The Debate and the Surrender (The Secret Podcast PREVIEW)

Hey there. It’s JBL. On the show today, Sarah Longwell and I talked about the debate and the mug shot and the all All of the bad things from this week. Here’s the show. Okay.

Talk to

me about Scott a little bit. Because on the one hand, he should drop out, if we want to consolidate, on the other hand, his incentives are to keep running because he wants to be vice president, which mystifies me. But also because he only has one thunder that really matters, which is Larry Ellison. And so long as as Larry Ellison is gonna pour Oracle money into this, then, instead of on his yacht, then, Tim is good to go. Is that a problem that you can’t move him out?

It is a problem. I think It depends on what the dynamic if there’s any dynamic shift after this. I I suspect there’s gonna be some toward Nikki. And, you’re right though that he wants to hang in for the VP slot, and so I don’t know that he gets out. But he could bleed, like, he could go from so his stakes were high as we articulated on Wednesday’s show because I thought he was best poised to move into the second place spot, along with Vivic.

Like, it was sort of unclear which way that could go. And the reason is is actually from an evangelical standpoint. He is the evangelical that seems to be the most of intro to the folks in Iowa. And so you’re really at this point. It’s all a question of Iowa, not everywhere else.

Because, like, Chris Christie’s in second place in New Hampshire, and nobody thinks that means anything about the race. But if somebody beats him or, you know, it becomes a two person race in Iowa, that’s sort of the the big stand. I don’t think that happened for him, though. Right? I think that the opposite happened.

I don’t think anybody I don’t think any money is suddenly moving. I actually think Nikki’s fielding a lot of calls from donors who are getting into their fantasy about like, okay. Maybe this is how we get it.

People who are looking at Glenn Young in a week ago are now thinking

Maybe she can do it, actually.

Yeah.

And her big stand on Israel against Vivic, I guarantee if she is getting, she’s getting calls from a ton of people to foreign policy folks. Like, there’s just a lot of institutional donors who are gonna really, really be amped up by what she said. And putting that, like, Pipsqueak Vivehic in his place. They’re gonna love that. And they are the donors are just a different breed than the voters.

Like, the voters, I’ve been very surprised by how much they are not that into nominating a woman, whereas the donors will like it very much. And so anyway, I think she’s getting lots and lots of calls. And I think she’ll get money to stay in. I think that Pence’s money’s gotta dry up. At some point.

But I got, you know, this is one of the weird dynamics of this race, which is both in Scott’s case and in Pensus case too. Lakeisha’s been around a long time and there are donors who will fund him to be Mike Pence in this race. Right, to just have his voice even when people are booing him excessively because they think it’s valuable. Just the way Chris Christie has a pocket of donors for people who think his existence in this race is valuable. I was among those people.

I think if we continue to see what that was, that’s not useful. So at some point, unless resources just continue to flow to everybody and everybody can hang into a lot. But like, The donors are at least strategic enough to say, you gotta get out. There’s gotta be some consolidation. And it just wouldn’t surprise me if people started to think the consolidation should be around Nikki.

Yeah. I mean, the problem is that we’re quickly gonna be in a world where the top three candidates are trump DeSantis and Vivec.

Yeah. No. I think that’s right.

This is the world we live in. Here, I wanna I wanna bring something up to you because you you mentioned I talked to a little bit about this last night with, Mona and Bill. So Vivint got a lot of booze mixed with his cheers. Do you know who else got a lot of booze mixed with his cheers during primary debates in twenty sixteen. Donald Trump.

Yeah.

I don’t know if you remember this, Donald Trump got booed for making fun of Charlie Sykes face.

Oh, yeah.

He got booed in South Carolina for saying that George Shelby Bush lied about WMDs, and all of those positions are now dogma. Right. Republican politics. Right. They booed him a little bit at first, but the truth was he was where most of the of the actual voters were, not like the elite types who show up to to debates.

I think that’s what Vivate did well. Like, I I think the truth is the Republican party is clearly moving at the voter level. Not the institute, you know, like Kevin McCarthy doesn’t want to defund Ukraine. Mitch McConnell doesn’t want to, but Republican voters are basically there. And not all the way, but that’s, you know, they’re at, like, fifty fifty, and it’s moving in that direction.

And if you have Vivic and Trump and DeSantis, who are the three people they like best, all making noises about that, they’re gonna follow those guys. Right?

Yeah. So this is where I felt like the crowd was a bit of a like I don’t know if their term is false flag, but it was like a false indicator. Because I know from listening to these motors, Nikki was getting wild shears for her defensive Ukraine against Vivic, and I know that software voters are. I have been listening to the voters say the opposite for. And so I was a little bit like, you know, I think this might give people a little bit of also because they are much more where Vivec.

Not exactly where Vivec is. But they’re much more in the we need to take care of. I think this was DeSantis. Really, we’re, like, where DeSantis is, which is we need to focus on here at home.

Invading Mexico.

Big and our southern quarter. Yeah. I do love, like, are they going to invade Mexico? This was a seem like a pretty big policy proposal to drop.

Sure did. Got no questions about it. This is in the same way that Vivec says this is sucking Brettbear and Martha McCallum to the worst moderating performances I’ve ever seen. Viveke says, I’m going to cut the federal budget by seventy five percent. And they don’t ask a follow-up question of.

How? Sir, sir, seventy five percent of our budget goes to the combination of social security, Medicare, and defense. Which of those are you going to eliminate? That means you need to eliminate two of those in addition to everything else in order to get to your reduction. Sir, which of those do you think that might be a piece of information that Republican voters might wanna hear?

But they just, you know, sat there, not at a long oh, that crazy scamp up there.

My favorite part is when Brett Bear wasn’t, like, turned to the audience because the audience was rowdy. And was just like, we just need to get through this part. And I thought that was a good, like, metaphor for the entire Republican project at this point where everybody’s we just need to get we just need to get through this part.

But this part means a decade.

It is a decade. It is. But the weariness of a bear, especially because, it was funny though. Like, the whole thing was so stupid, but there were some surprises. Mainly that, like, Mike pence was the one who absolutely refused to follow the rules with the dinging, like, that says your answer is over.

Like, he kept going over time and being very aggressive. And I was like, This is because Mike Pence speaks at the the speed of a turtle walking. And so he could possibly fit his answers in within the ding. But he was like fighting, you know, they kept gonna be like mister vice president. Yeah, no, they were terrible moderators.

And the questions It’s so funny how it’s you can just see the room of people who are like, you know, we need to ask some substantive questions. Because we’re we’re substantive people. But, you know, we need some for the people that aren’t And that’s why we’re gonna start with the Northman of Richmond and end with UFOs. When Chris Christie was like, you’re gonna give me the UFO question. I was like, Christy, this is where you should yell at them.

Like Yeah. But he doesn’t because people think that stuff is like cute. But it’s So dumb. It was all it was also beneath. And anyway, I just I have I have so many thoughts about this debate.

I have Let me just run like

Give me all of them.

Well, so so some of it is Don’t hold back. Is that half of them were debating a thing that is it was like two thousand eight and Nikki Haley is talking about our debt. You know, I I will say though, I I was revisiting some of Nikki’s answers, and a bunch of them were good. Like, good to me to me.

Yeah. Which means bad for her, respectively, and the denominator

is not bad. Maybe maybe with, like, she I

don’t know if you saw the Mona on Slack It was so funny. She’s like, I just assumed that any answers that I think are good mean that the candidate is losing. Yes.

No. It’s a good thing to check our own instincts. But but her her answer on the debt, which was to say that both Republicans and Democrats were responsible. True.

True.

And I can sort of see their strategy session of we need to find a place to hit Republicans. Like, everybody understands now that hitting institutional Republicans are good. And so they picked that. I don’t think they quite have the code down. But it was it was absolutely correct.

Her Ukraine answers, but she also said about Donald Trump. What did she say? Oh, she said he’d lose. She was very clear that, if like The

most unpopular politician in America.

That he’s the most unpopular politician in America. Yeah. She did. And so, Anyway, I I just I but but so she so I thought she was good at the same time to when because Trump wasn’t there, Vibank is being a chaos agent. It was like a big, like, Christie and Pence and, and Haley and Scott, they’re all these before time politicians.

And so it’s like a debate from two thousand eight where they’re talking about the national debt And they’re talking about foreign policy in a way that would appeal to voters in two thousand eight, and they absolutely don’t anymore. And so it was like they were taking place in two different eras, right, where then you’ve got Vivic and DeSantis giving, like, totally different, like, living in a totally different planet. And the problem is is that it was like, one of the paparas said something like this that I thought was was the right formulation, which is like it’s like they’re in black and white. And, he was talking about Trump, but, like

That was Tim who said that. He’s gonna be so hurt when you try that one of the pod bros from

Okay. Sorry. But, like, Vibank was, like, in full color. Right? There’s just like this that he’s jumping off the stage and you’re mad at him, but you’re focused on him.

And the Republic people don’t understand how much the Republican primary is now an attention economy. Right? It’s an entertainment economy, and it’s not about the substantive answers. So we can sit there and be like, boy, Nikki Haley gave some really good substantive answers. And I think that helps her with a certain class.

But like, That’s not the point for the most part of the Republican primary. And that’s where Vivic, and that’s where Tim Scott, Tim Scott was just When you’re barely there, like, he just was losing the attention economy, or he’s losing that attention race, and he lost it like, maybe more than even Doug Bergam, who was just happy to be there. Right? Okay. These are all my, but what are your thoughts?

They they basically yours. Good night for Trump. I think. Even if he hadn’t counter programmed it, he was right not to be there. There’s no reason for him to be there.

And what I said yesterday, I I’ve thought about this a lot. The fact that they did not know how to handle Vivay, And by handle Vivec, I mean beat Vivec within the terms of a Republican debate with Republican voters. Right? They nobody on stage knew how to do that, means to me and signals to me that there’s absolutely no way that any of them could have handled Trump had he been there. Because Trump just does the Vivic thing.

Like, you just, you know, this is easy. You people are stupid. These people are corrupt. I’m just gonna shout and talk over people, and they, you know, they’re engaging with Vivic in, again, as if it’s a normal debate. As if they’re in a democratic debate with democratic voters listening to them.

And that’s not what the voters they have chosen to ask for support, value. Right? I mean, this is you know, she’s she Nikki Haley was defending the Biden Administration’s handling of Ukraine. Ron DeSantis. She didn’t frame it that way, but that’s that’s what she was doing.

And those those Republican voters are not interested in that.

The base voters who make up the majority of the party that are basically in every poll, going for Trump. Oh my god. Did you see think you did because I think it was in the Slack. Hugh Hewitt being like, Trump relatively weak in Pennsylvania. There was like a new Pennsylvania poll in the primary.

It was like relatively weak. And I was like, he’s up by eighteen, bro.

Well, look, in huge defense, in Louisiana, Trump is up by sixty five. So relative to Louisiana, Trump is relatively weak in Pennsylvania. This is the again, it’s I’m sorry. Don’t Trump is gonna be the nominee. And this is very bad for all of us.

It’s very, very bad for all of us. And Joe Biden and Democrats and independents and Republicans are gonna asked to play perfect baseball and hope that the price of eggs doesn’t go up by a dime, and then that the turnout is good, And then that also, a couple of secretaries of state in Purple States do the right thing in order to save democracy again. And you know what? You know what? Why?

I’m sorry. But on November eighth twenty twenty four. If Joe Biden has just been declared the winner, Do you know who the front runner for the twenty twenty eight Republican nomination is gonna be? Because I do. Donald Trump.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is I don’t know. Like, this is very bad. This is why, you know, I wrote about this yesterday.

What depressed me the most? Wasn’t the bad things to the Republican debate. It was that the there were some good things. This is not the case where, like, you know, voters just don’t have any options Like, there were there were at least four. And if you wanna be charitable, maybe five.

People on stage were all solid plausible candidates for president, whose politics might not be my politics or your politics, but are certainly at a at a policy level arrayed very with good overlap with Republican voters, and those candidates are actively disliked by Republican voters. That’s depressing a shit. Yeah. I just

And and you know what? They they provide the illusion that the Republican party that a normal Republican party still resides in there somewhere. Right? You’re like, because because people will It’s it’s just there’s no way to get around it. Right?

Like, I can’t help but talk about Nikki Haley, as because I’m like, oh, well, look, like, but Even if she gets even if every other semi normie in the race dropped out and she would consolidate all of it. Might break twenty. Probably not. Probably lives in the teens.

No.

And so like Trump then this is where I I mean, I’ve been saying this for a long time, but it it’s Trump controls the base of the party, and the base of the party is really large. Right? It’s big enough in just about every state to win the primary. And so as a result, the nominees we are going to get on the Republican side, you can you and that’s why that’s where it’s all an illusion is like yes, do do these normie Republicans still exist. Do they have that judgment and do they often do they go along with the crazy they do?

But like they exist and that’s why at the essence of everything that we do politically for the rest of our time. It is to move small margins of those people over into the only pro democracy party that exists. Yeah. Like there’s only the only option is to deliver sustained electoral defeats to this very dangerous and sane version of the Republican Party and to do that, you have to continue to persuade people who have sort of this Reagan hangover who are tribally Republican that the Republican party that they joined does not exist anymore. And the problem is is that that’s gonna have to chip away slowly cycle after cycle as these voters go, why Why are the candidates that I like, losing?

Why? Right? Because it does because there are people in the primary field, they feel like they can attach to. It gives them the illusion that that party still exists when it doesn’t.

Well, I got good news for you. Soon, we’re gonna two parties who are nominally pro democracy, and the other will be no labels. And so we’ll have Kirsten cinema out there, providing a nice home for these people so that these people don’t have to give Joe Biden their votes. And, you know, they’ll help get Trump over the finish line in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in Arizona. It’ll be great.

Maybe even Georgia too.

You wanna talk about Trump’s, surrender yesterday?

Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about that. I, I took it as this is we make fun of him for treating everything as a performance. But on the other hand, there are tremendous advantages to doing so And unlike, you know, you put him look at his mug shot. Look at Charlie’s newsletter this morning, and you have all the mug shots together.

And, you know, like, mopes like John Eastman look like they’ve just come out of an insane asylum. They have this you know, professor Humberdink expression on the face. And trump who clearly had spent a lot of time workshopping this and I’m sure they had test photos done. I am sure that his people knew exactly what the lighting setup was going to be for there. And he had his hair done differently than normal.

He had his the exact tilt so that he got one half of the face in shadow. He had the And you know what? Like, he gets an iconic I hate him so much. He gets an iconic photo of this, which he is gonna own And he’s his people will own and love, and there’s no shame to it, and it’s defiant. And I just Oh, it makes me so angry.

A forty car motorcade or an eighty car motorcade?

What was that? Yeah. Tim Tim those Tim was like, you know, I Brock Obama went out to to shoot some something. And, like, it was like two Chevy suburbans. Why why does this guy have like he’s the fucking, you know, head of some petro state.

It’s really what are your thoughts? Do you have

Well, I so I couldn’t tear me up.

Please cheer me up.

Well, that was especially bad because that looks like the state paid for it. Like, that was like a Georgia provided unless he paid, not how would he do that? I mean, it just that’s like your tax dollars. I mean, like, let’s presumably that show of force is necessary if you think somebody might assassinate him while you’re doing it. But even then, you could probably do it with five cars.

Like, I don’t know. The eighty car motorcade seemed a lot like overkill. And also, In this weird way, I so I don’t know anything. I just want to be clear. I have no idea why he got that.

But, like, Partview was like, ugh, is this the, like, police showing up for him? Like, wanting to do a show of worse on his behalf?

Mister trump with tears in our eyes.

Yeah. Because this is it’s an underappreciated sort of element that I I don’t I don’t think this, as I don’t spend a lot of time fearing this, but I do sometimes worry about the level of trump’s support among rank and file sort of military folks f like this is why the FBI like the the FBI coming after him is so stupid. Like, plaintiff filed an FBI even sort of like kinda on Trump’s side. Like, anybody anybody will tell you that there’s a lot of love for Trump within the rank and file of our police, our sheriffs, our, military And so, that was like my first thought when I saw it is like, are they doing this because they like him?

I don’t know. The whole the whole thing was again disputing. And that’s even leaving aside the we’ve all absorbed the reality that, like, You know, he was just arraigned for a fourth time. He’s running for president. He’s he’s going to be the presidential nominee with four criminal cases hanging over his head.

At least one of which, everybody understands as a slam dunk. Right. I mean, the the document’s case is there is no defense on the document case. There’s no there’s no There’s

a political effect.

Ambiguity. There’s I mean, I guess, but he’s just fucking guilty. Like, everybody like, he’s just guilty. You know? I Can I

just try to go back to the debate for one second? One of the things that, When they asked this question about Trump, and everybody said that they would support him, but there was also this defense of him And one of the things that actually happened throughout the debate is how much visate got the lines off first So he went to the mat for Trump on this, two tiered justice system, weaponization, fire fire fire in these purple, Ron DeSantis had his canned response and it came a few minutes later and was basically just what Vivek said, and he delivered it with, you know, his, like, shouty little way but I was like, Mhmm, Vivik just said that, you know, like, you he was getting he was his best sort of canned I’m gonna go defend Trump. We’re we’re all upstaged, and I’m like, he seemed like an also ran when he got them out. Hey, did I see you say in Slack? I wanted to ask you about this, that the memo from his campaign was clearly a head fake?

Yeah. I had said that on, I think the show the week before. I

What do you mean?

I mean that it was not real. It was not genuine, and it was intended to lower expectations. And to, to make the other campaigns think that he was gonna go in a different direction. I I don’t I just don’t Like

the right never belonged. No direction.

No. Well, no. He went aggressive and assertive and forward looking, right, on immigration and economic issues. He laid off the culture war stuff. He didn’t attack Vivic.

He defended Trump, but only sort of, like, he didn’t really defend Trump until he got pushed into it. He tried to be forward looking, Like, I I mean, I think his strategy at the debate was basically okay. The problem is the execution because he’s bad at this.

I also wanna comment on this forward looking thing because he does when it comes to Trump. What are we gonna do? Are we gonna litigate? Twenty twenty, twenty twenty one all over again. That was two different democrats.

I would have fired Anthony Fauci.

And also also let’s litigate twenty twenty twenty and twenty twenty one on my record. So like his whole I’m forward looking thing then ends up stepping on his pitch for himself, which is all backward looking. Or his main critique of Trump. Oh god, Anthony, you’re fired. The I just

Anthony, you’re fired. With the

bobble head. His his bobble head is, crazy. He,

I, you know, the the more I have thought about Ron DeSantis. In the moment, I to myself. Yeah. Ron DeSantis did okay. Like, again, no, didn’t hurt to help himself, didn’t really hurt himself.

I don’t think that bork’s for him. He needed more. The more I thought about it, the more I I actually don’t think he did very well. Well, he didn’t blow up on the launch pad, but He wasn’t great, Bob.

It wasn’t great. It was not what he needed to you know, propel himself forward. Like, even if he did no harm, like the people who were already there for DeSantis might stay there for DeSantis, but also, you know, they might get a little wooed by the ache. I’m not sure. I can’t tell whether he’s just gonna stay the same.

Or go down and get chewed into my Vivic, but either way, I don’t think he goes up.

Have you have you done any more focus groups since you and I talked last time?

Yeah. So they did one yesterday. They did one yesterday, that I have not watched yet. That I’m actually frantically trying to find. So in the group must have been a weird group because I just got the you know, one person thought, that Mitch McConnell’s a rhino.

That comes up in a lot of focus groups. I’m just looking at the the chatter.

Yes. Mitch McConnell, rhino. Totally. So it’s That that scans.

So I was asking who do they think did well? And fewer on the Swamy, few DeSantis, Tim Scott got negative reviews for not saying or doing much during the debate. Haley got a free shout out in the very beginning. One person ASA because he stayed out of the fray and just answered the questions. So here’s oh, so here’s the head to heads.

Or like how many people who you’d vote for today in the primary. Trump four DeSantis two is a one with a two. So, which, you know, in the focus groups, which you cannot treat like, polling.

Right.

But so the AceA one means that, like, there was a, as there sometimes is, not often, but not half the time there’s, like, a very outspoken normie in the group who either likes Christie Pence. Haley. Like, you show the one person will like one of them. Right. Crump usually gets half or more of the group, sometimes sometimes clean sweeps.

But in this one, both desantis have been vacant too. And, like, I guess What’s

your screen on this? Was this Biden to Trump or two time trump?

This is two time trump.

Okay.

Two time trump.

It’s our time to trump.

I mean Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Okay.

So I have to go watch it to get, I will have to go watch it. But We just wanted a quick gut check, and it sounds it’s just like it’s nothing earth shattering, like, it’s exactly what you’d think, except I mean, I think it is notable, and this has been happening now a little bit as there are these groups where Vivec is starting to just be on par with DeSantis in both people’s impressions of him and, like, they’re they’re Vivic curious. You know, they talk about Vivic the way they were talking about DeSantis, like, ten months ago. So

Is is Ron DeSantis gonna go after him? Because it seems like he sure has to.

Well, that’s why I was asking you about the memo, because the memo was very clear that attacking Ramaswamy was the play. And DeSantis He’s not at all. No. He waited he waited to get a question. He delivered his answer.

And then otherwise, didn’t engage.

Yeah. He

didn’t do any of the I was mentioned in that answer because he wasn’t mentioned. Right? And like he didn’t fight for time. This is where the whole, I’m not sure. That anyone in the history of the world has ever been more high on their own supply than DeSantis was when he did that god made a fighter and watching that guy swivel on his neck to see if other people were raising their hands before he did.

Was the most pathetic display. And the thing is is like that happened fast, so I’m not sure. Not sure if his voters clocked that, but it’s just like his Ukraine answer. It’s just like his Trump answers, they are weak and cowardly.

Hey, again. It’s JBL. The conversation goes on from there. If you wanna hear the rest of the show, head on over to Board plus and subscribe. We’d love to have you.