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Special Preview: Voters React to the News of the Mar-a-Lago Raid

August 16, 2022
Notes
Transcript

I just talked about Florida with the best Florida man in the national political press corps, Marc Caputo from NBC News. Here's a special preview of our discussion—exclusively for Bulwark+ members.

As you must know, the FBI raided Trump’s residence Mar-a-Lago last week, and I’ve done two focus groups since then. Marc and I talked about what the groups in Florida and Pennsylvania are thinking about the raid. You may not like what you hear.

Look for the full episode in your feed on Saturday morning.

Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode.

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:10

    Hey,
  • Speaker 2
    0:00:10

    guys. Guys. I’m gonna give you a special edition here of the Focus Group podcast. This is for members only. This is a part of my conversation.
  • Speaker 2
    0:00:20

    With NBC National Political Correspondent Mark Caputo of Florida. We talked about the recent FBI raid of Marillaga we have sound from two different groups, won a group that voted for Trump in twenty sixteen that did not vote for him again in twenty twenty from Pennsylvania, and then we have another group from Florida, which did not vote for Trump in twenty sixteen, but did vote for him in twenty twenty. And we asked both those groups about the FBI and Mark and I discussed it and so we’re gonna release this to you early and exclusively for board plus members. Please enjoy. I want to turn now Mark Caputo of NBC, to a big Florida story that has been unraveling over the past few days.
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:13

    The FBI rated I guess, we’re going with rated Mar a Lago on August tenth. I
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:18

    think it’s a raid.
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:19

    Okay. And we did this Florida group the very next day before the warrant was unsealed. We also did another group from Pennsylvania of Trump to not Trump voters. So they were Trump voters in twenty sixteen, but refused to vote for him in twenty twenty. And in both groups, since we’re both after this rate happened, so we asked about it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:42

    They were very skeptical of the FBI. They thought that the raid was only going to help Trump. You might be shocked, but I wasn’t. I suspect you weren’t too. Nope.
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:53

    That this Florida group did not think the raid was legitimate. Let’s listen. I
  • Speaker 3
    0:01:59

    mean, why haven’t the Clinton’s had an FBI rate? Are you kidding me? Like, really?
  • Speaker 4
    0:02:04

    Like, I don’t
  • Speaker 3
    0:02:05

    know if that doesn’t it doesn’t make any sense. Like, I think it’s completely politically driven. Absolutely.
  • Speaker 4
    0:02:11

    Tutter Biden smoking crack with prostitutes on video. Who’s not current president. I don’t wanna get in trouble. Hunter’s not the current president, but no. But he’s dead.
  • Speaker 5
    0:02:22

    I think he probably did take documents, but at the same time, still think it’s fully accurate.
  • Speaker 3
    0:02:27

    I’m at that point where I don’t know who to trust because everything is
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:31

    so deeply corrupt for so long. I was surprised there was no independent council.
  • Speaker 1
    0:02:37

    So
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:37

    that was the Florida group. Now let’s listen to the Pennsylvania group, which was people who voted for Trump in twenty sixteen, but then refused to vote for him in twenty twenty. And so not a huge MAGA group and yet they too were pretty skeptical of the FBI and seemed to think that this raid was actually gonna help Trump.
  • Speaker 6
    0:02:59

    If it’s simply because, oh, he may have taken some stuff from the White House, not like the National Presidential Records Act, and that’s all it is, then it’s gonna blow up in their face. It’ll basically prove that everything Trump’s bid stands right now that they’re going after me, they’re going after you, they’re gone after their enemies. You know, if it’s simply all about, you know, you took a few documents, it’ll just make everything that Trump said true. It would show that, you know, the Democrats are illegitimate and that they only care about going after their enemies and that they’re gonna use the FBI to go
  • Speaker 5
    0:03:26

    after their enemies. Trump actually has, you know, the warrant. So he knows what is about, but he’s not releasing it. So that’s just jumping, you know, because he sees everybody else rallying behind him. They
  • Speaker 4
    0:03:38

    just wanna find a reason to prevent him to run. I have a serious distrust in any authority. It’s just I don’t know. I know inherently, probably most of the boots on the ground, FBI people are outstanding. So it’s who took notes and, like, wanted to be FBI agents since they were kids, just like police
  • Speaker 7
    0:03:58

    officers. But I have a hard time believing it when it comes to something like this.
  • Speaker 5
    0:04:03

    There’s other ways. There’s subpoenas. There’s other ways to get it. I mean, a rate. If that’s what it’s about, it’s over the top.
  • Speaker 7
    0:04:10

    From what I understand, all of Obama’s boxes and all of his documents are sitting in an abandoned restaurant warehouse in Chicago.
  • Speaker 4
    0:04:18

    Why isn’t that being trade? Like, why aren’t they going to get all those presidential? Like, it’s supposed to go into the presidential library
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:27

    So let me ask you, what do you think this FBI rate of And there’s still a lot we don’t know. But this is everybody’s wondering, does this help Trump? And everyone’s calling me to be like, well, what are your focus groups saying? But this group in Florida they were really down on the FBI. I thought it was politically motivated.
  • Speaker 2
    0:04:45

    You know, a lot of what about is, let me hear the Hunter Biden stuff. Do you think that it’s gonna help Trump? Well,
  • Speaker 1
    0:04:51

    certainly, in the short term, it consolidates his standing in the Republican Party. I was gonna mention this in my discussion of DeSantis. And for me, it’s the coup de Gaulle on my previous analysis as to why he’s not gonna run against him, is that there is now a rallying around the chief effect. It’s just difficult to see any Republican challenging him at this point. I mean, maybe Pence will.
  • Speaker 1
    0:05:16

    So, yeah, I think in the short term, there’s that. Now, of course, things could change. Who knows? Maybe the documents could come out, the evidence could come out showing any number of really terrible crimes from the president. I’m not gonna speculate on what they are, but there’s a lot of ranked speculation out there on Twitter you know, if that turns out to be well founded and irrefutable, then yeah, sure.
  • Speaker 1
    0:05:37

    I see that hurting them. Long term, Donald Trump’s biggest problem in twenty twenty is that he is chaotic and exhausting. And Joe Biden’s biggest asset was that he was boring and normal. And so people in twenty twenty chose boring and normal over chaotic and exhausting. Now there has been certainly a hit to Biden’s favorability ratings because another thing he ran on is being competent and all of these very problems came up, you know, from Afghanistan to inflation.
  • Speaker 1
    0:06:08

    We can debate later who’s to blame for that or how he should have handled or messaged it. So he certainly took a hit. But, you know, it’s twenty twenty two. It’s basically two years after the presidential election. And we are still just completely consumed by Trump.
  • Speaker 1
    0:06:25

    And so I wonder about the degree to which that kind of here we go again exhaustion factor is gonna surround Trump in a general election going forward. Now we got two more years to go who knows. So I don’t see this being helpful to him in the long run. But there are just so many unknowns as to how this happens. Does he get charged If he gets charged, does he get convicted?
  • Speaker 1
    0:06:50

    It’s hard for me to see him get convicted just because of a paneling a jury But I don’t know all the evidence. Right? I mean, if there’s just clear and beyond the shadow of that evidence, then, yeah, all of that stuff changes. But just to put a kind of finer point on it. Short term big benefit to Trump.
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:06

    His poll numbers are up in the Republican party. His fundraising went gangbusters. Everyone’s talking about him. That’s what he likes. Long term, I don’t see how this really helps him.
  • Speaker 7
    0:07:16

    So
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:16

    I agree with this. I think this is the correct analysis based on what we know right now. Right. The idea that he’s gonna be successfully prosecuted, I think, is probably a little far fetched. But the idea that he’s established as a national security threat you know, pretty good.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:32

    But these voters, even the ones who maybe have been drifting away from them, it is causing a kind of rally around Trump effect. And that includes DeSantis. It includes elites in the party who I think would love to see Trump locked up. DeSantis says the under study, like, they don’t have any room to maneuver the way that they’d like in terms of their own national profiles as long as he’s the one crowding the stage. But they’re certainly gonna vociferously defend him because again, they’re not trying to challenge him, they’re trying to be his under study.
  • Speaker 2
    0:08:02

    And so it does have the short term benefit. What do you make though of the thinking, such as it is, about when he gets in the race. Like, do you think it makes
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:10

    him move earlier? It may. The problem here is trying to predict the mind of Trump in such a dynamic environment. Right? I think if he hopped in now, he would look a little too nervous.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:23

    Mhmm. And so he wouldn’t want to look weak. But it certainly encourages him to announce sooner than later. The question is does he do it before or after the midterms? I still think it’s likely or the not he announces after the midterms I think if, like, does does this affect the justice department’s calculations on when to charge if they plan to charge?
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:44

    Do they wanna charge a former president who is an announced candidate for president and is the likely nominee for his party. So I I also wondered at what degree Merrick Garland is looking at this. I mean, people will say, well, no, he’s not. He’s an institutionalist and the like. And because he’s an institutionist, the attorney general, I imagine he’s gonna be giving us a lot of thought.
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:07

    And as a result of him giving us a lot of thought, it gives Trump a little more time to decide when to announce. Howard Bauchner: Yeah, so
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:15

    my time store analysis on this is that I thought that Trump might jump in early because I assumed that they’re running focus groups themselves, lots of polling and that he was seeing the same thing that I was seeing. In a lot of the work that I was doing, which is that people are starting to look around for other people. They were worried Trump had too much baggage. Right. And, like, his reason for jumping in had more to do with less trying to avoid legal trouble and more to do with, like, no.
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:39

    No. No. No. Me. Me.
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:40

    Me. Everybody look at me. And this sort of gives him that opportunity for everybody to look at him. And for the party to rally around him without him having to get in. Yeah.
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:50

    And so I think I think
  • Speaker 1
    0:09:51

    I didn’t think of that. I think you’re a hundred percent
  • Speaker 2
    0:09:53

    right. Yeah. It does give him, like you said, sort of that more time. Time to maneuver. And obviously, the party is not eager to have him jump in prior to the midterms because they don’t wanna make it about him.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:01

    But this allows you to get all that benefit of the anger that people feel. And this is the number one takeaway. I think from all the focus group work I’ve done is the total collapse of faith in institutions. Right? Like, nobody trusts the FBI.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:14

    And that includes people who, like, didn’t really like Trump and, like, didn’t vote for him again in twenty twenty, but they don’t trust the FBI. They think things are politically motivated. That’s something that’s different, like, with Nixon or just different times where people were like, oh, well, if the FBI is gonna prosecute you, like, you must’ve done something really bad. And now it’s much more like who can trust the FBI? Like, it doesn’t matter to them that Ray the FBI director was appointed by Trump, like, none of that matters.
  • Speaker 2
    0:10:42

    Right?
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:43

    Right. You know, I’m fond these days of quoting William Butler yields his poem the second coming where the phrase things fall apart comes from. And he says the center cannot hold the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of a passionate intensity. I think that centrifugal force of our politics where things have eroded in the center. And spun out of control and are gyring around really speaks to the political moment that we’re in.
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:10

    I remember in twenty fourteen, I remember hearing Hillary Clinton give a speech in Miami about the disintegration of trust in institutions. And it was a really good speech actually. It was one of the more interesting political speeches I had heard, and it’s true in spades now. You know, the question is kind of a court watcher is You’re normally a search warrant in a federal investigation that’s done as a means to an end. The means being the search warrant at the end being a conviction or an indictment.
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:36

    The question here is, does that search warrant actually function as an end in and of itself, where the federal government was in this tussle, in this dispute with Donald Trump. And finally, it was like, we’re just going to go there at the point of a gun, and we’re going to take back these documents. We’ve got the documents now yeah, we’ve crossed that Rubicon, but we’re gonna call it a deck. I don’t know. I
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:00

    don’t know either, but I always like giving William Butler Yates, the last word. So Mark
  • Speaker 1
    0:12:05

    Caputo We’ll do Lita in the Swan next time. I think Mark
  • Speaker 2
    0:12:09

    Caputo, thank you for being such an interesting guest. We really appreciate you being here.
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