Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Krystal and Saagar REACT To Trump 2024 Announcement

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

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This is an iHeart Podcast. to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chaston. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now.

Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The medal of honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what

their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, hello, everybody. It's that time of year, I guess, for the 2024 election. Ready or not, here we are. I feel like we just did 2022, Crystal. I don't know exactly how that's all going down here. They're literally still counting ballots from 2022, as a matter of fact. That's actually, that's a fantastic point, which is they are literally still counting ballots, and yet somehow we are here together. Yeah. So before we get started, really weird to do this show at night, I got to say, it does throws off my whole.

I don't think at all. I don't know what day of the week it is. A whole lot of sun is down or not. But anyway, we're here because the former President Trump is supposedly going to announce his campaign tonight. Right. So we're going to do a whole thing. We're going to have a kind of a normal show ahead of time. We're going to look at the polls. We're going to talk about the Democrats. There were leadership elections today, all kinds of stuff to break down. More Republicans trying to distance themselves for Trump, potentially opening the door for Ron DeSantis. So we'll break all of that down. Ryan and Emily are going to join us

as well. We have a couple of announcements at the top as well. Two things. Live show, as you guys know, look, we have the New York and the Boston live show. We've got tickets that are on sale right now. The description links on any of our past videos has the code and the link in order to go and buy that. And then number two, we've got a special discount, live discount. You guys loved it so much during the midterm elections. You said, OK, fine, we can go ahead and we can bring this back for everybody. So that's at the top of the chat and down in the description of this video as well. But, I mean, Crystal, before we even get to the election, before you and I were coming on here, well, there is a potential major foreign policy crisis on all of our hands.

So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is very important, what's happening in Poland, right near the Ukrainian border, near the city of Lviv, which we've talked about previously as a strategic waypoint. The immediate reaction was that Poland says that Russian-made missiles hit their territory and killed two people. Now, since that headline was cut for this show, we have a little bit more that we can offer all of you. The Polish foreign minister and the Polish president spoke with President Biden, who was woken up early. Currently, he is in Bali in Asia for the G20 summit where President Duda was did not confirm that these were Russian missiles. Crystal, he said that it was likely he was not ascribing any actual motive.

He did not say whether it was intentional or not. The Russians have come out and said that it's a fabrication, that there is no evidence, that they did not strike in that region. The United States has made no attribution here whatsoever. The Polish president, Duda, said that U.S. investigators are on their way to the site in order to, quote, ascertain exactly all what's going on there. There's a couple of different things that they wanted us to know. Number one, they're investigating the reasons two people are dead, the military readiness of Poland. And of course, I should even say at the top, Poland is a NATO ally. That's why this is so important

in the first place. Number three, President Duda has both spoken with President Biden, with Prime Minister Sunak, with the NATO Secretary General Jan Stoltenberg all tonight before he came out and put out the statement. Finally, and this is what's most important for our purposes, Poland is currently considering whether to call for discussions under Article 4. So everybody here knows about Article 5, that is the collective defense. If you attack one, attack against all. Article 4 is effectively a consideration as to whether their territorial integrity has been violated or not. To be 100% clear, they have not invoked Article 4.

They are considering Article 4. And I'll read you directly what that says in English. The parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence, or security of any of the parties is threatened. So that's the direct quote from NATO's treaty and its understanding. But obviously, zoom out, you know, what, 40, 50,000 foot and just say, this is a tremendously dangerous situation for the world, no matter what exactly happened. It could have been Russian missiles that were striking all across of Ukraine. It could have been Ukrainian air defense systems. We have no confirmation. We have no independent information,

confirmation, etc. Lots of accusations are flying around from the Russians to the Ukrainians, to the Polish, to the Lithuanians and the United States. And obviously we're monitoring the situation very, very closely. Yes. I mean, there are several different possibilities for what happened here, sort of plausible explanations for what happened here. And we do have images of the area that was reportedly struck and, you know, multiple confirmations that two people were killed in whatever happened. One possibility is that this was an intentional strike from Russia. Yes. No one has said that outright yet.

We should be clear about that. And the Russians certainly deny that. Another possibility is that this was an accident. The Russians haven't been known and their missiles haven't been known to be all that precise. And today they were bombarding Kiev and the eastern part of Ukraine, heavily, heavily hitting Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Once again, you've got Kyiv in pretty much a blackout state at this point. So under that sort of heavy bombardment, was there a mistake where one thing landed across the border in Poland? That is one possibility. Another possibility is that as part of Ukrainian air defense,

air missile defense, that they either hit a Russian missile and some of the debris fell here, or this was a Ukrainian air defense missile. So those are sort of the plausible possibilities. Again, we don't have confirmation of any of those scenarios, but to underscore why this is such a big deal, This is the exact kind of potentially accidental situation that we've been warning about. And we're far from alone in warning about the dangerous potential escalation from a situation like this. You have Poland now considering invoking Article 4. You have a major, major international incident. The one thing that I can say that is positive is that we know the Biden administration has been in communication with their Russian

counterparts in recent days and weeks. Yes. Having those avenues of communication and those channels of communication open so that, you know, if it was an accident, that can be made really clear. Any sort of potential escalatory moves can be telegraphed. So there's no misunderstanding of that as well. Those things are incredibly, incredibly important for keeping a dangerous situation like this from going completely off the rails. But this is a scary situation. There's just no doubt about it. I don't think there's any other way to describe it. You know, the moment I saw it, I was like, this is going to be big and it's going to be potentially bad. I think the best case scenario for the world is either the Russians say it was a mistake, they apologize, but they're already

coming out and denying it. The polls effectively either, you know, they have some face-saving move where they will provide X amount more military assistance to Ukraine, the United States and NATO in addition do that as well. And hopefully we see no further escalation from that. But everything is on the table right now. I mean, if Russia did accidentally do this versus intentionally doing this, those are two very separate worlds. But everything that we know is that this will likely invite some sort of policy response. We have no idea what that is. What's scary is that within that policy response is a consideration of possible war. I mean, if let's say that the Western intelligence agencies say that they or claim that this was an intentional act, I mean, that is an attack on a NATO country

and it would be within Poland and the NATO alliance is right in order to invoke that. Obviously, that wouldn't be in the World War III scenario. The other one- Poland, sort of understandably, given their location, has been among the most hawkish, if not the most hawkish, of the NATO allies. They and the Balt- I mean, whether they're Balt- whatever. We don't have to decide who's Baltic or not. They and the other Baltic states have long been the most hawkish whenever it comes to Ukraine. They have always warned that Poland, in particular, has said that if there was any strike, a nuclear strike, even inside of Ukraine, they would consider that as an invocation of Article

5. The point is, we do not know the information at this time. I just want to encourage everybody to wait. Don't blame one person or another. We, in a situation like this, the best possible thing is to know we know the phone calls are happening. We can tell you exactly what officially has been said from the United States government, from NATO, from Poland, and from the Russians, and we are simply

in a wait and see mode. We saw a picture from President Biden. They tweeted out, clearly been roused from his sleep. Him, Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, all in Bali, on the phone, very, very early Bali time, 5.30 a.m., on the phone with the Polish foreign minister. But you see the president roused out of bed talking about NATO, Article 4, Article 5, the considerations. There are diplomatic there's been a summons by the Polish government for their Russian minister, their ambassador, to come and explain the situation. So all eyes right now on the Kremlin. And we will try and keep everybody as updated throughout this stream as possible. Yeah. And the last thing I want to say about this before we move into the politics, I think this all really underscores what a critical presidential race we are facing in terms of who's going to be the next commander in chief.

So, you know, it's kind of an appropriate table setter, I guess, in that way. And then the last thing that I have to say is that scenarios like this are exactly why, even though we completely believe the Ukrainian cause is just, even though the Russians are the invaders and the imperial attackers here in this situation, why we have been so vocal and so direct, even when it was very controversial, about calling for diplomacy and calling for talks, because the longer this war continues, the more of a risk that you are taking of potential disasters leading to catastrophic consequences. And this is one scenario that we have talked about, that we have envisioned, that we have been fearful of. And now some aspect of it has come to pass. And let's just hope that everyone calms the waters and we're able to move past it without some aspect of it has come to pass. And let's just hope that everyone calms the waters and we're able to move past it without some sort of contagion. Yeah, that's all we can

possibly hope for. OK, guys, why don't we go ahead and move on to the Trump section? All right. So the whole reason we're here at night, which is really weird for both of us, we're usually literally in bed right now because that's how we roll is because former President Trump is apparently going to announce his presidential campaign, his third presidential campaign tonight at 9 p.m. at Mar-a-Lago. We will take at least a portion of that speech live. If it really starts to drag, we may come back and do some commentary on it. So we'll see how that goes. There are already his fans and admirers outside of Mar-a-Lago. Very animated.

Apparently there was some like stomping of a Ron DeSantis flag going on. The real hardcore folks are out there tonight. So in any case, there's a lot to talk about because obviously the midterms, we're not even settled with the midterms. I think today the GOP did officially clench the House, at least by some counts, 218. They're voting on who their leaders are going to be in the House and whether McConnell's going to stay in the Senate. Rick Scott is now running against him officially. So all of that is going on. And yet here we have the beginning of 2024. Now, obviously, Trump, I think, should be assumed to be the frontrunner in terms of the Republican nomination.

He's the former president. The party has basically been crafted in his image at this point. However, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had an incredible night in the midterms, won Florida by 20 points, has his own fan base, has a lot of fans also in the media. Rupert Murdoch has been sort of bolstering him over at Fox News and with his other outlets. And there are a lot of Republicans who see the results from Tuesday and are saying, hey, the writing's on the wall. This all in on stop the steal conspiracy nonsense that is the direction of the party under Trump. This is not working out for us as a party in our ability to hold on to power.

So that is kind of where we stand right now. Big shot across the bow from a Trump previous foe. And then they were allies for a while, and now they're foes again. That would be the Club for Growth. They took a series of polls of different primary states, and in each of those polls, they actually found Ron DeSantis to be leading Trump. Let's go ahead and put those up on the screen. So they have Iowa, DeSantis 48, Trump 37. New Hampshire, DeSantis 52, Trump 37. Florida, DeSantis 56, Trump 30. And Georgia, DeSantis, 52. Trump, 37. Florida, DeSantis, 56. Trump, 30. And Georgia, DeSantis, 55. Trump, 35. Now, I think it is worth saying, Sagar, again, this is a group that kind

of has an axe to grind. You can probably lay the sound even a little bit better than me, but the big rub here was in the Ohio GOP primaries, at least when tensions boiled over. Club for Growth was all in for this dude, Josh Mandel, who, I mean, I don't know. He's sort of a standard issue Republican, but he adopted some more Trumpy populist language, but he was more in line. They felt more comfortable with him in terms of towing the Reaganite conservative economic line. Trump was all in with J.D. Vance, and were tweeting at each other and it was a whole thing. For people to understand, it's a little bit of an internecine D.C. war, but does matter for all of you. So the Club for Growth was a Tea Party backed organization, very libertarian, very economically, quote unquote, conservative in the way that you would

think of like a Mitt Romney. So what happened? They were very against Trump in 2016 because of his positions on trade, on health care, many of the things that he said. After Trump won the nomination and especially after he won the presidency, they successfully co-opted his administration and got their preferred tax legislation and many other things through. So they were all allies. Everybody was cool for a while. The reason why it matters is that Club for Growth has a roster of a ton of billionaires. A lot of the more traditional, the Koch types and others, give them tens and tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions, really, every cycle. And they will use that to back candidates. So then there was a big civil war between Josh Mandel

and J.D. Vance. So J.D. Vance was backed by Trump. The Club for Growth went all out against him, mostly because of his positions on trade. Josh Mandel was really more of a stop-the-steal, clownish-type figure. But his actual policy positions were all against any vision of Trump 2016, especially in line with the 2012 candidate, of which we know that he was whenever he previously ran. So that's what effectively they went to bat for him. Mandel almost came across the finish line, but Trump ultimately prevailed. That led to a massive break between the Trump campaign and then finally between the Club for and then finally between the Club for Growth and the president. His name is David McIntosh. So since that time, the club has

been really, you know, they've been licking their chops and they've been pissed off. And then now with the also, you know, I should note the club actually did back Blake Masters. That's one of the only places where Trump and the club were kind of hand in hand. I think Masters' position on cutting Social Security might have had something to do with their support for him. The point being that it's kind of complicated. Now, since the midterm results, though, the club smells blood in the water and they are gunning for Trump. They're trying to co-opt the Republican elites to try and do some sort of draft DeSantis campaign. And that's why you see the release not only of these polls, but now we have another poll that you found, Crystal, from the Texas GOP.

Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. That also shows Florida Governor DeSantis up 11 points in the Texas 2024 GOP primary matchup. However, this is a major caveat that I think that our audience deserves right now. I will just remind everyone that the club, Trafalgar, all these other folks, didn't they just get every single election in this entire country wrong? So don't know about everyone, but quite a few and dramatically. So, yeah, pretty damn close. If I recall, you know, Patty Murray, they had her down by one. She wins by 14. What was it? New Hampshire. They had her at one. she wins by 10. They had, what, Blake Masters up by five. Carrie Lake, I'm sure, way up. They had her up by 12. So should we really trust the Republican pollsters who, you know, two weeks later are saying that DeSantis is beating Trump whenever, what, just a week ago their polls were proven catastrophically wrong? I think our major takeaway from all of these is polls are kind of useful, I guess, but are often wrong in completely different ways.

And so should we believe them? Probably not. I don't know. I look at this much more in the context of the fight than I do in terms of the actual efficacy of these numbers. That's what's most interesting about it is there's clearly somewhat of an effort, a coordinated effort here to move away from Trump with the argument being basically like this guy can't win. He's an albatross around our necks. Not wrong, by the way. The question is, what is the GOP base in this for? Right.

What is it that they want? And so you have a very clear sort of like elite level effort to make Ron DeSantis the guy and putting out all these polls is one part of that. But I mean, I think I don't want to like say this is just an elite phenomenon. There's genuine enthusiasm for Ron DeSantis. Of course. People like him. They respect him. You know, a lot of people who like Trump also like Ron DeSantis as well.

It's not like their camps are totally, you know, in separate corners here either. There's a lot of overlap. But that's sort of the backstory of why these polls are coming out. Like Ron DeSantis as well, it's not like their camps are totally, you know, in separate corners here either. There's a lot of overlap. But that's sort of the back story of why these polls are coming out and what their aim and what their purpose ultimately is. We have one more for you. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from YouGov. And this has DeSantis 42, Trump 35. And actually, I did see another poll today that had it Trump back on top over top of DeSantis, which just shows you like the numbers are a little bit all over the place

right now. And I would just say, too, you know, I just remember back even back to before Trump, the 2012 Republican primary and in 2016. And you'd have these candidates that are like polling well and the theoretical all the support. But when you actually came head to head with Trump, well, it's a different deal on the debate stage. How did that work out for a whole lot of would be contenders who supposedly had a lot of money support and elite support and even some base support? And ultimately, you know, it all sort of crumbled in the face of Donald Trump. So is that going to replay this time? Who knows? You know, the past is not the future. You have to live it out in real time and see how it all comes down.

We all have a potential indictment hanging over the head of Trump, which could throw another, you know, sort of another chaos element into this whole situation. But as I said at the beginning, I think you should assume that Trump is the front runner. There is no organized DeSantis campaign right now in terms of a team and a real concerted effort. He hasn't even potentially decided that he's going to run. So the man who is likely announcing tonight at Mar-a-Lago continues to be the most likely GOP nominee ultimately.

I don't think there is any other takeaway than that. I do not bet against Trump until he will literally like crumble before us. I would have to believe like a whopping DeSantis victory on Super Tuesday before I would count him out. And then honestly, even then, I mean, can you really say that you can confidently that Trump will bow out? Like, let's say even in a scenario where DeSantis narrowly beats him in a head to head. Well, what if he runs as third party? People have pointed out that many states have sore loser laws where if you're the nominee and you lose there, you can't run third party. What if he pulls a Georgia in 2020 and just tells people not to vote because the primary was rigged against

him? I kind of remember how that one turned out for people. So it's a confounding variable, which is just so unpredictable that absent him literally dying, you can't count him out until he's gone. In terms of his impact, there is just, and I think there's a lot of wish casting that is going on right now. I have, it's undeniable that DeSantis is probably in the best situation he's ever been in vis-a-vis Trump. Is that enough to win head-to-head? Here's the other problem. DeSantis ain't the only guy running. Why don't we go ahead and move on now to our second

part? Yeah, so we have some updates on some additional comments of senators, members of Congress, other electeds, other sort of consultant types trying to distance themselves for Trump and at least anonymously willing to kind of throw him under the bus. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from Politico. They had a whole rundown of different senators and members of Congress. The headline here is Republicans cringe as Trump 2024 approaches. And you had a lot of people kind of equivocating. You know, you had one rank and file House Republican speaking candidly on the condition of anonymity, which, by the way, tells you a lot that these people don't have the nerve to cross him publicly. That says a lot, too.

This person said in a contested race in a Republican primary, there are other people that I would support. I can make a strong case where he costs us the House in 18, costs us the Senate in 22 and costs us the White House in 20. And yet he wants us to rehire him because he likes the attention. So again, willing to say it anonymously. Will they say it on the record? Not yet. You did have Senator Thune, who was not willing to certainly not willing to endorse Trump and but also not willing to totally throw him under the bus. He says it's clear that running on relitigating the 2020 election is not a winning strategy. I'm not endorsing anybody at this point. So that's at least a little bit of a jab towards Trump and his obsession with stop the seal.

Senator Tom Cotton said he had no comment on Trump's likely run. Senator Roger Marshall said he was not taking any questions. And then you do have some people who are willing to come out directly and support him. Elise Stefanik of New York, Richard Hudson of North Carolina, whip hopeful Jim Banks already vowed to back Trump even before his bid is official. So a lot of people who are no comment, a lot of people who are willing to anonymously say we think we should do something else. Not a whole lot at this point who are willing to outright say we need a new direction. Oh, not even that, Crystal, as I alluded to. Well, let's say, you know, one of the things that doomed Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and John Kasich and all those people is none of them wanted to drop out, giving Trump the ability to clinch the nomination despite not getting a total majority of GOP votes in the early primaries. Well, DeSantis is not going to be the only guy running.

Mike Pence is doing the rounds for interviews with his book. We played some of it in our last show. He sat down with Sean Hannity just today, where he all but confirmed he is going to run for president. Let's take a listen. Let's talk a little bit about your future politically. You're going to get back in the arena, thinking about it on the fence. Where are you? I could tell you, Karen and I are seriously considering what role we might play in the future and including as a candidate for public office again. You know, it's only one office that I think you'd run for. Well, you're right. So he says, you're right. There's only one office I'd be thinking about. He's I mean, the man is on a book tour right now.

Going, sitting down. Sean Hannity, of course, is like the biggest Trump booster of all time and trying to get back in good with conservative media. Do I think that Mike Pence's potential presidential run is really going anywhere? No. Could he potentially get 10 points of that anti-Trump vote and cut it to DeSantis's margin? Yes, absolutely. Last time I checked, Crystal, there's a lot of Southern states on Super Tuesday, a lot of evangelicals who live in those states. They like Mike Pence. Mike Pence is going hard defending abortion. I was just reading a New

York Times piece this morning, wherever he did an interview with Maggie Haberman over at the New York Times. And he was enthusiastic about the Dobbs decision. He was taking credit for the Dobbs decision, making sure that people knew that it was he who helped do the Supreme Court test. And, you know, people forget one of the reasons that Trump picked Mike Pence is he had real credibility with the evangelicals who crawled over glass to vote for him in 2016. And I predict, well, they will have to be somewhat split because Trump ultimately was the guy who delivered for them. But many of them know that Pence was the real driver's seat behind putting social conservatism there to the test. Don't forget, Ted Cruz won a sizable portion of the GOP vote in 2016, and he was explicitly running against Obergefell

on the same abortion position as Mike Pence. We can't count that out. At the same time, DeSantis is not going to want for money. Not at all. Let's put this up there. Ken Griffin, you guys might remember him from GameStop. Well, the multi-billionaire worth some $29 billion. I love this, by the way. Speaking in Singapore at a conference said that three-time loser Trump needs to step aside for Ron DeSantis. Per what he has said, both publicly and privately, Crystal, Ken Griffin is effectively guaranteeing a blank check for Ron DeSantis if he wanted to run for president. Now, that doesn't hurt. By the way, go ahead and read the subhead there. It says that the U.S. is playing for fire when it comes to China's tech limits. So at the very same time that he is advocating for Ron DeSantis to run, he's also like, yeah, we need to stop that trade war with China. You know, that's really

creating tensions with all of us. The one good thing that Trump did and that Biden is doing. The best thing that Trump did. Effectively, Trump ushered in a paradigm shift and has now made it the dominant position to be to have want to trade war with China. At the very least, let's put trade war aside, protect American industry. That is the one thing that this multibillionaire Ken Griffin doesn't want. So always pay attention to what some of the wants that these people have. That's the global growth problem problem, too. Exactly right. Because they love the tax cuts. But the trade, the like one thing Trump did that was actually decent and directionally correct, that's the part they have the issue with, of course. They go. And so then finally, let's get to the ultimate shot across the bow. Ron DeSantis finally asked about Trump's comments,

Ron DeSanctimonious, all of that. He gave some veiled criticism and hit back, I guess, in his own little DeSantis way. Let's take a listen. Well, you know, one of the things I've learned, like learned in this job is when you're leading, when you're getting things done, yeah, you take incoming fire. That's just the nature of it. I roll out of bed in the morning. I've got corporate media outlets that have a spasm. Just the fact that I'm getting up in the morning and it's constantly attacking. And this is just what's happened. I don't think any governor got attacked more, particularly by corporate media than me over my four year term. And yet I think what you what you learn is all that's just noise. And really what matters is, are you leading? Are you getting in front of issues? Are you delivering results for people? And are you standing up for folks? And if you do that, then none of that stuff matters. And that's what we've done. We focused on results and leadership. And, you know, at the end of the day, I would just tell people to go check out the scoreboard from last Tuesday night.

What do you think of that? Check out the scoreboard. I thought it was a bit of a weak response because I think he should have just led with that. I think it would have been had some gravitas to it if he was like, I'll let the comment. I will let the election results speak for themselves, something like that. And that was a little because he was trying to conflate Trump criticism with the corporate media. And I'm like, well, hold on a second, dude. Like, what are we talking about here?

The whole wind up to it just spoke to like him being uncomfortable. Obviously. Making the critique. Obviously uncomfortable, right. Because, yeah, if you're ready to go out and take the shot, you just take the shot. And so, I mean, that's the thing is Trump is clearly wary of DeSantis. He's clearly watching his back. He's clearly starting to take some shots, trying to take the air out of the DeSantis balloon.

But as wary of DeSantis as Trump is, like DeSantis is clearly very afraid of Trump. And understandably so. I mean, this is still Trump's party. And so, yeah, I mean, I look at this and it does, to me, remind me of some little digs and jabs that we've seen from this or that Republican or other primary contenders back in 2016. And, you know, ultimately, if this is all you got, it's not going to be enough. I think you're correct. And, you know, it reminds me of exactly remember we played Mike Pence's clip in our last show whenever he was asked to criticize Trump over January 6th? Yeah. He took an almost 10-second pause, guys, for who haven't watched the clip.

And the reason I was like, man, he is just calculating his head. He's like, how much can I say? How far can I go? Not too critical. I've had a meeting once with Mike Pence, like back when I was in the White House. Yeah. Everything that man says when the camera's on. Very careful.

Very careful. Very calculated. It's a little different whenever the camera's not rolling. And I watched that and I was like, that is the Pence that I remember covering as a White House correspondent, hyper-calibrated language. So to watch him, to watch DeSantis, the fact is that we are here tonight to cover Donald Trump running again for the 2024 election. To come at the king, you best not miss, as they said in The Wire. And for me to watch Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis still effectively sitting on their heels.

And what I mean by that is, you can talk in the media all you want. Where are your consultants? Do you have a proper super PAC? Are you ready to roll? Are you ready to go, you better get your ass on a plane to Iowa. You better get your ass on a plane to New Hampshire.

You better get ready for Super Tuesday for Nevada. You know, we're about to talk about this. Actually, let's go and move on. Campaign. This is why it matters, which is that in the campaign section, let's put this up there on the screen. We have some of the staff which is getting ready. We can see now that inside of the 2024 announcement, the headline here is the dicey one. Still, though, Trump, Crystal, is putting together a team. There is no team that yet exists for the DeSantis organization. Who is his campaign manager? Well, if you read this article, you find out that his campaign manager from 2018, she ran Trump's get out the vote effort in 2020, and now she's working for Donald Trump

in his reelection strategy. He's going to be one of his top strategists. So you don't even have your old campaign manager. You don't have consultants. Trump has Kellyanne Conway. He has many of the veterans of the 2016 campaign. He wants to run a much leaner, smaller organization like the 2016 campaign, not let it get as co-opted by the RNC. Guys, let's go and put the Washington Post tear sheet up there as well. They also report on some of the insiders' stuff about what's happening. The reason that these things matter, guys, is that these are the nitty gritty nuts and bolts of campaigns. So we were talking there previously about DeSantis and Susan Wiles. She is the woman who literally ran his campaign, but she also ran Trump in 2016 and

Trump in 2020. Stephen Chung, who I remember, he used to work at the UFC, actually. He was on the Trump campaign. He's going to be running communications. Another thing that they point to is that the Trump Make America Great Again super PAC, ready to roll. And not only that, they have the old Trump email list. They're the ones who have been fundraising for his fake Stop the Steal lawsuits. They're the ones who have been fundraising during the Senate. He has what?

I mean, millions and millions of emails. He's got his new director of that super PAC ready to go, presumably in order to rake in all of the donations. Like, he's got the infrastructure, the juggernaut, the incumbency. Like, that is so difficult to beat in a true head-to-head matchup. For DeSantis to pull this off, it has to be the coup of the century. And you have to have a ground game. You have to have money. You have to have an organization. Who's he got? I don't see anybody yet. You can say that it's coming, but every day

it's coming. Donald Trump is here. He's announcing tonight. He's ready to roll. He's ready to get the money. He's got everything he possibly needs. Yeah, and that's why I thought all the chatter about like, oh, we should wait until after the Georgia runoff. Like, no. Like, I mean, maybe for the good of the party. He doesn't give a shit about the good of the party. Exactly. He gives a shit about the good of himself. And always has and always will.

So your scenario about like, okay, let's say Ron DeSantis does win. You think Donald Trump is just going to go quietly? You think he's going to, you know, endorse Ron DeSantis? Oh, he just got the best of me. Gosh, darn it. It was a great race. But in the end, old Ronnie, of course not. Of course, he's not going to do that. I mean, whatever happens here, he's going to create chaos and heartburn and potential disaster for the Republican Party. And also, by the way, potentially for the country. But, you know, going back to what you were saying about the apparatus and the organization, also look at what a hold Trump continues to have on elected leaders in Washington. There were leadership votes going on today.

Yes, he and Mitch McConnell are in some kind of a feud, but Mitch McConnell has never moved against him. After January 6th, he floated it a little bit, thought about it, ultimately did absolutely nothing. And he's not going to do anything now either. In the House side, Trump actually backed Kevin McCarthy, who, you know, sought his endorsement. McCarthy won today. There were maybe about 30 votes who dissented, led by Matt Gaetz and Andy Biggs as their potential candidate. But, you know, you still see that's a weird one because it's almost like either faction wins. Trump wins because it's the America first MAGA hardcore people who are going against McCarthy. But McCarthy has the Trump endorsement. So you see that you see at the RNC.

Ronna McDaniel has been a stalwart ally of Donald Trump. And that apparatus matters a lot also in terms of fundraising. And these, you know, billionaires who are going over to DeSantis, I think DeSantis would have plenty of money if he decided to run. I don't think that would be an issue for him. But Trump already has his coffers plenty filled and didn't spend a whole lot on these candidates in the elections either, by the way. He's cash flush to a degree, which I think is difficult to imagine. Now, look, once again, he was cash flush in 2020. And then his what, Brad Parscale, that moron blew all of his money. And then leading up to election day, it turned out that he actually didn't have that much money on hand. So don't ever underestimate

the idiots that Trump does hire who end up squandering some of his campaign. Still very much possibility. But I think what it comes back to me is when you're the incumbent, when you're the presumptive leader, the former president, the most popular Republican in the country since Ronald Reagan, especially with the Republican base, it's really yours. And then you're going to take somebody like that off. It requires a gargantuan effort. At the same time, look, as we have said a million times, so many balls up in the air. It's probably going to get indicted. Although, in my opinion, that helps him. You know, whatever. It helps him with the Republican base that they're prosecuting our man TrumpP base care about electability? And my personal answer, I don't think so. I'll tell you why. They nominated Kerry Lake. They nominated that Joe Kent. Don Bulldog.

They nominated Bulldog. They nominated Blake Masters. They nominated a slew of losers in the last election based solely on the word of Donald J. Trump. So does that now, will they learn their lesson? I don't know. And you know, one of the, one of the reasons why I think it matters is people should remember 2012. The base never loved Mitt Romney. They begrudgingly went along because they were told by Republican elites, he's the electable one, guys. He speaks well. He was the Massachusetts governor. Yeah. he wasn't with us on Obamacare. That's okay. Yeah, he wasn't necessarily with us on this fight

or Benghazi or birtherism or whatever. Let's put it to the side. Let's all show up to the votes and beat him. Then he lost against Obama. So what they learned is a real converse lesson. When GOP elites are telling him electability, don't believe them. And then second,

they nominated their gut instinct, Donald Trump, and were told a million times he was going to lose, and then he won. So why do they have any credibility with the base itself? That is a structural problem, which has not been solved in the Republican Party right now. Yeah, I mean, I tend to agree with you. I mean, let's just go through, though, really quickly, and then we're going to bring in Ryan and Emily. Please. You know, this is why DeSantis and co. smell blood in the water. So one of Trump's highest profile picks here who had the best chance of any of the stop the steal gubernatorial nominees to win Carrie Lake now official. She has lost.

She will not be governor of Arizona. That means let's go ahead and go to the second element in the C block here of all of the wins and losses of Trump. He lost every single governor's race, save for one Lombardo in Nevada, who I don't think was an election denier directly. Correct. In the Senate, he lost all of them except for incumbent Senator Ron Johnson, who narrowly squeaks by and Herschel Walker, who is behind but went to the runoff. And for Secretary of State, and these ones really mattered because, I mean, Secretary of State is just about running elections, basically. Every single one of his candidates lost. These are in the swing states. In other states around the country, different story. But in terms of these key swing states, the win-loss record is just plainly, absolutely abysmal.

To me, Fincham, the Secretary of State candidates are the ones that matter the most. They were going to throw us into a potential constitutional crisis for some sort of crazy stop-the-steal nonsense in 2024. And voters showed up and said, no, hell no. And the reason why I think that matters is that, look, guys, the Republicans pulled off some crazy upsets in Arizona. You're just not hearing about them because they're in the House of Representatives. Normal Republicans run who ran very not major stop the steal races.

They were able to beat Democrats. Brad Raffensperger in Georgia bucked Trump famously in that phone call that everybody heard and everything, he, I think, got a higher vote percentage than even Brian Kemp, who also, of course, famously was independent minded when it came to stop this deal. And so it's just as clear as it could possibly be. At the same time, you know, you have a lot of soul searching going on on the Republican side, including Senator Josh Hawley, who says now that the old Republican Party is dead. Let's take a listen to that. I think that this election was the funeral for the Republican Party as we know it. The Republican Party, as we have known it, is dead. And voters have made that clear. And in particular, the folks who did not vote for Republicans in this last election were independent voters,

working class independent voters, folks who voted for President Obama once upon a time, folks who then voted for President Trump but stayed home this time. We are not a majority party unless we can appeal to those voters. When he says that, what does he mean by that? So I think he means on the economic front. Hawley, of course, was with Trump on Stop the Steals, the first senator really to endorse Stop the Steals. The fifth picture. A very unfortunate picture for him that came out. I think he wants to—look, Hawley is a conundrum because it's difficult to get your head around. He believes in some very unpopular, socially conservative positions. I haven't yet heard how he's going to vote on this gay marriage bill.

So, presumably, guys, we got an announcement from Senator Heidi Heitkamp that 60 senators had signed on to pass during lame duck a gay marriage bill through the U.S. Senate. I'm very curious to see how he votes on that. He cheered the Dobbs decision. At the same time, he is a believer that you can have unpopular social conservatism and pair it with popular economics and then have that be the winner. So in his criticism immediately after, he talks about the GOP vote on insulin prices. Famously, I don't know if people remember, during the Inflation Reduction Act, he voted with the Democrats to make sure that you could bargain on insulin for the federal government and Medicare on a couple of other economic issues.

So I think that is where his head is at. Now, do I think it will work? I don't know. Part of the things that I said very often was, hey, if you align yourself with this crazy stop the steal nonsense, a lot of people aren't going to care what you think about economics. And I think personally, I was vindicated on this, is if you combine stop the steal with a national abortion ban, well, turns out a lot of people, even in the middle of the highest inflation in 40 years, yeah, I don't know so much about this one. So it's a chicken and the egg problem. I mean, I think he has a very unique view that he can combine social conservatism with economic populism. I am not nearly as optimistic as I once was that it's even possible in the Republican Party.

And also, I want to see, is he going to vote for Rick Scott? Because if you vote for Rick Scott over Mitch McConnell, you're kind of full of shit. Because Rick Scott is way worse on economics. Like, look, I got a lot of problems with Mitch, many that I could list a million in terms of what he's done on economics. He still, though, is not even close to as ideologically an economic libertarian as Rick Scott, who literally wants to cut Social Security. So how is Hawley going to vote on that one? I mean, I have all sorts of questions like this. In Rick Scott's announcement that he's running against Mitch McConnell, he brings up what he calls protecting Social Security. That's code. That's their code for cutting it and Medicare as

well. And it's all deficit hawk language. So, yeah, I mean, it's why it's hard to parse a critique like this, because Josh Hawley is not talking about like, hey, guys, maybe we shouldn't have done the whole stop the steal thing because he's not. There's no self-reflection there. His political fortune is tied to that. Yes. It's not possible. Yes, exactly.

So the last thing that, you know, I think it's worth saying is that the Donald Trump of today is not anything like the Donald Trump of 2015 and 2016. When there was something, you know, he was talking about some issues that really had resonance with people. You know, he was talking about trade. There was a different view. He was the outsider. Now, what is he up to? Go ahead and put this up on the screen.

Memes on Truth Social. Yeah. Lots of, this is C4. D4, sorry. C4, C4 guys. Memes on Truth Social, especially a lot of QAnon related memes. I mean, it's basically just like your typical boomer poster at this point. And Richard Henania actually made a very good point, which is in some ways Trump was kept in more of a normie world when he was on Twitter. Now he's just in this total like right

wing, very ideological, very pro Trump space on true social. And he just seems to be getting further and further from reality. I mean, he is like the definition of the dude who needs to touch grass. Yeah. I mean, this is just pure boomer posting. As many of you can see, it's not great to have the president. You know, it's funny because in the past, every once in a while, he would just do stuff like this. And now it's just like a constant stream over on Truth Social. I think Richard is entirely correct, which is that whenever you had Trump on Twitter, you at least had him in the ecosystem where everybody was involved. On Truth, he is genuinely in such a bubble that it is just nearly impossible in order to get him back. And then the fact is he hasn't at least come back so far.

So I think, look, do I think we'll be politically a problem? Not necessarily. But it's not good for anybody to be stuck in a single information environment. I don't think it's a problem for him in the Republican primary. I think it's a big problem for him in a general election. I think it was a problem for him in the last general election. Remember how, like, weirdly online the RNC was last time and they take these like

internet celebrities and put up on stage and they're like, I don't even know what the backstory is with this. Well, he's gone way, way further down that road at this point. Again, I don't think it's a problem

with the GOP base. And I guess that's my, before we bring in Ryan and Emily here, I mean, that's my overall view is like, I do think America is done with Donald Trump. I think the midterms, I think him losing his office as the presidency, I think that is all pretty good proof that America overall would very much like to move on from Donald Trump. Is the Republican, the diehard Republican party base that's going to show up and vote in a primary,

are they done with Donald Trump? That I'm not so sure about. Absolutely no idea. Okay, we got Ryan and we've got Emily who are on standby. Let's go ahead and bring them in, guys, into... Oh, there it is! Look at them! Hey, guys, how are you? Ryan, you look very relaxed. I am. I'm in Western Maryland in a cabin

working on a book. Oh, you look... Don't dox yourself. You look like it. That's a good place to withstand the World War III that we could be facing. That's right. Yeah. Ryan is in the best position of all of us. You got a bunker out there, Ryan. Maybe we'll come join you later. I'll send you the address. OK. Yeah, go ahead. So let me start with you, Emily, since you're, you know, our our right side of this panel.

What do you think that what do you think Trump's position is coming in to this speech? What what does he need to say? Who does he need to reassure? What do you think of his relative weakness, especially vis-a-vis Ron DeSantis? Yeah, I was just trying to work this out in a story that I wrote tonight, because the math to me is, I think, where Trump has a real problem and that you have some three out of 10 voters that support Trump more than they support the Republican Party. That's the hardcore Trump base. That's three out of 10 Republican voters. Now when that is still, like those voters are not going anywhere, but when you combine

that with Donald Trump not being able to pluck off as many independents and even as many Democrats as he used to in the past, or people are just staying home, that makes the national path for Donald Trump really difficult. And it makes the statewide path for Trump-branded candidates really difficult. Now, where DeSantis comes in is that he can make that math work in Florida, is what we're seeing, that he's able to sort of combine the Trump base, which may be some previous Democrat voters, people who previously didn't vote Republican, independents that are willing to vote for someone like that. Ron DeSantis is doing that, and he's bringing in more minorities. So that's where you're getting people saying, clearly, the answer to this question is Ron DeSantis. How could Donald Trump even think

about running again? But the last thing I'll say is before the sort of D.C. commentariat, especially on the right, tries to orchestrate this top-down coup against Trump in favor of DeSantis, they should be aware that there are still people out there. You're asking them to choose between Donald Trump and a regular traditional politician. And it's entirely rational if they say, screw you. I'm not trusting any normal politician. I've been screwed by the system for years. I've been screwed by the political system over and over again. So I'm going to take my chance with Donald Trump. I'd rather put my trust in Donald Trump, who says no to wars, says no to the political establishment, says no.

And whether or not you think that argument's a good one, I personally disagree with it. It's a rational thing for people who have zero trust left in the system to do. And I think people on the right are underestimating the degree to which people will still make that calculus. I completely agree with you, Emily. Ryan, to me, that's a central question. Does the GOP base care about electability when told by elites? What do you think in terms of, well, everything in the context before we get to the election or the announcement tonight? I mean, I think they do and they don't, but it doesn't matter because they don't care what the elites say about electability, if you know what I mean. Like they do care, I think, about electability. And I think

some of them thought, a lot of them thought that Trump could win in 2016. So it wasn't like they were just saying, you know, like, screw this, we're going to throw this guy up just as an FU to the system. And we're fine with Hillary Clinton becoming president. A lot of them thought, you know, they'd been watching Trump on Celebrity Apprentice for years. They're like, this guy's great. Like, this guy can actually beat Hillary Clinton. So they never, a lot of them never quite believed these electability arguments. And I think today they still believe the electability arguments.

But it's cut by the doubt in whether or not elections are credible. So it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out long term in the Republican base, because you saw it in the Georgia runoffs two years ago, that turnout was depressed because Trump was telling everybody that voting doesn't work. And that, you know, going back to that old famous slogan that, you know, if voting mattered, it would be illegal. If voting mattered, they wouldn't let you do it. Trump was really telling them, like, no, they're going to steal it. And so if coming out of this election, Carrie Lake, you know, goes hard on it and Trump goes hard on, you know, stolen votes around the country, that could depress the number of people come out. They might say, you know, in a fair election, he would be electable, but they are not going

to believe that's going to be a fair election. So now you have to throw into the electability conversations questions over whether or not they even trust the elections, which then they're like, well, why am I even engaged in this? So I think it's a it's a it's a deep, long term problem for Republicans that they're going to need to figure out. It's it's such a thorny one. And that's the thing I keep coming back to, Emily.

I'm like, OK, in some different scenario, which I personally don't envision, where Ron DeSantis can somehow beat Trump in a head-to-head primary, like, does he just go away? Does he tell people not to vote? Like, the confounding variables there effectively put him either as a third party or as a spoiler in some way, which is undeniably going to have some impact. And so by holding him hostage, the GOP, as he did in 2016, he always made the case. He's like, look, you're stuck with me. It's very much like you're stuck in this room with me. And if you try and kick me out, well, I'm not just going to take my ball and go home. It's a nice party you got there. Shame if something happened to it. It certainly could. I mean, what do you think? You talk to probably more base people than I do, like people who think of some scenarios where Ron DeSantis could pull this off. What would their counter to somebody

like me be? So Ron DeSantis gave a statement today when he was asked about Donald Trump, where he responded and essentially turned the question around on the media and said, you know, the media has been going after me, after me, after me, but look at the points I've put up on the scoreboard. That's what I'm focused on. And he didn't really take the bait and didn't really engage with Trump, which is something we saw all of those candidates fail to do in 2015 and 2016. They all thought they could go head to head with them. And I'll admit, I thought some of them could have gone head to head if they'd been more aggressive too, but it didn't work. When we saw them try it, it didn't work. So I think what it comes down to is whether there are enough, there are a lot of Republicans

and Republican-leaning voters that are very sick of Donald Trump. They are exhausted. These are persuadable voters in districts like Virginia 7 that are persuadable people that if you put up a so-called normie Republican, I think they can still sort of talk the populist talk, even if they don't walk the walk, and be electable. That said, Ron DeSantis is good proof of that. So are there enough people that in a Republican primary are so done with the Trump show that they will actually vote for Ron DeSantis? I think that's a really tough question in the primary, because if you remember, most Republican voters in 2015 and 2016 rejected Trumpism. They rejected Donald Trump. Most people voted against Donald Trump. But when you have a field that's that split and Trump's

base that is that hardcore, 30% of Republican primary voters, someone is going to have to get over that 30% threshold, which could, you know, it could gain or lose a little bit depending on how the primaries go. Good luck. Well, here's the other thing, Emily, that I have had trouble envisioning is, you know, it's fine for Ron DeSantis took his little jab there, which by the way, he may not have felt like he was going right up against Trump, but I can promise you Donald Trump took that as a full assault, direct attack on to him. So that's one thing. But the other thing is, like, eventually, if you're going to dethrone Trump, you are going to have to go up against him. It's not going to be enough to just sit back and hope this all just falls into your lap. It's not going to work that way. So what is the direct case that you think Ron DeSantis makes against Donald Trump? Imagine they're on the debate stage up against each other. They're really like, who won the presidency before,

who delivered them things that they thought were important and valuable, who continues to own and trigger the libs in all ways that delight them. What is your critique of why they should give up on Trump and go with you? I think he'll go with two really specific things if it ever gets to that. It would be tax cuts and COVID. And he may even throw in there the sort of administrative estate that Trump never did anything with Schedule F. But I think it would be a huge attack on, you know, Ron DeSantis would say, I saw the writing on the wall earlier. I'm a leader. I took actions earlier than Donald Trump. Well, Donald Trump was enabling Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins. I was taking different steps in Florida. And he would say Donald Trump had all the political capital in the world. He had two houses of Congress and the presidency,

and he spent all of his political capital on tax cuts. I do think that's powerful. But the question is whether Ron DeSantis is willing to veer into that lane of clear economic populism, because folks at AEI right now are saying, listen, this election was a resounding defeat for economic populism, which is a bad take because look where Fetterman won. Look where Tim Ryan overperformed. I obviously agree with you on that. And I did a whole thing on Fetterman as kind of a model for Democrats. But I mean, look at who's looking to pony up cash for Ron DeSantis. You got Club for Growth in for him. You got Ken Griffin. I mean, these are not people who are going to be

like, gosh, I really hated those tax cuts. You know, that was terrible. I can't believe Trump did the tax cuts. But the voters would. I think it's a powerful message with voters. And I totally agree with you. Yeah, but he's going to have to answer to his donors ultimately. Yeah, no, I agree with that. I was thinking of your Lever News piece actually exactly. I think it explained the dynamic when it came to economic populism. And then there's the question, is Ron DeSantis willing to be that much different from Dr. Oz? Is he? Because that's an open question. That's such a great point. You know,

Ryan, what do you make in terms of the dynamic having covered this? Also, I'm curious for what you think the like the Democratic machine's reaction to all of this is. Are they ecstatic about the Trump announcement tonight, especially ahead of Georgia? What if we zoom out from the GOP primary and to the meta kind of political effect of all this, what are some of the ripples that this is going to cause going forward over the next two years? They're a little bit reluctant to be too publicly celebratory about it because they remember being celebratory in 2016 and being so excited that because they had helped or they had pied Piper Trump to the nomination, as Hillary Clinton's team put it, that now they were going to just coast

through the general election. Like they remember that. That wasn't that long ago, yet they still feel the same way. And there is some justification to that feeling. And I think that Trump's success is actually a thing that is making it more difficult for him to have success this time. In other words, in 2016, it wasn't just that he brought out a whole bunch of new voters to politics that hadn't been participating before.

It was also that Democrats were demobilized and disengaged, and Hillary Clinton did not bring them out. That's the thing that allowed him to win by tens of thousands of votes in a couple of different states. And Trump's own success, you know, coupled with Trump's kind of behavior and Trump's character and who Trump is as president, changed that calculation fundamentally. Like, probably for the rest of our lives, we're not going to have a situation where Democrats are not engaged in an election. Like Like at least as long as Trump is

alive, they're going to be involved. And so that's why in 2020, Trump again increased turnout, brought more voters who hadn't come out in 2016. He brought them out again in 2020, but Democrats brought out even more because they're so angry at Trump. And in order for either DeSantis to beat Trump or for Trump to beat DeSantis in a primary, they're going to have to be doing all sorts of things that are riling up people on MSNBC every single day. And so if DeSantis does beat Trump in the primary, to Democratic voters, he will be as hostile a figure to them as Trump because he will have had to kind of out Trump Trump on the way to the nomination. And so that, that means they're going to have to find even more voters who didn't come out in 2020 because Democrats are going to continue to find young people and other people who are, you know, infuriated at the MAGA Republicans. And, you know, and it's going to make, it's going to make it so that Trump isn't going to be able to kind of sleepwalk his way

into the white house again. That's over. Like you get one shot at that. Heads up to the audience. We will bring the stream as soon as it begins. We're watching a little bit about what's happening here. The former president making his way to the podium right now through a seat in Mar-a-Lago. Looks like he's more or less on time. Yeah, he's on time, which I'm absolutely shocked by. And under budget. Probably under budget, on time and under budget. Just so everybody knows, Jared is in the room. If you've got that, we were

rid of the man once upon a time. We'll never be rid of any of these people. There it is. Okay, we'll keep talking. Very ornate setting there at Mar-a-Lago. Crystal, I'm going to let you do this because you used to do live TV. How do you narrate whenever literally nothing is going on? Yeah, you've got a lot of

backs of heads I see here. Yeah, you've got, he's walking now. Now he's walking left. Walking away from the podium. Ryan, while we're waiting for the former president to finally get around to speaking,

quickly, if you could, you know, what is your expectation about a potential indictment and whether that could help or hurt Trump here? I mean, it probably helps in the primary. I mean, unless he gets actually convicted, right? Right. That's the other funny thing.

Now, where is the escalator, though? Oh, no escalator. It's not a presidential announcement without an escalator. I will say, it's nice to see the red tie back. Every once in a while, he would flirt with a different colored tie. It's good to see him return entirely. Oh, listen to that beautiful music, folks. Amazing.

I'm getting a lot of flashbacks to my time as a White House correspondent. I had to sit through so many of these goddamn events. Same music every single time. Same grifters that are in the audience. What did he call you that one time? He called me Sager. Sager. Not just one time. He actually never learned how to pronounce my name. Sager. Became a little bit of a problem

in India. People were like, why doesn't he correct him? And I was like, you know, I'm not going to go ahead and correct the president whenever he's calling on you in a press conference. Alright, what do you think, Chris? Is he coming to the mic? Alright, let's take a listen, everybody. Let's you in a press conference. All right. What do you think, Chris? Is he coming to the mic? All right.

Let's take a listen, everybody. Let's listen in. Former president. USA! USA! USA! USA! Well, thank you very much. And on behalf of Melania, myself, and our entire family, I want to thank you all for being here tonight. It's a very special occasion at a very special place. You and all of those watching are the heart and soul of this incredible movement and greatest country in the history of the world. It's very simple. There has never been anything like it, this great movement of ours. never been anything like it, and perhaps there will never be anything like it again. There's never been anything to compete with what we have all done.

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, and my fellow citizens, America's comeback starts right now. Two years ago, when I left office, the United States stood ready for its golden age. Our nation was at the pinnacle of power, prosperity, and prestige, towering above all rivals, vanquishing all enemies, and striding into the future, confident and so strong. In four short years, everybody was doing great. Men, women, African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, everybody was thriving like never before. There was never a time like this. We turned the page on decades of globalist sellouts and

one-sided trade deals, lifted millions out of poverty, and together we built the greatest economy in the history of the world. When the virus hit our shores, I took decisive action and saved lives and the U.S. economy. And by October of the same year, America was roaring back with the number one fastest economic recovery ever recorded. How about that? All of the incoming administration and all they had to do was just sit back and watch. Inflation was non-existent. Our southern border was by far the strongest ever. And because the border was so tight, drugs were coming into our country at the lowest level in many, many years. Importantly,

after decades of rising energy costs, the United States had finally attained the impossible dream of American energy independence, which soon would have turned into energy dominance. For the first time in memory, China was reeling and back on its heels. You've never seen that before, because the United States was outdoing them on every single front, and China was paying billions and billions of dollars in taxes and tariffs. The farmers know that because they got $28 billion of it. No president had ever sought or received $1 for our country from China until I came along, and we were getting hundreds of billions of dollars. Many people think that because of this, China played a very active role in the 2020 election. Just saying, just saying.

Sure, that didn't happen. Instead of jobs and factories leaving America for China, they were for the first time ever leaving China for America. Businesses were pouring back because of our historic tax and regulation cuts, the biggest in both categories in history, bigger even than what Ronald Reagan was able to produce, and he produced a lot. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea were in check and respected. They respected the United States, and quite honestly, they respected me. I knew them well. I knew them well. The vicious ISIS caliphate, which no president was able to conquer, was decimated by me and our great warriors in less than three weeks, and al-Baghdadi, its founder, was hunted down and killed.

North Korea had not launched a single long-range missile since my summit with Chairman Kim Jong-un nearly three years before we developed a relationship. And that's a good thing, not a bad thing. It's a good thing. Very good thing, actually. Because look at what's happening today. My opponents made me out to be a warmonger and just a terrible person who would immediately go into war. They said during the 2016 campaign that if he becomes president, there will never be a war within weeks. And we will have wars like you've never seen before.

It will happen immediately. And yet, I've gone decades, decades, without a war, the first president to do it for that long a period. The world was at peace. America was at peace. America was prospering. And our country was on track for an amazing future because I made big promises to the American people. And unlike other presidents, I kept my promises.

I kept them. Thank you very much. Under our leadership, we were a great and glorious nation, something you haven't heard for quite a long period of time. We were a strong nation, and importantly, we were a free nation. But now we are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation. For millions of Americans, the past two years under Joe Biden have been a time of pain, hardship, anxiety, and despair. As we speak, inflation is the highest in over 50 years. Gas prices have reached the highest levels in history and expect them to go much higher now that the strategic national reserves, which I filled up, have been virtually drained in order to keep gasoline prices lower just prior to the election.

Joe Biden has intentionally surrendered our energy independence. There is no longer even a thought of dominance, and we are now begging for energy help from foreign nations, many of whom find us detestable. Our southern border has been erased, and our country is being invaded by millions and millions of unknown people, many of whom are entering for a very bad and sinister reason. And you know what that reason is. We will be paying a big price for this invasion into our country for years to come. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of deadly drugs, including very lethal fentanyl, are flooding across the now open and totally porous southern border. The blood-soaked streets of our once great cities are cesspools of violent crimes, which are being watched all over the world as leadership of other countries explain that this is what America and democracy is really all about. How sad. The United States has been embarrassed, humiliated, and weakened for all to see. The disasters in Afghanistan, perhaps the most embarrassing moment

in the history of our country, where we lost lives, left Americans behind, and surrendered $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment anywhere in the world. And Ukraine, which would have never happened if I were your president, are something. And even the Democrats admit that. That's something I've seen them admit over and over again. But our enemies are speaking of us with scorn and laughter and derision because of those two events. But there are many more. Even just today, a missile was sent in probably by Russia to Poland, 50 miles into Poland. And people are going absolutely wild and crazy, and they're not happy. They are very, very angry.

Now we have a president who falls asleep at global conferences, was held in contempt by the British Parliament over Afghanistan. Thanks to the words of wisdom, he said thank you to the wrong country for inviting him to a major summit on the environment of all things. They fly for days to get there, and then he calls the country a name that was actually a country on another continent. And he's leading us to the brink of nuclear war, a concept unimaginable just two short years ago. You cannot mention the nuclear word. It's too devastating. The Green New Deal and the environment which they say may affect us in 300 years

is all that is talked about. And yet nuclear weapons, which would destroy the world immediately, are never even discussed as a major threat. Can you imagine? They say the ocean will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years. But don't worry about nuclear weapons that can take out entire countries with one shot. Something is wrong with their

thinking under Biden and the radical Democrats, America has been mocked, derided, and brought to its knees, perhaps like never before. But we are here tonight to declare that it does not have to be this way. It does not have to be this way. Two years ago, we were a great nation, and soon we will be a great nation again. The decline of America is being forced upon us by Biden and the radical left lunatics running our government right into the ground. This decline is not a fate we must accept. When given the choice boldly, clearly, and directly, I believe the American people will overwhelmingly

reject the left's platform of national ruin, and they will embrace our platform of national greatness and glory to America. Glory. Exactly one week ago, our citizens voted in the important midterm elections. And despite a ridiculously long and unnecessary period of waiting, far longer, in fact, than any third world country. Just a short time ago, the Republicans won back control of the House of Representatives. And it was with a great Trump-endorsed candidate, Congressman-elect Kevin Kiley, who is a fantastic person, a fantastic person. And I'm very happy it was his vote that did it.

But so we now won back. This happened just an hour ago. Much criticism is being placed on the fact that the Republican Party should have done better. And frankly, much of this blame is correct. But the citizens of our country have not yet realized the full extent and gravity of the pain our nation is going through. And the total effect of the suffering is just starting to take hold. They don't quite feel it yet, but they will very soon. I have no doubt that by 2024, it will sadly be much worse, and they will see much more clearly what happened and what is happening to our country, and the voting will be much

different. 2024. Are you getting ready? And I am too. I am too. I do want to point out that in the midterms, my endorsement success rate was 232 wins and only 22 losses. You don't hear that from the media. And this is an elegant night and an elegant press place. And I'm not going to use the term fake news media. So we're going to keep it very elegant. But you don't hear that from the media. But I think you will, because people are starting to see what happened. That's some score. And in in the primaries was 98.6%, but they were still trying to blame me. And the reason for the success and that unprecedented success rate is that the Trump administration

changed our nation on trade, on securing the border. We're the strongest, safest border ever in the history of our country. On Islamic terrorism, we had practically just about, not that I can think of, no Islamic attacks, terrorist attacks during the Trump administration. And in fact, we got along very well with the various countries, including coming up with the Abraham Accords. That's a great thing, the Abraham Accords.

It's a great thing, the Abraham Accords. But it's because of cutting taxes and cutting regulations at the highest level ever and on building the greatest economy. Anytime in the history of the world there's never been an economy like we had just two years ago. Despite the outcome in the Senate, we cannot lose hope, and we must all work very hard for a gentleman and a great person named Herschel Walker, a fabulous human being who loves our

country and will be a great United States senator. Herschel Walker, get out and vote for Herschel, and he deserves it. He was an incredible athlete. He'll be an even better senator. Get out and vote for Herschel Walker. We elected a group of incredibly talented America First leaders who will be stars of our party

for many years to come. In the popular vote, another thing that's not discussed for the House, we must remember that Republicans won 5 million more votes, the largest margin in many, many years, over the Democrats. Five million more votes, that's a big thing. Breaking the radical Democrats' grip on Congress was crucial. So in other words, because of our great congressmen and all of our great congressmen and congresswomen, we have taken over Congress. Nancy Pelosi has been fired. I told them, I said, if you just keep a little bit lower standard, you're going to have a big

victory. They said, let's win by 40 seats. Let's win by 50. I said, if you win by two seats, be happy. But she's on her way to another country right now. She's been fired. But we always have known that this was not the end. It was only the beginning of our fight to rescue the American dream. And it's a word you don't use. Two words. I don't want to be Joe. It's two words.

American dream. That was not good what he did. There are a lot of bad things like going to Idaho and saying, welcome to the state of Florida. I really love it. In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for President of the United States. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. All of you. Thank you. Thank you. So many incredible friends and family here tonight. It's such a beautiful thing. Some

people say, how do you speak before so many people all the time? When there's love in the room, it's really easy, if you want to know the truth. Really, you ought to try it sometime. Together, we will be taking on the most corrupt forces and entrenched interests imaginable. Our country is in a horrible state. We're in grave trouble. This is not a task for a politician or a conventional candidate. This is a task for a great movement that embodies the courage, confidence, and the

spirit of the American people. This is a movement. This is not for any one individual. This is a job for tens of millions of proud people working together from all across the land and from all walks of life, young and old, black and white, Hispanic and Asian, many of whom we have brought together for the very, very first time. If you look at the numbers, if you look at what's happened with Hispanic, with African American, with Asian, and just look at what's happening. This is a party that has become much bigger, much stronger, much more powerful, can do much more good for our country. This is a job for grandmothers and construction workers, firefighters, builders, teachers, doctors, and farmers who cannot stay quiet any longer. You can't stay quiet any longer.

You're angry about what's happening to our country. Our country is being destroyed before your very eyes. It's a job for every aspiring young person and every hardworking parent, for every entrepreneur and underappreciated police officer who is ready to shout for safety in America. The police are being treated so badly. These are great people. They can straighten out the crime. They're the ones that know how to do it. We have to give them back their respect and their dignity.

This will not be my campaign. This will be our campaign altogether. Because the only force strong enough to defeat the massive corruption we are up against is you, the American people. It's true. The American people, the greatest people on earth. We love them all. And we love both sides. We're going to bring people together. We're going to unify people. And it was happening in the previous administration, previous to the previous. And what was bringing them together was success. Prior to COVID coming in, the people were calling me, that were calling me. You wouldn't believe it.

People that were so far left, I figured they'd never speak to me and I would never speak to them. But our success was so incredible, like never before. And then COVID started coming in from China. We call it the China virus. Some people call it other things. But it was devastating and we built it back and did an incredible job. But when people say Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives, I say we can all get together, and we were doing that.

That was happening just prior, because the success was greater than this country has ever had. We were leapfrogging China and leapfrogging everybody else, and everybody wanted a piece of it. But just as I promised in 2016, I am your voice. I am your voice. The Washington establishment wants to silence us, but we will not let them do that.

What we have built together over the past six years is the greatest movement in history because it is not about politics. It's about our love for this great country, America, and we're not going to let it fail. I am running because I believe the world has not yet seen the true glory of what this nation can be. We have not reached that pinnacle, believe it or not. In fact, we can go very far. We're going to have to go far. First, we have to get out of this ditch. And once we're out, you'll see things that nobody imagined for any country. It's called the United States of America, and it's an incredible place. We are Americans, and we do not have to endure what has taken place in Washington, D.C.

This is our country, our government, and the Carters of Power, or they're our Carters. They're not their Carters. These are our Carters. And we are coming to take those Carters back. So from now until Election Day in 2024, which will come very quickly, we'll go, look at how time flies. Look how fast it's all going. I will fight like no one has ever fought before. We will defeat the radical left Democrats that are trying to destroy our country from within and likewise protect us all. We want to protect us. We have to be protected from all of those nations out there that are looking to destroy us from beyond our shores. There are lots of nations that hate us gravely. And that's the problem when they look at us in disarray like we are right now,

when we go to them begging for oil and we have more liquid gold under our feet than they have or any other nation has, and we don't use it because we're going to them, it's crazy what's happening. We can't let it continue. Joe Biden is the face of left-wing failure and Washington corruption. He had a big G20 dinner tonight. Everybody flew over to wherever they flew over. And guess what? He never showed up. They're still looking for him.

What's going on? G20, I used to love that. The leaders, they used to make deals for our country like you wouldn't believe. It was one, give me the next one, give me the next one. And we got them to stop taking advantage of our country. Every nation took advantage of our country. We renegotiated deals with Mexico and Canada, USMCA. We got rid of the worst trade deal ever made, ever made, NAFTA, the worst trade deal ever made. That's why the farmers love Trump, because we did a great job, but manufacturers also. And we did a deal. We restructured our terrible deal with Japan. And I did it with Prime Minister Abe, a great man who

unfortunately is so sad. He was a great friend of mine, but a great man, loved his country so much. But we restructured and made it a really terrific deal. And with South Korea and so many other countries. And the best of all was what we did to China. We made an incredible deal. But after COVID, I don't even bother talking about it because the devastation that that caused for the entire world was too much to bear. I will ensure that Joe Biden does not receive

four more years in 2020. Can't do it. Our country could not take that. And I say that not in laughter. I say that in tears. Our country could not take four more years. It can only take so much. It's all very fragile to start off with. It can only take so much. It's all very fragile to start off with. It can only take so much. In 2020, I received the largest number of votes of any sitting president in history by a lot. And we will do it again, but with even more votes this time. Many have noted that huge gains we have made with Latino voters, and I believe we will set even greater records with this crucial vote in 2024. The Hispanic voter, the Latino voter has been unbelievable.

Great people, very entrepreneurial people, and they want security. And everyone thought when I did the wall, I built the wall, and they thought, oh, that would hurt me with the Hispanic vote. No, it helped me because they understood they wanted safety. They wanted security. And they understood the border better than anybody else. So they were amazed that we started that trend. And now we're continuing with that trend. You look at what we've done in Florida, what everybody's doing now in Florida and Texas, along the border in Texas, won every single community. I won every single community. Governor of Texas called. Great gentleman just got reelected. And he said to me, I'd like to talk to you for a second. Well, he said, you've done something that nobody else has done. You've won every single area along the borders, the longest since Reconstruction.

I said Reconstruction. I guess you call that the Civil War. That's what I call it. That's what I call it. Governor Abbott, very good man, and he's working hard. But it's horrible because what's happening is they're just sending hundreds of thousands of people right through his state, right through Arizona, right through all of the states. What's happening is they're coming up all of the states. And we can't have it anymore. This campaign will be about issues, vision, and success.

And we will not stop. We will not quit until we've achieved the highest goals and made our country greater than it has ever been before. And we can do that. We can do it. Our victory will be built upon big ideas, bold ambitions, and daring dreams for America's future. We need daring dreams. It is not enough merely to complain or oppose. We don't want to be critics. We don't want to be complainers. I never wanted to be a critic.

I never respected critics. They tell people what's wrong, but they can't do it themselves. We will win because we will fight with every measure of our strength and with every ounce of our energy to lift up the working men and working women of America and to restore the fabric of this nation. The radical left

Democrats have embraced an extreme ideology of government domination and control. Our approach is the opposite, one based on freedom, values, individual responsibility, and just plain common sense. It's common sense. In two years, the Biden administration has destroyed the U.S. economy. Just destroyed it. With victory, we will again build the greatest economy ever. It will take place quickly. We will build the greatest economy ever. It will take place quickly. We will build the greatest economy ever. And if you remember, I did it twice. I did it before COVID and then handed off something where the stock market was higher than just prior to COVID coming in. And we did it

twice and we will do it again, but this time we'll do it bigger, stronger, better than anybody can even imagine. And one of the beautiful things of the pause, if there is such a thing, is a beautiful thing, but one of the important factors of the pause, if there is such a thing, is a beautiful thing. But one of the important factors of the pause is that we see how bad they've done. So we will be able to do it properly, and it will be much easier. Everybody will agree with us because everybody sees what a bad job has

been done during this two-year period, and it will be a four-year period. Everybody sees that. It will be much easier for us to do what has to be done. We will immediately tackle inflation and bring down to a level that it was, you know, we were at zero, but actually the best number is 1%. Do you know that? You don't want it really zero. But we were at zero. We actually got it to exactly 1%, the perfect number. One thing every economist agrees, don't have it zero, have it like at 1%. They even say one to two, but I said, let's do 1. And we had it at 1%, and we had it there for a long period of time, and we had the value of the dollar. We had it so that this country could make a lot of money, and I fought other countries where they devalued their dollar, they devalued their currency, whether it was the pound or whether it was the yuan or the yen. And I used to fight

like cats and dogs with the leaders of other countries because they were stealing from us. When they did that, they had artificial devaluations of their currency. It's a very important thing. I haven't even heard it mentioned in two years. That's a very important thing.

It's very hard for us to compete when they do that artificially. And they had to pay a big price when they did it. And they never really did it for very long. I said, we're not going to do business with you anymore as a country. And they believed me. And they let it go back up. Instead of putting America last, as the Biden administration has done very, very openly and bravely, because I can't imagine saying, let's put America last. I think it takes courage. We will again put America first.

Every policy. Thank you very much. We do love our country, isn't it? That's why we're here. I didn't need this. I had a very nice, easy life. This is something I didn't need, and a lot of you people don't need either. But we love our country. We have to take care of our country. We have to save our country. Every policy must be geared toward that which supports the American worker, the American family, and businesses both large and small, and allows our country to compete with other nations on a very level playing field, which we never had until I came along and the Trump administration came along. And now we're losing it. They're moving back into China. They're moving back into these other

countries. It's horrible. That means low taxes, low regulations and fair trade, much of which I've already completed, but now will even greatly enhance. Other countries should pay for the privilege of coming into the American marketplace. They have to pay to come into our country and make all of that money, take it away from us. And thanks to the Trump administration, still the best and the biggest country in the world is what we have. We have the best and the biggest. If you remember, for many years, you can look in your projection books, China was going to take over from us as the largest economy in the world in 2018 or 2019. I said, I don't like that timing. And I was with President Xi, who's now president for life. I call him king. He said, no, no, I'm not the king. I said, yes, you are the king. You're president for life. It's the same thing. But I said, president, president, you can't do these

things. You can't remember they had a China 25. That means China was going to take over virtually the whole world economy by 25. I said, that's not a nice sign. I don't want that sign. They took it down. They took down the whole slogan. Probably will be coming back at some point in the near future. But I found it very insulting. I said, I find that very insulting. On day one, we will end Joe Biden's war on American energy. And you will see when that happens, you will see energy costs come down. And because energy is so big and so important, you will see inflation dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping. You

will see it come down. It's a thing of beauty. And you wouldn't think it's that complicated. Now, what has been complicated a little bit is what's happened to so many other things, I believe, originally started by this energy disaster. We were $1.87 a gallon for gasoline, and now it's hitting $5, $6, $7, and even $8, and it's going to go really bad. The socialist disaster known as the Green New Deal, which is destroying our country and the many crippling regulations that it has spawned, will be immediately terminated so that our country can again breathe and grow and thrive like it should. It's very, very much hurting our country. Germany tried it, you know. Germany tried it.

They were up for about a year. Remember I sent to Angela? Remember Angela? Do you remember Angela? Nobody's remembering her now. Angela Merkel, I sent her a white flag of surrender. She said, but why, but why do you send this to me, Donald? I said, Angela, I sent it to you because this is a flag of surrender. You are getting 78% of your energy from Russia. And when that happens, history has proven that it's not good for Germany. Just take a look over the last 150 years. It hasn't been good.

What I didn't know would take place so fast. And Germany closed, as you know, all of its coal-powered plants and its nuclear plants. They closed everything. And now they're building coal plants, and they're building them fast. And China's building a coal plant every week. Every week, they open up another. And then they talk about all of the things that they do environmentally. They are watching us die with the Green New Deal, with our windmills and with our solar that doesn't have the power to fire up our great factories and our great plants. They are watching us die and they're laughing as it happens.

Remember, economic security is national security, and that's what it is. We need economic security. That is why we will launch an all-out campaign to eliminate America's dependence on China. We will bring our supply chains, which are a disaster right now. You can't get anything. And good luck getting a turkey for Thanksgiving. Number one, you won't get it. And if you do, you're going to pay three to four times more than you paid last year. But we will bring our supply chains and manufacturing base back home, as we were strongly doing during the Trump administration. And we will systematically bring back wealth, health and success to the American middle class and to America itself. Please.

Please sit down. I feel so guilty having you stand. No. No, you've been standing for the whole event. I feel very guilty. I don't want that to happen. To every worker and family struggling to survive in the Biden economy with inflation destroying your family and your life, this campaign will be for you. Help is on the way. Joe Biden has abolished America's borders. We are going to restore and secure America's borders just like we had them before. Best ever.

We built the wall, and now we will add to it. Now we built the wall, we completed the wall, and then we said, let's do more. And we did a lot more. And as we were doing it, we had an election that came up. And when they came in, they had three more weeks to complete the additions to the wall, which would have been great. And they said, no, no, we're not going to do that. And that's when I realized that they actually wanna have this disaster known as open borders. Hard to believe, isn't it?

But one of the reasons we had so much success at the border was because of the fact that two things, we got Mexico to give us free of charge, 28,000 soldiers, that helps, and the president of Mexico is a great gentleman, by the way. Socialist, but that's okay, he can't have everything. But he's a great man and a great friend of mine. But 28,000 soldiers while we were building the wall.

And then when the wall was finished, that's how we set all these records. We have records that nobody can even compete with. Right now, it's a disaster. I believe it's 10 million people coming in, not three or four million people. They're pouring into our country. We have no idea who they are and where they come from. We have no idea what's happening to our country. We're being poisoned.

Within moments of my inauguration, catch and release will be gone forever. Remain in Mexico. Remain in Mexico, which was so important. Everybody came in here. They remained here and they never left. And you couldn't get them. You couldn't find them. I had a policy, remain in Mexico. And if you think it was easy for me to get the president of Mexico to agree to that, it wasn't. But we got it. And they terminated it. Can you believe? So now they come in here, they stay, and we have no idea where they are. They get lost. And it's very dangerous for our country. And again, I'll say we're going to pay a big price someday for what they're doing.

We will begin the process of safely removing the illegal alien criminals that have been unlawfully allowed into our country. We have no choice. We have no choice. And in restoring border security, we will stop the flow of deadly drugs and horrible human trafficking, which both have been set upon us like never before. The human trafficking, you think of it as an ancient thing. It's not ancient.

Because of the internet, human trafficking is worse than it's ever been in history. And we stopped them at the southern border, which is the number one port all over the world, the southern border. So much comes through the southern border. All right. So we have been listening to the former president, Donald Trump, officially announced that he will run for the presidency for a third time. I'm here with Sagar. We're going to get Ryan and Emily here back in a minute. Different speech, frankly, than what he normally gives and what I expected.

I will say something that will cut Donald Trump to his core. It was boring. And I guess, I mean, the positive is that if you wanted to spin it this way, he stayed away from the crazy conspiracy theories, the obsession with 2020, even like the longtime obsession with Russiagate and the Mueller report and all of those greatest hits. He really stuck to, you know, core message about here's what Biden did wrong. Here's what I did right during my administration. Here's what we'll do going forward. Totally on script, which is very unusual for this man. Yeah. My top line takeaway is all stylistic and less substance, which is that that is probably the most low energy, high profile speech I've ever seen Trump give. Was the most standard Republican

speech I've ever seen from him. Standard, scripted, no stop this deal. I was anticipating having to come out and be like, okay, YouTube gods, just for the record, the 2020 election was not stolen. He did not make one claim. I was watching very closely while we both were, when he started to say in 2020, I got more votes than any other president in history.

That is true. Actually, it's just Biden happened to get more. And he didn't elaborate on that. So from my own personal observation, I have seen the man, covered him for years at the White House, at ceremonial events with more energy than he had tonight. And I can't help but wonder what's going on here. I have a couple of theories. Go ahead. I have a theory, which is who's abandoning him in droves right now?

Right. Elites. Yes. The elites of the party think this guy's crazy. He's out of control. He can't win. He's a loose cannon. We can't go forward with this dude. He's a disaster for the party. opinion, this performance, very staid, very stable, very stable genius vibes here on prompter, on, you know, a sort of normal message that might potentially appeal to independence, leading with inflation and gas prices and, you know, leaving the crazy aside. That, to me, seems to be pitched at the elites of the world, the media elites, the party elites, the sort of like

thought leaders of the Republican Party. So I don't know that the speech was really for the base. I think it was to try to bring some comfort to that group of people. I share your conclusion, which is I think if the Republicans had a red wave, we're looking at a totally different speech. We're looking at a stop the steal affirmation. We're talking about Carrie Lake. We're talking about Blake Masters. We'd be talking about the Secretary of State candidates. This was, and again, I want to reiterate,

I've watched him a lot. I remember covering him at like the Diwali celebration of the White House. And he was more off script there than he is here. I've never seen him stick to a teleprompter in my life

to the degree that he has tonight. The take from Mick Mulvaney, which I don't know if this is, if I agree with this or not, but he was like, wow, he stuck on to the teleprompter. If he had done this in 2020, he would have won. That's one theory of Trump is like, oh, if you kept him in line and you didn't let him be crazy. But I mean, people also like get excited by the crazy and the entertainment value and they're there for the show.

This was not a show for anyone other than, you know, a small group of basically like Republican tastemakers to demonstrate to them like, OK, this time I'm going to be calm. I'm going to carry the message that you want me to carry, that you believe will resonate with independents. And so I really think that's ultimately who it was pitched towards. You know, I mean, he told a story. It was there was no need for the speech to be as long as it was either. Like you could have said everything that he is still saying, apparently in like 20 minutes. But, you know, he told the story about the way he sees his administration. This was a golden age. He

described it as he talked about the economic numbers and we were poised for all this success. And then you bring in Joe Biden harps on some of the Biden, you know, gaffes and mental stumbles. And also, I thought it was interesting, you know, the way that he really talked a significant amount about Ukraine and the peril that we're in with regards to potential nuclear war. And so clearly is going to sort of lean into that, which I do think has some potency with the electorate, ultimately. Yeah. So I wrote down a couple of quotes, which I thought were very important. He said, quote, two years under Trump, under Biden, which he referred to as the pause, pain, hardship and despair, inflation, the highest gas prices in history, expecting to go higher. Here was the most important line of the speech

to me, which was he put the blame of the 2020 election on the voters. He said, quote, the citizens of our country have not yet grasped the total effect of the suffering. They don't quite feel it yet, but they will very soon. I have no doubt in 2024 there will be, and the voting will be much different. So he's saying his theory that he's putting out there is things are really bad, but people it hasn't totally set in for people yet. And that's why the results didn't go the way we thought. The other thing he threw out there was that he was like, oh, I told the Republicans like, oh, if you if you win the House by two seats, we're going to get 40. And so he was trying to also sort of spin the very disappointing night into, you know, oh, actually, you took back the house. You sent Nancy packing. She's out of the country now.

So it was actually a win. So I think the fact is, and I'm monitoring continuing, it's been he's been speaking now for 51 minutes to have no stop the steal in the last 51 minutes is stunning to see from Donald Trump. Yeah, especially if had two years, January 6 on Truth Social, all you hear about all the time. But look, here's the one thing I know about Trump. No matter how many times he sticks to the script, acts presidential. Yeah.

He'll be back. I don't know how long it'll take. It could take a day. It could be one hour later. I can guarantee you this. He is going to be pissed as hell at the media response to all of this. So we were watching. That's important. Yeah. So none of the major networks, as you said, the actual like ABC, NBC, CBS, none of them carried the speech. MSNBC did

not cover the speech. CNN cut the speech at the 35 minute mark. Fox News cut it about seven minutes before we did. And that's during Sean Hannity's hour. Exactly. Hannity kicked it to a pro-Trump panel, basically thinking our panel of Pete Hegseth and Sean Hannity breaking down Trump 2024, more important than the man himself. That is the ultimate repudiation. I mean, look, we would have stayed with it if there was anything interesting, quote unquote. Yeah. And by the way, we have our producer monitoring it in case something does interesting happen. Well, we can always jump back into it. But I think that media piece is really important for a couple of reasons. First of all, I mean, part of the reason he got

off the ground in 2015 was because of the media obsession with him. I mean, when he announced and he said the thing about immigrants, rapists, criminals, some of them I presume are good people, that triggered an entire media firestorm. And that actually is what gave him lift initially in the campaign. Remember the announcement he had to hire actors to go? It's not like he had a grassroots base to start with. Now he can't necessarily take that amount of media attention for granted, obviously, if they're not playing the speech. Now, I think from a news like journalism perspective, I think that's a mistake because you do have a man who's a former president.

He's announcing his next campaign for the presidency. He's very likely to be the Republican nominee. So I think there's a lot of news value in covering what he has to say here. But I also think that the reason why he has himself so hemmed in in this speech and isn't making the crazy voter fraud claims is because he wanted to get that mainstream coverage. He wanted the speech to be broadcast. He showed up right on time at 9 p.m. That was very shocking. So that, again, he increases his chances that these networks are going to be there, that it's going to be primetime, that they're going to take it. And then by staying away from the crazy claims, it makes it more palatable for them to be able to cover what he's saying.

Yeah, that the media angle, I think, cannot be overstated. That's very important for our major takeaways from this speech. But I think overall, the scriptedness of it, the content itself. I mean, look, I covered Trump many, you know, a long time. And that was just very boilerplate what the advisors put into there. From what I've read, his advisors had wanted to actually keep him under 45 minutes. I mean, look, we're not the only ones who eventually cut away because it was just frankly getting boring. Like we could watch not only in terms of numbers going down, but you can sense, and we saw some of you,

thank you, by the way, at the super chats, were like, bring back breaking points. This is getting boring. I think the reason why that matters is his ability to transfix and center the entire culture. I've always thought of Trump. He was not just a president. He wasn't just a politician. He was a cultural figure. For some reason, it's just not there right now. And maybe that some of that is structural, the networks and all of them not cutting it. But at the same time, everybody's in the ratings business. Like, yeah, if you if Trump is doing something interesting, you stay with it. So, look, I think. Well, what he's always understood is the way to get the most media attention is to say the most insane thing that you can. That's how you get out your whole thing going ultimately.

But I think you're right that after the losses of his candidates, especially, you know, Kerry Lake and some of the most prominent stop-the-steal election deniers, he felt like he needed to put a more chaste presidential quote-unquote image forward for the elites to keep, you know, the entire thing from kind of coming apart. Let's go ahead and bring back Brian and Emily. I want to hear what their take was on the speech. And I think they're standing by. There they are.

There we go. Emily, let me start with you. What were your overall takeaways from what we listened to of Trump's speech? I'm curious about the optics. So I agree with a lot of what both of you just said. And I also think, though, that for Donald Trump, even in the content of the speech, what makes Donald Trump Donald Trump? It gets to this tension that actually you guys are talking about with this media angle is that what's always differentiated Donald Trump from every other boilerplate Republican candidate is that he says crazy things. He gets tons of media attention and he then becomes the sun that our culture orbits. Like it's, everything is just in Donald Trump's orbit. The entire culture becomes in Donald Trump's orbit. And without that,

if, when he's going for the sort of normal optics of himself, you know, at a, at a resort, at a hotel, in a ballroom, granted a very ornate ballroom. I saw someone on Twitter say that Trump was announcing Louis the 14th was going to be his vice presidential candidate, which I thought was apt. Um, it's, it's just not, how can you take, it's like Trump is trying to do Trump without Trump, right? Like that's the big thing in Trump circles is like, let Trump be Trump, or you can't have Trump without Trump, right? Like that's the big thing in Trump circles is like, let Trump be Trump or you can't have Trump without Trump. Like DeSantis can never be Trump without Trump

because it's impossible. Then why is Donald Trump himself trying to do it? I like Crystal's theory that it's a bid for the sort of rubber stamp from Republican elites that are tempted by DeSantis right now and also perhaps independent voters. But again, like Donald Trump is not going to win and beat Joe Biden by being Dr. Oz. Yeah, I completely Ryan snap takeaway.

What'd you think? What'd you make of everything? One of the big draws of Donald Trump in 2016 was the fact that you weren't even sure if he wanted to win the presidency. Yeah, he just he just wanted to get up on the stage, get up on the debate stage, say what he was going to say, didn't matter who he offended, and he's just going to rock the boat and let the chips fall where they fell. That was a real appeal for people. There was an authenticity to that. There's a real striving from him on that stage. The energy that it takes for him to read from the teleprompter rather than be himself shows just how desperately he wants to get back to the White House. And there's something deeply pathetic about that desperation. Every politician has it, but that just means he's now like every

other politician. And so it just undercuts so much of the energy that he had. I think Crystal makes a great point of the paradox that he has to kind of rein it in in order to get attention. But by reining it in, he will get less attention. And it goes back to the question of what would his prospects look like if he hadn't inspired a mob to sack the Capitol on January 6th? Because that was the moment where Twitter, Facebook, the whole media were like, okay, you crossed a line here. And so now, even though this is great for ratings and great for numbers,

we're dialing this back here. And so now he can't do the same shtick and get the attention, but without the shtick, he doesn't get the attention. So who is he? Yeah, and even the shtick is old. I mean, that's part of it like let's not pretend like these news organizations are like doing the right their civic duty by not platforming false election whatever no they like they don't think he's gonna write the way that he used to write i mean that's part of the decision making that goes in here and for him

that's devastating because that's everything for him and that's a lot of his appeal is like his ability to touch the nerve and say the thing you're not supposed to say and piss off the person you're not supposed to piss off and offend them and like everybody freak out about it. And if he's lost his ability to do that, then, I mean, he really has lost a core element of what the past, you know, however many years have ultimately been about. You know, Emily, one thing that I wanted to ask you specifically about is it's noteworthy to me that he doesn't really, he's not all in on the new cultural fights on the right. So none of the school stuff comes up, you know, on like, quote unquote, gender ideology, none of, of no CRT. He didn't use the word woke a single time while we were listening, which from a Republican is like, whoa, you know, this is crazy. So that was what what do you make of that? Is that just, you know, he doesn't feel like that's politically that salient or that powerful, packs that much of a punch?

Is it just those aren't the issues that he's ever really been all in on or particularly passionate about? What do you make of that? I think it's a fascinating point. And I actually think it's interesting in context of what he didn't talk about this time either. He used to talk about how everyone would have health insurance, and it really pissed a lot of established Republicans off. He used to talk about, I will never touch your Social Security. He used to talk about people struggling to feed their families, working multiple jobs, forever wars. This time, he sounded like he was upset that Joe Biden wasn't waging war enough. I mean, seriously, it was just a very different Donald Trump. And I think part of that problem is two things. One,

it's when you're an incumbent or you've already been in office and you didn't drain the swamp, it becomes enormously more difficult to make the case that you are then going to go in and drain the swamp. And secondly, I think Hillary Clinton, the reason Donald Trump won in 2016, among the many reasons, was that Hillary Clinton is the perfect foil. Almost in the same way Fetterman is just like the great foil for Dr. Oz and vice versa. I don't think you get Donald Trump as president if he's running against someone other than a Clinton. And when you take that power away from him, and he's now coming into a race where it's him against maybe Ron DeSantis, maybe a Glenn Youngkin, people who have been shaped by the party that he helped reshape. It's just completely different. And he seems to be in this sort of straight jacket.

It's like he's going for the 2012 autopsy version of Donald Trump, where there was very little economic populism. He talked about trade deals. He talked about the border. But that's all pretty, I mean, standard Republican fare at this point. It's not signature Trumpism. And I just don't think you can have one without the other and have the same effect on the electorate. So that's the real, real conundrum. And also didn't talk about the FBI. He didn't talk about Russiagate as someone earlier, Soccer Crystal, you mentioned. And so it's just a very, very different version. So I'll say a couple of things, little updates. There are, I think, a couple of, I think, important ones for us to discuss. He said, quote, I am a victim of political corruption, alluding to the FBI. He said, and I was anticipating this as kind of a hit back

against potential Ron DeSantis attacks. He said he would restore any unvaccinated member of the U.S. military back to his jobs. Third, and this is the most that he's gone so far in terms of voting, he just said and called for an end to early voting. He said, to prevent cheating, I will restore voter ID. We will have only paper ballots. We will have same day voting. And we all want all votes to be counted on election night, saying, quote, our country is a laughingstock right now. What do you make of that, Ryan, in the context of, obviously, going against mail-in ballots didn't help the Republicans in Georgia in 2020,

certainly didn't help here in 2022. I think it's fascinating that after all the Stop the Steal talk, this is the furthest that he's willing to go so far. And it's suicidal. Mail-in ballots help the party that use mail-in ballots more than the other party. Like, if everybody equally uses mail-in ballots, then, you know, it's not going to help one party or the other. But as you saw in, say, Nevada, you know, you had several weeks of early voting in which Democrats are banking all of their votes. And I told Emily this on the day of the election.

I talked to a Republican operative that morning. He's like, we feel really good about Nevada. We're just getting pretty nervous about this weather report that it might snow in Reno and it might rain in Las Vegas. So you put all of your eggs in the election day basket. And if you get a freak snowstorm in Reno, then you're screwed. It rains in Vegas. You're screwed.

You have some computer outages in Maricopa County, and you have long lines, and Republicans can't vote. You're screwed. So here's Donald Trump again telegraphing to his supporters not to do early voting. And the fact that he wants to get rid of it, that's cute. But like, he doesn't run the governorships of Pennsylvania, of Wisconsin, of Michigan. He lost all those secretary of state races. So he doesn't have the power to implement that by the 2024 election. So all that his words are doing now are discouraging Republicans from taking up mail-in balloting, which is just going to hurt them in the long run. Emily, I want to pick up on something you were saying. You were talking about, like, you know, we're sort of missing the core of Trumpism or the core of the MAGA base in the speech.

And I was asking myself, well, what is that core at this point? You know, after, like, it clearly is not the same messaging or rhetoric, as you were pointing out, that was there in 2016, where, you know, there were some parts that really scrambled the political circuitry. And what it really comes down to in terms of what he has centered the party around is the stop the steal conspiracy. I mean, that is the beating heart of the movement. That's why you had so many election deniers who got through primaries and ended up in positions where they might have won elections. Many of them just lost. But that was a real litmus test. And that was a real energizer. And I mean, I understand that because if you genuinely, genuinely believe that a presidential election was just stolen, like, yeah, that would be a very motivating issue.

So I think if he's trying to take that off the table when he has spent years making that the center of what everybody in the party cares about, I mean, you know, yeah, they care about immigration, but that's not like what it was in 2016. Build the wall is not the thing that it was at that point. You know, they care about inflation. They care about these other things. But the true, like, passionate, beating heart of Trumpism at this point is stop the steal. And it was really used as a litmus test. That's the exact right phrase for it. And by the way, I just got a text from somebody who's in the room at the speech right now as it's ongoing, who said that people are leaving, like people are walking out of the room.

And that's, yeah, sad. So that was the sort of word that was, I got in a text message, basically, that it felt sad. And it's, I think, kind of a remarkable thing. He continues to go on. Now, this guy, he holds court for hours. He has hours and hours long rallies. I don't know what the audience is like, how it compares to a rally in this case.

I would assume it's more political professionals and journalists than it is, you know, the sort of tailgaters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. But to your question, Crystal, it's like when you have Donald Trump in this speech going just like kind of in the establishment Republican direction to appeal to maybe to the political elites, to appeal maybe to independents and not really getting into the, it was a distraction. Like it talks to, to me, it speaks to how much Stop the Steal was a distraction for Republicans. Josh Hawley coming out and saying, this last week was the funeral for the Republican party. Well, listen, I wish that were the case,

but if it were, why is Donald Trump talking like Donald Trump is talking right now? It's because he didn't have the consensus. He didn't have the will or political ability to really meaningfully drain the swamp. And I know that's a hard thing to do, impossible almost, but what was one of the first things he did? He made the CEO of Exxon, the secretary of state and installed a bunch of people from Goldman in his administration. I mean, it's just outrageous to then come back and pitch and try to capture the same energy. Instead, what he's doing, I really think, is play acting as a president, as he always wanted to be. He's playing the role of president.

We saw the stage set up today. And I just do not think that works for Donald Trump. I don't think the math adds up, frankly. I agree. You know, my main takeaway was this never should have been at Mar-a-Lago. It should have been in a rally. He's always fed off the energy of the room. It was a huge mistake, I think, to do it the way that they did. He's the only one that can have rallies like that right now. It's so true. It's like Trump rallies are like concerts. And in terms of political events, I've been to like two covering them. There is nothing like it.

I've been to many political events. That is in a league of its own. This was boring. You know, he had originally really wanted to announce at J.D. Vance's rally. I think it would have been the right move. And to be honest with you, that probably would have been a better call. And his advisors, I mean, this is all the reporting. Who knows what really happened, but this is what's been leaked. His advisers sort of talked him down off that ledge.

No, you're not. Don't do that. And so the compromise position was, OK, we'll announce that we're going to do the announcement and then we'll do it a week after Election Day. And that'll be the thing. And so you end up that's how you end up with this sort of like compromise speech situation. Obviously, in a week's time, it's not enough to spin up a whole rally. By the way, we just got an update that he's just now wrapping up the speech. So he went about an hour and 10 minutes. Not unusual for him, but it is unusual that it really feels like it's an hour and 10 minutes and felt like it kind of dragged on and on. You know, Ryan, I, I'm curious for your take on the question I asked Emily about how he doesn't, he at least in this speech, did not really go into the new sort of cultural interests and obsessions of the right. His own obsessions obviously stopped the steal.

So he takes that off the table as like an energy and passion generator. And he didn't go into some of the new interests in the sort of like cultural right focuses and fixations. What do you make of that? I mean, my guess is that he's just not into them. Like, yeah, it's just not a thing, right? A cultural conservative. He's like everybody assumes that he's pro-choice. Like, I mean, he's been pro-choice most of his life. He just kind of lied and said he was not. And everybody knew that it was a lie and they're fine with that. They don't care. That's actually a great point because he also, while we were listening, didn't bring up abortion.

So I was just looking because I was about to bring up that point. That is extraordinary. That is extraordinary because that is one of the things that I thought he would really sell to the base on is I'm the dude that got it done. You know, for years and years, we've been talking about it and we've been hoping for it. Well, I put the justices on the court and they did the thing. But, you know, there's been reporting that he was not he saw right away when Dobbs came down that this was going to be a problem for Republicans. There's also reporting that he was not he saw right away when Dobbs came down that this was going to be a problem for Republicans. There's also reporting that he all along he thought Republicans would do OK in the midterms, but he didn't think they were going to have the massive red wave because he thought abortion was going to be a problem for them. So very noteworthy that

he seems to have stayed almost entirely or completely away from a topic that I really thought he would sell hard to the base. Same. Well, and quickly, just when Ron DeSantis won last week, he said Florida is where wokeism goes to die. Like that's a huge contrast with the speech that Trump just gave. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right. And DeSantis wants to be the guy doing cringe on social media. Trump wants to do the cringe on truth social. Truth social. They got all their bases covered. Trump wants to be the guy that's going to ban abortion in the future if you just continue to give him power.

I don't think he wants to be the guy that banned abortion. I think he's embarrassed about that and thinks it was a mistake. Every leak that ever was come out from the Trump advisors was he thought that it was a huge – not a mistake necessarily, but he's like this is going to was a mistake. Every leak that ever was come out from the Trump advisors was, he thought that it was a huge, not a mistake necessarily, but he's like, this is gonna be a problem. Allegedly, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman were all writing before the election

or before his announcement that the part of the reason why he anticipated not having as much of a red wave as he thought abortion was gonna be more important. In a lot of ways, he got almost too much of what he wished for because running on it was very powerful for a lot of these evangelicals. To me, the crazy thing is no stop the steal, no abortion. To have neither of those in a 68-minute speech by Donald Trump in this election, that is just underscores again

that he was not speaking, I think, necessarily to the general election or maybe he or maybe he was in his own mind. But he was trying to shore up, Emily, Republican elites saying this is not, you know, the election announcement that many of them probably would have anticipated. And he's not necessarily giving a reason for Ron DeSantis and others to jump in. Or what am I reading that differently? How would you read it? Yeah, I think he's trying to sort of corner the presidential, like I have been the president of the United States. I accomplished X, Y, and Z. I have been there before. This other guy is just a governor. This other guy is a senator, but I am a former president and this is sort of my lane. I have done it. And I think that's probably why he staged it at Mar-a-Lago in the sort of ornate ballroom,

as opposed to the casual setting of a rally. I don't know that for sure, but I think that's why they tried to make it look very formal. I think that's why he stuck to the script intentionally, got there on time. And I think the speech was way too long, but he hit all of the sort of notes that establishment Washington Republicans would want him to hit. So it's strange. And I think Crystal's theory is still the best explanation that what he's trying to do is reassure the consultant class, the professional political class, that he can be presidential. He can appeal to independence. He can be the guy who's the contrast with Joe Biden. He immediately drew himself into contrast with Joe Biden as opposed to Ron DeSantis or other Republicans, whereas before he was drawing

himself in contrast with the entire political class. And I know he's mentioned the corrupt system a couple of times in that speech. It wasn't the theme. In the past, the theme would have been drain the swamp, the system's corrupt, quote, I alone can fix it. And it's much, much harder to make that pitch when you're an incumbent. So I think he sees his lane as being someone who is the heavyweight, the former president who can come in and just get it done, get the old coalition together, peel off those independents. But again, I don't see how that math works for him. If he's running the Dr. Oz campaign, he's not going to put up the same kind of numbers in

Wisconsin's third, in Erie County, and all of those different places, because the people that crossed over and voted for him aren't all members of that hardcore base. And some of them are exasperated, too. I mean, on the other hand, if he is able to be a boring, buttoned up Trump like he was tonight for when he needs to be and he's able to do his thing and be the guy at the rally, putting on the show and making the wild claims for the base when he needs to be and wants to be, then maybe that, you know, maybe that works out for him. Ryan, I guess my question is, do you think this speech, which was different than what we expected and different than most Donald Trump speeches and, you know, kind of boring and not all that remarkable ultimately and kind of very low energy, do you think it does damage to him? Or do you think that he accomplished what his goal was, which was to signal to people, see,

I can read the teleprompter. I can be the good boy. I can stay in the lane where you want me to stay. I think you're right that it's too early to say on that because maybe the Jekyll and Hyde thing works for him down the road. That's certainly possible. But I think the point about abortion not being mentioned is, you know, really needs even more unpacking. Like, if, you know, the secret to Trump's success was, we can talk all we want about the white working class and all that, but it's really the evangelical vote. And that was an extraordinarily pragmatic vote that was like willing to put up with this moral train wreck that is Donald Trump because they were going to get what he was promising, which was a bunch of justices on the Supreme

Court that were going to overturn Roe v. Wade. All right. So now they've gotten that. He's over. They've overturned Roe v. Wade. Now he's no longer interested in their culture war stuff. He's still a moral train wreck. So what what does he have to sell them anymore? Well, not only that, not only that, but I mean, there will be other candidates. Mike Pence has all but said he's going to run and he would run. He's already said, I want a national abortion ban. I mean, that's the next push for that particular group of voters. You know, their core cause, they've got a champion in Mike Pence. But, you know, Ron DeSantis has also been very reluctant to go all in with the evangelicals on abortion. So it's not a point of contrast, really, between the two of them. It's also interesting. Yeah, I was gonna say it's also interesting because one of the things a lot of the sort of national conservatives or right

populists point to as a major accomplishment of the Trump administration is an executive order he issued late in his presidency on critical race theory. And to Crystal's point, we heard so little about that. We heard so little of the rhetoric that a lot of people on the right, especially in the sort of populist Trump sphere, see as being powerful and potent, which is the, you know, Republicans need to become the party of families. They need to become the party of parents, whatever that means. And there was like virtually none of that, despite the fact that if you, you know, went down to the NatCon conference or CPAC or wherever and listened to what people were saying, they're talking about that. And instead, I mean, maybe though it's because Donald Trump realizes

that there's the competition. He's not going to be the abortion candidate in a race with Mike Pence. If you're a single issue voter, Donald Trump's not going to be your guy in a primary against Mike Pence or Ted Cruz or whomever else. But then again, this is what's so hard about it. That's the fundamental tension. If you're a conservative voter, period, why would you go with Trump over DeSantis? And I think that explains the tone of the speech tonight, which is you would go with him because he's been there before, as opposed to his old pitch, which is you would go with him because he's never been there before and he'll drain the swamp. Yeah, I think that's the main thing. I mean, look, Ryan, let's play devil's advocate here.

As Emily just said, there's a lot of structural reasons as to why Trump was powerful with the base, why if you're a conservative, you may not go with him, but while these new people could stick with him, it's only November 15th, 2022. Two years is a long time. A lot can change. So what's your structural takeaway in seeing how the Democrats may handle Trump now going forward as a result of this speech, having now watched it? I think that one big thing to watch is how confident Republicans are about their chances

in 2024. And no matter who's the nominee, and I think that's what he was trying to cue up. He's like, okay, look, yeah, yeah, we didn't do great this time. But in two years, trust me, it's going to be so bad that, you know, even though I'm a bad candidate, I will be able to win. Like, I think that was kind of the subtext of what he was saying there. And he has, to some degree, the power to affect that change. His good friend, the crown prince over in Saudi Arabia, could jack gas prices back up to $6 or $7 a gallon. And no matter what J-PAL does, push the country into a recession. J-PAL might push the country into a recession even without MBS's help. So that I think if you do see that, if you start to see the economy deteriorate and if you see a crowded primary, like not just Pence, but not just the Santas, maybe a couple of others that allows him to skate through, he gets some of his mojo back in the rallies. Yeah,

I wouldn't count him out, but it certainly doesn't look good for him now. Yep. Brian, I have another theory about why he didn't talk about abortion, why he didn't talk about trans issues, he didn't talk about CRT, didn't talk about anti-woke, which is that, you know, for all of Trump's issues and failings and flaws and all the rest, he's oftentimes had a better political gut instinct than other Republicans. And that shows up in some of, you know, the immediate reaction to Roe being overturned, for example, and him continuing to hold the thought of like, you know, guys, I don't know that this is going to go as well for you in the midterms as you ultimately think. There are reports that also after he watched the Fetterman debate, he had the opposite take of all

the, you know, strategists who all of this is devastating. And he reportedly was like, you know, I think people are going to feel bad for him. I don't think this is going to hurt him the way that y'all think it's going to. So, you know, we just had an election where Republicans leaned into a lot of these cultural issues and it didn't go well. I mean, even at the local level, their big push to take over school boards and all of that, that didn't go nearly as well as they thought it was going to, even when you're just focused on these like school level issues. So he may have a sense that these issues for a general electorate or an independent audience aren't the selling point that a lot of other conservatives think they are. Right. And I think he's probably right, particularly on Roe. And, you know, it was like it was much easier for him to sell it in theory,

like to tell the audience, like, you know, don't worry, I'm with you. We're going to get this done when people didn't believe that it was actually going to happen. And, you know, and it almost did, except, you know, except for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you know, passing away at the very end. Like the idea that he was going to get to appoint three justices who then immediately would overturn Roe isn't something that I think anybody understood could happen that quickly. I mean, people were definitely predicting that it would happen, but just not that quickly. And so he's, again, kind of a victim of his own success there. But I think you're right. You know, he has spent an enormous amount of time in kind of in the world of Hollywood

and in a broader world than a lot of Republicans who are, you know, in a right-wing ecosystem, a right-wing bubble, whereas he's been, you know, across the entire kind of pop culture. And so I think he does recognize that, you know, he lived through the 2010s. I don't think he thinks that this culture war stuff is going to be majoritarian fast enough for him to ride it. What do you think, Emily? Well, he also had a really good gut instinct on trade and immigration and foreign entanglements. And I just didn't hear much of that in the speech either. So I think there's a lot of truth to the fact that he did go in on trade and Ukraine and Russia and North

Korea immigration. He was going when we actually cut away, he was doing his whole typical immigration, build the wall thing. I just don't know that those issues aren't the like, they aren't the burning passion of the base the way that some of, you know, that Stop the Steal is, for example, at this point. What were you saying, Emily? Go ahead. Well, I just was, I was like, you had a funny tweet where you were like, where is the snake? And Trump's speeches of the past, he painted this very vivid picture of America, tapping into these issues, saying, you're getting screwed. The borders are wide open, people are flooding through. So he definitely did the sort of paint by numbers version of, you know, some of those issues. But he used to like, remember the reaction to his American carnage inauguration speech, which sounded a lot like a lot of speeches he'd given previously, that just painted this

very dark but vivid and visceral picture of the country. And he always had that sense with immigration, that it was really strong and that he could use that as a gateway into the Republican Party. When he was calling into Fox News for years in the 2010s, he was talking all the time about immigration and trade. And he did. He absolutely did touch on those things. I guess I just didn't see it wrapped into this broader narrative about American decay. It was just talking points.

I think you guys are right. I mean, what I'm really hearing is like thematically it wasn't as on point. It wasn't a good performance stylistically. It was mishmash. Some takeaways and what wasn't as on point. It wasn't a good performance stylistically. It was mishmash. Some takeaways and what wasn't included, whatnot. I think my major one is, look, we still got two years. Anything can happen. Oh.

We got a long, long road ahead of us. And Emily and Ryan, we are very glad to have you guys by our side so we can all get through this together. Thank you, guys. Thank you guys for staying. Well, for me, it's staying up late. Maybe it's not for you, but thank you for staying up late with us tonight. Yeah, thank you guys. Thanks, guys.

Yeah, absolutely. I do think, Sagar, for me, the most stunning parts are the pieces that were left out. Yeah, I agree. Abortion not being there, really super noteworthy. And then the fact that you don't have the stop-the-steal claims, also really super noteworthy. And then the fact that you don't have the stop the steal claims also really super noteworthy. And then just the style of the speech

that was clearly very intentional choice. And, you know, as you are aptly pointing out, like this is just the beginning. This is day one. He's going to, I'm sure, go and do a rally and be like the crazy thing that we expect and say all kinds of things that are going to make people pull their hair out. And we'll see how it all unfolds. Yeah, look, I mean, this could be an asterisk. We could forget it. You know, six months from now,

we may not be talking about it at all. On the other hand, you know, if he loses or if something really happens, we could say, well, this was the lackluster beginning to effectively what is a lackluster effort. Again, I have been humbled many times. I have no idea what will happen. All I can say is what exactly is going down right at this moment. So anyways, it was a real pleasure being with you all. Just so we have right now, as we said, our last live stream, we had the discount code. So by popular acclaim, it's back. It's pinned in the chat and it's also down in the description. If you guys can help us build up for 2024 coverage, as we had during midterms, we had people on the ground at John Fetterman and Dr. Oz's campaigns. We want many, many more. And also, we really want to get somebody to do data and elections analysis for us. So if you can help us in the premium membership,

specifically the annual one, which we have discounted, it really gives us the cash flexibility to go out there to find and hire somebody, potentially expand on more partnerships to give you guys like the best, best election coverage that we possibly can. Yeah, we are already thinking about what we can do next time around, learning from the midterms, trying to expand our coverage, getting someone in-house who can crunch the data for us, I think is going to be a key part of that, And having more people on the ground. All of those things that you guys enable. We love you. Thank you for hanging with us tonight. We're back to regular schedule. We're going to be posting these clips tomorrow and then

full show like normal on Thursday, CounterPoints on Friday. Love y'all. See you soon. Love you guys. Thank you. Thank you. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. Small but important ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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