Chapo Trap House - 846 - Sundown of the Erdtree feat. Dave Weigel & Ettingermentum (7/2/24)

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Last week’s stunningly bad debate and a few shocking Supreme Court rulings have rapidly taken the 2024 Presidential Race into relatively unprecedented waters. We’ve assembled the CTH election unit of reporter Dave Weigel and analyst Josh aka Ettingermentum to survey the state of the race, Joe Biden’s quickly diminishing outlook, and potential surprise outcomes that may lay ahead. Plus, key tips and tricks to master your playthrough of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. Find Dave’s reporting at Semafor here: https://www.semafor.com/author/david-weigel Find the Ettingermentum newsletter here: https://www.ettingermentum.news/

What can be unburdened by what has been? Hello everybody, it's Tuesday, July 2nd, and we've got Chapo coming at you. Well, folks, after a week in American politics, unlike any I've seen in my life, we have assembled a full spectrum political coverage to dive into it today. Joining us is Josh Ettinger-Mentum and Dave Weigel. Here to answer the question that's on everybody's mind, how do you beat Mesmer the Impaler in Shadow of the Urge Tree? Yeah. Josh, go. So I'm going to get into that.

This was a weird decision they made when they like for these bosses. But there's actually a summon sign, like right at the start of the arena, like not before it, but right when you get into it and you can summon Horn sent. Actually, he has some cool voice lines, not as good as Egon, but like, it's pretty nice. And he helps a lot. Oh, I just sent that guy to kill horn sent. Oh, if you like it I killed horn sent the first chance I got like I'm so I'm sorry if you don't fucking kill horn sent the first Shot that you have you would go on birthright as a 37 year old man

The horn said are the closest equivalent. We've had two Israelis in the universe of Elden Ring their conduct their attitude Just the first time you talk to horn said when you meet all of Miklas companions Everyone is like kind of charming and interesting and then you talk to horn sent and you're like you're the biggest fucking freak I've ever met I can't wait to kill you and you do and it's great so I didn't even know that he could be summoned much less that anyone didn't just murder him the first chance that they got I did his quest and it's important for like if you're real slow burn like horn sent hater because when you get his armor said reveals that he

is he shat himself and he has shit in his pants the entire time. All right. Okay. I could see the value in that. I think going back to Mesmer, Mesmer has incredibly cool powers. He has like you get the most bang for your buck out of his remembrance. It's an incredible incantation and weapon. Yeah.

And his voice lines are awesome. His voice lines are awesome. And he was left in a hot car. What else can you say about the man? Well, I mean, I think the question that's on everyone's minds right now, what's really just coursing through the nation right now, is that is it legitimate for Biden to continue running for president by using the mimic tier and or summons that are available? The game the game is designed around it

Look if they didn't want Joe to summon Frank Biden his brother who looks exactly like him but slightly wider And who has a tankier HP bar? They should have like written a law against it. They didn't they clearly why does Frank Biden have extra lines of dialogue? That he could say in front of Trump if you're not supposed to bring him out exactly Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't have to go through all those quests if it wasn't a utility you could use in the battle Yeah, it's not easy to get him you have to go through the Delaware catacombs You have to find you have to find you have to find the crown of DuPont. You have to find the crown of DuPont. That isn't easy. You have to you have to learn the gesture

that you get from visiting Bo Biden's grave and you have to do it in front of the DuPont HQ. It's really fucking hard. Yeah. Well, I don't know, like, will America make it through the DLC? I don't know in light of this recent spate of Supreme Court decisions, but let's just start with like I said This was this is a week in an American politics. It was truly extraordinary And I'm gonna just preface whatever I say on this show is likely to be irrelevant by tomorrow If not time if not the time you listen to it, but I want to start with Dave Dave What do you what are you hearing? Like what is, what is the word now on like where Biden's at?

Because everything I'm reading from the New York times is that like he's hunkered down with his family and they're encouraging him to stick it out. And like, this was just a blip, a bad debate, and they're, they're trying to tamp down panic. Is it working? It is not working. It is true working they're very bunkered they're very bunkered they in ways though that have made things worse because Democrats have phones and we know them when we can talk to them and I I anyone who said conversations people I talked I happen to be with Bernie on Saturday after the

debate and he did not sugarcoat it he one of his lines was look the president's not a very good debater he's not a very good debater. He's not a very good speaker. But everyone is going between this was awful and maybe we can salvage it to this is so bad that we need to switch him out for probably Kamala Harris. And only today, as we're talking, there's one Democrat, Lloyd Doggett,

who represents Austin, Texas in the House. He said that, he said, said he has nothing to lose. He's in a safe seat. He's in the 70s. They don't they he just said, yeah, I'm being realistic here. This guy can't can't win. The best case scenario for them right now is that a bunch of people say the right president is too old. We've been lying to you about how he isn't.

And then he keeps running, which seems seems suboptimal. I don't know. Yeah. Josh, go ahead. Yeah, this may sound stupid, but I was kind of fascinated by how unspinnably bad it was. Nobody even tried to say, oh, he told the truth or his policies were good, which is rare. You usually see them spin practically anything now. The fact that they admitted it was bad was kind of shocking to me a little bit. Yeah, the only guy who attempted to spin it with it like new newish turn of phrase was the old bungler.

I was shocked. I was shocked when the bungler said, Hey, we all have bad debates. Like this is a conversation about a bad debate performance, not the most shambolic and old, old flashing HP bar candidate we have ever seen in the history of presidential politics since they've been televised. Yeah, a 90 minute medical episode. Yeah. Bad debate is not a phrase that really covers or summarizes any of this. That's really, I don't know.

I don't know if that was a bungler like trying to shank Biden or what, but like it was just, it was a very pathetic attempt that I don't think anyone really bought. I was in Atlanta for the debate and they separate out where the candidates are from where the media is. That's pretty normal.

They have the surrogates come in the room afterwards. And so before the debate, I ran into Gavin Newsom and one of the questions I said was, hey, is this going to end the year of speculation that they're going to have to swap them out for somebody else? He said, 100%. It's ridiculous to keep asking that. And then I think really 10 minutes into the debate, it was very clear in the room, you can hear other reporters working and talking and etc And it was just when he couldn't land the plane on the Medicare answer and say we finally beat Medicare That's when I heard six people around me who are all silent or that go Whoo, just like yeah, punch in the gut

Exhaling one of these people the golf moment was when he just said, Jesus Christ, that wasn't me. That was somebody near me. But, yeah, no one had experienced debate this bad at this level before. And Democrats are saying, yep, you're right. It was it was that bad. But and I was that was the that was

Obama. Yes. I mean, the problem with the but here and I just want to turn to the New York Times. This is an article by Katie Rogers and Peter Baker. It says, Biden's family tells him to keep fighting as they huddle at Camp David. And it says here, Mr. Biden huddled with his wife, children, and grandchildren at Camp

David while he tried to figure out how to tamp down democratic anxiety. While his relatives were acutely aware of how poorly he did against former President Donald Trump, they argued that he could still show the country that he remains capable of serving another four years. And I think the problem with that is like you can acknowledge how bad he did in the debate but like I think I think you guys got it exactly right like this is not a bad debate issue what has happened with this debate is that the paradigm has shifted and now the question of Biden's cognitive capacity like his is his mental and physical faculties are now fair game for journalists. Now

people are going to talk about it. There's no way they can't push it behind the curtain anymore. I mean like we've been talking about this since 2020 at the very least but like now the question is out there and every next like every every next time he screws up or like can't finish a sentence speaking off the cuff it's going to compound the problem it's going to get exponentially worse okay if anyone could do this if anyone would do this and not acknowledge it and think it was totally fine it would be the Democrats but how do you come back, not just from that, not just from everyone

thinking that like, you know, you're probably weeks away from death from, um, I just, you know, it is literally without precedent, not just that, but like pretty much 70% of the people who actually matter in the party Going yeah, we can't do this. He's too fucking old He's too fucking old and infirm and this is humiliating How do you come back from that from your entire party saying that they enter a quick time event? Whenever they're within 20 feet of you If like they if they didn't already have enough stuff if they didn't already have enough moments of video and

just Baffling baffling Biden shit like when he said Then Donald Trump cheated on him Joe Biden with the porn star that he was pregnant with I believe on him, Joe Biden with the porn star that he was pregnant with, I believe. Um, they now have like, yeah, Jamie Raskin and all these people saying this is untenable. Yeah. It's the politics of resentment. I think it's, um, this is something that I like spent like some time in 2023,

just trying to figure out like how his administration worked and like, especially after Gaza, like how their foreign policy worked and resentment is just the key word that like goes back into all of this they see everything is like. Just like everything that happens to them is this story of them overcoming adversity in the haters of the doubters and it's like really kind of funny cuz the arc is like nobody thought we could win in the 29th like in the primary when they led for all of 2019. Nobody thought we could beat Trump at race. They led from start to finish. Like nobody thought we could do well in the midterms, which were races he didn't run in and yeah, it got to the point where they were trying to take credit. Like Andy Beshear winning in Kentucky. Like, yeah, that was all you, man.

That was incredible. Yeah. Like there's this like the opening, like the thing, I think the moment that made me like kind of go from like, oh, he's just kind of like a regular Democrat, like, like kind of looking at him like the way I look at Whitmer, versus seeing them him as like this weird Nixonian figure was I got the book The Last Politician by Franklin Foer. And it oh, this is how it opens, like I have like the first two paragraphs, it says, like, Joe Biden's inauguration was an image in his mind. It took hold there decades earlier and it looked something like a brisk winter's day in a nation's establishment huddled around him, wrapping its arms around the kid from Scranton.

It was a triumphalist scene, but also a revenge fantasy since Washington's liberal elite had long rolled his eyes at him and he knew it. The constant underestimation of Joe Biden was his diesel. It propelled him to keep chasing the image over the course of three presidential runs. He pursued it into his late seventies even though diminishingly few of his peers considered it plausible and even though his inability to surrender his ambitions occasionally verged on the undignified.

That is a description of Richard Nixon. If Richard Nixon had to shoe off the visage of death every 20 minutes. If Richard Nixon had to tell the boat at the River Styx, hold on, I'm doing something. Don't pay the ferryman. This is an issue in 2020. You guys talked about it too. The whole Democratic primary, Biden was still pretty old. He was sharper and he did not lose his place like he did

in this debate all the time. He had mediocre debates, but he wasn't just saying... You were starting to see the beginnings of fading to a non-conclusion going, anyway. He was already doing that, but he wasn't this bad. And the argument clearly this obvious, everyone probably the argument was yes, he's old, but he can save democracy. We all need to pull in to save democracy. And that that's obviously been lost where Democrats are now panicking that Biden will just by their own dictates will destroy democracy. And they're frustrated because Biden seems to be cloistering with Hunter,

among other people. The fact that Hunter's there at all, that's enough for a lot of people. Yeah. And saying, it is risking democracy because I know how to do the job and I don't trust anyone, including my handpicked vice president to do this for me. So he's gone from a elder statesman who they brought in from retirement to save them to somebody they are starting really quickly to have contempt for. The Hunter stuff is amazing. Yeah, Dave, you mentioned Hunter.

This is from the Peter Baker, Katie Rogers piece. It says, one of the strongest voices imploring Mr. Biden to resist pressure to drop out was his son, Hunter Biden, whom the president has long leaned on for advice, said one of the people informed about the discussions who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations. Hunter Biden wants Americans to see the version of the father that he knows, scrappy and in command of the facts, rather than the stumbling aging president Americans saw on Thursday night. I mean, to that, I would add Hunter, if you want to help your dad out here, you got to call the guy. Because if you want him to your dad out here you got to call the guy because if you want him to be you know up after 4 p.m. you know he's gonna need some of

those moon rocks and fleet boxes that you've been you've been keeping you up I'm going strong but then just one more paragraph where it says other family members are trying to figure out how they could be helpful at least one of the president's grandchildren has expressed interest in getting more involved with the campaign perhaps by talking with influencers on social media, according to an informed person. So they're they're bringing the grandkids off the bench for this, but it really is like a Biden family versus everyone else dynamic going on right now. I love so much.

If there was a a JFK deep state, I'm not saying there is there isn't. If there was one that was just ready to go oiled up and attacking him It would go after the family right now because biden's actually got a pretty good Let's say a pass from the press compared compared to some people who have family problems and they can't keep it out of tabloids Hillary clinton's ne'er-do-well brother things things like that. You know, but biden has two kids He had bo that lost his state of him and because of that people have been fairly, people in the media, fairly easy on the fact that he has two kids who have screwed up big time and left documents in places that

detailed their various screw-ups, affairs, drug addictions, etc. And this clearly hurts him. And again, if somebody, you have to kind of read between the lines of what is in these papers, who is saying what. I don't think you're ever going to say, have a Democrat say, look, a guy who raised two drug addicts can't possibly be president. But this is what is bristling now. They have really been pretty chill about the way Biden's family have, I shouldn't say this, they're embracing some Republican arguments about the way Biden's family have, I shouldn't say this, they're embracing some Republican

arguments about the Biden family. Because on the right, you could say for four years, Joe Biden is puppeting him like Oscar the Grouch and Hunter's a screw up and Obama's really running the country. There are lots of things Republicans said about Biden, the Democrats said, that is obviously crazy. And we're not going to embrace that. If you start seeing more attacks on the family I think you can that you can assume this is coming from people who were just Ripping the tape off and saying that's it. That's it. We put up with too much of this This guy has weaknesses. We need to exploit them

Yeah, left-wing anti-hunter ism is gonna be nuts like they're gonna start saying that like he's enabling Israel like he enabled hunter One thing that always like shocked me about like, you know, whether you want to call it being in the tank or what this sort of like wide berth that they give Joe with Hunter stuff is the fucking paternity test. Hunter had a paternity test suit that was running from pretty much the time Biden got inaugurated until like the midterms. And Hunter, it took Hunter forever to acknowledge it. It of course turned out to be his kid.

It was probably years before anyone even asked Biden about this and like usually, like this type of stuff is usually bullshit, but I'm sorry. If Don Jr. was in that situation, we would probably be hearing a lot of questions asked of Trump by the White House press pool. Well, we're gonna take it to the convention

and Biden's natural born heirs can fight it out. Well, here's an example. This actually came up in 2019 because it was Peter Ducey, who is the Fox News reporter who Biden cannot stand and has cursed under his breath on on Mike before. And I remember an event in November 2019. The Arkansas Paternity Report had come out and the way Ducey put it at a normal press conference where everyone else is being polite says, I wonder if you have a comment on this court filing that your son Hunter made you a grandfather again. And Biden said, only you would ask that. You're a good man. You're a good man. Classy. But then no other reporter followed up on it. There was just the sense that this is sleazy. He has a difficult family life, we're not gonna bring this up. I mean, he has gotten the treatment that,

because I think Trump exists, frankly, and because the standards all fell because of Trump, but people on the right asked this, and they've had a really great week, because they're saying, everything we said about Biden is going to be validated, ha ha ha. They really just had to sit back and watch this, because they were asking this,

and then ABC News, etc Just didn't follow up. Yeah, I can't believe the Michelle Obama truthers may be right Think how funny that would be if that turns out to be true and we have to make a formal apology and retract our statements that Larry Sinclair was lying. He really did, he really was in that limb of smoking crack. Yeah, ultimate update to the electoral history of transphobia coming soon.

Yeah. Yeah. I think many of the things they said about Biden, et cetera, are going to be, are, are, were false and were just malicious. But this is, if you give, if you deny people a nut and then they find it and they were right about something, yeah, people, people start asking questions about it, it really is just Trump who has this invincibility where people will find out something was true and say, you know what? Uh, I liked, I liked the way he hugs the flag and I'm going to be fine with this.

And despite Biden got a lot of that, that benefit of doubt no longer really. Just another headline from the Times here from July 1. This is the headline is in a staring contest with Democratic voters, Joe Biden hasn't blinked. voters, Joe Biden hasn't blinked. And I love the staring contest metaphor about Biden. But I also because you know, he was like a lot of stare a lot of staring off into he's winning a staring contest against dead space in a room right now. He has a staring contest every morning he gets up and looks in the mirror. But I mean, I think it's I think it's like that they're just outright saying that this that this election is a contest between Joe Biden and Democratic Party voters that he's going to win. It's crazy.

They're the haters and doubters. They're the haters and doubters right now. I mean, it's, yeah, Josh, it speaks to the Nixonian quality to this guy. But I want to talk about like, what, you know, where do they go now? And I want to turn to Axios. This is by Mike Allen and Jim Van De Heide. It says, behind the curtain, Biden's salvation plan. And I just want to go through sort of like,

it says, the biggest argument will be that Biden won the Democratic primaries overwhelmingly, and that result is final. I love that line. I've been hearing that a lot. It's like, the primaries are over, and the people chose Joe Biden. It's like, what primary? I mean, I suppose he was running against uncommitted in Michigan and a few

other states, but there was no primary. I mean, this is just, this is Joe Biden and it says here, okay, the first one, the first big, uh, you know, bullet point here is dismiss, quote, bedwetting. The official White House and campaign line is this is much ado about nothing that Biden works so hard that it drains his young staff. And I, and I heard the bedwetting line immediately after the debate. And it's just like, it is egregious malpractice to use the phrase bedwetting in conjunction with an issue where the issue is the fact that people think he's too old.

You don't want to remind people about incontinence when, uh, you're bringing the, bringing up how, how he's not, not he's he's up for the job. Well, also, like it's so it's it's very self contradictory because, like, obviously, they're in different contexts, but you can't say you can't accuse people of bedwetting and freaking out and then go, it's this guy or the country ends. Yeah. Like that immediately throws the use of bedwetting out the fucking window. Yeah. I mean, it's it's a hard balancing act because they're saying, like that immediately throws the use of bedwetting out the fucking window Yeah, I mean it's it's a hard balancing act because they're saying like nobody freaked out about the debate Nobody wet their pants, but at the same time certainly in light of the recent Supreme Court rulings

They're saying that like this is an election that will either preserve or end American democracy or what the threadbare remnants of it I mean like how are they trying to manage that? That cognitive dissonance. They're just sticking to it. They're pointing to the money he's raised. He has raised pretty good money since the debate. Republicans haven't said how much money they've raised. And if you ask Democratic voters, they're, I'd say pot committed. I can say pot committed. Just, you're at that point where the uncertainties of getting rid of the nominee are so vast that they're kind of scary. So they're really just defending, in light of what you just quoted there, hey, we had

a primary, there was a chance to replace them, nobody took it, this is our guy. There's also some second order political science worry that an incumbent president is just more electable than anyone else. I've never liked that stuff just because Well, like president yeah, yeah, you're I'm saying page that there just aren't that many present presidential elections It's not like so yeah a bunch of like baseball games to the bill James machine and coming out with average It's like there's never been an 81 year old president ever that there is not a precedent you can point to for this But that's kind of what they've been saying even that whole we're gonna defend democracy argument There's already a little bit of back

I would say backfire but something's not going according to script on that which is Jared Golden Who's this not even that conservative but like a moderate Democrat in Maine rural Maine had an op-ed today after the weekend saying in rural Maine had an op-ed today after the weekend saying, Donald Trump is going to win the election and everything my party's saying about how democracy is at risk is not actually true. And that's not the sort of thing that you say if you have a nominee riding herd on the party. They clearly, I really have never seen anything like this

where like Kerry was losing at points, Obama was losing at some points, Hillary was losing at some points, but never this, the closest I came was when Hillary fainted after 9-11, sorry, not after the 9-11, after 9-11 Memorial. Well, we just don't know, we just don't know, Dave. But Dr. Brazil admitted after the fact, hey, I thought about whether I could replace this ticket

with Cory Booker and Joe Biden, with Joe Biden at the top and Cory Booker on the bottom. I looked into it, I was really panicked. So Democrats have panicked very quietly and then admitted after the election. Maybe that would have been a good idea if we just swapped out the ticket. They don't have a consistent message

because they are panicking. It's very hard to be consistent when you're panicking. They really are. They're not like, they're not, I mean, there are times when people say panic and indeed indeed if you talk to the Democrats who really know stuff it's all BS. But not this time. They really don't know what's going on. Yeah, the Jared Golden op-ed was annoying because he was on some reddit shit. He was like, I'm going to stand up against the old guard Republicans who are going to try to make Trump be corporate. It's like, shut up, man, that's annoying. It's taking too long. Okay, Matt Walsh, like, come on, dude. Yeah, but he doesn't do that if the party's, the other thing is a lot of reporting,

let's point out, Biden's just not calling people. And if you have a president who says, everyone's worried, I'm gonna go down the phone tree and say, hey, buddy, I'm still the guy that could come out there and campaign for you. Even if they don't believe him, they have the conversation, it's really hard to just say to a president,

stop doing this. And he's not doing that. He's been really cloistered. So everyone's kind of leaving the reservation. Yeah. I don't think, well, I don't think even the White House is offering Biden services as a campaigner, unless it's like a direct threat.

Come out. Come out, come out for us and we're gonna go to your district to campaign for you. campaigner unless it's like a direct threat. Come out for us. We're going to go to your district to campaign for you. Yeah, I mean, like this is going to get I mean, this is already very, very dicey for Democrats in like state can pick in competitive state races, because I mean, like they're feeling this is like an anchor around them. But I want to go to some of these other sort of

salvation points here. Number two was squeeze polls for juice. Biden's allies are circulating polls and focus group results showing the debate that little to change the dynamics of the race. I mean, Josh, you're a poll watcher. What are the polls? I mean, are there any juice to be squozed out of these polls for Biden? I mean, everything I've seen looks pretty bad. Yeah, there is the one like mass, like immediate poll that came out, I think by one of those daily trackers, like Morning Consult or something that showed like no change. But we've had stuff come out since then, and it's ranged from like bad

to downright horrific for him. There was the CNN poll today that had it done by six. There was that one and it came along only done by two. There was the one like big um, big kind of like list of, um, alternatives. So they pulled in swing States that had like, um, hit Biden being the worst performing them by far, uh, Whitmer and actually Pete Buttigieg of all people being the ones leading a 270 electoral votes and worth of States, both if you adjust for any recognition and very close to like leading outright if you don't.

So like the idea that he's lost support and that there are alternatives who significantly outpoll him isn't really a hypothetical at this point. Like, it's not like you're like, oh, look at these Senate races. None of these like candidates are particularly spectacular. You can assume it's because of Biden's age.

We're literally seeing like practically every alternative outrunning him. And it's very clear right now because of Biden's age. We're literally seeing practically every alternative outrunning him. And it's very clear right now that the issue is age. It's not ideology, it's not wokeness, it's not any extraneous factor, like Trump becoming more popular compared to the average Republican.

This is a uniquely Biden issue. So it makes the question of replacing him weirdly, I mean, there's obviously tons of uncertainty But like it removes it like a very big problem very specific to him that practically nobody else would have and they'll be under real They're real clear politics shit They'll like try to like look at like cherry pick some stuff to say that it didn't impact stuff But either way like first like this debate was supposed to be something that outright moved you ahead, you were going to show the contrast with yourself

and Trump, you did in a certain way, and it didn't work out as you wanted. But like they're trying to spin just stagnating as a win, which is just played in spin. And Josh, it wasn't so much it was also it was the they wanted to make the make the comparison between Biden and Trump a hot off the heels of Trump's felony convictions. But also they wanted to like lock in in June that this is the contest. It's Trump and Biden and like no matter how the voters feel they may want something different. These are your two options.

And like that that comparison could have not gone worse for them on both counts. And it's rough because I saw the vision for this strategy. I wrote like a couple of months ago, like the path for Biden to win. And what I noticed looking at like kind of the more really like detailed polls like New York Times was that there is a big difference between like very engaged voters and non-engaged voters were very engaged voters were a lot more pro-Biden and non-engaged voters were more pro-Trump. And this was brought up to explain why Democrats

had done so well in the special elections and why that didn't necessarily mean the polls were wrong. And a lot of pro-Biden people were really pissed off about this because it took their best argument and sort of took it away. But the way I looked at it was, well, this kind of shows that maybe there are some reasons why the people who aren't paying attention don't like them,

but it might just be because they're not paying attention and just getting them to pay more attention to the race could move them to be more like the people who are paying attention. And so I saw like the conviction is a good sign for him. He did move up a bit after that. The debate was supposed to be like hypothetically, theoretically, could have been a real moment with the really high coverage where you get people to realize what the choice is and remember what they don't like about Trump. But instead of remembering what they didn't like about Trump, they remembered what they don't like about Biden. Not only that, but like it was worse than they even imagined. So it takes the dynamic

that you could have seen that could have potentially led to him winning like kind of solidly, he wasn't down by that much in the pivotal states and has reversed it where he's the one with the downward momentum instead of Trump. So like it's just the ideal outcome here is out of the cards. And that puts him in a very perilous position, no matter which way you spin it. The poll that they posted, like to stem the bleeding and stop everyone from freaking out in bed wedding was a poll where it's basically like, see, he's losing by pretty much the same amount as before.

Yeah, like you just don't you really don't want to fucking be in that position. After 2022, when they won races in every single swing state, it's just like. It's insane that they like they think they can argue that that's acceptable. Like the Republicans are not a strong political movement. No, yeah, no. Their signature issue is like a unique liability, a unique liability that pretty much, um, like just disqualifies like nearly half the population from voting for them more or less. Like it's not this unstoppable

juggernaut. And I feel like I feel like all the arguments for Biden hinge on that idea that Trump is this electoral fucking monster that no one knows how to deal with. Yeah. It's like, oh, he's the only guy who's ever beaten him. Like I guess technically, but like you also had people who won in Michigan by 11 points against his handpicked candidates. It's exactly like what you guys said, where it's like, OK, if there were like 50 elections a year and the only one Trump ever lost was against Biden, OK, maybe.

But yeah, no, there aren't that many fucking elections. I'm sorry. There are 160 plus games in a regular season of baseball. There have only been 46 presidents of the United States. So there's not that much data to go on. I just want to go back to the list here. One of the bullet points is limit dissent. Biden allies helped orchestrate the supportive tweets by former presidents Clinton and Obama. Those happened after furious back channeling by allies. That's a Biden win getting these things up there. Put that on Biden wins.

But I guess, like, I mean, like, I'm sitting here in Wisconsin with that captain's family right now and I got to pass along. His dad asked me last night, like, what would you do if you were advising Biden? And he was like, well, let me stop you there. What would you do if you're

advising Biden and you couldn't tell him to resign immediately? So, like, what are the realistic options for the Democratic Party now? Because So like, what are the realistic options for the Democratic Party now? Because like one is doing what they're doing now, what they seem to be, if Biden is in control or his family's in control,

they're just gonna batten down the hatches and just tough this one out, limit his exposure. But like, Dave, like realistically, like what would replacing him on the ticket look like? With Kamala or the convention? Or what, like how would that process play out? What would that look like? He would have to resign the nomination. You know, every time they accept the nomination, they say, I accept the nomination.

He just wouldn't do that. It's a I thank the delegates, yada yada. But I I've determined I can't run. And in that case, there already are there mostly picked already because the primaries ended last month. There's delegates that would meet to pick the new nominee, and they're 99% Biden delegates. There are 37 people, 37 uncommitted delegates and 3,900 something Biden delegates. So it would be basically Joe Biden's party and Joe Biden's party would, well, I'd say for two things.

Everything logical would pick Kamala Harris. People belly-ache about this, but one problem is that there is this thing called the Biden-Harris campaign that's been raising hundreds of millions of dollars and making all these ad reservations for the rest of the year. And if you replace that with the Wes Moore,

I don't know, Mark Cuban ticket, well, that would help because he has money. if your president or ticket you just wouldn't have that committee you have to be tied up in court arguing that they can use the Biden money the Biden money could be donated to a super PAC that then makes new ads reservations there's all these complications the easiest thing would be as if as if he just something happened to him I don't know why I'm being like a twitch streamer trying not to use death words because I feel like I don't be demonetized. Yeah, if they aren't alive by the end of the live.

And to be clear, Secret Service, I am not calling for this. I'm saying on paper, those are the rules in the States. Like if that happens, then you say, all right, well, there's a running mate and they're the nominee. And so the convention would there would be a media frenzy about running mate and they're the nominee. And so the convention would, there would be a media frenzy about who the VP nominee is or whatever, there are already discussions. A lot of this is fantasy football happening right now, but the actual rules are, okay, the party does this.

And you've seen David Sacks, the first person I saw in this, which I don't know what that says because his takes are always bad. His takes always make no sense. But he was already, he was kind of taking out this mini, this like self insurrection argument. He was saying that if Democrats did that since they had a primary,

they would be destroying democracy inside the party. And I read that and my eyes started to roll back in my head, so I don't think that'll be super convincing to a lot of people. I think it would be seen as oops, a crisis. And they all defended the wrong guy for too long. And now they have a new nominee. It would be ugly, but it'd be impossibly ugly if they say, you know what? We told you for four years, both that Joe Biden was young enough to be president and that Kamala Harris could take over if he, if something happened. And we lied to you about all of that.

So here's here's a new ticket to different. Yeah, we said we would. We would said we said we would only serve one fucking term. What happened to that? What happened to that? What happened to any of it? Well, technically, he just said he would be a bridge president. And you can be a bridge president while serving two terms.

Just because he said he wasn't the future doesn't mean that he doesn't have to be a defining fucking Reaganesque figure like he wants to be at 86? They were super careful They would let it be known through AIDS that he thought about this and then he decided not to it most it seemed the reason Like McCain thought about this and never did it because when you pull it and every voter says gosh an old president I don't want that and they and they and they pull it back But but but they he never went on the record and said I'm only a one-term president But yes, lots of people I've met them. Yeah, I mean like voters are normal

They're not reading every single article about this They I've made people who don't like Kamala Harris because they just don't know who she is But I've met normal voters who voted there and they thought yeah I thought the deal was that he was gonna do one term and I was surprised that he's still the nominee There's a lot of their ability. That's perfect. Narratively, that's so perfect. The idea of him kind of coming in, coming out of retirement, fixing the country or whatever, beating Trump and then handing it off, that gives him such a coherent role in history. It matches very perfectly. That's the type of thing that historians would just love.

And if he just decided, I think he would be relatively popular now if he just decided, he said he wasn't gonna seek a second term. He would be an uncontroversial figure, like to a certain degree. But like, and one thing that really weirded me out was that like, it's like this one article said, Biden won't step down unless he's sure that like,

people won't see him as like this like quitter, or like, he has to be sure that he'll be remembered as the guy who beat Trump. It's like, you already beat him. You're the president, man. People are going to respect you second term or not. The way you get them to see you as a failure and a loser, like all your seventies Delaware columnist who still live in your head rent free described you as is if you lose to Trump. That's how you get. Yeah, that's how you get remembered as a loser. Also, like, okay, just taking, like, I don't think Trump winning is necessarily like the end of the country, but like, just on abortion stuff alone, the policies and everything are like

horrifying. And like, there is some credence to the idea that like, yeah, I guess it's either like this or Kabbalah or like this horrific set of outcomes. Right. But like you can't say that. And then then the reason that you're risking the election is that Biden will feel bad about his legacy if he quit. Yeah. Is this important or not? Right. Is this so important that everyone has to fucking hold their nose and just do whatever and ignore?

God said all the all of this Or is it trifling enough that we're gonna risk this entire thing? Based on what a guy who's probably not going to be alive in three years thinks about himself What the fuck if a time traveler went to Hillary Clinton in Summer 2015 and said look I'm from the future James Comey screws you at the last minute Very friendly goes to who speaks really? You're gonna lose the election of Donald Trump. There's nothing you can do about it and she kept plowing you might say well That's pretty selfish if you knew she was gonna lose and and And this is the thing where Democrats have, I think this is why this is so

traumatic. A few voters I talked to in Wisconsin compared this to just the feeling they had election night 2016 was just, oh God, it's happening again, where we had everything lined up to beat Donald Trump and we're going to screw it up. Somehow that's, that's the issue is that they, they, they know that there is probably a different way to do this. And the person saying, just trust me and not sacrificing anything, because that would be a huge sacrifice. The democracy is so important that I'm not going to run for president again. I'm going to give

up everything that I worked for my entire career. That would be impressive. And he's just not doing it. They're doing it. They're giving their money every month. They're the people who want the presidency and have decided not to run in the primary. Everyone else sacrificed, except for Joe Biden. Yeah, people are sacrificing. I mean, migrants are sacrificing. They have to now live in detention centers because his fucking popularist team decided that they needed to adopt right-wing immigration policies to get a slight messaging advantage over Trump. There is a report that trans people, like he might have backtracked on trans

rights, those people are gonna have to suffer for Biden but he can't be asked because it'll make him feel bad. The only like actual point like argument you could make it would be somewhat coherent is arguing that he's uniquely indispensable which was kind of like the way people pushed Hillary, that she was just this uniquely competent iron lady who like needed to be president She was the most qualified person and I guess like I mean that kind of made she was a very singular figure So I like I guess theoretically that made sense and maybe for body because he's so experienced It's like oh you need him to handle these crises. You can't do that after last Thursday. Like it's over. You can't push it

I love the idea of Joe Biden visiting Hillary Clinton like Marley's ghost. These polls I wear, I forged in life, Jack. But like, I mean, like on the question of like, Felix, your point about like the stakes of this election, which have been brought into stark relief by the Supreme Court decisions, like one basically overturning the regulatory state and the other like immunizing Donald Trump from any or any other precedent from quote official acts committed while in office. And then like Biden's statement the other night where he he read from a teleprompter and spoke for about five minutes. I think the thing that really sums it up is when he closed by saying

I dissent like he's fucking Sotomayor, like he's a justice and not a politician, not the executive of the country who has power to like do something about this. Who are you dissenting against? Your own bodily functions? Your brain saying, Joe, we're about to die soon. But Josh, like let me put to you the Catherine dad question. If you were advising Biden

and resigning the office immediately were that was not on the table What would you be telling him now? Like I mean is there is there any way for him to continue to run this campaign or what would a competently run? It just generic Democratic presidential campaign right now look like you kind of like kind of think big the thing I thought about last night was why aren't they running like a amendment that says the presidents don't have the right of kings? That could be somewhat splashy. It would get people's attention. It might put some Republicans in a tough spot.

I always try to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever I wrote about this over the past year or so. I was like, well, I'll assume that he's capable of doing these things. It's basically what everybody's saying. You have to give town halls. You have to give town halls. You have to give like big press conferences. You have to show that you can give like speeches and interact with people without a teleprompter.

Like you gotta really go like balls to the wall. I think his schedule this week has basically nothing on it. You need to like immediately like start talking to people. Like the fact that he talked to Hunter before he talked to like Hakeem Jeffries, imagine how he feels because like he's facing like the least productive congressional majority in history with like majority of like two votes.

Republicans are resigning en masse, like he had registered in go in his favor, like somewhat and like it looks like the most layup speakership of all time. And then Biden like does that. And then he doesn't even give him a call. Like, come on, like he's got to feel pretty shitty and this is supposed to be what Biden was great at he was supposed to be the great back slapper that Obama never

would be and he doesn't seem to really be living up to that no yeah that was I mean talk about abandoned Biden sales pitches look you guys might may like Bernie's plans but no one's as good as good at handshakes as old Joe. Just wait till he gets in there and starts working the phone. It seems like the moment he picks up a phone, he dies instantly. He cannot complete the call.

He's like me when anyone actually calls my phone. I have a dementia-induced episode any time anyone tries to call me on the phone these days, which you should never do if you're listening to this show. But yeah, like, so, Dave, what I see like, people people may not like Kamala because they don't know her. But like, given that she's the most realistic, you know, sub to come off the bench for Biden, like, what is that like, you know, who would be her running mate? Like, who's on the shortlist for that? Should they should they move Kamala in there? And why why aren't more Democrats like talking up Kamala right now? And like, what and what are her like, have you if you like noticed anything from the people around her about how they're trying

to position themselves now as like the obvious replacement as the vice president? Oh, they're being very careful because I was talking to Matt Gaetz on debate night, and that was his first reaction, is like, Kamala's gonna be checking his pulse every time she shakes his hand. That they've wanted to, one, they know Republicans don't like Kamala and have been trying to say for four years

that Biden is the friendly old man face on the socialism of Kamala Harris, but that kind of frayed over the years. If you go back and look at how they were attacking Harris in early 2021, it was that she was the avatar of the left inside the White House. And then she just had some specific scrubs that, I wouldn't say destroyed, but hurt her public image.

And they stopped caring. They just said, this is not somebody we need to take seriously. She's never gonna win, Trump'll flatten her. And so the combo of people are staying very quiet. And the polling from CNN today was like, you couldn't get anyone to talk about it because that's the sin you cannot commit.

Even LBJ was not going around back channeling reporters. You know who actually could win Texas against Coldwater. But he did other things. I mean, he had the courtesy to do that other thing before that. There used to be some sense of propriety. But they're not talking about it, but you can't even get them to comment on this poll. But the theory basically is that she has been defined by two groups of people, people on

the left who always disliked her because they thought she was a phony, running in 2020 and grabbing onto Bernie's message without understanding it, which I think even Bernie would agree with parts of. And then conservatives just think she's a joke and just and you see the same loop of the coconut tree gap, not even a gap, just an odd story, right? And some of the more word-sality things about we being unburdened by that which came before and but that not what that which is. That's facts. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, it's true. I want to be like that. The theory is that that image is so lousy

that she, as somebody who is young enough to be trained and do well in public speeches, that actually if you look at her, and I have, if you look around the stump in the last few months, she's defensive, but usually defensive when being asked about Biden. She is just, she's not the kind of person, kind of no Democrat is, who would take a question

about abortion and then somehow bring it in, bring up the rape committed by an illegal immigrant and how that's a problem. There are just basic performance issues that she would fly over is the idea. Like they won't talk about, like I just, in public she supports Joe Biden, but you don't sign up to be vice president unless you think you could also

Do the job and do the job better and that's that's right The thing though is she's shed a ton of staff over the year She does not have she doesn't have this brain trust that's that's like locked up with her doing this because she's laid off staff Staff have left because they she has just made mistakes usually related to not prepping for something important. She's giving a speech and she kind of wings it instead of going to the prepared remarks because she didn't read them. That's damaging, but they're thinking now, oh, in a short general election, could she

tack that in? Probably. And then for her running mate, I'm going to be clear on that they just this is just Democrats kind of riffing like Democratic members of Congress and people behind the scenes. Any white male governor somewhere of which they have a few they got Roy Cooper in North Carolina, they have Tim Walls in Minnesota. Roy Cooper is term limited. So he's retiring anyway. Walls could run without giving his seat up. And they just say there would be somebody safe in a swing state that you can put on the ticket which they didn't have

four years ago. Well they had those governors they weren't ready to run for president yet. Somebody like that. So it'd be, hey everybody here's the vice president you thought you hated she's not that bad, here is a white Democratic governor you love those guys you've been wishing with one of those guys for years. That'd be the ticket. It is just one probably Cooper or walls I've not heard anyone else names specifically because Josh Shapiro is Interested in running for president and has modeled his entire public speech pattern after Barack Obama In this mix in this in the same in the same way

That he would want the vice presidency in this method. But there's a thing everyone is being this. This is real VEEP hours where people are real real in the loop. Our people, people cannot say this stuff. Like it makes you realize how much of normal political discourse is frivolous. Can't handle it because the riff on this stuff until it's serious. And then and then they do not want to be tied to the speculation. It's just like members of Congress who have no skin in the game

that I'm texting with who are like saying, I don't know, this guy look good on TV. That's real. The problem with Cooper, I heard, is that if he leaves the state of North Carolina, Mark Robinson becomes acting governor, so he cannot like leave the state without like that guy being in charge effectively. He has not left North Carolina, I think, in years for that reason. He yeah. And oh, man North Carolina, I think in years for that reason. He, yeah. And, oh man, I'm really channeling

the full Renfield, Democrat, Democrat strategist mindset, but they're trying to beat, they're trying to beat Mark Robinson for governor this year. And they have the attorney general who's fairly popular running. And anything that made Mark Robinson more famous,

they like that idea. any news cycle strategy. Oh, yeah, which works great for him. I haven't checked yet what happened there. But in the in North Carolina, hey, a headline that says crazy North Carolina governor just just made straight marriage mandatory or whatever. Like they're not worried about that. But they're going to throw that. That's one sacrifice they're willing to make

for democracy is like maybe a few weeks of Mark Robinson being governor. I mean, I think at the at the very least, Kamala would be able to speak cogently about the Democrats number one issue, which is abortion. So I just really think are we are we de facto or are we just all k hive now? Do we have to break out the Kamala apology forums? I've been on that shit since like February I've been an age truther for so fucking long This is I can't like say it's not a little bit cathartic that this like people are finally like what I think Woken up because he was down on the pole since like September. This isn't like the risk isn't exactly new

But yeah I mean like I went through that article and it's like all this stuff about like him being, a lot of it was kind of like the circumstance of how Kamala even got here in the first place, which I do think are interesting. But the thing that made me interested in her, even as far back as February,

is that she seemed to have kind of an understanding of the election that like a very spite driven Biden just doesn't have. Like there was this one, like her team started leaking a bunch of stuff in February about like about Gaza and other stuff that like, I mean, obviously you only leak stuff that makes you look good,

but the fact that she thought it would make her look good, I thought it showed a certain level of understanding. And it was like, she was like saying, oh, I'm actually pressing for a ceasefire. Or she released, there was a CNN article about how she met with all these governors and they all slammed Biden's campaign. And instead of calling them bedwetters and complaining, she was like, okay, what do you want to do to make it better?

How can we work together on this? And I read that and it was legitimately kind of refreshing. It's not like she's some kind of masterful politician or amazing candidate in a vacuum, but it's like in the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen, I guess. Yeah. It's the same way that Ansbach in Shout Out of the Erd Tree seems like the nicest guy ever, because he just has a smidgen of self-awareness and humility in a world filled with mass murderers and sex maniacs.

A hundred percent. I think that's a great comparison. Yeah, she's Ansbach. Yeah. sex maniacs. 100% I think that's a great comparison. Yeah she's Ansbach. Yeah Ansbach just by having a normal person's, well I wouldn't say normal person, but like a Kojya Depraisal, a Kojya Depraisal you know she comes off way better. I like I am ready to go to just dive into an illusion here. Her campaign colors were the same colors of the original print run of The Wretched of the Earth.

Are you ready to nuke Israel? Yeah. Her parents were Marxist scholars. She was a DA. Ansback worked for Moog, and he's cool. Like, people can change. Yeah, no, yeah, people have passed. Maybe those truant kids were actually just being tricked by Bicola.

You don't know that. Yeah. That's where we all love him. I know. Yeah. He's tough, but fair. You know, as long as we're talking about Elden Ring again, you know, what is it like you can pick up items that are like a turtle meat or like a turtle neck to eat, right?

Like to get some health back or whatever. Well, as long as we're talking about various meats to eat, we got to talk about the R.F.K. Jr. story from this week because we have another election, another American election where eating dogs is becoming an issue. Once again, he thinks he's him this week. This week, Richard Nixon has been vindicated when he said it's not illegal if the president does it. He's been vindicated by the Supreme Court and Barack Nixon has been vindicated when he said it's not illegal if the president does it.

He's been vindicated by the Supreme Court and Barack Obama has been vindicated by R.F.K. Jr. for it's okay to eat dogs. I just want to read here. This is from last year, Robert Kennedy Jr. texted a photograph to a friend. In the photo, R.F.K. Jr. was posing alongside an unidentified woman with the barbecued remains of what appears to be a dog. Kennedy told the person who was traveling to Asia that he might enjoy a

restaurant in Korea that served dog on the menu, suggesting Kennedy had sampled dog. The photo was taken in 2010 according to the digital files metadata. The same year he was diagnosed with a dead tapeworm in his brain. A veterinarian who examined the photograph says the carcass is a canine pointing to the 13 pairs of ribs which include the telltale floating rib found in dogs But so you like so insane about this is like okay like I get like there I think there's a

Coherent and cogent argument that I kind of agree with as far as like eating dogs and cats where it's like It's no more weird at the end of the day At least meeting a pig. I mean they need a dog where it's like, it's no more weird at the end of the day, at least more. And eating a pig, I mean, pictures are harder than dogs, yeah. Than eating a pig, right? Or eating a lamb or whatever, right?

Like, I think that's definitely true. But like, regardless of what you eat, regardless of the meat you eat, have you ever taken like an entire pig that was on a barbecue and held it up and be like, ah, I'm eating this with your mouth open, not like a part of it, which would be like weird enough, but the entire carcass, the carcass. Hey, look what I'm eating.

It's so weird. He is such a fucking weird and annoying person. He's letting this come out just like it's not even like with Trump where he like tanked through all these scandals to become president. Is this for like 9% of the vote, Max? He's letting this come out just like, it's not even like with Trump where he like tanked through all these scandals to become president. Is this for like 9% of the vote, Max? Well, he's also the anti-Biden because it's the Kennedy's who are ratting him out on this.

Like if you look at the sourcing in Joe Higgins' article, his entire family is like, what do I got? Let me search my email. My email file of dumb shit RFK sent me. Here you go, here's the- They hate him so much. They hate him so much. They hate him so much. They're talking about his drug use and not current.

Like he's talked about his heroin use and all that, but they're really just speculating about him as to destroy him. Like it took him a while because they were doing all these events with Biden where they didn't really say much about RFK. They just said they were sad. And they're going full October oppo on their brother, yeah I haven't seen before not with a Kennedy yeah it's just

July imagine what they have he he um like unsurprisingly there's like um I don't know if you guys saw this uh the vanity fair I think it was article about him in the babysitter. Yeah, like a pretty big accusation and His response was I'm not a church boy choir boy Church church boy We haven't even gotten to his ex-wife suicide note. Yeah, yeah, that's that's pretty rough as well

It just such a weird fucking candidate because it's like, okay, uh, what do I bring to the table? I bring the exact positions and incoherence in Joe Biden's campaign that everyone hates. The biggest policy liabilities of his campaign. I have those I Sound like shit and I also have Trump's sexual history and worst We can be worse than sexual history. Yeah, no, it's Jesus Christ. I mean like it who is this for? He was trying to take advantage of the fact that most of the country didn't want a Biden Trump rematch, which sure, that's fair, that shows in the polling. And then it's kind of an indictment to him

that when 70% of the country said we don't want this, 8% said, yeah, we'll settle for you. No, this is it. This should be such a layup for like a viable third party candidate with name recognition. Like these are, not only are these two Horrific candidates there are two horrific candidates that are known qualities that everyone is kind of fucking sick of yeah No one wins of outright majority in this year. It's it's amazing. It's a me I I hope that like I don't know

I don't know if it's important enough for this to happen for there to be like a game change type book About the RFK campaign, but I hope there is one and a TV movie I would the last time I saw him was at the Libertarian Convention where he he it was very strange So he showed up first of all he has a joke he makes now about the brain worm Where if he if there's a crazy idea in this case, it's spying on people He says I I don't support that, maybe the worm ate that part of my brain, and it doesn't get a big laugh.

Oh my God. Oh! Because people just feel it's a little too strange. So in a room of libertarians, he made that joke. Yeah, that was too weird for them. Yeah, not a big response. And so he showed up, he didn't really work for the nomination, and then the last day when they were voting on the up, he didn't really work for the nomination.

And then the last day when they were voting on the nominee, he hadn't put his name in. So the party chair called him live and asked if he was willing to do it. And then he recorded a video saying, sure, I'm in. But it was one of those phone videos where you could see the thumb blurring out part of the image. So he just, from his backyard,

recorded this video that they played on a short delay of him saying, yeah, yeah, please, I'd love to be your nominee. And then he lost. So this is another thing. I think the Kennedys do not like being embarrassed as much as anybody else. And I wonder how much of their willingness to share the worst stories they've ever heard

of their brother came about, because he just has face planted harder than, there's so many, I'm not gonna make any joke on this. There are people who can. And further, he face planted to a degree that none of them have when they run for office. Joe Kennedy losing to Ed Markey was kind of embarrassing. It was embarrassing that his dad had to spend a bunch of money on a super PAC, didn't do anything.

But not, I lost to the Libertarians embarrassing. Yeah. Total aside, completely irrelevant, but I cannot believe the Mises caucus lost that shit. I cannot believe they lost the nomination. Because their nominee took an edible before his speech and then tried to. Oh, this is the Von Bies' caucus, the Austrian, the Austrian economics caucus. Yeah, they lost.

They nominated a Reddit guy from 2012 as their nominee. So they had this guy, Michael Recktenwald, who they built up for years. There was gonna be another podcast guy called Dave Smith who decided not to run because he didn't think he'd be a good candidate. This guy, Michael Recktenwald. He's from the Legion of Skanks, by the way, Dave Smith.

Oh, that's right. He really is. Yeah? Well, yeah, Recktenwald was just more of the guy who writes the long, the books you can buy online about libertarianism and gold, et cetera, et cetera. And he was running, and so the day that Trump showed up at the convention, he got a speaking slot right in front of Trump, and then he was able to do a press conference on stage after Trump, and he was just off it.

You could tell there was something wrong. He was the guy who's normally good at talking talking the rumor spread that he's taking an edible and then he can he could sue him the edible sorry he confirmed that he took this edible before going on stage he had no idea as we pull back on you on the on the in the press conference he just got tired of the questions said and said I'm gonna leave and walked away and then the next day to spin why he did this he said I am high on liberty. It did not work. Like he lost nomination. I'm going to leave now. I literally did that when I ran into one of my best friend's fathers

when I was on mushrooms in college. You just had to walk away. Yeah, no, he just started talking to me and I was like, I need to leave now and walk to. But I guess to wrap things up here, like, I don't know, I'm like, there's some all-hands meeting tomorrow at the White House. Who knows what will come out of that? But, like, now we are in, like, the King Lear part of this presidency and really American democracy. And the question is, will Biden be able to determine who is the good daughter or not?

And I guess I'll just ask Josh first, then you, Dave. If you had to bet, how is this going to shake out over the next week? Are they going to are they going to stick with Biden or are we going to see a change? Oh, boy. This is the podcast recorded, and it's online forever. So I think the way things are going, for the first time, I think Biden might say that he has to make a decision for the good of the country and step aside. If he doesn't, then like I was saying, it snaps back to every, it's like one of those things where the lights turn on at an orgy and everyone's naked and everyone's embarrassed.

Everyone in the party has said a version of this guy is too old to do it and either he needs to get Much better quickly as he ages in a month or we have to drop him for them to go back and say, you know What didn't mean it? Sorry that I trashed my president and said he's incompetent. I think that's just gonna be so tough that it's gonna be untenable So I'm seeing I'm seeing the path to Biden saying I can't do this. Yeah, I'm going to stick with that. If I keep talking, I'm going to make it boring. Yeah, I agree with that. Basically, I'd add on that another structural thing for the vision here, which I also have come around to seeing, is the donors who are giving their own money to this. If you reach a certain point where

he's losing in New Mexico and Colorado and Virginia, and he's refusing to step out, he's calling everybody bedwetters, like he is so condescending to like the donors, which is so like fucking strange to me. Like, I mean, I get like being mean to the voters or like the other politicians who you don't respect, but these guys are giving you like seven figures

and you're like going up to them and patting them on the head and saying, you're like going up to them and patting them on the head And saying you're fucking bedwetter. Fuck you It's just like they are really lost in the sauce or the kind of Nixonian psychodrama I think they've been going through like for the past number of years and if it like if he can't really Just demonstrate a display of like kind of vitality in a way that I don't know is still possible for him. Like there's obviously the issue with the elected officials saying it, but like fundamentally if you can't fundraise the campaign and there's like a donor strike, Robert kind of meets

the road, push comes to shove, like I don't know how he can justify it even to himself continuing this unless he legitimately thinks that preserving his dignity is so important here, which he might because he's psychotic. But I mean, we'll see. I mean, if preserving his dignity is a factor, it's hard to imagine the people around him haven't, you know, had a serious conversation with him at this point. But yeah, I just don't see I don't see how you can go to convention. I don't see how you could go to convention run ads put your candidate out there after Again over half the people that actually matter in the party and elected positions go

This is fucked up. He can't be president You just can't I'm sorry You cannot if anyone if anyone would like go ahead with that after all of that, after all that has been done, it would be the Democrats, as I said at the beginning. Yeah, but like, I just I don't know how you can allow yourself to do that. Well, we shall see. Like I said, this podcast will probably be rendered irrelevant by the time it released but Chris Yeah, sorry I would just like to add it for anybody who's listened to hell of presidents It just goes to show you no matter how humiliating it show it It seems at the time you always take the VP spot. Mm-hmm even Mike Pence

We're here more about Mike Pence than we than we would have if he just stayed in Indiana County fairs Like John Greg's speculation. I will leave it there for today. I want to thank Josh and German and Dave Weigel. Josh is on Substack and Dave is at Semaphore if you want to read their coverage and commentary of this extraordinary now quite a great historic presidential election. We shall see what next week brings. Hope everyone has a

good Fourth of July holiday. Till next time everybody, bye bye. Bye. Bye. What can be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been? What can be unburdened by what has been?

What can be unburdened by what has been? That can be unburdened by what has been. There are those who are unable to see what can be, but there are many more who are able to see what can be, but there are many more who are able to see what can be unburdened by what has been.