--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a big week for Joe Biden. The U.N. Security Council just passed a resolution for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza that will test the United States' relationship with Israel. 14 votes in favor, zero vote against, one abstention. The draft resolution has been adopted. It's a big week for Donald Trump. A New York judge just saved him from having to pull a half a billion dollars out of his MAGA hat. This appeals court allowing the former president to post a smaller bond of $175 million within 10 days. And it's a big week for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Alright, I guess. He's announcing his running mate. Maybe it'll be someone famous. Maybe it'll be someone infamous. Maybe it'll be a random billionaire. The question is whether it can have a big enough impact on the races the other two guys are running.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Adio. Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management platform that Adio says is built for the next era of companies. A powerful data structure adapts to your business model, syncs in all your contacts in minutes, and enriches your business with actionable data. Adio says it also allows you to create those email sequences, those real-time reports, those powerful automations, which they claim can help you build what matters most, your company. You can go to adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year. That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying. But are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm David Weigel. I'm a political reporter at Semaphore. The last time we checked in on Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. on Today Explained, he had just declared he was running as an independent, no longer a Democrat. How has his campaign been doing since the start of the year?
--:-- David Weigel: His campaign has been steadily polling between the high single digits and the low double digits in swing states, sometimes better in national polling. A recent Reuters-Ipsos poll put his support among registered voters at 15 percent versus 39 percent for Biden and 38 percent for Trump. This is a function of many things. People disagree on them, including Kennedy. How much of it is that the Kennedy name is famous? How much of it is that he personally is seen as an independent set apart from the parties? It's debatable, but it has not been moving.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And of course, who might serve on his ticket is going to make big news this week. It's the reason we're talking to you right now. Tell us who RFK Jr. is considering, will you?
--:-- David Weigel: So there is not an official Kennedy shortlist. There's not ever really an official shortlist when somebody's choosing a vice president. The names we have heard the most about are Aaron Rodgers, the Jets quarterback who was benched the last season. Getting vaccinated was not on the top of my list. Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota. I don't think so. But the more recent name that he has focused on is Nicole Shanahan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, not sure who that is, but I've heard of the other two. Let's go through them, starting with the guy from Jeopardy, Aaron Rodgers.
--:-- David Weigel: Final Jeopardy today, we deal with American names. Is he from Jeopardy? Is that how we know him now? And the clue. Rogers is a young, fairly healthy football player who has never run for office before. His politics are not clearly delineated in every single way, but he got to bond with Kennedy. And this has been a case with Kennedy for years. Kennedy is a famous person who is good at connecting with other people who agree with him. He's done a ton of charity work where he connects with celebrities. If somebody is simpatico with him, he talks to them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Kennedy and Rogers met up and went on a hike. They've been talking. They got along. They went on a hike? It's so romantic. Everyone goes on a hike with RFK Jr. Every reporter who profiles him goes on a hike with him. But what we determine as reporters is that you get one level of skepticism as an athlete. You get a different level as a potential political candidate.
--:-- David Weigel: Really, in no time at all, there was a lot of scrutiny on Aaron Rodgers' record of statements, what he said in the past. There was a damaging CNN story. Rogers has shared conspiracy theories falsely claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting was not real. CNN has also spoken to another source who would like to remain anonymous in order to avoid harassment. This person said Rogers claimed that, quote, Sandy Hook never happened. All those children never existed. They were all actors.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, no. The sense we get is that Rogers was pretty high up in the pecking order for who might be his running mate, and that hurt. Kennedy was singing Rogers praises on Fox News Wednesday before the story broke. He's a critical thinker, and I think we need that at the time, you know, the rise of AI. We need people who understand that you cannot always trust authority. Rogers is denying the allegations today. And this is something we've seen repeatedly with Kennedy. He has had a, I wouldn't say a charmed life, obviously, but he has had a certain level of celebrity that has inoculated him from the career damage of other people who have become vaccine skeptics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He does not like criticism of his quotes, his beliefs. He considers them smears. I guess a lot of people would. And that hurt. It hurt that Aaron Rodgers got that coverage out of the gate. So we have not heard him in the conversation very much in the last week. Okay. Okay, well, maybe he has a long future ahead of him in football. I don't think so. Let's talk about Jesse the body Ventura.
--:-- David Weigel: Ooh, you bet I got something to say. You check it out. Ooh, the most beautiful body in professional wrestling. People once liked him and he an actually experienced politician Rare He is a mayor and a governor Jesse Ventura the former wrestler who slammed Minnesota body politic Ventura underdog campaign promised taxpayers he give back surplus budget money, that he'd loosen gun laws, even consider legalizing prostitution. Again, not qualities that Kennedy said he wanted in a running mate, but somebody who appeals to some of the same Kennedy voters out there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Kennedy voter might have voted for Ron Paul, Republican primaries, might have voted for Ralph Nader in the year 2000, is very flexible, is very anti-establishment. For a long time, I would say really until maybe 2008 or 2012, Jesse Ventura was seen as one of those candidates who could appeal to people who hated politics. He only ruled out running a few times, and then he dabbled a lot more in conspiracy theories and things that made him just more politically toxic.
--:-- David Weigel: We knew before with Condoleezza Rice's memo on August 6th when it stated right in the memo, bin Laden to steal planes and run them into buildings. And more stuff is coming out now also how much the Bush administration ignored the intelligence. It was almost like they ignored it because they wanted it to happen. Oh, come on, Jesse. No, not oh, come off. Every, wait a minute. Every war thought starts with a false flag operation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He hosted a show on RT, on the Russia-sponsored cable network, which had for a long time a kind of stable of anti-establishment American political commentators. He left that because of the military moves that Russia made, basically. He is pretty committed. I wouldn't say pacifist, but pretty committed anti-apiralist, whether it's America, whether it's Russia.
--:-- David Weigel: That was one we, in hearing about him in the conversation, it sounded a bit more like this is someone who appeals to voters that Kennedy wants, whether or not he agrees with Kennedy on the motivating issues of his campaign. And lastly, let's talk about perhaps the person who's least known in the mix here, Nicole Shanahan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, Nicole Shanahan is a wealthy attorney who has contributed a lot to help Kennedy thus far. Nicole, like Aaron Rodgers, has been interested in regenerative agriculture and press freedom and ending the chronic disease epidemic. She is wealthy both from her legal career, young too, I should say, 38 years old, had enough money to put $5 million into the Kennedy Super PAC, which ran the Super Bowl ad, that got attention.
--:-- David Weigel: Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy. And her politics are pretty, pretty progressive. Her pre-Kennedy donations were to Democratic candidates. She donated to the Los Angeles County's progressive DA, George Cascone. But a pattern with these Kennedy nominees is that they're ideologically all over the place. They're potential Kennedy nominees, I should say. They have either celebrity or resources, and they get along with him personally. Those are the criteria. This is not like a Democratic-Republican process where somebody needs to check a bunch of boxes on different issues and different factions of the party. It's not like that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It really is. Do you get along with RFK Jr., and can you help boost his campaign in some way? Is there a chance that whomever this is, whether it's Jeopardy or The Body or Nicole, that it moves the needle on RFK? It could, or it could hurt. The Rogers campaign, I think, has surprised a lot of people that the attention Rogers got immediately, that for really the first time in several months, and I'd written a couple stories about Kennedy, and I could tell that wasn't burning up the internet with traffic, just speculating that he might pick a football player, a famous football player, was a big story. And so Kennedy will get some news out of this announcement.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, it's possible he chooses Shanahan, and there's negative coverage of that. So the larger context for this is that the Democrat National Committee, which sees third-party candidates as a threat to Biden, is working right now to undermine Kennedy. It's done oppo research on who he might pick as a running mate. It wasn't fueling the entire Aaron Rodgers thing, but it is acting and is responding to questions and trying to undermine these people. So whoever Kennedy picks, if they're famous or they're not famous, is going to get more scrutiny than the average running running mate for a candidate polling around 10 percent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the big question here is if one of these three or even someone else he could select this week does indeed boost his campaign, at whose expense? Biden's? the other guys? Well, it's a good question because his name is very famous with Democrats, very beloved by Democrats and by some Republicans, especially there's a sort of Trump voter who used to be a Democrat who's moved into the party and really likes the Kennedys.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There is a appreciation for the Kennedy brand, the Kennedy family in mega circles that's been written about from time to time. So at the moment when Kennedy is included in polls, the margin between Trump and Biden doesn't change that much. And what Kennedy's pointed out, including the Libertarian Convention where I covered him, he's aware that his name is very famous and that older Americans, older Democrats like the Kennedy name. But those voters tend to listen to the mainstream media, which doesn't cover him the way he wants to be covered.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He does better with anti-establishment voters, kind of the Joe Rogan listener, the TikTok viewer, etc. Could you imagine a primary, like a debate between Biden and RFK? Let RFK go. Let him go on TV. Imagine. Those people like Kennedy better than voters who pay attention to The New York Times and CBS News and hear that this candidate is a conspiracy theorist anti-vaxxer. They don't like him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: More with David on all the other spoilers when we're back on Today Explained. Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio? Adio is an AI customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies They say it extremely powerful adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model According to Adio Adio takes less than a minute to set up And within seconds, you will have your email and calendars synced. You'll see all your relationships in a fully fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data. 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 adio.com slash todayexplained to get 15% off your first year. That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from Macy's. It's almost fall, and that means it's time to cycle your wardrobe to the cold setting. Because while everyone loves a breezy summer outfit, let's be real. Layering is even more fun. That's why Macy's Fall Fashion Guide has everything you need to piece together the perfect look for you. It's your one-stop shop for fall's latest trends and must-haves. curated by their experts.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Find the perfect layering pieces for you by exploring the Macy's Fall Fashion Style Guide. Shop in-store or online at Macy's.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Upwork. If you run a business, you know that scaling your business requires the right expertise at the right time. I sometimes wonder how many of you are running businesses out there. I would love to know. Please email me, noelle at king.com. With Upwork, you can find specialized freelancers in IT, web development, AI, design, admin, support, marketing, and more experts who they say are ready to help you take your business to the next level.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to post your job for free and connect with top talents ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is back. I'm still Sean Rameswaram. He's still Dave Weigel. Well, Dave, the last time Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. and Donald John Trump ran for president in 2020, there wasn't seemingly a big third party threat. What about this time around?
--:-- David Weigel: So in 2020, a majority of voters went to the polls, according to exit pollsters, and said they had a favorable opinion of Joe Biden. A little bit lower, but it was more negative for Donald Trump, but less negative than it had been in 2016. was there a little bit of a conversation among people about how surely the country should be able to do better than these candidates?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was, but it wasn't like it is now. And it's a combination of the fact that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election and the fact that Joe Biden is in his 80s and we've never elected somebody to a new term in their 80s. Those have fueled this idea that the country is being cheated by having a choice of two major party candidates who most Americans don't like.
--:-- David Weigel: It is younger voters, voters under 30, who are most unhappy with these choices. And that's, again, a combination of age, Trump's record, and just a sense that there has to be something better, that things have not been good enough for them over the last four years, and that there's something inherently wrong with being forced to choose between two parties.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're seeing a return of that attitude, which is much more intense than we saw in 2020. And remind us who the other choices are for these young people and for older people, for everything in between, because it's not just RFK. So there are two candidates and there are two question marks. There is Cordell West, the left-wing academic who supported Bernie Sanders for president and now is running his own campaign.
--:-- David Weigel: There is Jill Stein, who was the Green Party nominee for president in 2012 and 2016, who's back. Then there are the Libertarian Party and the No Labels Ticket, two organizations that do not have a nominee yet, but are trying to get as much ballot access as possible for nominee TBD.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, let's go one by one through these, starting with Dr. West. I want to reintroduce America to the best of itself. And it's fairly clear that Brother Trump, neo-fascist gangster, not the best. Brother Biden, neoliberal hypocrite, not the best. I want the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. West's story is complicated, almost as complicated as Kennedy's.
--:-- David Weigel: He was running for the Green Party nomination. That's the first time I talked to him in this campaign. His first week as a Green Party nominee, and he had reasons why he was going to see the Green nomination, reasons why he was going to build the party out. He was working with Joel Stein to do so. He changed his mind shortly after running and went independent, went to found his own party.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Again, same thing as Kennedy. In some states, it's easier to get on the ballot if you found a new party to do it. The Green Party did not pack up. The Green Party just kept running with its own nominee, and Jill Stein jumped back into the race. It has rebooted, I'd say, her 2016 campaign. Same sort of arguments. It's very clear that people who would vote for Biden are mostly against Trump. They're not for Biden. And people who would vote for Trump aren't so much for Trump. They're just really against Biden.
--:-- David Weigel: So where can you go with a political system in which we cannot say what we want, what we need, what are our priorities? When I've talked to her, this is something Wes says too, the country would not be significantly better off if Biden wins or if Trump wins. They both are seen by Democrats as potential threats, again, to the younger voters who might agree with them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Not to get too on a tangent, but one reason some Democrats don't mind the current uncommitted effort, the effort to get as many protest votes as possible for Biden in the primary, is because that's taken some attention away from this effort to get them to vote for the third party.
--:-- David Weigel: You said there were two question marks the libertarians and no labels What going on with the latter one No labels no candidate Yeah no labels It has followed down a very unrewarding path of creating a third party organization, getting on the ballot with the promise of nominating a candidate who would have broad bipartisan appeal and win the election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They cannot convince a well-known candidate to make the leap. And they also, because they have some principles but they don't have clear priorities and let's stipulate that one of the big jobs of a president is pointing judges, for example, because they haven't really clarified who they want, the top ticket, a Republican or a Democrat. They just kind of go after everyone who's got a big name and needs a job.
--:-- David Weigel: So this happened with Nikki Haley. Repeatedly, no labels floated that they would be happy if she lost to Donald Trump and decided to run no labels that welcome her. And she said she wouldn't want to do it. Here's what she said. Quote, if I were to do no labels, that would require a Democratic vice president. I can't do what I want to do as president with a Democratic vice president.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Larry Hogan, the former governor of Maryland, said he wouldn't do it. Chris Christie said he's gone back and forth a bit on that. But Joe Manchin is another prominent person, Democrat, who said he does not want to do this. This is a no. This is the problem with floating the access to the ticket but not having a candidate. Each time you get rejected, I mean, it's like a script being passed around Hollywood and you learn that, well, Brad Pitt's attached and now Joaquin Phoenix is attached and now this guy you've never heard of is attached. It's kind of the same thing.
--:-- David Weigel: The crown has gotten a lot dingier that they're offering. So they have this ballot access. They don't have a candidate. And they also, returning to a theme, have been opposed this whole time by the Democratic Party. Republicans just focused on other issues, but the Democratic Party has worked overtime, including legally filing complaints to attack no labels for even trying this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, yeah, they they have a lot of tumult and no candidate. You've named off a bunch of names. Some are familiar, some are TBD, but it does seem like there's a bunch of them. And they're certainly all going to get some number of votes unless no labels never gets its act together and actually has a candidate. who's it going to hit more, all told, Trump or Biden?
--:-- David Weigel: Yeah, well, I should say to start off, third party candidates and advocates hate this question. They get it all the time. Their usual answer is that no one is entitled to a vote. As long as we admit that we all have an equal right to run for election, we should not engage in this political bigotry that focuses on a third party, Green Party, as taking away votes from Gore, when clearly George... I was covering Ralph Nader in 2000. I was covering Jill Stein in 2016. They were making a lot of money. They were having rallies with a substantial size.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You've not seen the same thing this time. You have seen third-party energy around Kennedy, and it changes from place to place. I've been to events where most of the people who support Kennedy there are Republicans who don't like Trump, and I've met Democrats who don't like Biden who are supporting Kennedy. It is mixed, but you'll notice the Republican Party just doesn't talk that much about Kennedy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was hyping him quite a bit. I should say Fox News was hyping a bit more when Kennedy was Joe Biden's primary challenger. The question is, who is telling the truth? There are not many of those. One of them is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. You know, there's so much energy behind these third party candidates, and there's several of them that are somewhat serious. and yet none of them are pulling any significant numbers.
--:-- David Weigel: How is that when your two main candidates, the two 80-year-old-ish guys, are so unpopular across the country? People are willing to put up with candidates that they don't love. This has been happening with Donald Trump. This has been happening with Joe Biden. I should say the disquiet the Democrats had about Joe Biden, And apart from Gaza and younger voters who disagree with him on Gaza, it's largely about his age.
--:-- David Weigel: We saw this in the primaries. We saw a very real test of this. There were polls in New Hampshire and Iowa, which didn't matter in the end anyway, that showed last summer a majority of Democratic voters wanted an alternative. And there were stories written. I'm saying in the passive voice because luckily I didn't write one of these stories. This story is written about how RFK Jr. could be a threat to Biden because look at this gigantic Democratic vote that says it wants a younger alternative to him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, when one did not emerge that voters took seriously, I'm saying but Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, when neither of them got traction, Biden as a writing candidate won the New Hampshire primary. He's been winning with lower turnout to every Democratic presidential primary. And so it turns out that when pushed, most Democrats are worried about Biden, but they're not against him.
--:-- David Weigel: What that leaves you with is a chunk of the electorate, perhaps 30 percent of the electorate, that really doesn't want to have to choose between these candidates and doesn't agree with the parties on everything. But they're sorting. The stakes are just very high. And it's been very tough to convince people to try something else when the risk is very high that something that you agree with, something you believe in, could be undermined or destroyed in four years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: David Weigel, Politics, Semaphore.com Our program today was produced by Miles Bryan edited by Amina Al-Sadi mixed by Patrick Boyd and fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Anouk Dousseau It's Today Explained. Thank you.
