The David Pakman Show - 1/4/24: Tim Miller on his epic Kari Lake confrontation, DeSantis officially falls behind

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

-- On the Show: -- Tim Miller, writer, political consultant, and author of "Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell," joins David to discuss his recent viral confrontation with Kari Lake, his current relationship to the Republican Party, and much more. Get the book: https://amzn.to/3TOxG6i -- The pro-Trump Chair of Maine's Republican Party, Joel Stetkis, is asked seven times on CNN why Donald Trump's removal from the ballot was improper, and he is unable to give a single coherent action -- Joe Biden's progressive economic adviser Jared Bernstein stuns Fox News host with real facts about the state of the economy in 2024 -- 2024 Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis officially falls behind challenger Nikki Haley in average recent polling for the Republican primary -- 2024 Republican presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is confronted by a voter over his being "soft" on Donald Trump -- 2024 Republican presidential candidate and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says on The View that he would not pardon Donald Trump as president if Trump is convicted -- Failed former President Donald Trump officially gets away with punishing his own former lawyer Michael Cohen with jail -- Fox Host Jesse Watters hits rock bottom, inviting a so-called "psychic" onto his show to do a tarot card reading to predict the future of Trump and Biden -- Voicemail caller admits that, despite "doing it for the money," David is more entertaining than many other political hosts online -- On the Bonus Show: Trump's support from Hispanic and youth voters grows in new poll, Chief Justice Roberts urges "caution" over AI shaping legal field, 13-year-old boy believed to be first to "beat" Tetris, much more... 🔊 Babbel: Get 55% off your subscription at https://babbel.com/pakman 💻 Stay protected! Try our sponsor Aura FREE for 2 weeks at https://aura.com/pakman 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

Welcome, everybody. As many of you have probably heard, there are two states, Colorado and Maine, that have decided that because Donald Trump violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and was involved in or incited an insurrection, he's not eligible to hold public office. As a result, those two states have moved to remove Donald Trump from the Republican primary ballot. Those decisions are now being contested in court. It's expected to get all the way up to the Supreme Court. In the midst of this, a number of different defenders of Trump from both states, Colorado Republicans and

Maine Republicans have come forward to say this was wrong. Donald Trump should be allowed on the ballot. And unfortunately for them, when they are asked why they can't really articulate an explanation. The first example of this and this is a doozy. I'm going to play a video clip for you from CNN. This was the chair of Maine's Republican Party. He's on the right CNN anchor on the left. This this guy, Joel Stetkis, is on the

right. He was asked seven times, why was it the wrong decision to remove Donald Trump from the ballot in Maine? What was it about the decision made by the main secretary of state that makes this the incorrect decision? And the guy can't spit out anything other than it was just wrong. It was wrong. Take a look at this. This is pretty painful to see, but it is emblematic of the total absence, the completely vapid nature of the support of Trump that is happening in light of and in the context of unconstitutional actions, allegedly criminal actions and more. This is the caliber of the defenses that Trump is getting. I don't know.

It was just the wrong thing to do. He's, of course, talking about the secretary of state's decision to remove Donald Trump from the ballot. What is your response? Well, Boris, I think the simplest way we can put this really is, you know, we've got an unelected bureaucrat who likes to pretend that she's a lawyer and she's literally taking away the voters choices in Maine. All right.

Now, so first explanation as well, she's unelected and she's taking away voters choices. This is the way that Section three of the 14th Amendment works. It's not about taking away its you're not eligible if you've engaged in certain actions, you know, here in Maine and across the country, regardless of, you know, whether they like Donald Trump or not, you know, bellows is wrong on so many levels. And it's it's getting to the point of really being embarrassing. OK, right. It's just wrong. It's wrong. But if the state law, like the state constitution makes it so that if someone has a complaint about a candidate, they take it up with the Secretary of State, who then is the arbiter. How could she

be in the wrong for making a decision based on what was presented to her in that hearing. Well, you know, her her decision process was was just wrong. Yeah, I mean, dude, it was just wrong. Why don't you understand this? You know, she's there to to support Maine's Maine's voter Maine voting rights. And she's doing exactly the opposite. You know, we're going to fight this thing to the highest extent that we need to. And what she's doing is just flat out wrong.

There it is again. But I don't. What is it about this CNN audience that just won't accept that it was wrong. Why would you say that? Do you object to Donald Trump's participation on January 6th? Do you think that Article five of the 14th Amendment or rather Article three of the 14th Amendment is doesn't include the presidency? Like what's your main argument against her decision?

Yeah. What? Give us a factual basis, please. Oh, this has this has so much more to do with the. You know, the suppression of the vote, as opposed to Donald Trump, we would we would oppose this decision regardless of- I'm sure. What Republican. She decided that she was gonna arbitrarily decide Maine voters aren't gonna be allowed to vote. You're saying, Joel, you're saying that it's arbitrary, but what is it about her decision? What is it about her argument legally that you're opposed to? We're just opposed to her, her taking away the rights of the voters. It's, it's getting, it's getting awkward. Okay. I'm starting to, it's, it's starting to get where

I'm like, does this guy have any business even participating in this segment? Be able to choose the leader that they, they want to vote for or not. But if there's a part of the Constitution that says that if someone is an insurrectionist, a state can intervene to remove them from a ballot, and she is designated to make that decision according to Maine's state constitution, then isn't it up to her? Her reasoning behind her decision is completely wrong.

Speaker 1 I've not gone back to the beginning of the video. It's amazing. OK, so Maine's law says the secretary of state gets to decide this. Here's what's in the Constitution. Do you disagree with this being something she's allowed to do? Do you believe that the president isn't subject to the 14th Amendment? Do you think the legal argument is wrong? Boris, it's just wrong. Why won't you let me give that as my final answer? So what is the reasoning that no matter how you ask the question, her decision is completely

wrong. There are there are the details. Why is it wrong? Why is it wrong? So Boris, so so Boris, this is the thing, right? There are there are attorneys and judges, Democrats and Republicans across this country that have said that she's wrong. Other people, Boris, it's not just I who am here saying that this is wrong with no explanation.

There are other people who also say this is wrong with no explanation. I won't subject you to the last two minutes of it. It's basically the same thing. This epitomizes this epitomizes what is happening right now in so many different levels with this Republican Party and specifically with Donald Trump. We can engage on the facts if both sides are willing to do it. And then if we did, we might get to, hey, you know what? The main secretary of secretary of state didn't do anything wrong. Or here is the legal argument for why the main secretary of state acted incorrectly. But it's just wrong is not going to fly, I hope, with sensible people.

Really embarrassing stuff. Let's now look at something that was not so embarrassing, but was actually pretty interesting to see. A progressive economic advisor to Joe Biden, Jared Bernstein, appeared on Fox News over the new year and made an absolutely ironclad case. Statistically, right. We go from the guy in Maine who had no actual facts other than just it was wrong to Jared Bernstein, who couldn't possibly stuff more facts into a short appearance on Fox News. Bernstein appeared to close out 2023 and to sort of set the stage for where are we now

and what are we looking at economically looking into 2024? Bernstein is a competent economist to the extent that we believe economists are competent. And there are those who say economists and predictions, they're worth what you pay for them, which is usually zero. Jared Bernstein's chair of the United States Council of Economic Advisors, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He was chief economist and economic advisor to VP Joe Biden. He now also has a role as an advisor in the administration. He's brought on, I guess, with the idea that he might struggle to explain which metrics point to a strong economy. He did not struggle. Take a look at this.

Now, as Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jared Bernstein. Jared, welcome. Thank you, Mike, and a happy and prosperous new year to you and all of our viewers. Amen. From the Fox poll in the next year, 22 percent say get better. Forty four percent say they expect the economy to get worse. How troubling is that heading into an election year? First of all, I even want to take issue with the premise. OK, if you look at the polling numbers here and I apologize that it's blurry,

forty four percent expect the economy to get worse. Twenty two plus thirty one is fifty three. That means most people expect the economy to stay the same or better. And since the economy is strong, more than half the country believes the economy will be strong over the next year. This is actually a good poll in the hyper polarized world. Put that aside because that's not what the segment's about. To an election year. Well, I think on New Year's Day, a good place to start is,

let's look at what folks were saying last New Year's, at the beginning of this year. You had most financial outlets and many economists assuring us that a recession was inevitable and that the unemployment rate would have to rise many points in order to get inflation down. Go back a year and a half and the price of gas was north of $5 a gallon. Today, as I sit and talk to you on New Year's Eve day, there is no recession. Unemployment has been below 4% for 22 months in a row. The price of gas this morning was $3.11 on average across the nation and below $3 a gallon in 28 states.

Now, this combination of lowering inflation and inflation is on a solid glide path back to its pre-pandemic rate. This combination of tight labor markets and easing prices has led to real wage gains. On a yearly basis, wages for mid-level workers have been beating prices for nine months in a row. That's a trend, Mike, not a blip. Now, you reasonably ask, why isn't that reaching more Americans? Well, if we look at our two most closely watched measures of consumer sentiment, consumer confidence, they both rose big time in December. One was up 10 percent, the other a whopping 14 percent. And to be very clear, this is this is the delayed effect that I've been talking about

where we have had eight months of really good looking economic numbers. But we've had two months of that news getting to the average person. And that's the polling that Jared Bernstein is pointing out. Whoops, apologies. That's one month. That's not yet a trend, but it's certainly suggestive that the measures that this president is taking to help provide support and relief to families like the one he grew up in are working and that people are starting to feel it. More from the Fox poll, only 14% say they've been helped by President Biden's economic policies. 46% say they've been hurt. That helped number has dipped from December 21 and December 22.

Why do you think Main Street may be so upset? Well, look, people have been through a lot over the past few years. A 100-year pandemic, a global supply chain snarl up that led to a global inflation. We've seen geopolitical conflicts and so on. And so I think some of that is definitely in the mix. But I think you have to look, yes, at what people say. And I pay a lot of attention to that. They're the best arbiters of their views of the economy. But I think we also have to look at what people do right now. If you look at just the last couple of months from November 1st to Christmas Eve, we saw spending at restaurants go up 8 percent. That's that's less than two months. We saw spending on online sales go up 6 percent.

Overall retail spending up 3 percent. All right. So anyways, we don't have to watch the whole thing, but this was chock full of facts and data. And it is truly a pleasure to watch. Now, this is the exception on Fox News. To be super crystal clear, the reason this is notable is you don't normally get this. You normally get a couple of right wingers sitting around saying everything's terrible. Bidenomics has failed. Everybody's unable to afford stuff and it's all just so around saying everything's terrible. Bidenomics has failed. Everybody's unable to afford stuff and it's all just so bad and it's terrible. And then maybe

sometimes you'll get the alone liberal voice like a Jessica Tarlow on the five who goes, hey, hold on a second. Here's five ways in which you're wrong. And then maybe she's allowed to say two of them before they interrupt her. This was Jared Bernstein at his best, making what is simply a mathematical case. You may notice there was no conjecture. There was no emotion. There were no. Well, here are my feelings. It's all here is what we see in the economy. Here's what we see in polling about the economy, which is improving. As a reminder, none of this means there aren't economic problems, poverty, hunger, lack of jobs, lack of access to health care. We've got a country of three hundred and thirty five million people here. We have problems to solve. There's no doubt about it. But as

even we are now seeing on Fox News, they are no longer able to make any empirical case of this disastrous economy that Donald Trump has been predicting since 2019 and 2020. If Joe Biden were to get elected, a pleasure to watch. Really nice job there by Jared Bernstein. We had a momentous event yesterday milestone in the 2024 Republican primary for the first time in the entire primary. Nikki Haley has officially taken a second place position in the primary ahead of Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis has been polling in second place essentially since the beginning. And now he is behind Nikki Haley. You will see here that as of today, in average polling, we have Nikki Haley, 11 and DeSantis 10.9. Now, this is a very,

very small margin, of course, for Nikki Haley. But the point here is if you go back, especially to early in 2023. It was DeSantis 30, DeSantis 24, Nikki Haley down at two, three, four. And now Nikki Haley has basically gone 11 X in terms of support, whereas DeSantis has lost two thirds of his support. It is the first time this cycle that we see this reversal where Nikki Haley is now in second place. Now, of course, there is not a national primary for Republicans. It is individual state primary. So it is important to look at what about those early states? How is this all looking? Well, let's take a look at that in the Iowa caucus. Ron DeSantis is still leading Nikki Haley by two. But the newest polling we have is almost three weeks old. My belief is that Haley will outperform DeSantis in Iowa. That's just my prediction. We then look at New Hampshire.

In New Hampshire, Nikki Haley has long been ahead of Ron DeSantis and is absolutely crushing him. DeSantis isn't even in third place in New Hampshire. He's actually in fourth. And then, of course, in her home state of South Carolina, Nikki Haley continues to build the lead over DeSantis. She is now roughly at 20, where DeSantis is at 11. So two parallel stories here. Parallel story number one, the ascent of Nikki Haley contrasted by the decline of Ron DeSantis as both his personality and his campaign continue to glitch and fail badly. The bigger story is Trump's crushing everybody. And again, I want to remind you, nationally, Trump is polling just under 63 percent. In Iowa, Trump is polling 51 percent. In New Hampshire, Trump is

polling 46 percent, under 50 percent, notable, but still well ahead of Nikki Haley. And then even in South Carolina, which at one point was considered Nikki Haley's shot. Right. It's her home state. After all, Trump two point five times the level of support of Nikki Haley with Trump at 49 and Nikki Haley at 20. So if Trump were to die, I believe Nikki Haley ends up being the nominee. Short of that, I don't see anything getting in the way of Trump as nominee unless something completely unpredictable happens with these criminal trials that changes the minds of quite literally tens of millions of Republican voters. I don't think it's likely, but it is the last remaining possibility other than Trump suffering

a premature death before the election. I believe Trump runs away with it unless something changes. Let me know what you think. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash the David Pakman show. Let's go to a very short break and then we're going to look at some interesting videos from the campaign trail. Many in the audience know my first language is Spanish. I learned English later when I moved to the United States. And these days I do a fair amount of traveling and I always make an effort to learn some of the new language

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It only will apply to new members. So you're able to lock in today's rates and discount those even further. If you sign up at join pacman dot com, use the coupon code. Save democracy 24. Let's take a look at some videos from the campaign trail. Here is Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, running for the presidency. Was it once in second place? He has now fallen to third place. He's fallen to fourth place in some states. He was in Waukee, Iowa, doing one of these extremely charismatic and engaging and didactic town halls. As you know,

that's what DeSantis is known for. Wait, no, that's not true. And a guy confronted the Santa's and said, you're soft on Trump. Why won't you go after Trump? DeSantis tried to sort of explain, well, it's not about smears. If you want me to smear Trump, that's not me. But I have criticisms of Trump. I, I can do stuff and it doesn't go particularly well. Take a look at this. What do you mean by going directly after? I mean, you're you're in my viewpoint, you're going pretty soft on it. What what what what do you think? So, you know, because we I've articulated all the differences time and time again on

the campaign trail. I just I think that there's just a narrative that I think the narrative is this. I think what the media wants is is they want Republican candidates to just kind of like smear it personally. So this is attempt number one at telling the voters in the room, you don't really want what you think you want. This is what the media wants. But the reality is, listen, maybe the media, quote, the media does want a bloodbath of sorts and they want smears. But it's been made very clear that there is a contingent of Republican voters where if they're going to vote for someone who's not Trump,

they don't want a candidate who says Trump was great, but it's just like my time now or Trump was great, but just like he's not really what he was at one point. The people in the Republican Party who are not for Trump have expressed, which is not the majority, by the way, have expressed we want someone who's actually going to denounce the things that Donald Trump did. But DeSantis, instead of taking that seriously, he goes out. This is what the media wants. But there's a voter in the room telling you that that's what he wants.

I'm not going to. OK, good. But look at the last vote. Trump and Biden, basically they were right. If Trump had kept his mouth shut for the four years that he was president, you would have won on the landslide. Is that true? I believe that that's absolutely true. Look, he's been his own worst enemy. There's no question about that. And when you call somebody, a lady, a carty figurine, what, a horse face, right?

And you call John McCain not a hero, right? I mean, those are talking points that I would use. I mean, the guy has no class in a lot of different ways okay and um so so he lost uh you know no matter if there was corruption in voting or not the man lost because of oh he lost the women's vote how many military did he lose by making that comment about John McCain. Look, I mean, I think I think it's in Florida. I can tell you Donald Trump underperformed in the Florida panhandle, which is a very military heavy area. And I think I think he did lose support from veterans.

Look at the Santas equivocating. I would respect this guy so much more if he just said, hey, you know what? You're completely right. This guy has taken our party in the wrong direction. I'm offering something different. I'm going to get us back to conservative principles. Obviously, I mean, I'm saying what he could say. I don't I'm not pretending like this is this stuff is all true.

He could just embrace it and go, you're completely correct. Well, you know, in the Florida panhandle, he definitely relatively underperformed in certain counties relative to where we stopped woke in Florida. He's not able to just go after it and say this guy was wrong. He's wrong now. And I'm right from active duty. We should be running up the score with veterans in active duty against a woke Democratic Party. There it is. Well, I've actually made observations and said, I don't think Donald Trump ultimately can win an election. I know Fox News. There you go.

And that's the cop out, right? That's the latest cop out, which is listen, it's not about me smearing Trump. It's I at the end of the day, I don't think the guy can really win the election. That's different than just saying this is the wrong direction for the party. Let me bring the party back. It's I'm a slightly better alternative and I think I could win where Trump probably couldn't. And, you know, it's just not it's it's so weak. It's so milquetoast in every way. The voters who are skeptical of Trump aren't getting what they are clearly asking for. And DeSantis is unwilling to say it.

Now, let's go to someone who's willing to say it. Chris Christie appeared on The View yesterday and, you know, bless his heart. Chris Christie is polling three percent. He has no shot. He's the only guy willing to tell the completely unmitigated truth about the disaster of Trump ism for his party. He's the only guy who's willing to be remotely honest of those up on the stage. He's the only guy who is willing to just tell it like it is. And the Republicans don't want him. But here is Chris Christie making it very clear. Nobody else in this primary is willing to say the things that need to be said.

And he is asked, would you pardon Donald Trump? And he goes, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Whereas so many other Republicans have said, absolutely, I would. Or they're playing coy with it and saying, well, maybe I need to see this. I need to see that. This is the only guy, OK, who's willing to say this stuff and they don't want. But as I looked at the way the race was coming together and the field came together, my sense was no one was going to tell the truth about him in our party who was running for president. And then I go to the first debate and it turns out I was right because all of them raised their hand and said they'd support him if he was convicted felon. They also said that they would pardon him. Yeah, well, I mean, he became president. Nikki Haley and DeSantis both said that if you became president, would you pardon him?

No, no, no, no. It's hilarious that that's an applause line in 2024 based on the people that are running against him. And the reason is because one of the things as a governor, I issued pardons. And one of the things you have to do is look at the person. The person has to accept responsibility for what they did. Do you think Donald Trump will ever accept responsibility for anything he did? It would be the easiest pardon decision I would ever have to make as president.

You don't accept responsibility. Too bad. Go to jail. And I think the other thing about what both Nikki and Ron are doing right now is this isn't about this race. This is about 2028. Right. Neither one of them are going after Donald Trump. They're not running against him. What they're trying to do is do the best they can to come in second. And then in 28, they wouldn't have offended any of Trump's voters. And when he's gone, either because he's done with the second term or because he's lost

again, then right. We're in prison. They they can go back to those voters and say, I never said anything bad about Donald Trump. This is the most cynical type of politics. This is an accurate analysis. Now if you want to come back and say Christie's only willing to say this because it was made clear that

Trump didn't like him anymore and then he was going to be in his cabinet and then he wasn't. And now Christie's pissed. I'm perfectly fine. I mean, listen, there was a point at which Romney was sucking up to Trump and maybe Romney was going to be secretary of state. And there was the point at which Christie supported and stood behind Trump literally and figuratively. Those are absolutely fair criticisms with regard to they are saying things and we evaluate is this true or is this false? Chris Christie is the guy telling the most truths most regularly. Right.

Maybe we call him troughs at this point. I don't know. He's the only guy willing to do it. And even if there is this Trump skeptical wing of the Republican Party, they don't know. He's the only guy willing to do it. And even if there is this Trump skeptical wing of the Republican Party, they don't want Chris Christie. And it shows us that even if the Republican Party manages to get away from Trump, they're going to get away from Trump and go to someone like Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley when Christie is so obviously the most sane and competent choice. I still vote Biden over Christie, to be

clear. But if you said, David, the next president will be one of these Republicans. Chris Christie is the obvious choice. You might remember that a few years ago the show got hacked and a bunch of money was stolen and we never got it back. But I now have more peace of mind because I'm using aura. Our sponsor aura is your all in one tool for protecting your online and financial accounts. Aura alerts you any time your personal information is found on the dark web or data breaches like social security number, login credentials, financial accounts, and you get super fast alerts. If a criminal does something like try to open a bank account in your name or take out a credit card in your name, aura also lets you instantly lock your Experian credit file

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The link is in the podcast notes. It's great to welcome back to the program. Tim Miller. Tim is the author of Why We Did It, a travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell. His show is available on Snapchat and it's called Not My Party. He also has a new show on the Bulwarks YouTube page with Bill Kristol called Ballot Box. Tim, great to have you back on. Hey, David, good to be back, man.

Let's start with the viral Carrie Lake confrontation. My audience may remember this very interesting and in some ways unusual, idiosyncratic, we might call it conversation you had with Carrie Lake, where I mean, listen, the way I summarize it is that you as a child of the Republican Party basically said to her, listen, I'm aligned with you on a bunch of stuff. You're talking about Trump won an election that he actually lost. This seems like a bad idea. You're turning people like me off. You're turning other people off. She wasn't like hugely receptive to you, was she? That's an understatement. And I guess she's willing to play ball. So I will give Carrie Lake credit. She's willing to spar.

And a lot of, you know, I was always a moderate Republican. So a lot of the remaining moderate Republicans, the extent that there are some, they won't even deal with me, right? Because they see me as a traitor. And Carrie at least will have an exchange of views. So that's the one nice thing I'll say. And the main premise of the interview was I was saying to her, look, you probably would have been governor if you would have just tried to appeal to the John McCain, Doug Ducey type of voter. You know, the types of people that I used to work for. But you didn't. You know, you spat in our faces and you, you know, advanced a bunch of weird conspiracies about the vaccine and then about the election. I was at her event. I brought up that, you know, when I was guest hosting on the circus, I went to one of her events like three days before the election. Steve Bannon is there. Pizzagate Jack Posabeak is there. Like, why are you campaigning with these people three days

before the election in a swing state? And so in some ways, I was like, help me help you, which I don't really want to help her. But that was kind of the conceit of the argument. And she just wouldn't, she can't concede any of that, right? She just, she can't give in. And I think that she senses rightly that her power within the party and anybody's power within the party these days emanates from the MAGA voter base. And if she's seen to concede to somebody like me and never Trump or even one inch, then she'll lose street cred. And maybe she can't win general elections, but she can still become kind of a hero within the party as long as she maintains her hold on the MAGA base. She didn't say that, but that's

how I'd psychoanalyze her. And she put the video out. So I don't know. I thought I embarrassed her, but she thought it was good enough to put it out. So I think that shows that her audience isn't gettable swing voters or David Pakman's audience. Like her audience is these MAGA folks that want to see her telling me that I'm wrong. What did you make of when she kind of strangely touched you in the middle of it? Where like I some of my colleagues at the board get mad at me because I'm also a touch. I'm generally a toucher. It's OK. You can hug me if you see me out in public and we're pals. But to me, it felt manipulative. Right. It's like, it's one thing to pat me on the shoulder, but she tried to grab both of my hands

like a condescending, you know, aunt, you know, telling you like telling you that you need to start behaving and stop smoking cigarettes. And I was like, I don't like this is not the, this is not the environment for that. So that caught me off guard. And I think it probably just like the fact that I don't really want Carrie Lake touching me in any environment definitely had an impact as well. So I mean, this kind of gets to what I want to hear from you. It's been about a year since we spoke, 11 months maybe or something like that. We now have a Republican primary in which Donald Trump has 63 percent of the polling

support as of today. Everybody else is fighting for what is now 47 percent. DeSantis went from 31 to 11. Nikki Haley went from one to 12. Vivek Ramaswamy in the middle of a surge is now at four and he's basically done. And Chris Christie, who I think is the most sane man on the stage, is polling three point three. So what do you see as I mean, listen, I think unless Trump's dead, he's the nominee. I'm curious to hear whether you agree. There's people talking about, listen, I think unless Trump's dead, he's the nominee. I'm curious to hear whether you agree.

There's people talking about, well, if Nikki Haley overperforms Iowa and then brings momentum to New Hampshire and then gets to her home state, is it is it Trump? Is that is it it? No. Yeah. Trump is going to be the nominee. The party voters want Trump. You know, all the pundits, we can all try to come up with a way and fantasize different

solutions for which it won't be Trump. But I've always – I've been saying for a few months now that the conceit that consolidation needed to happen, that they need to consolidate behind one candidate to defeat Trump in a one-on-one, I thought that was wrong from the start. I was like consolidation helps Trump. What people do not understand is that Trump has a core base of cultists, right? That's about 40% of the party, probably, maybe 33 if you want to be on a nice day. But then there's this other group of people that like Trump a lot that are with the Santa, some are with Vivek, even a couple are with Haley. And so you saw when Tim Scott dropped out, like his 3% didn't all go to Haley. Much of that went to Trump, right? Because a lot of people, Trump is a lot of people's second choice. I think that's what a lot of pundits misunderstand. There is maybe, you know, 20% of the party that really is ready to move on from him, doesn't like him at all. Mild people the chris christie three percent you mentioned and then some percentage

of the mickey haley vote so maybe it's more like 15 yeah but that's not enough to do anything like 15 so it's not nobody there those people exist in the universe but but it's not nearly enough to win a primary and so if if mickey let's say mickey gets second iowa desantis drops out probably 60 of the DeSantis vote goes to Trump. Right. So people are like Nikki needs DeSantis to drop out to get momentum wrong. You know, if DeSantis drops out, that it's only going to help Trump because it's the party that the party wants Trump. And that's just the fundamental reality. I wish that weren't the case, but that's the truth. So you wrote this piece, the Matt Gaetz GOP future. And in it, you kind

of go through, well, here's here's what's going on with with some of the, you know, Vivek and different people and kind of contextualizing what what the next generation may look like. I struggle to imagine that the immediate future of the Republican Party is the Hindu Indian guy. I just struggle to think that that's the future. From an identity perspective, Matt Gaetz makes a lot more sense. It seems like Matt Gaetz is a continuation of MAGA, right? I think so. And I appreciated your interview with Vivek, by the way, while I was following him around Iowa and watching it. The Gaetz to me is the continuation of MAGA. He's different than Trump in certain ways, right? So you have to define what is MAGA. And to me,

the premise of the article is I spend a lot of time around young MAGA types, Turning Point USA, young Republicans. And the first question I always ask them, what are the issues you care about? And what they always say is immigration, no foreign entanglements that are unnecessary, and woke stuff broadly defined. Sometimes they'll say trans, sometimes race, whatever. Okay. So that's their issue matrix, right? So the young up and coming Republicans, that's what they care about. Well, who represents that? Gates, Vivek, again, he's got some identity issues that prevent that. And those types, J.D. Vance, maybe, right? That is where the party is going. The young voters, you know,

none of them say, like you went back to 1992 when I was at college Republican events, you said, what do you care about? You know, it would have been tax cuts, abortion, strong military. None of that stuff is even said. Some of that they maintain, but that's not the thing that animates them. And the problem is – or not the problem, but the establishment Republican Party still doesn't realize this. And this is why Gates was able to overthrow McCarthy with the support of literally nobody. It was Steve Bannon and Matt Gates. That was it. And seven other random congressmen. Fox was against him. McConnell was against him. McCarthy was against him. Even Trump was kind of neutral.

But it's because the voters want the Gates mold that he had the power to be able to do that, despite the institutional opposition. I think that's just a huge sign of where the party's headed. Speaker 1 of the things we see during presidential campaigns is sort of a suspension of disbelief in this sense. Three days ago at an event in Iowa, Vivek Ramaswamy talked about when someone mentioned his wife, he said she's going to make a fantastic first lady. And it's like we're all living in a fantasy world because you're not you're in the race. We all know you're not going to win. You know, you're not going to win, et cetera. What I want to know from you is as someone who's been behind the scenes of so many of these things, when someone

like Tim Scott says I'm running and then he pulls between one and two the entire time and then drops out and none of us are surprised. Is he surprised? What is the calculation that makes Tim Scott say, I guess I'm running for president. I'll run a couple of months and then I'll drop out. Or like Francis Suarez, who polled zero. And when he was asked, how much did you raise? He was like, it's definitely thousands.

And then he quietly drops out. What what is the point of running for them? Yeah, Suarez might have been a grifter, but I think that the Scots of the world and the vivakes and even the San Jose, even Haley probably right now, you know, I think they're not totally delusional. They recognize that Trump is the favorite. But there's a lot of mind games you can play with yourself and self delusion. If this happens, if that happens, right. And I was people always called me rain cloud on campaigns when I worked for Jeb and John Huntsman. I was always guy meetings. that was like, we're going to lose, guys.

We got to change. And all my colleagues are like, well, Tim, but this could. And so I think that the self-delusion is there. And my big observation about what feeds this self-delusion is you get in these little bubbles. Tim Scott is at events and at fundraisers that are self-selecting. They're people that are open to Tim Scott. And so he hears all this positive info. And then on the street, I remember with Jeb, we're like in fifth place.

We're walking down the street in New York. Every block, one person's like, Jeb, I love you. But here's the thing. You walk past 1,000 people on every block, and the one guy that says I love you might be trolling you. Or they might really like you. Or they might really like you, but actually like Marco a little better. But when you're hearing that, every block somebody is being like, Jeb, I love you. Tim Scott, I love you.

You're like, wait a minute. Something might be happening here. And I sense that that's happening with these guys. And I know it's happening with Vivek because when I followed him around, his campaign team is irrationally optimistic because he goes to these events that have huge crowds. But the problem is most of the people in these crowds are for Trump. But it makes him feel like it's an ego boost. You know, it makes him feel like, oh, maybe there's something here. I'm curious about your view on.

Well, my view on the economy right now is can I find problems with this economy? Of course, we haven't solved inequality. There's people who don't have health care. There's people who can't afford food. There's people whose wages haven't kept up with inflation. We have all those things. But if you look at the top five or six metrics that for 50 years we've used to measure an economy, they all look pretty good. And if you look in history at when you have an economy that looks like the one today based on those metrics, presidents running for reelection tend to get

reelected super 30,000 foot level. If you were advising whoever is the eventual Republican nominee or running against this economy right now or whatever, would you say this is a big problem for whoever is trying to take out Biden that the economy looks like this today? I don't think so right now for a couple of reasons. And you know, I on the show I do with Bill Kristol, he's the old timer over there on the Bulwark feed. He was there for HW in 92. And he worries that there's this parallel with Biden, that the economy was getting better for HW in 92, but it just wasn't getting better quite fast enough, right? People were still feeling the lag of the previous recession.

And I think that there's a little bit of that happening with inflation right now. And so I'm concerned about that from the Biden perspective, that while the economy is objectively getting better, people are still kind of feeling the lag of the inflation. And they're not going to come to terms with the economy being better until hopefully next summer or next fall, but maybe before it's too late. So I worry about that. And I think that Biden needs to be out there selling much harder on this and needs a more aggressive surrogate team selling

this, selling the progress to direction. You know what's happening in red states, what's happening in red areas, the manufacturing, the chips. I know that they're going to do all that, but I would like to see more louder, faster on the Republican side. I think probably their strategy is let's try to keep this lag of people's felt experience of the economy as long as possible. The more I just keep saying it's bad. Keep saying it's bad. Yeah.

The more I remind you that bread's more expensive because that's true. In the macro, it might be untrue that the economy is bad, but in the micro you can find things that feel worse. Like your grocery bill is a little bit higher than it used to be. I got a loaf of sourdough the other day. It was nine dollars. And that thing happened where there's holes in the middle where to be. I got a loaf of sourdough the other day. It was nine dollars. And that thing happened where there's holes in the middle where I feel like I got half a loaf and I could blame Joe Biden for that. Maybe. I don't know.

Yeah. So anyway, I think that is going to be the Republican strategy and it's it's going to take, you know, some of this hopefully will happen naturally with the lag. But some of it is going to take an aggressive I don't want to call it a propaganda effort, but a promotional effort of the areas of progress coming from the Democrats. Yeah. And, you know, when you think back to Trump predicting in 2020 that under Biden, the stock market would do what it did in 1929, and then it's at an all time high. And then two weeks ago, Trump says the same thing will happen if Biden wins in 2024. You would think that could never work, but it sounds like you're saying just kind of keep at it and some people will believe it, I guess.

I do think so. And the other thing is people are not. This is not fair, but I'm just telling you the reality. People are not judging Trump on what on COVID. They just aren't like a lot of people. There are a lot of voters, some are like Democrats, but some voters out there are judging what was happening before COVID. I think that's unfair. I think that's bullshit. But that means that Biden has to have an effort, a counter effort to that, to them saying things have gotten worse by saying, no, actually, things have gotten better. If you compare things to 2020, crime rates down, fentanyl deaths are down. Like all the things that they say are horrible have actually gotten better since 2020. But people don't know that. And like they don't intuitively think it because they are still a little bit elevated from where they were in 2017.

You know, and so I think there is a big communications game that's happening here that both sides are going to play. Biden has a lot of facts on the side, not all the facts that he hasn't been. You know, I kind of Biden has been, you know, for a moderate Republican type, a pretty good president. I have some complaints, but this is a weakness of his, you know, and it's part of the age thing. He's just not that convincing of a messenger sometimes. And he needs help from his from allies, I think, to make this sale. A hundred percent couldn't couldn't agree with you more on that.

Has the there was this period where there were the early, early big Republican donors lining up behind DeSantis. This is when he was polling like 30 and then they've kind of evaporated as the polling has gone down. And then you anecdotally hear about some of those nebulous people now see Nikki Haley as the only person who maybe can take down Trump, but they're not donating to Nikki Haley in any significant numbers. Right. I mean, there is there's there doesn't seem to be a serious movement of anti-Trump Republican donors that are saying we believe so strongly in Haley that will actually start giving her a bunch of money.

Yeah. All right, David, you've hit one of my pet issues. These donors like they're delusional. And the media coverage of it, I think, is stupid. It doesn't matter. Republican voters hate these people. Right. They don't hate they hate the rich rhino republican donor class more than they hate democrats right so and so it doesn't work and these ads yeah desantis raised a ton of money 200 billion nikki's raising a decent amount of money not as much as desantis yeah but but they

put you watch the ads go watch them yourself on youtube like they're terrible it's just they're either these gauzy generic ads about why Nikki Haley's good. Sometimes. And that's what they're paying for. I just assumed that couldn't possibly be what there must be something else in Iowa that I'm not seeing that they're paying for. You're saying they're paying for YouTube videos. Yeah. No, ads are going on TV, but you can watch the ads on YouTube. I mean, but it's the same pre-roll ads though you're seeing. And it's door knockers. They're paying for that. But it's like, this doesn't work. Donald Trump, these people are in a Donald Trump cult. They're not going to watch one 30 second. This is not

like a state legislative race where TV ads really matter, right? If you don't know who your state senator is and an ad comes up and you're like, state senator, so-and-so is terrible. And other state senator is up from their bootstraps working man. That could convince you because you don't know anything about any of the candidates. These people know everything about Trump. And so this money is just being pissed away for no reason. And these donors think that they're the masters of the universe and can control and puppeteer the party when they keep, when the party keeps telling them no. Like they didn't want Trump at 16. They didn't want Trump at 20. Excuse me. They wanted Kevin McCarthy to stay. They didn't want Matt in 16. They didn't want Trump at 20. They didn't.

Excuse me. They wanted Kevin McCarthy to stay. They didn't want Matt Gaetz. They didn't want Trump this time. Why do they think that their their donation matters anymore? It does. It's a different world. It's not 2012 anymore.

That's for sure. That's for sure. Tim Miller, author of Why We Did It, a travel log from the Republican road to hell. The Snapchat show, Not My Party, the YouTube show on the Bulwarks YouTube page with Bill Kristol called Ballot Box. Tim, always appreciate your time and your insights. David, thanks, brother. We'll talk to you any time during the campaign, however, any time.

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at drink AG1 dot com slash Pacman. That's drink a G the number one dot com slash Pacman for free vitamin D3 and K2 and five free travel packs of AG one. The link is in the podcast notes. I don't know how many of you remember the allegation that Donald Trump essentially got his own former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, jailed and put in a solitary confinement. But we actually have follow up on that story. It's not exactly a story that brings me pleasure to report to you. As The Daily Beast reports, Donald Trump just officially got away with jailing Michael Cohen

back in 2020. Michael Cohen was jailed and put into solitary in 2020, seemingly because he protested being silenced as he was trying to do press for his book. The article explains Trump will face no repercussions over how he appears to have used federal prison guards to intimidate Michael Cohen, jailing and silencing him in 2020 ahead of his tell all memoir about Trump's mob like behavior. What happened? Well, Tuesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York affirmed the federal judge's decision to dismiss the case. The case relates to this authoritarian episode in Trump's final year of his presidency. The three judge panel would not

let Michael Cohen use a legal remedy, which lets someone who's been abused by federal agents seek justice. The panel did acknowledge something unfair happened because Michael Cohen was thrown back in prison on flimsy reasoning. And the case was only resolved through extraordinary intervention invention by a judge who said, hey, you've got to let Michael Cohen out. Ironically, the judges ruled it was the very intervention that now prevents Cohen from holding Trump and certain government agents accountable because of a 1971 Supreme Court case. But the bottom line here is as follows. The Fed started cracking down on the way that Trump paid off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet.

And that case essentially ended in twenty eighteen when federal prosecutors took down Michael Cohen for campaign finance violations and tax charges. You may remember that this is because he was the one who arranged the payoff and was reimbursed for it as Trump's lawyer. Trump Cohen, rather, was at that federal prison in Otis, New York, and he was working on his book, his book, Disloyal, about which we've interviewed him. When covid hit, some prisoners were allowed to continue sentences at home. And indeed, Michael Cohen and we interviewed him when he was on home confinement.

He was allowed to go to his New York City apartment and he started saying, hey, this memoir is coming. I'm going to be bringing this memoir at a certain point there. He was rejailed. He was rejailed. And Michael Cohen points to Bill Barr, the then attorney general in the Justice Department, at the direction of Donald Trump. He sat in solitary confinement 16 days after a federal judge said, you can't do this, you can't do this. You've got to let him out.

Michael Cohen has insisted that was a punishment brought down directly at the direction of Trump through his attorney general, Bill Barr. I am seeking recourse for that. And a judge, a three judge panel has now said we are not going to allow you to do that. They recognize what happened to Cohen was unfair, but they say we aren't going to let you actually seek those redress that redress for the grievances, which means Trump effectively got away with jailing his own former lawyer for 16 days in solitary confinement because he did not like the book that he was writing. This was before Trump openly said, I'm going to try to get my political enemies prosecuted, investigated,

indicted and jailed. Trump is now telling us that he's going to do it in his second term. So if you remain on the fence about electing an authoritarian dictator wannabe like Trump, we have examples of how he has previously used his power in these disgusting ways. And he's telling us, I'm going to do more of it. Hey, they did it to me. he has previously used his power in these disgusting ways. And he's telling us, I'm going to do more of it. Hey, they did it to me, so I'd be totally right to do it to them. He's been saying in interviews for a while. We don't need to imagine he did it to Michael Cohen and he's going to do it for more to

more people because he's telling us that he's going to do it. This I believe is rock bottom on Fox News. There's this guy, Jesse Waters. He has a Fox News program, really odd guy in a lot of different ways. If you research him, he did a segment where he brought on a so-called psychic. Now, the reason I say so-called psychic is, of course, there's no such thing as an actual psychic in the sense that it's not a real thing. But he brought on a psychic and the idea was for the psychic to tell us what is in Trump's future for 2024 and what is in Biden's future for 2024. The who should be most humiliated by this segment? Is it Jesse Waters? Is it the psychic? Is it Fox News executives like who should be cringing the most at this pathetic humiliation? And whose idea is it to do something

like this? Paula Roberts is the English psychic who is on set to give us a reading right now. I would like, Paula, for you to give me a reading on President Trump. Just the one card, one card, one card. Let's do just one card. We like that. Now, what is the what is the algorithm through which she picks the one card? I mean, the one card is going to tell us everything about Trump. She seems to just kind of shuffle through them. How does she even know what card to pick? Speaker 1 a sense of loss, but it's very specific. No, let me move on. It's a sense of loss. It's as if he may be thinking more about what he's lost and not still taking full advantage of what he still has.

That's a great interpretation. Paul, I didn't make it up. Let's see. President Joe, who should be most embarrassed by this? I'm having embarrassment by osmosis for this segment. Biden, what will his year look like? Let's look at Joe Biden. Lots and lots and lots and lots of money. Lots of money. I mean. From China? Oh, you are cheeky. I didn't say from where lots of money,

lots of money is very interesting. I mean, above. OK, for whatever. And the little cartoon cards that she has tell her all of this are the cards printed in China. I wonder is his normal. It's way above. That's what when I say lots, because I deal with everybody, very possible income. So that, that, that, that's not, I'm going to put you in touch with James Comer after this reading, please tell us what Jesse water's year will look like. And I've got something more to tell you about that, but Speaker 5 It's an interesting aspect of the young dynamic. Very very. Speaker 1 By the way, she pulled out a card that's like a guy on a horse with a sword

and the card is called the Knight of Swords. Very bright person. Quick. I don't know about you. I don't know you so well, but somebody quick, bright, sharp. When it says young, it means it doesn't mean to say immature, but we're still that amount of energy. Not immature, you're saying. I have to stop this, guys. This is Fox News in prime time.

Now, we had a so-called psychic on the show once, and the whole point of it was like, is this even a real thing? And we brought in a psychic. This was when producer Lewis was on the show once. And the whole point of it was like, is this even a real thing? And we brought in a psychic. This was when producer Lewis was on the show. She attempted to do a reading of me and of Lewis and it failed humiliatingly. You can find that it's actually it almost gets awkward where I start to feel bad that this person is flailing and failing so badly. This is Fox News in twenty twenty four. They bring in a psychic so-called to do a reading with cartoon cards about the future of everything. This is about this. Every segment on Fox News should be taken with whatever level of seriousness you think should apply to the tarot cards. Let's put it there and leave it there. Hey, here's a really funny voicemail that

came in during my vacation last week. Of course, our voicemail number is two one nine two. David P. Here's a caller who says, listen, David, I don't like you. I don't like anything. But I got to say, you're more entertaining than some of those guest hosts. The guest host reminded me that you're actually kind of entertaining. I guess I'm taking this as a compliment, right? Hey, David, when you come back, man, I used to give you a hard time and I used to think, you know, you were just doing it for the money. Right. But I'll be honest, you're a lot more entertaining than the new guy you got up there. I don't know what he is saying, man.

Hey, listen, sometimes you don't know what you got till it's gone. And even some of my haters recognizing they are more entertained by by me being here. I don't know that they're necessarily learning anything, but it is what it is. So I'm back. I'm back. We've got a great bonus show for you today. In new polling, Donald Trump's support from Hispanic voters and youth voters is growing relative to Joe Biden. What does this mean about 2024? Secondly, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, is urging caution about the ways in which artificial intelligence is reshaping the legal

field. And a fascinating story. I loved Tetris growing up. A 13 year old boy is believed to be the first person ever to beat Tetris. And you might be saying, David, sir, with tears in my eyes, you can't beat Tetris. The pieces just move faster and faster. Well, with the original Tetris, there is a limit to that. And there have been incredible developments in Tetris playing over the last 30 years. We will discuss all of it and more when I am joined by producer Pat from his swanky new modern studio. If you haven't seen Pat's new studio, check it out because people are interior

designers writing in and saying, David, whoever Pat hired, I need to consult with. And it's Pat. Pat did it all. All of that when I'm joined by producer Pat from his swanky new studio today. You can sign up for the bonus show and all of the other great member benefits at none other than the website. Join Pacman dot com coupon code available, but never mandatory. Save democracy. Twenty four. I'll see you then.