Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - What's with the GOP & these debates? - with Eliana Johnson

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

What to make of the most recent presidential debates? What to make of what we're learning from these debates? What to make of the media's coverage of and role in these debates? And where do things go from here? Eliana Johnson is the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon. She is a former White House correspondent at POLITICO. She previously served as Washington editor of National Review, where she led the organization’s election coverage of the 2016 presidential election. She has worked as a producer at Fox News and as a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. Eliana is also the co-host of the critically acclaimed podcast "Ink Stained Wretches". Items discussed in this episode: - "Ink Stained Wretches": podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ink-stained-wretches/id1573974244 -Tevi Troy's piece on debates in The Wall Street Journal: www.wsj.com/politics/moderators-have-ruined-presidential-debates-lets-get-rid-of-them-3ec877ca -The Washington Free Beacon: freebeacon.com

What to make of these Republican presidential debates? What to make of these Republican presidential primaries? And what to make of the mainstream media's coverage of these debates and the primaries and the Republican candidates and of the Republican voters. These are all issues that have been bothering me for some time, which you'll understand why when we get into the conversation with today's guest, Eliana Johnson, who makes her maiden voyage on the Call Me Back podcast. Eliana is the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, one of my favorite publications. She's formerly White House correspondent at Politico, and she previously served as Washington editor at National Review,

where she led the organization's coverage of the 2016 presidential election. She also has worked as a producer at Fox News. She was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, and she's a graduate of Yale University, where she has a degree in history. Eliana is one of the wisest journalists I know in Washington, chock full of insights, both on just the national political scene generally and right-of-center politics specifically. And I'm excited to have this conversation with her, especially coming off this most recent debate. Before we start our conversation with Eliana, though, two quick housekeeping notes. The next couple of episodes are going to deal heavily with national politics. We have Amy Stoddard coming on, but mostly focused on the

state of the Democratic primaries. And then we have, yes, primaries. Keep that in mind. I do not think it's a certainty that Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee. And then we also have Karl Rove coming on, returning to the podcast to have a conversation about what's happening on the Republican side of the election, and then more generally about where things are going headed into November of 2024. Second housekeeping note is we extended the promo campaign for the genius of Israel, the surprising resilience of a divided nation in a turbulent world. We initially said that if you purchased the book, pre-ordered it, and sent the confirmation of your purchase, just forwarded the email to book at dancenor.com. We'd send you a sampler

with basically three chapters, one in particular that deals specifically with the current political crisis in Israel, and I think will be helpful in how you think about and debate the issues that are going on in Israel right now. We'll send you that sampler. It's basically a way to get ahead of the book's official release, which is November 7th. So if you send the pre-order confirmation now, we'll send you the sampler now. It's book at dayandsinor.com. Kol Nidre was the previous deadline. We've extended it to the beginning of Sukkot, Jewish holiday that begins this Friday. So if you get your email confirmation in by Friday, September 29th, by the end of the day,

before sundown, we will send you that sampler. It would mean a lot to us. Saul Singer and I worked quite hard on this book, and it would mean a lot to us. Saul Singer and I worked quite hard on this book, and it would mean a lot to us if you helped with pre-orders now. And now to our conversation with Ileana Johnson of the Washington Free Beacon on where we go from here and what to make of this coverage of Republican politics. This is Call Me Back. And I am pleased to welcome to this podcast for the very first time, my longtime friend, Eliana Johnson, who should have been on this podcast a while ago, but, you know, she's too busy with her own very excellent podcast. And as I said in the introduction,

leading the indispensable Washington Free Beacon, one of, if not the most important news organizations covering Washington and covering national politics. Eliana, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me, Dan. Great to be with you. It's great to be with you. I hope it's the first of many visits on the Call Me Back podcast. But the reason I wanted you to call me back is I was pulling my hair out, which is saying something, because there's not a lot to work with. I was pulling my hair out. I haven't for actually a while because of my sense that the mainstream media, and I'm not pounding on the mainstream media here. I have many friends in the mainstream media. I don't think they're all irresponsible at all. But I am struck by how some in the mainstream media cover Republican politics, cover national politics, cover conservatives.

And then I sort of was heightened watching this debate last night, which we can talk about in a moment. But what I find interesting about you, among the many things I find interesting about you, is there are many people in conservative journalism, right-of-center journalism, who have worked in mainstream news outlets, but have done so as a conservative columnist. So they're effectively like the conservative voice. It's an affirmative action program for conservatives. It's like they're the right-wing voice in a non-right-wing platform. So that's like the most—but you have actually been a straight, middle-of-the-road journalist covering news as a journalist, not as an opinion columnist, not as an analyst. You worked at Politico. You were an analyst at CNN, but at Politico, you were

just a straight-down-the-middle reporter covering news of the day, covering long-term trends. And you've come at it from a conservative perspective, but that wasn't your job at Politico, and obviously now you're leading a conservative organization. You previously worked at other outlets that were conservative, like National Review. But I just think you have a sense for the mindset in these news organizations and how they cover conservatives and conservative ideas and conservative politics. So let's start with last night's debate, I guess, because it's sitting there right in front of us. I found it bizarre because I tend to see myself, I am a conservative, and I have a sense for how conservatives were tuning into that debate, what they were looking for. And it seemed at least some of the questions, not all, but some of the questions, particularly coming from the Univision anchor, were teed up as though these Republicans were trying to win over hard left liberal voters in a Democratic primary rather than Republican primary voters. So let me just start with that. What on earth was going on last night?

I think watching it, I had the same impression of you listening to the moderators, you felt like you could have been dropped into an MSNBC debate where there was sort of a misunderstanding about what is the point of these debates. And from my perspective, and I'm going to guess from your perspective, these debates are supposed to be a service to Republican primary voters. So the audience is conservatives, center right people, Trump supporters, you. And the angle of the questions, the subject of the questions and the angle of the questions simply was they weren't questions, I think, that were of interest to Republican primary voters. And that itself was a disservice to the audience that that debate was intended for, who are we know that 75% of Republican voters are open to voting for someone other than Trump. The debate should have been a service to those people to

help them make up their minds. These candidates disagree on lots of issues. But my sense was that the anchors, particularly the Univision anchor, Ilya Kalduron, who I wasn't familiar with before the debate, because they're not conservatives, they come at these candidates and ask them things from the attitude of, how could you? How could you issue a curriculum that has this line about slavery? What are you going to do about LGBTQ plus violence. How could you take this attitude toward the dreamers? And while those may be good, interesting questions in a general election debate, while those may be issues of interest to a general election audience, they are not top of mind for undecided Republican primary voters whose chief concerns are the economy, the border. And there is a lot

of disagreement among conservatives about economic issues. What do we do about them? What's the right approach about foreign policy? What to do about Ukraine and China? Exactly. And I think the best moments of that debate were when you saw Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy spar about TikTok. That was interesting. But asking Republican candidates, what are you going to do about LGBTQ plus violence or what are you going to do for the dreamers? When we have hordes of people crossing the southern border illegally, Republican primary voters don't care. So, OK, so now let's let's kind of raise the lens a little bit beyond was bizarre. The lighting and the sound and the audio and the turning some mics off, I just thought it was a little, also wasn't the best viewing experience. But again, I don't think Stewart and Dana were so

much the problem at all. I think that they tried to marry Univision with Fox News for this debate, for an audience that, as you said, care about a certain set of issues, and they just weren't getting questions about these issues they care about. But now, but I suspect in most mainstream newsrooms, as I said at the beginning, which you have worked in, this structure would have made perfect sense. Like, not the structure, the having Univision, having a reporter, having a journalist ask the kinds of questions of Republican candidates in front of a Republican audience, they wouldn't have found that the least bit, you know, problematic or, you know, just sort of unordinary.

I think that's totally true. And it's not out of any sense of hostility. Mainstream newsrooms, you're just swimming in a different ocean. You know, it's the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean or the Indian Ocean, whatever. You just swim in different waters where the beliefs are totally different. The preconceptions that you come to

with issues are totally different. And there's a lot more attention in mainstream newsrooms to sort of gender and racial bean counting than there is. So I think there was some sort of attention to how many men and women do we have up there? How many people of different races? Do we have a Hispanic?

Do we have a man, a woman, all of this? Like there's just a lot more attention in mainstream newsrooms to that sort of thing than there is, I think, on the right in general or in conservative newsrooms. So now let's let me ask you about specific issues, because because I am struck by the fact that there's certain issues and a sort of point of view settling in among the electorate that the media, mainstream newsrooms just refuse to cover. It's not that they refuse to cover. That's not fair. It's not that they refuse to cover. It's not that they refuse to cover. That's not fair. It's not that they refuse to cover it, but they're not covering it the way the public is aware of it. So let's just start with Biden's age issue. And this is not an ageist, you know, I'm not pounding the table on ageism.

But there's no question, if you look at all the public polling, there's a sense out there that Biden is not on top of things in this job. And you see it manifest itself in so many ways very directly when people are asked, do you think Biden is too old for the job? But then when you ask when you see that Trump is beating Biden on specific issues like who's best to handle the economy and he's winning, depending on the poll, from 10 to 20 points. Like what's that about? It's, it there's, it's gotta be partly a manifestation of the sense that Biden is just not on top of things. I was struck in this recent NBC poll that showed if there, ask the question, if there's a government shutdown, which seems likely in the days ahead, if there's a government shutdown, who is more likely, who's to blame? And amazingly Democrats are, are, are singled out as more likely to blame for a government shutdown. Now, I was struck by that because typically whoever's in control of

the House, or Congress for that matter, gets the blame when there's a government shutdown, right? Gingrich and the Republicans got the blame when there was the Clinton shutdown during, the government shutdown during the Clinton years and the 101st Congress. I was I was working the Senate at that time. And and the Republicans walked right into it. And and Clinton looked like the guy who was trying to problem solve and get things working again. And Gingrich and Dole and the Republicans were blamed. Obviously, government shutdowns in later years always hurt the Republicans that benefited Obama. And here we have a government shutdown where the party in the White House, the party of the White House, is getting the blame.

And that I'm struck by. And I was comparing it to Obama and to Clinton, regardless of what one may think of those presidents. They were large and in charge and on top of things and engaged. So they were able to own the kind of megaphone and say, look, I'm trying to solve this problem. These intransigent Republicans are preventing me from preventing from reopening the government. They're crazy people. Whereas in this situation, you don't have the large and in charge president. You don't have Obama. You don't have Bill Clinton. You have Biden, who's basically absent from the frame. And so I also think his lack of being on top of things, his lack of energy, the sense that he's too old for the job is filtering in to other issues.

So to me, it's like so obvious what's going on here. You see it in the direct polling and you see it in these indirect issues. And the media is sort of tiptoeing around it. I guess my question is, is that like a conscious decision where they say we're going to we don't think this is a central issue and we're going to play it down or we're not going to put it like or is it to your point is there's just swimming in a different ocean. So it's not even obvious to them that they should be all over this issue. It's a little more complex than that. And I think what you said is interesting because it tracks to the previous Wall Street Journal poll that showed huge

disapproval ratings for Biden on the economy, on immigration. But most surprising, it showed Trump out polling Biden on whose vision of leadership do you trust more? And that was interesting to me because we I don't think you know, I don't think of Trump as some visionary leader. But I think Biden actually won the presidency by receding into the background and letting Trump take center stage. And he won by shrinking and sitting in his basement. But this issue of why isn't the press covering this issue, trying to hold Biden accountable? Why aren't they chasing the Hunter Biden scandal more? Now, we can talk about whether that would be damaging to Biden is a different question. I think there are a couple of reasons.

The first is the social atmosphere of Washington, which is these mainstream newsrooms. They're all liberal. You know, all these people socialize together. So while The Washington Post and The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, they're supposed to be competitors. In reality, all their White House reporters hang out together, are friendly, know each other. And while they're supposed to have an adversarial relationship with the White House, in reality, they're friendly with the folks who work in the White House. They socialize with them. The same really can't be said of the Trump White House, where they really did

have an adversarial relationship with the Trump White House. So I think there's just a gentler approach to Democratic White Houses where you don't want to upset your friends. You don't want to punch them in the face. Whereas these guys covering the White House, they weren't going to get drinks with Sarah Sanders. They weren't going to get drinks with Sean Spicer. But it does take an understanding of kind of how the party scene, the Georgetown party scene in Washington, D.C., to understand, like, why don't the Washington Post and the New York Times cover each other aggressively? It's the same reason why they're not covering the Biden White House aggressively. And it also has to do with their liberalism, which is that when there's a Republican in the White House, they chase down every rumor, every bit of speculation because

they feel it in their kishkas. You know, your Jewish, your Jewish listeners will know probably that Yiddish term. We have a lot of them. We have a lot. They really, really want to hold these people to account. When it's a Democrat, like they're not so motivated because they want to give these guys the benefit of the doubt. So I think for those two reasons, it's why you don't see them hounding Biden. And by the way, you know, Biden had this disastrous news conference when he was in Hanoi, where he was quoting a John Wayne movie and talking about dog face pony soldiers and ended by saying, I'm to read a little bit of it because I read this and thought, you know, this is the type of piece that a conservative, hardly, you know, I'm not a mega flag-waving, crazy right-winger, but a conservative reads and says, this is why I don't, why the New York Times is so infuriating, this line, by Monday morning the 80 year old president was flying home on Air Force One, conservative media outlets had seized on his end of trip news conference as the latest evidence that he's too old to perform on the world stage. And so rather than actually covering what happened, which was quite interesting and embarrassing, the coverage is about conservative outlets seizing on this to try to embarrass the president.

And by the way, this was extra outrageous because what really angered the White House in this was that CNN had covered it straight. And the Times didn't even note that. They didn't say, you know, actually another mainstream news outlet noted this, and the White House got on Twitter to bully CNN about it. But I think it's that dynamic that these reporters don't want to be bullied by the White House. And so you see how The New York Times reacts to that. Yeah.

And the coverage they give. And when you were, I mean, I don't want to have you single out situations or names, but when you were, say, at Politico, did you ever like shake people and say you're completely seeing this the wrong way? Like you're like you're like you guys are too close to the situation to get what's really going on here in the context that you're saying you're too cozy to like. Did you ever have those conversations? It was a little bit different because covering Trump was a little bit different than I think covering Biden in that there were a basket of events that were genuinely crazy and then a basket of things that Trump did, like nominate Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court or nominate Amy Coney Barrett, that were things any traditional Republican president would do. So I think the things I often found myself saying were sort of reminding people that

of what the not crazy things were and telling people, guys, you know, like Marco Rubio would be doing this or Ted Cruz would be doing this. This is not a Trump thing. And I think those were things that people in the mainstream had difficulty distinguishing between. And that was in part because there was a was actually outrageous and what would any Republican do? Because the lack of familiarity with conservative ideology and that and that, by the way, comes from not having conservative friends, not socializing with the right, not knowing like what the real differences are between the MAGA right and folks like you and me, Dan. What are what are the what debates are we having? And when you bring this to their attention, they're not hostile. They just don't know.

Yeah. I'm struck. I, you know, I was, I won't mention the name of the person or the school, but a friend of mine's daughter is a, is a student at a senior at a, at a, let's say, call it an elite post-secondary institution, education institution in the U.S., an elite college. And she reached out to me recently saying, I'm taking a class on conservatives. It's really interesting. It's a class about conservatives. And I've never really thought about conservatives before or considered getting to know a conservative. I mean, by the way, she said this totally straight. And she goes, and as part of the project, part of the school, part of the class, one of the projects is we have to interview a conservative. So would you be willing to be interviewed?

And I'm like, you know, talk, understand how you arrived at your conservatism, how you think about issues, how you. And I think I was just I mean I mean, I'm happy to help. She's she's a good kid. And she's. Did you submit a DNA sample? I mean, it's hilarious. But they treat us like we're like animals at a zoo. You know, look, kids like a swinging, you know, look behind the cage. And so it's like you're an other. And I didn't want to be snarky. But I said, is there a class on liberals where you have to go talk to a liberal? And that's what reminds me of what's going on in the newsroom, right? It's like conservatives are covered as this other thing. That's totally true. And I just think it leads to

just a lack of familiarity with the ideology, the history, and the current debates that brings you to the sorts of questions that we saw in the debate that just aren't relevant to a voting conservative audience, and also that allows them to bring a presumption often of bigotry, racism, and therefore hostility on their part, as opposed to like sort of empathy, understanding. Right. The way we all are when you actually know people. Right, right, right, right. Now, their definition of knowing, knowing, knowing conservatives is like the Central Park Zoo opening a new a new conservation for conservatives. OK, one one piece that Tevi Troy, our friend Tevi Troy, wrote in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago, I guess it was after the first debate, where he

basically makes the case that we should experiment with the debate. He goes through the history of debates, not so much the current ones, but just generally speaking, he goes through the history of debates and how problematic moderators have been, whether it was Bernie Shaw in 1988 and the Dukakis-George H.W. Bush debate, where Bernie Shaw asked that question about, gave a hypothetical to Mike Dukakis about Kitty Dukakis, if she were raped and murdered, would he still oppose the death penalty? And, you know, Dukakis gave that extremely weird, awkward, clinical answer to the question. Some argued it was an unfair question. Bernie Shaw, according to Tevye in his piece in the Journal later said that he had thought of the question at two in the morning, the morning of the debate, that same day. And it sounded like it didn't go through

any kind of screening process and he just like popped it and it was not an appropriate way to frame a question. Obviously, fast forward, 2012, a debate that I was very involved with, at least in the prep for, which was the Romney-Obama debate, where Candy Crowley really inserted herself, not just as questioner, but as kind of real-time fact checker and kind of adversary in the middle of the debate, and almost judge in the debate. Totally inappropriate role for a debate moderator. So Tevye lays out this piece where he says, why not try a debate with no moderators? Actually get the candidates together. I guess no audience, too, would be also interesting.

No moderators, no audience, and just force them to have a discussion for 90 minutes. What do you think? The thing I think most enthusiastic about in terms of changing things up is departing from the network model of these things. I think the RNC has approached us with this idea that we have to have one network sponsor and the network sell ads. And I think breaking free of that would be liberating and having real conservative moderators, moderators who understand the right, can ask pertinent questions and put them to the candidates. I'm not sure. It's hard for me to envision how a debate without moderators would be. But you can just allow anybody to carry the debate on a television network who would like

to. That's a possibility. And CNN could carry it. CBS could carry it. Anyone can carry these things. You can allow that as opposed to limiting it to a single network sponsor and find some real trusted conservative moderators who will ask real questions of interest to conservative voters. I think that's the sort of thing I'm most interested in seeing from these things. And dispensing with these silly gimmicks of, you know, who would you vote off the island or, you know, what are you going to do about a UFO that are just, you know, this is a serious thing that are like beneath the dignity of these events. And I thought DeSantis had actually his best moment last night where he said, I'm not going to do that. Everybody here showed up. We're running for a serious office.

And and that was good. I just did not understand how that question came to be, especially it struck me as amusing that we're trying to get away from the game show reality show president. And they ask this reality show question it was just ridiculous literally reality right uh okay so now um to use our friend jonah goldberg's phrase rank punditry let's just dig into a few minutes of rank punditry what were your big takeaways from the debate last night the first big takeaway um was that i don't think the debate moved the needle for anybody very much. And the second was that I think for this format to become useful, the field really needs to consolidate. I thought it was pretty clear. Look, I may be out on an island. I look at Twitter and think, like, was I watching the same debate as anybody else? But I thought Nikki Haley did well. I thought Ron DeSantis did well. And this field needs to winnow.

And the RNC should really ramp up the qualification requirements for the next debate. And it would be quite interesting to see a debate that had Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, you know, Vivek, if he qualifies. But these other guys need to drop out. Yeah, I think that's likely to happen. I do think there's going to be increasing pressure to do that. Do you put Tim Scott in that category? I don't put Tim Scott in that category based on the polling and also based on his performance in the past two contests. I thought

that one of the worst moments in last night's debate and i'm curious in your thoughts were tim scott scrapping with nicki haley i thought it was bad for both of them i thought i agree i thought it was bad for both of them um first in that it was about ticky tacky stuff about a debunked new york times story about nicki haley putting up expensive drapes that the times basically retracted and that was humiliating for them um and that she appointed him and i'm surprised he didn't have that comeback ready to go but at the same time i think it evinced why that he's not great at these formats it was such an obvious response that he could have gone to um but i i thought that that was um that was a low moment in the proceedings so i had I had a few reactions to it. It was actually the worst moment for me.

And as a Republican and as someone who these debates that include people who I generally like, you know, Trump is not in these debates. So I kind of look across the stage more or less. I say, you know, I'd be pleased with almost not everyone, but I'd be pleased with almost any one of these people as president. So I want them to do well. Like, I want the whole package. I want, like, it to reflect well, the package that people are seeing on the party. And when I saw Nikki and Tim Scott getting into it, my first reaction is, thank God, this is the end of the debate. So most people are not watching this now because I was, like, embarrassed for them.

The way I'd be embarrassed for, like, siblings or not watching this now because I was like embarrassed for them. The way I'd be embarrassed for like siblings or a kid, I was like embarrassed for them. Two, I thought it shrunk them both. I thought they both looked diminished. These are both impressive people in their own way, in their own right. And getting into this, you know, this little cage match seemed small and petty.

And lastly, I was like, it gave me a little PTSD from Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. Like, it reminded me of, and I was very involved with Rubio's campaign in 2015 and 2016. And when Jeb and Marco used to fight, it was, there was like, there was the story and then there was the story, like, behind the story. The story was they're both running for president. Of course, two people running for president get into these you know nasty fights but the real subplot was jeb thought that marco shouldn't have run in the 2016 cycle that he should have cleared that lane for jeb and that jeb had basically helped launch marco's career and turned him into a national figure and and how dare Marco run against him.

There was that kind of, I created you, son, and now you're running against me. And so there was so much nastiness and bitterness kind of embedded in their back and forth. And, of course, that was what was going on with Scott and Haley last night, that she felt like, I created you. I appointed you to this Senate seat, and now you're running against me for president. You should get out of the way. And so there was like, again, I don't think most people following this are following that kind of intra-family fight that people like you and me follow, but I did, like, and most importantly, I thought, this is crazy,

that this is, like, this is, what's really going on here is Donald Trump is the favorite. He's the frontrunner. He's not the prohibitive frontrunner. He's not the prohibitive favorite, but he is dominating this race. And you two getting in this little nasty back and forth about drapes and spending records in Congress, when you two worked together, you were allies, one appointed the other to the seat. I mean, it was just, it was so diminishing and sad. It is striking because, of course, that was Jeb Bush's complaint about Marco Rubio. And had Marco Rubio not run in 2016, Jeb Bush would not be president of the United States right now. Marco Rubio was not Jeb Bush's problem. And if Nikki Haley does not become president of the United States in 2024, Tim Scott is not going to be the reason why. And in that sense, these petty arguments are not are truly are sideshows. Yeah. And do you think there's and now i i you know i get like it was sort of set up

there was a question for scott that it was sort of weird like he was asked to make his case to nikki for why he was an effective leader there's some the question and so then he did his riff and then she responded and then like the fight got started and i think once the fight got started neither of them wanted to toengage. So I kind of get like once it got started, how it was kind of, it was hard to deescalate, but it was still depressing to watch. Is there anything you would advise or hope that any of these candidates would do to kind of reframe this? Because right now it feels that they're all hoping that something happens to Trump, that for some reason he can't run, whether it's legal issues or health issues or whatever. They're just hoping that for some reason he ultimately is not in the game and that one of them is the last person standing, which is one strategy, I guess.

It's, you know, to paraphrase Petraeus, hope is not a strategy. So I guess it's a hope. But do you think there's anything they could be doing differently to deal with the reality that they're running against someone who's, you know, depending on the polls, you know, at 40% or 40 to 50%, let's say 30 to 40% in the early states, 40 to 50% more nationally, that there's something they have to do to dislodge him? That's a good question to which I don't think I have a good answer. I think the answer is really woulda, coulda, shoulda for DeSantis. And then I think his strategy was misconceived from the outset in terms of running a campaign that was aimed at trying to take Trump's voters from out from under him and overly focused on the online right and not enough focused,

frankly, on earned media that includes conservative media and building a coalition of allies. So that's what it could have, should have for him from here on out. I think, look, all of these guys, every one of those guys on the stage, with the exception of Vivek Ramaswamy, said they do not think Trump is fit to be president. If that's how they feel and they're interested in the future of the Republican Party, they should think about consolidating the field. That is the best way, I think, to defeat Trump. And if you look at these polls, Trump is the leader. There's nothing you can do if Republican voters want Trump. The best way to convince them otherwise is to get more attention on a few candidates and make the case to them. If you consolidate the field, if you consolidated the votes in Iowa

between the three candidates pulling behind Trump, DeSantis, Haley, and Ramaswamy there, Trump would be leading by 17 and a half points. If you consolidated the field in New Hampshire, that's Haley, DeSantis, and Christie are the three pulling behind Trump. Trump would be leading by 10. The field just has to shrink. Yeah. Yeah. What I try to remind people when I try to keep them upbeat is if you think about Trump as not a regular candidate running in an open race, but as an incumbent, he's effectively running as an incumbent, as the incumbent Republican president. That's how he's looked upon by most Republican voters. And if you look at an incumbent running effectively for re-election, the fact that he's polling, depending on what part of the country, say in the 40s, that means that more than 50 percent,

over 50 percent of Republican primary voters in important parts of the country are choosing someone else. And they know Trump. It's not like they have to get to know Trump. They know Trump. And they're choosing someone else. And if those people who are choosing someone else could settle on one person, the race gets really interesting. But if they're all splintered behind multiple candidates, it's the way Trump is going to just, you know, moonwalk right into this nomination. The other thing we haven't heard much about from these candidates is the reality of Trump's legal troubles without them saying whether these cases are justified or unjustified, but simply the reality that he's going to have a hard time campaigning. He's going to be in court.

Now, they can say this is a grave injustice, but it is the world we live in. I'm not sure how that would play. And I don't claim to know. But the reality is that we're going to have one candidate, the Democrat, if Biden does run in the general election, who basically can't campaign because he's too old. And another candidate, Trump, if he is the Republican nominee, who's going to be tied up in court throughout the general election. And that's going to be a strange, strange general election. I have not heard these Republican candidates say to the voters, you all deserve to have a general election candidate who can be out on the campaign trail prosecuting the case against Biden on the economy, on immigration, and on foreign policy each and every day. Trump gave four years of service to the country,

but he's not going to be able to do that. You guys deserve that. I agree with you, and I would be thrilled for a candidate to make that case. And I was for that a while ago, a version of that. Where I've become less persuaded that that could break through is because of how well Trump is polling against Biden. It worked better when you just were able to focus on 2018. Trump was effectively on the ballot. Republicans got wiped out in the midterms. 2020, Trump runs for re-election. He loses. 2022, Trump, you know, Trump is attached to a bunch of Republican primary winners who all then lose, most of whom lose in the general election. He's a loser. And I believe we should

lean into that, that he's a loser, except he's polling now head to head to Trump, head to head to Biden. And depending if you look at the, polls of the Real Clear Politics average, he's either slightly behind Trump than Biden, tied or ahead in those polls, depending on the poll. And he's in the game. So it's hard to argue that he's not going to be able to beat Biden when Biden, as we said in the earlier conversation, looks so invisible. That's why I'm not persuaded. That's the winning message. But I'm all for trying it. It may not be, but you see polls where Nikki Haley's up eight points on Biden.

And I do think she could leverage that. But I certainly don't claim to know. This is like a lock that nobody has found the key to. What is the winning message against Trump? I'm not sure. And if Republican voters want Trump, they're going to get Trump. Right. All right, Eliana.

I don't know if you've given me reason for optimism, but you helped me vent a little bit and at least clear some things up. I do want to say one thing that you said to me offline that I do want you to make the point here about the Virginia gubernatorial race because it was a good example of what we were talking about earlier. And I just want to make sure you make that point before we wrap. Well, we were talking about the coverage of Biden's age

and that we hear from the White House and then see in the New York Times article about Biden's press conference in Vietnam and his whirlwind tour in Asia and how much energy this guy has. He's running circles around us. But that voters can see with their own eyes that he is frail. He does shuffle. He has lost several steps. He clearly is not all there at times is an attempt to tell voters that what they're seeing

with their own eyes is not there. And it did remind me of in the 2021 gubernatorial election in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin was campaigning on education, both on school closures, but also on the content of the curriculum in schools. And the response from the left was that critical race theory is not being taught in schools. It's an obscure legal theory that is taught in some law schools. But this isn't stuff that elementary school children are learning. And it was in it. Of course, that's shorthand for radical teachings on race and gender that's in your kid's textbook. And everyone knew that. And Youngkin was effective because parents could see, particularly because their kids were at home during COVID, with their own eyes what their kids were learning and were disturbed by it.

And I think the same thing is happening with the Biden age issue. And also on the economy, you know, the White House and the press can talk about Bidenomics and try to slap a new name on something and tell you that it's good. But people are seeing something different with their own eyes. Yeah, exactly. Okay. I thought it was the Yunkin, Virginia critical race theory example is a great little case study. And I just want to make sure our listeners heard that. Ileana, thank you for joining us. We will be sure to have you back, and I appreciate the quick callback, the quick turnaround, and maybe we'll rope you in after the next debate. Thank you, Dan. All right.

That's our show for today. To keep up with Eliana Johnson's work, you can go to the Free Beacon website, freebeacon.com, or you can follow her on Twitter at Eliana Y. Johnson or at Free Beacon, both of those on the website formerly known as Twitter. I should mention the intro that she's the host of Inkstained Wretches, an excellent podcast, sort of media commentary podcast that she co-hosts with Chris Stourwalt. It's an endlessly informative podcast and hilarious, so I highly recommend it. We'll post the link to the podcast in our show notes. Call Me Back is produced by Alon Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Seymour.