The Daily - A Guide to the Suddenly Crowded Republican Primary

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination keep entering the field, despite the fact that Donald Trump polls consistently as the front-runner and Ron DeSantis has emerged as the clear No. 2. Why do so many lesser-tier Republicans think they have a real shot?Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent for The Times, offers a guide to the new crop of candidates and discusses their rationale for running.Guest: Shane Goldmacher, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Mike Pence, former vice president — and now rival — to Mr. Trump gave his most aggressive criticism of his former boss, portraying him as unfit to be president.Chris Christie’s presidential bid has little chance of success. But if he takes out Mr. Trump along the way, the former New Jersey governor may consider it a victory.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

I'm announcing today that I'm running for President of the United States of America! From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. For a strong America. For a proud America. For a proud America. Before God and my family. I am running for United States President.

President of the United States. President of the United States. President of the United States of America. Day after day, more and more long-shot Republicans are throwing their hat into the 2024 presidential race, despite a set of seemingly insurmountable obstacles in their way. My colleague Shane Goldmacher offers us a guide to the new crop of candidates and their rationale for running. It's Thursday, June 8th. Shane, hello.

Hello, Michael. Good to see you. Nice to see you as well. Shane, your bylines and your datelines in The Times tell us that you have been in Iowa. And the reason we want to talk to you is because this Republican race is now truly, it feels, underway. And because several new candidates have entered the race

in just the past few days. And that's a little bit confounding, in a way, because of what we already know about this Republican field, which is, first, that Donald Trump has a lock on something like a third

of the Republican electorate, and that lock can't be broken. And second, that Ron DeSantis has emerged as the very clear number two in the Republican field, trying to somehow pick off some of those Trump voters and consolidate the remainder of the Republican field. So with that in mind, we want to talk about the rationale of these candidates that keep entering this race day after day. Candidates who, with apologies to them, are kind of lower tier candidates than Trump and DeSantis. And why do you think they think they have a real shot? Well, I think there's two reasons.

And one is a general reason, which is there's a long history of early frontrunners stumbling in presidential politics, right? The people who look like 800-pound gorillas at the beginning of the year, they end up not actually winning. And sometimes they're not even in the top two or three to jail, leaving space for someone else to rise up. at the front at the beginning so often aren't the people at the front at the end. But if that's the sort of broader general reason, there's a more specific reason, which is in the last six months leading into his candidacy, Ron DeSantis didn't appear as a world beater to all his potential opponents. He didn't consolidate the base to turn this race into a clear two-person contest. He had some stumbles when he first started to do his book tour. He had some donors who said,

oh, I'm not sure that he's actually going to be the more electable Republican. He's taken positions on issues that make him a tougher candidate in the general election. Depending on the people's views, there was weakness seen in the pre-candidacy of Ron DeSantis that encouraged people, A, who are already in the race, or B, who are about to get in or getting into the race, that there was, in fact, an opportunity to emerge

as the non-Trump candidate. Because there's not as many questions about that Trump base. There are legal questions about potential indictments and his ability to continue to run. But both sides, between Trump's legal jeopardy and Ron DeSantis' performance on the stump, opened up the Pandora's box for all of these potential candidates to say, you know what? I'm going to throw my hat in the ring because there's a chance that I might be able to break

through. Okay, so who is in this, as you have termed it, Pandora's box of Republican candidates who may not look all that meaningful right now in the polls, but who could become much bigger players in this Republican nomination contest? Well, right now, there's going to be about 10 or 11 candidates by the end of this week. They include people like Asa Hutchinson, who's a former governor of Arkansas, Larry Elder, a longtime radio talk show host in California. There are people like Doug Burgum, who's entering the race this week as the governor of North Dakota. Even Perry Johnson, a candidate who tried to run for governor of Michigan and failed

and is deciding to parlay that into an even longer shot presidential bid. But really, there's five candidates that are worth focusing more time on besides Donald Trump and besides Ron DeSantis. And that's Chris Christie, it's Mike Pence, it's Tim Scott, it's Nikki Haley, and it's Vivek Ramaswamy. Okay, so what's the right framework, Shane, for thinking about and kind of classifying in our heads those five Republican candidates for president? Like most things in the Republican

party for the last eight years, the best framework to think about this race is how all the other candidates are relating to Donald Trump, whether they're mimicking Trump, whether they're trying to out Trump Trump, or in the case of Chris Christie, where they're running to say, it's time for the party to move on. And I'm the candidate who's going to take him on and knock him down a notch. All right, well, let's start with Christie, former U.S. attorney, former governor of New Jersey, and a former advisor to Trump during Trump's presidency. Guys, thank you. Thank you guys for being here. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, and you just got at one of the sort of key facts and contradictions of the Chris Christie candidacy, which is way back in 2016.

He was a key endorser of Donald Trump. He helped run his presidential transition. And now. Let me be very clear. I am going out there to take out Donald Trump. But here's why. I want to win. And I don't want him to win.

Chris Christie's pitching himself as the answer to bringing the Republican Party around to a non-Trump era. A lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog is not a leader. After the 2020 election, when Donald Trump wouldn't accept the election results, and then especially after January 6th, Chris Christie said, look, Donald Trump is a danger to the Republican Party, and he's bad for the country. And sat and watched on TV as people that he urged to go to the Capitol smashed the windows, broke into the Capitol, and chanted, hang Mike Pence. Hang his own vice president. And when he heard that and saw that, you know what he did? He ate his well-done cheeseburger and sat there and did nothing and let people die in that building. Is that really the kind of character we want back in the Oval Office?

And now he's saying the person to take on Trump, the person to take down Trump, is me, a former Trump insider who knows him, knows his weaknesses, and can expose them on the national stage. him, knows his weaknesses, and can expose them on the national stage. Hmm. So it's basically a pitch to Republican voters to excise Trump from the Republican Party. Yes, exactly. But Shane, we know from everything that has occurred over the last eight years in American politics that excising Trump from the Republican Party is a little bit like excising the blue

from the sky, right? It seems like a very big stretch from the sky, right? It seems like a very big stretch. And undoubtedly, that's something Chris Christie knows. Look, if you look at polling, Chris Christie starts this race in probably the worst position of the best known candidates out there. There was a CNN poll recently where 60% of Republicans said they would not consider supporting Chris Christie under any circumstances. So how do you win a Republican primary where 60% of the voters at the beginning say, no way, no how, no Chris Christie. And so he says, look, he's not running unless he thinks there's a path to win. But for most people, he's seen as a candidate who can

literally confront Trump and specifically on a debate stage. He's even had this moment in New Hampshire, the same place he announced his campaign this week. He had a town hall earlier this year where he said, basically, you want me on that debate stage. Let me tell you something. You better have somebody on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco. It was this sort of a few good men moment where he's saying, look, the last time you heard of me was 2015, 2016 on the presidential campaign trail when I was eviscerating Marco Rubio,

catching him and repeating his talking points in real time. Because that's the only thing that's going to defeat Donald Trump. And that means you got to have the skill to do it. And that means you've got to have the skill to do it, and that means you have to be fearless. You need somebody like that, somebody, a brawler like me, who can take on Trump on the debate stage. Hmm.

That kind of makes me wonder, Shane, if it would be enough for Christie to just land one big punch against Trump on a debate stage, and then he could just kind of fade away. Well, there's two big problems with that. And the first is that Chris Christie has to get onto that debate stage, and just announcing a campaign doesn't do it. The Republican National Committee recently set criteria to make those first debates, and it's 40,000 donors, and it's achieving 1% of the polls. And while he so far has been in that 1% range, which is pretty low, 40,000 individual donors is a high bar for a candidate like Chris Christie,

who is out of line with the new Republican base. And finding all those people is going to be a challenge. So that's challenge one for him. And challenge two is, does Trump even show up? Donald Trump has talked about not attending each of the first two debates, and he may attend only one of them. And so even if Chris Christie gets that moment on the debate stage, Trump might not be there to receive the punch. Okay, so a long shot candidacy. Who is next? The land of opportunity. Beacon of democracy. The shining city on the hill i would say vice president mike pence is the next candidate and just announced just announced and he starts in this unusual place because he was donald trump's loyal lieutenant for four years i had the great honor to serve in congress as governor and as your vice president and i'll always be proud of the progress we made together

for a stronger, more prosperous America. So for most voters, he was the guy standing beside and never disagreeing with Donald Trump. That is, of course, until January 6th, where he didn't vote to overturn the 2020 elections. And that was really the break in the Trump-Pence relationship. Right. And how Pence is positioning himself in the 2024 race is not a sort of Trumpism light. It's actually a throwback to Reaganism. We can turn this country around, but different times call for different leadership. Today, our party and our country need a leader that will appeal, as Lincoln said, to the better angels of our nature.

He's saying the Republican Party needs to turn back the clock and re-find its roots. And he talks about the old three-legged stool that Reagan talked about for the Republican Party of the 1980s, which is fiscal conservatism, really actually spending less money, which is not what happened in the Trump administration. We can bring this country back. We can defend our nation and secure our border. We can revive our economy and put our nation back on a path to a balanced budget. Being hawks on national security, which right now is about robustly supporting Ukraine,

and probably most important at the beginning stages of the Pence candidacy is social conservatism and appealing to the evangelical Christian right, where he is promising to go further on some social issues than other Republicans, especially on abortion, as the most outspoken Republican talking up a national abortion ban. I believe in the American people, and I have faith. God is not done with America yet. And together, we can bring this country back. And the best days for the greatest nation on earth are yet to come.

God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. But Shane, Trump has a pretty tight relationship with religious voters, with evangelical voters. We know that because they helped elect him in the first place and because his Supreme Court picks overturned Roe v. Wade. So there's not a lot of daylight between Trump and what would seem like the key block of voters who Pence thinks he can win over in this campaign. That's true. But the alliance between evangelical voters and Donald Trump was always an uneasy one, just because of who Donald Trump is, because of the record around his own moral character. And so while evangelical voters got so much of what they wanted, including multiple appointments

at the Supreme Court, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a generational goal. There's now this belief, at least from the Mike Pence world and even some other candidates that look, you can have all of those things without the personality issues of Donald Trump. And that's part of their pitch. You know, Pence knows that he's a long shot. And they've said that they're going to run very heavily in Iowa specifically. Even some people around him have talked about it's like running for county sheriff in all 99 counties. He's basically going to live there. That's not the typical path for a former vice president, but that's the path that Mike Pence is taking at the moment.

Right. Right. So Pence's best hope is that based on his appeal to religious conservatives, based on policy and based on moral character, he could end up shocking everyone with a superb performance in Iowa, that first Republican election of this whole process, and get a huge bump and suddenly become a meaningful player in this race. And then perhaps something happens like Ron DeSantis falters, and suddenly Pence is not just an asterisk anymore. He's a real force. And my time in Iowa this week really showed a little bit of just how long of a shot that is for Mike Pence. I talked to a lot of Republican voters, and very, very few people brought up Mike Pence's name as even someone they're considering at this point. And I think one of the reasons is he's both so closely associated with Donald Trump and trying to break away from him at the same time. So in the months leading up to his announcement this week, Mike Pence has sort of flirted with a break from

Trump. He said the party needs to resist the siren song of populism, which is, of course, what the Trump presidency represented. But then in his announcement, he did something different. It might be fair to ask why I'm challenging my former running mate. He actually broke with Trump. January 6th was a tragic day in the life of our nation. And he did it over January 6th was a tragic day in the life of our nation. And he did it over January 6th. On that day, President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution.

And he said, I chose the Constitution, and I always will. That anybody who's asked to make that choice between the Constitution and themselves, that anybody who's asked to make that choice between the Constitution and themselves, that a person picking themselves should never be president. And it's a line he'd never crossed before when talking about Donald Trump. Add all that up, and it shows why Mike Pence is in such a tough spot in this race.

How are you, for four years, the most loyal of lieutenants, and then asking voters to say, you know what? We want you instead. So as with Christie, Pence's path is narrow, tricky, relies on some things that very well might not happen. And these two are charting

what feels like the most oppositional, quote unquote, relationship to Trump, although it varies between them. And I wonder where that leaves the rest of the field and their relationship to Trump. I think it leaves three other candidates, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy, trying to find their moment without directly confronting Donald Trump. confronting Donald Trump. We'll be right back.

So, Shane, let's delve into this world of second tier candidates who are unwilling to forcefully confront Trump in any way and how they are seeing their path in this race. Well, the first person that comes to mind is Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who's really running a different stylistic campaign than most of the rest of the field. It's very sort of happy warrior, optimistic, tells the life story of himself as the lone Black Republican in the United States Senate, and saying that like anything is possible in America. Good evening. I'm Senator Tim Scott from the great state of South Carolina. His first moment on the national scene was giving the State of the Union response to Biden's first national address from Congress.

We need policies and progress that brings us closer together. But three months in, the actions of the president and his party are pulling us further and further apart. And it was really well received. He had a flood of small online donations. And the question is, does the tone that he's talking in, does that match the sort of mood of a Republican Party that in recent years has wanted a fighter, a brawler,

somebody willing to just annihilate the left and the Democratic Party? The easiest and cheapest game in politics is the game of division and fear. The only problem is it leaves our country broken, starved, and depraved. We deserve better as a nation. At the core of the early Tim Scott candidacy is this sense that if Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump spent the next six months hitting each other, that there's going to be an appetite among Republican voters for something else. But when the rubber meets the road, how does this happy warrior, optimistic campaign actually win over Republican voters, especially when, from what you're saying, it doesn't ever explicitly go after the two leading candidates. Well, he starts with a geographic and a demographic plan.

And the geographic plan is he's the senator from one of the three early states, South Carolina. So he has a base in one of those early states that he hopes can last. And in order to maximize his chances in South Carolina, he's focusing on Iowa, and he's focusing on those same evangelical voters that Mike Pence is speaking to. We are a faith-filled country, but our foundation as a nation is a Judeo-Christian foundation. And the further we get away from it, the harder life gets. And Tim Scott speaks with an evangelical fluency that really is almost unmatched in the Republican field. I heard the Lord speak to my heart and say, this is not about you.

He is speaking in a way that people immediately understand that he too is a religious man. It was a combination between John 1427 and 1 Peter 5.7. And that's a very, very important voting bloc in Iowa. And the other thing that Tim Scott has is that he's a Black Republican. And if you look back in the last two Republican presidential primaries, there has been a moment where Black Republicans have popped up and jumped in the polls. Herman Cain did in 2012, and he was not really running what most people considered a serious campaign at that time. And yet at one point, he topped Mitt Romney in the 2012 Republican primary polls. In 2016, the one candidate in the 2015 calendar year who jumped ahead of Donald Trump, it wasn't

Bush, it wasn't Ted Cruz, it was Ben Carson, right? So Tim Scott and his aides think that he's well-positioned to eventually have a similar bump later this year. Shane, how should we understand those bumps from Herman Cain and Ben Carson and the idea that they are tied to the candidate's race? And how should we understand the idea that that might also happen to Senator Scott? I think you have to think about it

that the base of the Republican Party is overwhelmingly white. And that base has heard for years and years accusations that they're racist, that they are discriminatory. And so the idea of in a poll or at the voting booth or online by giving their credit card number

can elevate a Black Republican is deeply appealing to those voters. We have too many false prophets talking about how we are condemned eternally for the original sin. I believe that our nation is a story of redemption. And he's saying that to the Republican base to say, you elevate me, and he's saying that to the Republican base to say, you elevate me and you are telling the left and the Democratic Party

that the Republican Party is not racist. So Scott is doing something pretty interesting and unique in this race. His candidacy is, it feels like, the candidacy least about Donald Trump so far. It's about Scott, his temperament, his sunny optimism, and his unique appeal as a Black

Republican fluent in the language of social conservatism from a state that happens to be an early voting Republican state. So he thinks that's a potentially potent combination. Yeah. He's not the only candidate who's avoided direct disagreements with Donald Trump. In fact, another candidate from South Carolina who's taken a similar tact is Nikki Haley. I have always had a deep belief in America. We're ready, ready to move past the stale ideas and faded names of the past. She's the former governor of South Carolina, the former United Nations ambassador under Trump. And at times, she's avoided any real policy disagreements with Trump, just like Scott. And they're similar in another way.

They're both from South Carolina. And she, as an Indian American woman, is a non-white candidate in a white-dominated party. Okay, well, what is the case that Haley is making for the nomination if she's not explicitly criticizing Trump in any way. She has some criticisms of Trump, but they're implicit. It's time for a new generational leader that can put the status quo behind us,

that can put all of the past issues behind us and say, now it's time for us to move forward as a country. There are things like saying it's time to turn the page on a new generation of leaders, right? And in fact, she's focused on age and generation as a differentiator. She's called for mental competency tests for everyone above age 75, which happens to hit both Trump, 76, and Joe Biden. Where she's been less subtle is whacking Ron DeSantis, especially over his fight with Disney. When you have a company

like that, don't bring the citizens' taxpayer dollars into it. Pick up the phone, deal with it, settle it the way you should. And I think he's being hypocritical. She's criticized and said, from one governor to another, I know how to treat businesses. And her business climate history as governor is a big part of her pitch. She's trying to find her place in this race by displacing Ron DeSantis first before taking on Donald Trump. Right. So this is a strategy of not going after Trump, really, but really going after DeSantis so that she can be seen as a rival to DeSantis and kind of waiting in the wings if, as many hope in this field, DeSantis does eventually falter. Yeah, and I would say that if Tim Scott was presenting himself as

the candidate of hope, she does want to present herself as tough and as a fighter. And look, there's a long history that women candidates have a high bar to clear with voters on those issues, that there's a natural misogyny to the electorate, both Democrats and Republicans. And her identity is a complicated part of her candidacy because she doesn't lean into it in some ways, but in others, she very much does. I think that the one thing we need to do to make sure we right this shit is send a badass Republican woman to the White House. When she's asked, like, who should be the best candidate, she'll say something like, let the best woman win, right?

And she's the prominent woman running in the race. And so a big part of her candidacy is pitching herself as tough enough for the job, saying she took on all these other countries when she was at the UN. She took on all these other people when she was governor. And that she can take on first Ron DeSantis and then Donald Trump. Shane, I believe that brings us to our fifth second-tier candidate in the Republican field, Vivek Ramaswamy.

Yeah, he's somebody who six months ago would not have been somebody you'd include in the second tier. He's a self-funding so far, extremely self-confident, 37-year-old former entrepreneur. I traveled the country calling out the woke industrial complex in America. I started a new company called Strive to take on BlackRock and the ESG movement through the market itself. Who seeded his campaign with $10 million and has taken this sort of go everywhere all at once approach. And Donald Trump, a man who I took inspiration from. Instead of saying I'm the anti-Trump, instead of saying I'm not going to criticize Trump, he said, I love Trump.

I know him. He cares deeply about national unity. I know you care deeply about national unity. I know you care deeply about national unity. I'm running for president because I care deeply about national unity. He just wasn't Trump enough. He could have done even more. If he hadn't done what he did in 2015 and 2016 as an outsider to came and shake up the system, I wouldn't have even thought about doing what I'm

doing today and running for president. That's just a fact. OK. And what exactly does that look like to out Trump Trump? Well, if you go to his website, he doesn't have an issues page that you would think of in a normal sense. It's called America first 2.0. So I'm an unapologetic America first conservative. I do not apologize about that. But I think to put America first, we need to go further and rediscover what America. And it includes like using the military to squash the Mexican drug cartels. I think it is a legitimate, morally, ethically, legally justified use of military force. It includes things like rolling back affirmative action in a single executive order. It is a cancer on our national soul.

It talks about banning federal unionized employees, ending the civil service protection for bureaucrats. He wants to make it so there are term limits for people who work for the federal government, not for lawmakers, but for the civil service, so that people aren't making a career out of the government. I'm pretty animated about this because it is my top domestic priority to actually decimate the administrative state and restore a three-branch government, not a four or five-branch government as we have today. He's talking about a wholesale reimagination of the role and power

to the federal government, with much of it centralized in his hands in a powerful executive. And which voters exactly is this meant to appeal to if, as we've said a million times on this show, Trump has something like a third of the Republican electorate locked up? And the rest of the GOP is wary of Trump. What does that leave for Ramaswamy? I think it comes down to how you define wary, right? If you've got a chunk of 20%, that really doesn't want Trump. They're ready for the party to move on. There's about 50% of

the Republican Party. And the bet that Ramaswamy is making, and frankly, it's really similar to the bet that Ron DeSantis is making, is that that part of the party, they're not wary of Trump because they want to change the things he stands for the way that Mike Pence, for instance, is arguing about. It's that that 50% wants an even Trumpier candidate. And he presents this in a very brash package. He speaks with the same kind of fluency that some other candidates are speaking to evangelicals. He's speaking to the Trump base. He speaks the same language as them. And his bet is that there's more votes there than on the anti-Trump end of the spectrum. So his theory is that plenty of Republicans want more Trump, but without Trump. They want

the policies without the drama and the personality flaws. And with a different package, with a Ramaswamy package, a big number of non-Trump people will get behind Ramaswamy. Yes. And we talked about that debate threshold. Ramaswamy said he already has 40,000 donors, right?

That's going to be a challenge for the former vice president. But this guy, he already has that. So he has found a following online. And when you talk to voters in Iowa, they've seen him. At some of these events, I meet people who've already seen him twice, right? He is doing lots of events. He has a bus tour. He has his own money that he's putting into the campaign. And so he's out there on the trail. He's not looking like a candidate with a pathway to win, but he is looking like a candidate with a pathway to impact the results in the Iowa caucuses and beyond.

Right. And then maybe run again in four years. Or eight years or 12 years or 16 years, right? He would still be young. the comparison of some of the other candidates. So Shane, zooming way out, what does this group of candidates tell us about the fundamental nature of this emerging Republican campaign? We're going to spend lots of time talking about Trump and lots of time talking about DeSantis, but what does this group of five candidates we've spent this time talking about reveal? I think I would answer that by telling you how Donald Trump has reacted to this field expanding. He seems pretty pleased. Like you would think that seeing his former

United Nations ambassador running for president would bother Donald Trump, right? That he wouldn't want Nikki Haley to be running for president. But that's not actually how he responded when she got into the race. They had a private phone call and he wasn't discouraging of her running. He didn't attack her for being disloyal. When Tim Scott got into the

race, similarly, he issued a positive statement. He's only said nice things about Ramaswamy, because the Trump team has been pretty clear the only person they see as seriously contesting the nomination from him is Ron DeSantis. So all these other people, for Trump who sees himself and his advisors who see him holding a big base in the Republican Party, the more people in this race they see dividing up the rest of that 70%. However you split it up,

whatever chunks you think they're taking, he sees them taking chunks that Ron DeSantis needs in order to beat Trump. Right, this is a dream scenario for Trump because every day a new Republican candidate enters the race, it's easier and easier for him to win the nomination because each of them takes a small slice of the Republican electorate and makes it impossible for anyone to truly compete with them. This is the fear that Republican strategists have who don't want Trump to continue to be the leader of the Republican Party, which is that all these candidates stick around and that they're there on the day of the Iowa caucuses and they're taking 5% of the vote, 6% of the vote, 10% of the vote and making the math that much harder for Ron DeSantis to coalesce the rest of the party behind a single Trump alternative.

to coalesce the rest of the party behind a single Trump alternative. So Shane, I just want to end on a thought experiment. If any one of these candidates we've talked about somehow ends up breaking through for real, not just in one primary or one caucus, but in an enduring and sustained way, and the race becomes one of them versus DeSantis versus Trump,

what will that mean? And what will that tell us about the Republican Party? Well, it would first be an indictment of the DeSantis candidacy and him as a candidate, because that would result in him having failed to break through. And it would also say that maybe the party doesn't just want what Trump and DeSantis have been offering, which is variations on a theme of Trumpism. And that maybe that there's space for something else. But so far, we really haven't seen an appetite for that. Well, Shane, thank you very much. Thank you.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Smoke from hundreds of wildfires in Canada has drifted down to the American Northeast and Midwest, creating days of hazy skies and serious air pollution. This air quality event presents real health risks. The fine particulate matter in the air can get into people's lungs, cause inflammation, and worsen conditions like asthma. In New York City, the result has been the worst air quality since the 1960s,

according to the city's health commissioner, who, during a news conference on Wednesday, advised city residents to avoid the smoke. Right now, our health guidance to all New Yorkers is to limit outdoor activity as much as possible. And CNN has fired its president, Chris Licht, after a 13-month tenure marked by plunging ratings, declining profits, and internal tumult. Licht had sought to restore CNN's reputation for nonpartisan journalism,

but several of his highest-profile decisions backfired. Don Lemon, Licht's hand-picked co-host for a new CNN morning show, was forced to resign over on-air comments, and a live town hall last month featuring Donald Trump, which Lick oversaw, was roundly criticized for giving Trump a prime-time platform to lie. Today's episode was produced by Michael Simon-Johnson, Mary Wilson, Eric Krupke, Rob Zipko, and Sidney Harper. It was edited by John Ketchum and Paige Cowett, contains original music by Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bolvaro. See you tomorrow.