QAA Podcast - Melted Election Season feat Dave Weigel (Premium E250) Sample

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

In the wake of a disastrous debate, the presidential elections enter terra incognita. We attempt to contextualize the situation with journalist and repeat guest Dave Weigel, who has a deep knowledge of both presidential campaigns and voters across the country. We also explore how the debate has led some liberals online to spin up conspiracy theories of their own. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to podcast mini-series like Manclan, Trickle Down, Perverts and The Spectral Voyager: http://www.patreon.com/QAA Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

POMAYOR. Oh, OO-O-hoo-AA-hoo-oh-oh-oh-oh-ah-oh-oh-ah-oh-ha-oh-oh-haw-h. If you're hearing this, well done. You found a way to connect to the Internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast, Premium Episode 250, Melted Election Season. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky, Liv Aker, Julian Field, and Travis View.

Hello, sweet listeners, and welcome to what will surely be our one and only episode about the United States election season. With the Biden campaign urging us to trust the plan and the Trump campaign gloating in the aftermath of a disastrous debate in which they were able to put behind them a post-felony conviction period of doubt. We thought we would check in with our man on the ground journalist Dave Weigel. Welcome back, Dave. It's good to be bad. Thank you. Okay. We'll be asking Dave a few questions in a bit and also examining Travis's segment about bizarre conspiracy theories that have cropped up in the wake of the debate. But first, News Flash. Podcasters are under

attack. Listener, the most sacred of American rights, the right to listen to our podcast is under attack. It brings us no pleasure to read parts of this email sent out by the Biden campaign in the wake of the debate. Seven things to tell your friends after the debate. And four things you can do. Hey, Travis, if you're like me, just be clear. This is something Julian added. I didn't receive the email. You're that ashamed of like signing up to the Biden newsletter? Wow. Are you like a post left guy or something? I mean, what's going on here? I get emails from them.

Hey, Travis. If you're like me, you're getting lots of texts or calls from folks about the state of the race after Thursday. Maybe it was your panicked aunt, your MAGA uncle, or some self-important podcasters. It's a tough position to be in, so I thought it might be helpful to send you a few responses. Yes, the debate started rough, but voters saw what a threat Donald Trump is to the country. It was more than just lying, though he did plenty of that. Trump defended the end of Roe v. Wade saying it's been a great thing. said that the pro-Trump Nazi march in Charlottesville was made up,

said on January 6th that we were respected all over the world, defended his 34 felony convictions saying the system was rigged and he did nothing wrong. Actual voters perceived this debate very differently than those who pay attention to politics a lot, like everyone who is getting this email and everyone who goes on cable news. Breaking news. People think Joe Biden's old. They did coming into the debate. They do coming out of the debate. At the same time, though, a lot of people have rose-colored glass about the Trump years. The most important thing about the debate was always going to be that people were reminded

of what they hate about Donald Trump, that he's unhinged out for revenge and in it for himself, and they were reminded in a powerful way. So I just want to take a moment here to examine what we just read. Dave, is this type of email something you've seen before? Like, is this part and parcel of presidential election cycles, or are we seeing a unique moment here? To answer the question, is this normal, almost, this is almost normal. This has happened before where a debate goes badly. I'm just not going to say this.

I'm not going to underplay what happened here. I'm just going to let context. This happens where debate doesn't go that great, and the campaign has to reach to things that were said that they want to draw attention to. An example I'm cited just because I haven't heard anyone else mention this, is back in 2004, the first Bush-Carrie debate went pretty poorly for George W. Bush,

carry got to bounce off it. And what the Bush campaign did, and they messaged all their surrogates for afterward, was saying, well, the real definitive moment of this debate was John Kerry saying we need to make sure that our military action passes a global test. And what other global tests would John Kerry want us to submit to? So that's the normal part of this, that you brick it in a debate and you say, well, what everyone should be messaging about are these two or three things that the other guys did wrong. But there really isn't a precedent for a debate

performance going this badly. In the way that Biden did, there has never been one that generate this sort of, do we have to dump the nominee chatter that is ongoing as we have now? So this is a particularly sweaty and desperate version of a thing I have seen before. What's interesting to me is that the email starts out with like, we're on the same side, right? It says maybe it's your panicked aunt, your MAGA uncle or some self-important podcasters that are like challenging your support of Biden. But then later it says actual voters perceived this debate very differently than those who pay attention to politics a lot. So you'd think, okay, so the person being written to here is an actual voter, but then it says, like everyone who is getting this

email and everyone who goes on cable news. That part is kind of new where they have to argue that you, while you might be feeling something and your friends feel that something, you should stop feeling it and pivot to something else, which is as a trauma response, that makes sense. That happens, right? Somebody survives a car wreck and they don't wake up every day. Think about the car wreck. They start to, they start to process it. It goes into that part of their gray matter. They really were treating this like, well, this went about as badly as it could have, and your job is to tell everyone else, you know, who thinks it did that it was as badly as it could have gone, that the real problem is Donald Trump. That was unified Democratic messaging.

I saw his email, but over the weekend, I, after the debate, I should say, was with Bernie Sanders who ran against Biden and there were a couple people at his events saying they wish they could swap him in for Biden. And that was his answer. It was, well, we're not choosing the best talk show host for choosing a president and look at what Trump said as opposed to how they looked while saying it. That is weird. It's both traditional and very weird for it to be this big a part of their spin. Another part that I find really telling is saying at the same time, though, a lot of people have rose-colored glasses about the Trump years. You're writing to your base, Democratic supporters, people who have donated to the Democratic Party and saying that they are seeing the Trump years

with rose-colored glasses. I mean, is that really true? Do Democrats? have fond memories of the Trump years? Well, not the person getting that email, but they do have this issue where real people, and TV cameras seem to find all of them. I don't know if there is a black male without a college degree at a barber shop that has not been on TV explaining this point of view,

but it's a very, it is a very popular point of view. I'm a Democrat, I voted for Biden. However, well, there's some stuff that was a lot cheaper four years ago, and for that reason, maybe the Trump years weren't that bad. Now, if you look at polling, very, very few people identifying as Democrats say, things under Trump were less bad than they expect them to be.

But enough, enough of them come out and do say that. I don't think it's crazy that a Democratic mom who gets this email has a Democratic aunt friend who has expressed this point of view that, well, they said things were terrible under Trump, but think about how, I don't know, there weren't, there weren't new wars. There just were more bombs dropped in wars that existed before he got there. Or he blew up the Iran deal, we didn't die yet. Or things, they'd probably be less arch. But things like that.

We have a passage from a little later in the email. The bedwetting brigade is calling for Joe Biden to, quote, unquote, drop out. The bed wedding brigade. I think the only person wetting the bed here is probably the president. I personally would not bring up wetting the bed after that debate. That's all I'm going to say there. But then it says, first of all, Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, period. End of story.

Voters voted. He won overwhelmingly. And if he were to drop out, it would lead to weeks of chaos in turn. eternal food fighting, and a bunch of candidates who limp into a brutal floor fight at the convention. You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast. For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA. Travis, why is that such a good deal?

Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month. For that very low price, you get access to. to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries. That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Pervers with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View. It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.

Travis, for once, I agree with you. And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA. Well, that's not an opinion. It's a fact. You're so right, Jay. We love and appreciate all of our listeners. Yes, we do. And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude maybe?

That's not true. The part about be crying, not me being grateful. I'm very grateful.