vote for Donald Trump. They won't vote for Hershel Walker. And I think that Joe Biden, that's why he runs the campaign.

That's why the next eight months matter so much because he has got to take people who right now are frustrated with him over the economy, over immigration, and he's got to make them hate Donald Trump more. It's going to be a nasty campaign because the pox on both their housers, the double haters, it's going to come down to, man, the phrase that I hear all the time in focus groups, if it was a drinking game, we'd be dead, which is lesser of two evils. It's just, that's what people say, right? That's how they think they're evaluating this. And I think Joe Biden can win on lesser of two evils.

head to head. You can talk to Liz Smith about the third party stuff, though, because I think that is, I think that's incredibly perilous. When people say that lesser of two evils and you give them some third place to put their vote, that becomes really difficult. But head to head, I think Biden can really win over those double haters. And that's who I think the rest of that.

And then the people who, the double haters, they heading into that election, they largely broke for Trump if they voted for either Trump or Clinton. And a bunch of them voted for, enough of them voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson that Donald Trump became president with like less than 47% of the vote. I think you made a really, really important point here, which is when this has been a, you know, I have been, very much like you, very bullish on these Haley voters, Haley's showing in these primaries as evidence of some real potential weakness for Trump as a general election candidate with swing voters. And the thing you get back all the time is these people are, you know, they voted for Biden, they voted for Biden, they're Biden voters. And that is interpreted by some people as these are democratic mischief makers who registered to, who voted in these open primaries.

And that's, there are some of that, I'm sure, I'm sure there's a handful of people who do that. But really what they are is they're swing voters, right? They voted for Trump in 2016,, Biden in 20, and Biden has to keep them. And Trump has to win them over, right? We often talk about this, how Biden has to keep all these voters.

Trump has to persuade some of these people to vote for him if he wants to win. And he is not trying to do that. And so these are, these are the voters who can decide the election. And Biden is making a pitch to them, right? When Nikki Haley dropped out, he made a pitch to their voters.

And I'm confident they're going to be advertising to them. They're going to be using some of the footage of Trump saying non-MAGA, you know, the rhinos are not welcome, only MAGA folks, all of that stuff to make these people feel uncomfortable with being in, being with Trump in the end. And I think this is, we could look back on his approach to this. And yeah, you're right, he has eight months to change, but we could look back and say, this was a fundamental strategic error born of Trump's absolute, stubborn assholery, right? This is like, this is who he is.

This is what he has done. And this is why he lost. All right. Speaking of persuading these voters, Republican voters against Trump, the group you started recently launched a $50 million ad campaign targeting, you guessed it, Republican voters. The campaign will highlight the voices of over a hundred people who voted for Trump once or twice before, but now refuse to do so again.

Let's listen to some.

I think what Donald Trump did on January 6th was dangerous for multiple reasons.

. Who are you targeting this time? Is it the, you know, the 6% or so of Republicans that voted for Biden in 2020?? Is it independents? Is it, you know, even some of these two-time Trump voters?

Yeah. So it is exactly the Nikki.

Okay. I'm going to build an anti-Trump coalition, because that is the largest coalition that you have access to. These right-leaning independents, these soft GOP voters, even these two-time Trump voters, or the people who voted for Biden holding their nose last time and, you know, have, you know, are struggling to stick with him. You got to keep those people and you got to go get a few more, because you're losing some other places, right? And, and so, you know, you're off, you need to offset some of your losses with black male voters and with Hispanic voters.

And so I think you can get them from, I think there's been, it's not a full political realignment, but there's been a political shift and that accelerating can occur. And this, I'm going to say something that actually might sound a little bit crazy to people, but white voters over 65, you think of those people and you think, man, that's the MAGA target. That's the people that Trump, that love Trump. Actually, a lot of those people are the people who became Republicans under Ronald Reagan. They're the ones who saw Trump as maybe an aberration the first time, but voted for him holding their nose, because they're like, I don't want a Democrat, who, after January 6th, were appalled.

Like, and I want to make it clear, we don't just have a hundred testimonials. We launched with a hundred testimonials. We now have almost 200 testimonials. And, you know, but in 2020, when we were doing this, we had a thousand by the time the campaign was over. And I hope we get there again this time.

We want to go after people who are really uncomfortable. Like, look, you can't talk about COVID to these people. You can't talk about Stormy Daniels. You can't talk about anything that they already voted for Trump for in 2020.. This is for people who saw what happened on January 6th, saw Trump's lies about the election.

And man, for a certain kind of swing voter, the way that Trump talks about himself all the time, his own grievances, the election being stolen, even if they think there was something weird about the election, they're like, shut up, man. Who cares? Just, like, move on. And those people who hate Donald Trump, right, we are trying to appeal to the anti-Trump coalition and peel those people away, even if some of them, who voted for him twice, stay home or don't vote at the top of the ticket, which a lot of Republicans did this in 2020.. They left the top blank and they voted for Republicans down ticket.

It's why the undercard of Republicans outperformed Trump in the 2020 election. And so our goal is to try to hold the people that we moved in 2020, who are Republicans, who were against Trump, and keep them more, and then peel away that other crowd of folks who say, I don't want a Republican party that's dominated by Donald Trump. And also, I thought what happened on January 6th was awful. Again, shift your analysis from what base voters are doing, which is saying January 6th was good. Let's all lionize the January 6th people who broke into the Capitol and now have a choir and are martyrs or whatever.

And think about your average voter in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, or Maricopa County in Arizona. They're 45 years old. They've got a couple of kids. They've always been kind of slight Republicans, but they're socially moderate. They don't want Trump again.

Or even your older Republicans who are like, what is happening to this party? Because it's not just Trump anymore. This is the other thing that's happened since 2020, is they've watched a whole coterie of mini Trumps. It used to be that there was a sense of, okay, Trump's an aberration, but the rest of the Republican Party is normal. Nobody thinks that anymore.

They were running on Republican fumes for a long time of normality. And those have been going away cycle by cycle.

It's just people looking in their camera, speaking just, honestly and forthrightly. And I think that's very powerful because it reflects how communication has changed in recent years. Political ads, as we commonly know them, with their voiceovers and their graphics, and all of that, were originally developed to be able to air on linear television, between an ad for laundry detergent and an ad for McDonald's. It was supposed to look like that format. And that's just not how a lot of people communicate anymore, especially with people cutting the cord and being able to fast forward through their commercials or anything else.

Especially, and this is why it was so powerful in 2020, is because we were all locked in our houses with the pandemic. That's how people were communicating, right, on FaceTime and Zoom and all of that. And so that's reason one. I love the format. Two, I think this is just so important, is that, in a world where there's so much distrust of institutions, of the media, of politicians, that hearing from people whose life experiences seem like yours is so much more influential, right?

You're a Trump voter who is wrestling internally with voting against them. And that is part of your identity, right? And, given how geographically polarized we've become, you may live in a community of primarily Trump voters, right? People you go to church with may be mostly Trump voters. The folks on your softball team may be mostly Trump voters.

And so to break with that requires a feeling of community somewhere else, right? And seeing someone who is having that same struggle and crossed the Rubicon to do it is very powerful. So I absolutely love this. I think it's really good. I think, and I said this when I was talking to Jonathan, but it's just, there's a version of this.

This is not your project. You have a different project. But for folks on the Democratic Party side, this is how you go get young voters, right? There's a version of this for Gen Z voters. There's a version of this for Black voters who are frustrated with Biden, or Latino voters, or whatever.

your group is, where you're just letting people hear from people whose life experiences are for them, who are trusted messengers for them. So this is just great stuff. Sarah, if people want to support this.

But, Dan, can I just say what I appreciate about you, because you're a political and an advertising nerd. You see me. You see this campaign for real, for what it is. And the thing that you just said, I think a lot about tribalism. Doing the focus groups, I just think about how we live as tribes and how important it is to us as a community.

And people underestimate this about Trump. Those rallies that he does, man, those are Red Solo Cup parties. They are about people getting together. They like each other. They have an in-group.

They have an out-group. There's an out-tribe that they don't like, that they can all make fun of. They have in-jokes. That's what Let's Go, Brandon, is all about, right? And so you need to make your own tribe.

And that identity is still important. And a lot of these voters, they still want to say that they're Republicans. They just want people to know they're not those kinds of Republicans, that they're against Trump, that he's anathema to their values. And the videos that are the most persuasive. And people are always like, why don't you, you know, we want them to highlight how much they like Joe Biden.

That's not these voters. Like. the reason these voters work authentically is because it shows Republicans who are struggling with their vote for Joe Biden. They say things like, I've never voted for a Democrat before, or I can't believe I have to vote for Joe Biden, but I will. And that resonates with the people that we are trying to get to, because they are never going to love Joe Biden, but they might hate Donald Trump enough to vote against him.

Joining us now to talk more about what the Biden campaign is doing to counter third party candidates like RFK Jr. and his new running mate is Democratic strategist and longtime friend of the pod, Liz Smith. Liz, welcome back to Pod Save America. Thanks for having me, Dan. It's great to be back.

All right. You are the perfect person to have as our guest today, because you have been advising the Democratic National Committee on their efforts to push back against third party candidates. And today, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his vice presidential pick, and it was not Aaron Rodgers.

It was not Jesse Ventura. It was not even Mike Rowe. So, Liz, I think perhaps the most important question I can ask you is, who the hell is Nicole Shanahan, and why did RFK Jr. announce her as his vice president today?

asked to be on his ticket said no. You know, people including Aaron Rodgers, disgraced self-help guru, Tony Robbins, Tulsi Gabbard. And two, she is very, very wealthy. And we know that Kennedy's campaign is broke and he needs money to hire staff to be able to get on the ballot in states across the country. And she has, you know, it looks like pretty unlimited wealth that she can give to the campaign.

She's already given four and a half million dollars to the super PACs helping him. So this might be the first case in history where someone was able to,

Well,

does not have a path to victory in this race. And he is therefore just playing the role of spoiler. And he was recruited into this race by people like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, who viewed him as a useful chaos agent. And now he is being funded by Donald Trump's largest donor. And why is that?

Because they believe that he can play a spoiler and help throw the election to Donald Trump in November. So we are trying to scream to the top of the rooftops so that everyone knows that, that he is being propped up by Donald Trump's.

Today I saw some polling that showed that a third of the people who said they're supporting Kennedy can't name anything about him, anything he stands for. So that, to us, signals that, you know, there's a big information vacuum. And for the people who are just supporting him because of his last name, it's really, really important for them to know that his family members, his siblings, his children, his cousins, his aunts, his uncles, that they aren't supporting him. And if the people who know him best aren't supporting him, that speaks to a lot of who he is, both as a person and a candidate.

And where does it overlap with some of the supporters, like Tim Mellon and other MAGA types?

Yes, a lot of those people are on the right, but there is not an insignificant subsection of people like that on the left, you know, sort of in the new age left. And then, when it comes to issues, oof, well, I would say, you know, the next big bucket in his campaign, the guy has never met a conspiracy theory that he doesn't love. He thinks that Wi-Fi gives you cancer, that chemicals in the water and in fish turn kids, gay and transgender. He's questioned whether Al-Qaeda is behind 9-11, and, you know, he's just spread a multitude of vaccine conspiracy theories. And the most harmful of them of all is at the height of the pandemic, he put out a documentary that was really targeted at the black community, meant to undermine trust in the efficacy and safety of vaccines.

And that shows why, you know, his policies and his language is actually dangerous, because that was at a time when there was already a lot of misinformation going around in the black community, and we saw, you know, low vaccination rates. Ultimately, those vaccination rates came up to parity with the white community, but his words and his actions do have consequences. And it's really important that people understand. it's not just him going out there saying wacky things, that there are real-life consequences for the dangerous conspiracy theories that he espouses. A couple things.

just on issues, I would say he's gone back and forth. on abortion, you know, he's said that he's open to supporting a ban after three months. And on gun control, he said that he does not support doing any more, you know, gun safety measures, and that mass shootings are the result of antidepressants, not semi-automatic weapons. So, you know, this is a guy who is generally pretty far outside the mainstream.

They say they've collected enough signatures to get on the ballot in a number of other states, but just yesterday, we learned that in Nevada, where they said they had enough signatures to get on the ballot, that they had missed, that you have to have a named vice president before you start collecting signatures. So we have a team that is devoted to keeping track of all this, to make sure that they're playing by the rules and that if they get on the ballot, it's in a way that's legal and ethical. But this is very much the biggest obstacle that his campaign faces. And the fact that he chose a donor with the ability to self-fund indicates that he understands that he's going to need to dump a lot of money into this if he's going to be able to make it onto the ballots in.

? So I think the earliest deadlines are in May, and that's with some of the swing states like North Carolina. Some of the deadlines stretch out till September, so this is going to be a long slog, and it's going to be something that we are keeping a close eye on. But obviously, we're going to keep a close eye on states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, you know, the states where...

kind of took a shot, an oblique shot, at what I imagine was at you guys at the DNC, saying that the parties are trying to keep him off the ballot. What's your response to the people who, like R.F.K. Jr., others who say that it's sort of anti-democratic to try to keep him off the ballot? Well, look, he's, like Trump,

F.

K. Jr., maybe they've seen some of his interviews on Instagram with wellness people, he's sort of, you know, maybe seen some of his YouTube stuff. What is your best advice, based on your polling and messaging, to someone who's trying to convince their cousin, friend, whoever else, not to support R.F.K. Jr.? What are the best talking points?

Yeah, so, if they are choosing.

F.

K. Jr. and Joe Biden, I think it's really important to make the point to them that he has no path to victory. He is playing the role of spoiler candidate in this race, and he is being backed by Donald Trump's largest donor with the purpose of siphoning votes away from Joe Biden to throw the election to Donald Trump. One, that's really important.

The second point I'd make is that the people know him best, you know, Kennedy family members are not supporting him. And generally, you know, these two points, I think, are the most salient, with Democrats who are leaning his way. And third, to raise the stakes of what happens if he can play the role of spoiler. Do you really want another four years of, you know, a con man, chaos agent like Donald Trump in the White House? It's really important to raise the stakes, point out he's a spoiler, has no path to 270, and that we really can't afford it, another four years of Donald Trump.

And if the person.

F.

K. Jr. and Trump, the talking point is obviously that R.F.K. Jr. is a visionary leader who's really tough on the border, is that right?

Right, exactly,

He's too conservative for America. That's right, he's just like six inches to the right of.

Obviously, because of what happened in 2016,, where the margin of some of the third-party candidates was larger than Trump's victory margin in some of the battleground states, it's obviously why you're doing it. But what are you guys working?

F.

K. Jr.? What's the plan here? It's to really keep an eye on all the third-party independent candidates running in 2024.. And after 2000,, when Ralph Nader helped throw the election to George W.

Bush, after 2016,, where candidates like Jill Stein helped throw the election to Donald Trump, I think it's really, really important that we do start to pay attention to candidates other than just the major party candidates. Because even though third-party and independent candidates might not be able to win, they might be able to throw the election to the Republicans, to Donald Trump. And frankly, I'm almost surprised that it has taken us this long to do it, but it is really, really important. And so we're going to be watching who gets on the ballot, where. We're going to make sure that we are communicating with voters who might be sympathetic, might be open to those voters, and laying out the choice ahead of them.

That ultimately, this election is a binary. It's between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and that a vote for Jill Stein, a vote for R.F.K. Jr. versus a vote for Joe Biden ends up being a vote for Donald Trump, and we cannot afford another four years of Donald Trump.

And I hope, just for my brother's sake, that he has a better season than the last season, but there's no doubt that it would have been very, very entertaining to watch him as a vice presidential candidate. But again, this speaks to the type of campaign that R.F.K. Jr. is running, right? That these were the people in line.

None of these people were serious candidates. It seems like all that he was attracted to was celebrity and their willingness to embrace conspiracy theories. And this is not someone who is a serious candidate for president.

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