--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, we're going to talk about Donald Trump's campaign against Kamala Harris. Jonathan Martin is a columnist for Politico. Jonathan, what was the world like before Biden dropped out?
--:-- Jonathan Martin: When I think of the summer of 24, never has Arthur Schlesinger's quote been so applicable. The future outwits all of our certainties. It's the beauty of politics for those of us who love politics, the uncertainty.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you had said at the start of the year that Joe Biden's campaign frustrated that they were not moving numbers against Donald Trump, come on. In part because the trial of Donald Trump's payoffs to a porn star were of no interest to the country.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: And that they scheduled a June debate to shake up the campaign. Joe Biden and this debate will make clear the contrast. And that that June debate would then be such a disaster for the incumbent president that he would pull an LBJ. I shall not see. But even later in the campaign cycle and decide not to run for re-election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. And that his VP would essentially be coronated overnight. On behalf of Americans like the people I grew up with.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: And be thrust into the campaign for 100 days, and we'd have effectively a snap election here in the states. I would have told you, like, I don't think the stuff that you're smoking is licensed in most states because that's pretty intense product.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so, yeah, it's been a remarkable summer. They've been turbulent. And look, I think now, given all that drama, we're kind of back to where we were at the outset of this campaign last year, which is effectively a toss-up race, and Democrats have a real chance to win.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: That's not where we were for most of the summer. Democrats were not only going to lose the White House election, they were going to take devastating hits down ballot. And I think what has happened here, at the very least, is Democrats have gotten to a point where the top of the ticket's not going to undermine the rest of the ticket.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Kamala Harris may or may not win, but Democrats are not going to suffer a devastating election this time on the rest of the ticket, which, frankly, I think a lot of numbers of Congress were thinking about in the first place this summer.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: You know, I think so much attention was thrust upon Kamala Harris and her campaign when this transition happened that the former president actually became something of an afterthought. But you were paying attention to how he reacted.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can you remind people who maybe forgot how exactly he initially responded?
--:-- Jonathan Martin: Well, it's September and he still is responding in the same way that he did initially, which is he's in disbelief that Democrats would dump Biden and that Biden would agree to be dumped.
--:-- [Audio clip of Donald Trump speaking]
--:-- Jonathan Martin: I spent $100 million on fighting him. We weren't fighting anyone else. We weren't fighting a vice president. We didn't even know who the hell she was. And then all of a sudden they say, Joe, you're losing badly. You got to get out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And part because Trump doesn't give a damn about his own party and would never voluntarily leave a ticket when his party tried to push him out.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: And I know that because we have evidence. It happened. Hi, I'm Senator Mike Lee. I'm speaking to you tonight from my home in Utah.
--:-- [Audio clip of Senator Mike Lee speaking]
--:-- Jonathan Martin: In the fall of 2016, the Republican Party leadership class turned on Trump after the Axis Hollywood tape came out and tried to get him off the ticket. I respectfully ask you, with all due respect, to step aside. Step down.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he said, pound sand. So we know how Trump would have responded to party pressure.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: It's very different. And I think Trump cannot comprehend that Biden did this. And he can't comprehend that this race has now changed and he's now facing Kamala Harris instead of Joe Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Joe will take my word for it. Just look at his comments every day. He keeps talking about it. And we're now in September. Quote, I hear there is a big movement to bring back crooked Joe.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn't want to leave. And they said we can do it the nice way or we can do it the hard way.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He seems to not be a huge fan of the sitting president, and the sitting president doesn't seem to be much of a fan of the former president.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: Yeah, I've noticed that, too. It really feels sometimes like Trump just really misses Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, I think it seems like it. I think it's a fact. I mean, he just says it himself. Remember when Biden used to love this guy.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: Look, I think the bargain was that Donald Trump was going to run against a soon-to-be 82-year-old incumbent, and the effective platform was four words. Joe Biden is old, right? Like, that was the campaign against Joe Biden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It wasn't more complicated than that. And like, Donald Trump says, I thought we had a deal. Like, America, you've gone back on the bargain here, and I don't have that same agreement.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: And I think he feels like cosmically wrong because of it. And if he does lose, that will effectively be, unless something changes, his case. This was wrong. I was cheated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He said a couple of weeks ago it was unconstitutional what Democrats did. I mean, of course it's not unconstitutional. There's nothing about the parties in the Constitution, let alone nominees parties.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: In any event, he feels cheated. So as a guy who feels cheated, who feels wronged, who feels like he was forced to dump a bunch of money on the wrong person, how exactly is he responding?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You said it hasn't changed much in the two months, but what exactly is the tactic if there is one?
--:-- Jonathan Martin: They're still grappling with how to run against Kamala Harris. I think they want to basically tie her to the administration and say it's four years more of the status quo, which is not a bad message at all.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Americans are pretty unhappy with inflation, with immigration, and obviously put the blame for that on the current administration.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: If Trump could drive that message, I think it's still pretty effective. He doesn't have the Joe Biden is old message any longer, but he can still run against the sitting president and the administration because Kamala Harris is Joe Biden's vice president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's just that Trump has not been disciplined enough to prosecute that case. Is any of the undisciplined stuff working?
--:-- Jonathan Martin: I mean, it works in the sense that Trump's base likes it, but Trump is a 47 percent candidate, right? He got 46 in 2016. He got just shy of 47 in 2020.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, that's the popular vote. No, we don't have a popular vote election. But the point is, is that he's a minority candidate nationally. He's got to grow his support, especially in the half dozen battleground states.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: Saying and doing things that his base likes aren't adding new voters to his column. This is a straight math question. Is he going to get voters in the political center who right now don't love him but obviously have concerns about Kamala Harris and Democrats?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's not doing anything to get them right now. What do you think his campaign would rather have him talking about out there?
--:-- Jonathan Martin: Oh, well, that's easy. They want him to run against Kamala Harris as a partner of Joe Biden in an administration that's presided over a spike of folks coming to the border without documentation and double-digit growth and inflation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Pin that on Kamala Harris and say she's four more years of the same. And do you want that or change? That's what they want to run on. He just isn't doing it.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: It seems clear that if he really wanted to win, all he really would need to do is stick to, you know, a few talking points. Immigration, inflation, you know, Kamala is Biden done.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that would be a resonant message for a lot of these voters that he needs to win. Do you think in the remaining two months he can do that? Do you think he's got it in him?
--:-- Jonathan Martin: The short answer is I don't know. Will, I think, have a better sentence next week at that debate if he can stay on message.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Look, the reason Kamala Harris's campaign wants the mics to be hot at that debate, which is a shift from what Biden wanted, is they want to expose Trump.
--:-- Jonathan Martin: The dirty secret is that Democrats want the election to be about Trump. They don't want to run on Kamala Harris's vision or Joe Biden's record.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They don't want to make this about Donald Trump. America, do you want him back in your living room for four more years?
--:-- Jonathan Martin: And if the election's about Trump, Democrats probably are going to win.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jonathan Martin is Politico's politics stud, Politico.com.
--:-- [Audio clip of David Weigel speaking]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Jonathan's buddy, David Weigel, is going to join us when we're back on Today Explained to talk about Trump leaning into the weird.
--:-- [Audio clip of Donald Trump speaking]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio?
--:-- David Weigel: Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model.
--:-- David Weigel: According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up. And within seconds, you will have your email and calendars synced.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You'll see all your relationships in a fully fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data.
--:-- David Weigel: And they say you can build AI-powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters, building your company.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile, Replicate, Modal and so much more. You can go to attio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year.
--:-- David Weigel: That's attio.com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On everything at Apple. Apply for Apple Card on your iPhone in minutes. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.
--:-- [Audio clip of David Weigel speaking]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for the show today comes from LifeKit, the podcast from NPR. What's in your life kit?
--:-- David Weigel: I'm asking. They didn't ask that. Every day you have to make choices that might shape the direction of your life, but you can't flip to the back of the book to find an answer key.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Instead you can listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR LifeKit offers real stories about common issues like relationships finances parenting and your career.
--:-- David Weigel: If you looking to move with more intention or just need thoughtful guidance on living better, Life Kit delivers strategies to help you make meaningful, sustainable change.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: From fitness routines to mental resilience, navigating personal goals to tackling burnout, each episode is full of relevant insights and clear takeaways about things we all could use a little help with.
--:-- David Weigel: LifeKit wants to help you approach your own life with confidence and clarity and walk away with a game plan you can implement right away.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Enough from me. Go listen to the show LifeKit. It's a podcast from NPR.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 2024 explained. Donald Trump's been doing lots of podcasts lately. He talked to the Russian computer scientist Lex Friedman about Kamala's resume.
--:-- David Weigel: But she never worked at McDonald's. It was just, you know, sort of a cool thing to say, hey, I worked at McDonald's, you know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He talked to the comedian Theo Vaughn about the podcaster's prior drug use.
--:-- David Weigel: So you're way up with cocaine more than anything else you can think of. Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie. You know what I'm saying?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it'll you'll be you'll be out on your own porch, you know.
--:-- David Weigel: If you're wondering why Trump's all of a sudden taking interest in influencers with mullets and pseudo intellectuals, I think I've figured it out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's the anti-establishment coalition strategy and anti-establishment. You can raise your eyebrow because this is this is the game that he's been playing for years.
--:-- David Weigel: He he's he was the anti-establishment candidate in 2015. Absolutely. He is now the leader of the Republican Party who the whole party is built around, says he's anti-establishment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But he has a meta narrative about his campaign, which is that last time, 2017 to 2021, I had too many old guard idiots around me.
--:-- David Weigel: And this time I'm on leash. It's going to be me versus the deep state. We will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there are plenty of them. If I can generalize the kind of voter, too, the sort of person who does not pay a lot of attention to politics is not in a super high tax bracket, not a ton of money, doesn't belong to a country club, doesn't trust the mainstream media, listens to podcasts on commute.
--:-- David Weigel: Yeah, what else, dude? We went to interview Donald Trump. That was crazy, bro.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In the new X, the new Elon X probably might be active.
--:-- David Weigel: Inflation was caused by oil. Yeah. But does not like the Republican Party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The kind of people, they boo Mitch McConnell, but they cheer Donald Trump. That's the sort of person he's reaching out to.
--:-- David Weigel: At Semaphore, I wrote that Donald Trump is going all in on the weird vote.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But he reminded us that this isn't necessarily a new strategy. Oh, no, again, this this is really from 2015.
--:-- David Weigel: The idea with with Trump was always that there are people who hated the mainstream Republican Party, the Bush era Republican Party, and wanted to blow it up and they could blow it up from the inside of the tent, not outside.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. All right. So I was encountering people throughout that campaign who I met because they were Ron Paul advocates or because they never voted Republican.
--:-- David Weigel: They thought the party was a bunch of losers. This is he's been doing this for nine years. But he's been ramping it up lately and he's had some help from people on the right, Obvi, but also people who used to call themselves Democrats, namely RFK, JR and Tulsi Gabbard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Kennedy is a mercurial character. I only interviewed him for any length at one point in the campaign.
--:-- David Weigel: And he's somebody who had, I think, a big structural theory of change, which is that there are ways in which American life has gotten worse under both parties.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We have the highest burden of chronic disease of any nation in the world. Why is that? Obesity has increased. Military budgets increased.
--:-- David Weigel: We've wasted $8 trillion on useless wars over 20 years. He was a Democrat who wanted his party to fix that stuff, and it didn't to his liking, so he ran for president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He ran a bad campaign for the Democrat nomination. Then he ran a bad independent campaign, and he found in Trump somebody who is willing to believe if you lose, it doesn't matter.
--:-- David Weigel: It's not your fault because of the campaign. It's the Democratic establishment stole it from you. And I mean this sincerely. Had he been allowed to enter the Democrat primary, he would have easily beaten Joe Biden, but they wouldn't let him in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there is a population of people, very online too, who are willing to believe that. Okay, but is this going to work? Because RFK cares about the environment. He's anti-vax. He's seemingly historically pro-abortion.
--:-- David Weigel: And Trump holds basically the opposite views. He doesn't care about the environment. He got rid of Roe v. Wade. And he vaccinated a ton of Americans, it turns out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So are there RFK supporters who are going to see him join up with the Trump campaign and actually vote for Trump? That's a very good question, because, again, we're talking about a fairly small group of people.
--:-- David Weigel: Now, in the conversations that you've that I've not had too many, I had a couple with people who had been with Kennedy in the first place.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're seeing some people who already like Trump, but have their issues with him come back on board. You're seeing a lot of people just bail out. You're seeing a lot of former Kennedy voters bail out because it's the argument Trump is making, and it's very easy to make fun of, but Kennedy was saying, I want to break up the two-party system.
--:-- David Weigel: Trump is saying, I basically can do that through the Republican Party. And there's a slogan that Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, Turning Point Action, mentioned on his show, which was, Donald Trump and RFK on stage together.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It is the unity party against the uniparty. Unity party being we are Republicans and frustrated independents and Democrats versus the uniparty of neocons and neoliberals.
--:-- David Weigel: That is the argument they're making. Kennedy would use the term neocons to describe lots of people who were not neocons. He was pretty loose with his language.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's the argument. President Trump has told me that he wants this to be his legacy. I'm choosing to believe that this time he will follow through.
--:-- David Weigel: So how many people is this? The polling suggests that the goal of this was to step on any benefit Harris got from the convention.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the way I read the polling over the last week is that it improved her favorables. It ended Trump's advantage on a lot of policy issues.
--:-- David Weigel: Right now, I've seen a number of polls that say she's tied with Trump on crime. She's tied with Trump on the economy. That's insane because that was not the case 20 days ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Harris supporters are now even more enthusiastic to vote for her than Trump supporters from 75 to 68.
--:-- David Weigel: But she leap far ahead of Trump. She ahead but not very far ahead. Some of that was Kennedy. Some of that was these anti voters saying Trump can pull this off.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there's a chance RFK is going to do something for Trump. What about Tulsi Gabbard, another fallen Democrat who's on the Trump train?
--:-- David Weigel: She's a special person. She's got great common sense, great spirit. She loves our country and She loves the people in this room.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi, please. Thank you, Mr. President. Aloha.
--:-- David Weigel: Gabbard is a more complicated story and she's written a memoir, but she didn't really explain the whole story in it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So she was in Hawaii, a ambitious Democrat with conservative views on particularly gender gay rights.
--:-- David Weigel: You go back 15 years, you can find Gabbard being very critical of gay marriage, which Hawaii was legalizing before other states.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Seat opens up 2012. She wins it. And she is very exciting to Democrats who don't know a lot about her because she is young.
--:-- David Weigel: She served in the National Guard, attractive, charismatic, and instantly Democrats give her a lot of power inside the party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She's a DNC vice chair right away in her early 30s. And she's just never taken very seriously by the ideological left of the of the party.
--:-- David Weigel: They always think there's something off about her. But she has a cohort of frustrated people who believe that she is a talented political figure who can get us past partisanship and save the country.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's where she converges with RFK Jr. Kennedy and Gabbard both appeal to people who say that nothing actually changes, that both parties are corrupt, both parties are pro-war, the military-industrial complex runs everything, the pharmaceutical industry runs everything.
--:-- David Weigel: And even if you introduce different facts or the Democrats answer that critique in some way, it's not enough. You want to blow up the system.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: President Trump is showing that he can bring people together who may not agree on every issue, but who value what is most important, which is protecting and defending our fundamental rights and freedoms that are enshrined in the Constitution and making it possible to live in a truly peaceful and prosperous society.
--:-- David Weigel: Is this the best strategy he can come up with or is there a better one out there?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, there was a moment during the RNC when after a week of hearing, you know, God saved our candidate.
--:-- David Weigel: Over the last few days, many people say it was a providential moment, probably was. It felt like Trump really had the whole country eaten out of his hand and he could have just gone up there and stayed on message and really transformed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And instead, he just did the greatest hits. He did Hannibal Lecter. He did crazy Nancy Pelosi. And he just leaned into his old self.
--:-- David Weigel: Like, has he ever been able to harness an actual strategy here? And is this it?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's all of a piece because, again, Trump has run three times for president. The media environment he was running in in 2015 was much more dominated by old legacy institutions.
--:-- David Weigel: To be credible, and it happened very quickly because he was good copy, good ratings. Trump needed to do interviews with the cable networks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He needed to do sit downs at the Washington Post and the New York Times, etc. He did a lot of take me seriously media coverage.
--:-- David Weigel: And over time, and he encouraged this. I mean, one goal of his administration, which I think was pretty successful, was when he was in trouble, and the media was investigating allegations against him, turning it back on the media.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And when something fell apart, saying that, well, the media has been out to get me, and you can't trust the mainstream media.
--:-- David Weigel: Lots of things are converging at a great time for him. People are canceling their cable packages, they're canceling their newspaper subscriptions, and he's also engendering this anger at the mainstream media, and there's a lot more money flowing into alternative conservative media.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Joe Rogan's show. In 2016, going on Joe Rogan's show is not a big deal. It is by 2020. And definitely is by 2024.
--:-- David Weigel: And so he's in a much friendlier media environment. And one that is very friendly to Kennedy, one that's very friendly to Gabbard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there is a thesis for all of this stuff, which is that the time of the mainstream media, legacy liberalism, that that is just you can blow it up.
--:-- David Weigel: The second Trump administration, like the theoretical administration will never happen, doesn't need to care what the media thinks. It can govern. It'll make the media angry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The fact that they're getting angry means that you're right. And who cares because they're collapsing anyway?
--:-- David Weigel: Will it work? I'm not sure. It's close to working. I mean, this is not a campaign that's down 10 points, a campaign that's down a couple points.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it worked pretty well in 2016 before this was built. And so it's compelling.
--:-- David Weigel: David Weigel, Read them at semaphore.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Miles Bryan, find him in Philadelphia. He produced the program today.
--:-- Amina Al-Sadi: Edited.
--:-- Laura Bullard: Checked facts.
--:-- Patrick Boyd: And Andrea Kristinsdottir mixed and mastered.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Rameswaram for him. This is Today Explained. We'll see you next time.
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--:-- David Weigel: And collaboration tools put feedback right where you need it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: See how you can turn your team into a content machine with Adobe Express, the quick and easy app to create on-brand content.
--:-- David Weigel: Learn more at adobe.com slash express slash business.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for the show comes from Mercury.
--:-- David Weigel: What if banking did more? Because to you, it's more than an invoice. It's your hard work becoming revenue.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's more than a wire. It's payroll for your team. It's more than a deposit. It's landing your fundraise.
--:-- David Weigel: The truth is, banking can do more. Mercury brings all the ways you use money into a single product that feels extraordinary to use.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Visit mercury.com to join over 200,000 entrepreneurs who use Mercury to do more for their business.
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