The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved, Donald Trump is a weak general election candidate.

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

If recent polls are to be believed, Donald Trump is poised to become the President, for the second time, of the United States of America. Yet some observers think most swing voters who end up deciding American elections will ultimately turn away from Trump 2.0. For proof, they point to the difficulty Trump has had winning over many voters in his own party during the Republican primaries.   But other analysts insist the former president remains a formidable political force: He has a large and loyal base, he motivates people who don’t typically don’t vote, and he’s consistently beating Democrat Joe Biden in polls of key battleground states. 2016 should serve as an important lesson, they argue: don’t underestimate Donald Trump. Arguing in favour of the resolution is Sarah Longwell. She is the publisher of the political analysis and opinion website The Bulwark, and host of The Focus Group Podcast.  Arguing against the resolution is Patrick Ruffini. He is a pollster and founding partner of the firm Echelon Insights. He is also the author of the book Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP.   SOURCES: The Times and Sunday Times, MSNBC   The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths  Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 50+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Producer: Daniel Kitts Editor: Kieran LynchBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Our goal is to arm you, the listener, with enough information, to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Donald Trump is a weak general election candidate. Together we will turn the page forever on the miserable nightmare of the Biden. presidency what a presidency what a president the most incompetent president we've ever had the worst president the most incompetent and the most corrupt other than that i think he's doing actually quite a good job and we will make america great again hello i'm your moderator rudyard griffis well if opinion polls are to be believed don't trump is poised to become the president of

the united states for the second time Yet some observers think that swing voters who will end up deciding this election may ultimately turn away from the Trump 2.0 that we're seeing in our social feeds and on our television screens. For proof, they point to the difficulty that Trump has had winning over many voters in his own party during the Republican primaries. Here's one-time Trump rival and fellow Republican contender for the Republican nomination for presidential. the United States, Nikki Haley, speaking to supporters last month. You look at those first early states. They can say Donald Trump won. I give him that.

But he, as a Republican incumbent, didn't get 40% of the vote of the primary. But other analysts insist that the former president remains a formidable political force. He has a large and loyal base. He motivates people who don't typically. vote, and he's consistently beating Joe Biden in surveys of key battleground states. If 2016 is an important lesson for us to remember going into the ballot box this fall, it's a simple one. Don't underestimate Donald J. Trump. On this installment of the Monk debates, we dig deep into the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved. Trump is a weak general election candidate.

Arguing for the motion is Sarah Longwell. She is the publisher of the political analysis and opinion website, The Bullwork, and host of the Focus Group podcast. Arguing against the motion is Patrick Ruffini. He is a pollster and founding partner of the firm Eschelon Insights. Patrick's also the author of the bestselling book, Party of the People, Inside the Multiracial Populous Coalition, Remaking the Geo-Mobile. Sarah, Patrick, welcome to the Monk Debates. Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Super timely debate. Our motion is simple to the point. Be it resolved, Donald Trump is a weak general election candidate. Sarah, you're arguing in favor of the motion. Let's have your opening remarks. Donald Trump is currently under indictment for 91 felonies. He lost his election in 2020. his candidates that he endorsed in 2022, most of them lost.

He tried a coup after the 2020 election. He lied to all of his voters about the election being stolen. And then he encouraged people and certainly didn't try to stop them as they attacked the capital to overturn the election. And if one was a campaign consultant or a political consultant, perhaps a pollster, And Donald Trump, as a candidate, came to you and said, hey, with all that baggage, would you like to run my campaign? I think lots of people would say no, not just because he would, with that kind of baggage, be a weak general election candidate, but also because he's morally repugnant and an actual threat to democracy. And so there is some moral deficiency that comes with the kind of person who would want to work for a person like that. And look, the fact is, when you talk about Donald Trump being weak, that weakness is not to me relative to his Democratic opponent.

We have two quite weak candidates running this time, and they've both got different kinds of liabilities. I think the question is, would a different Republican outperform Donald Trump by wide margins in a general election? And to me, the answer is easily, yes. Nikki Haley and all polling has shown this where she the general election candidate would beat Joe Biden by much more significant margins. And so this comes down to a fundamental problem that Republicans are now experiencing, which there is an enormous gap between what base voters want and what swing voters will tolerate. And Donald Trump is an incredibly strong Republican primary candidate, but he is an incredibly weak general election candidate. because voters in the suburbs, college-educated voters, they have rejected him now across three cycles. And I don't see why anybody could argue that he would be this fourth time around an objectively strong candidate.

Thank you, Sarah, for that opening statement. You're listening to our debate today. Be it resolved Donald Trump is a weak general election candidate. Patrick, you're arguing against the motion. Let's have your opening remarks. Well, Donald Trump has been leading in general elections. survey since at least last September. And that really hasn't, that really hasn't changed. Now, that's pretty extraordinary in our already long experience with Donald Trump, because at no point

in the 2016 or 2020 election did Donald Trump lead the national polling averages for any sustained period of time. And on top of that, in both 2016 and in 2020, he had an advantage in the electoral college relative to the popular vote. So the election in 2020 was decided by just over 40,000 votes, the thinnest of margins for Joe Biden. And who would argue, right, that Joe Biden's political position has deteriorated since 2020 and Donald Trump has only gotten stronger. But the fact that Trump now leads in pretty much every single battleground state also indicates that he will continue to have that advantage. So it may not just be enough for Biden to draw even in the in the popular vote, which we do not have a popular vote. We have an electoral college. And Trump has

had an advantage in that because of the coalition of voters that he uniquely has been able to drive, you know, breaking down the blue wall in Michigan, Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin in 2016. And those states were once again very close. Biden won them in 2020, but they were very close, closer than people had expected. And the root of this, right, is voters are making a really head-to-head evaluation of Trump and Biden. This is a very unique election that features two people who have served as president, to people with 100% name ID. We're not going to learn anything new about Donald Trump that we didn't already know throughout the course of this campaign. And they're making a head-to-head evaluation of swing voters, specifically are making a head-to-head evaluation of these two

candidates' records. And they're finding very much Biden coming up wanting. In the New York Times Siena poll, you had every group in the electorate saying Trump's policies, right, not in his personality, not Trump's policies, benefited them compared to Biden's policies. You have every single group, including black voters, the most loyally democratic group. And in 2020, Biden at that point, had about a 15-point advantage on this question of who would be more competent and effective as president. Now Trump has a 15-point advantage on that question. And it's because the issue environment here uniquely benefits Donald Trump. He was perceived to have a very strong record on the economy, even in 2020 voters were saying he was better on economic issues, right? And this is a time of

economic anxiety. You also have the situation along the southern border, which is just much, you know, that is much higher up as an issue than it was even in. 2016. And, you know, fundamentally, he's also what we're seeing is he is rating key parts of the Democratic coalition, Latino voters, black voters, even young voters, lower propensity voters who, you know, particularly are unenthused by the candidate that Joe Biden is and also resonate more with Trump's populist style of politics. You know, I worked for those establishment Republicans, right? I work for George W. Bush. And even when we won, right, even when we won, we still couldn't win in those Midwestern

battleground states in the way Donald Trump could. So I was surprised by this. You know, I was wrong in 2016 about my assessment about whether Trump could win. And it certainly seems that he's well positioned to do so in 2024. Thank you. Patrick. Two great opening statements. Deserve some great rebuttal. So, Sarah, you're up first.

Let's hear your reaction to Patrick. opening. I mean, I think the first thing I would say, Patrick noted correctly that the blue wall sort of crumbled in 2016, but in 2020, it held. And the political realignment that I think is right. I think that there is some attrition for Joe Biden and that Donald Trump, because of his celebrity and a few other factors, because I think some, I agree, some voters just view him as being better on the economy, that is going to help him, I think, do better in Texas. There's high numbers of Hispanic voters. I think it's going to help him in California.

I'm not sure it's going to help him in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona, where it is a much higher percentage of white voters and where they have this high percentage of these white college-educated voters who have been moving away from Donald Trump at just an incredible speed. And these voters are the reason that Donald Trump law. lost a state like Georgia, right? Georgia's a red state. It voted for Kemp as its governor, a Republican governor. It's even elected its Republican Secretary of State again, probably with the help of some Democrats, Brad Raffensberger, one of the people that Donald

Trump called up after the election to ask him to find him 11,000 votes because he'd lost the state. He also, in fact, lost two Senate seats in Georgia by being uniquely terrible with these college-educated suburban voters. He also, and this in Pennsylvania, he lost in 2022, his handpicked candidates, Doug Mastriano and Dr. Oz, both got beaten by Democrats in the state. Same is true in Arizona, a Trump wannabe extremist, Carrie Lake, who also says that the election was stolen, something that swing voters hate, lost to one of the least charismatic Democratic candidates, like not even a good Democratic candidate, just a bland Democratic candidate. And so Trump and candidates like him have been getting the floor wiped with them because, and let me just say another thing about 2022,

Republican turnout was higher in 2022. And let's, if we're going to take polls seriously, if that's where we're going to rest our arguments, everybody thought 2022, all the fundamentals were going to really help Republicans. The polling was in their favor. And they totally underperformed. Why did they underperform? Why did they underperform when Republican turnout was higher than Democratic turnout? Because these swing voters do not like these extremist Trumpy Republican candidates.

it's the same way they don't like Donald Trump himself. And they are high propensity voters. They are people who turn out. And for every low propensity voter that Donald Trump turns out for him on his behalf, he turns out a low propensity voter on the Democratic side who hates him with a white hat passion and would never turn out to vote against Nikki Haley, but is going to make their personal mission to turn out to vote against him in a general election. Thank you, Sarah.

Okay, Patrick, your chance for rebuttal now. you can react to what you've just heard from Sarah or go back to her opening statement. Well, I think the polls were actually historically accurate in 2022. And so, you know, they were accurate sort of in sort of the House in the House popular vote. Certainly you did have some candidates in states that these, let's call them Trump imitators who were not, who were actually underperform Donald Trump, right? I mean, so what were they underperforming against? they were underperforming against Donald Trump. Because, yes, only really, I mean, Trump's political formula is not something that other candidates can easily recreate.

And what Brian Kemp and others have done successfully is really chart their own path, right, independent of Donald Trump and are winning over, you know, kind of the vast majority of Trump's voting. voters, right? So certainly, you know, those candidates in 2022, we're also just going to see a very different election cycle because, yes, why you have seen in places where Democrats are, let's say, motivated by specific issues like abortion, where there are abortion measures on the ballot, or you see in these special elections with a highly educated coalition, right, that can have benefits. I certainly wouldn't disagree with that for Democrats. But, you know, I think the main point is we are in a presidential election environment with historically, we need period in American history, a recent American history, with historically high turnout. And when you look at where the turnout has surged, it has been in places like, you know, you look at a state like Pennsylvania, regions of Pennsylvania, rural Pennsylvania.

So a huge turnout surge, not just a surge in Trump's margins. but they are casting dramatically more votes because, you know, some, a candidate like Trump, has been able to bring them out where previous Republicans may not have. Of course, there are places, right, where Donald Trump isn't going to do as well as other Republicans like maybe Mitt Romney did in 2012. The issue is, and the issue has been for the electoral calculus, is that those states really haven't been close at the presidential level. Now, let's take the other states, right, that you mentioned, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. All of those states have high non-white populations relative to the rest of the country. So in the Sunbelt states, not only do they

start out extremely close, both Georgia and Arizona start out with the narrowest of Biden margins, where he can't really afford to lose anything. And they also start out with very high non-white populations, where we've seen some pretty good momentum for Trump in the polls. And as a result, you're seeing Trump advantages of anywhere between five to seven points in that group of states that I think the argument for Joe Biden, being a strong general election candidate, has rested on a state like Georgia. And now his campaign is talking about, well, maybe we should focus more,

North Carolina instead of Georgia. They shouldn't focus on either of those. I mean, if I were Biden, right, this is why I was making the point about the blue wall states, because Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, that is this election. I would maybe, I think you're right. I think that Joe Biden is going to run weaker in Nevada than you've seen Democrats win, although we still had the Democratic senator pull it out in Nevada in 2022, in part because you had a Trumpy candidate.

it and the normal Republican won the governorship there. The normal guy won. The not, was laxalt, the more Trumpy guy, lost. And you can point that, you can do that in all the swing states, but you can especially do it. You're talking about one of these crazy, the governor, the guy who ran for governor in Pennsylvania was a Trump acolyte, also a lunatic, lost by 15 points to Josh Shapiro, maybe 14 points, large margin. Fetterman beat the very famous Dr. Oz by five points. And look, the fact that Kemp had such success in Georgia is speaks to Trump's vulnerability, right? And this has been true, actually. The idea that Trump somehow overperforms regular Republicans is not true.

In 2020, down-ballot Republicans outperformed Trump. He lost many of them won. That's why they won by big margins in the House and they took over the House in 2020. It was because there's a subset of voters, a key, the margin makers, are people who say, no. I will vote Republican. I am a Republican. I voted for Mitt Romney. I voted for John McCain. I happen to be one of these Republicans. But I will never vote for Donald Trump. And I think in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin, they all elected Democrats in the last cycle. They all rejected Trumpy candidates. Those suburbs are not coming back to Donald Trump over the economy. And so you can make your argument about Trump doing slightly better with, and I think it is in the case of black voter slightly better. I think it's more. for Hispanic voters. But that just, I mean, the percentage of Hispanic voters in Pennsylvania is 3%. I think it's 2% in Michigan, 3% in Wisconsin. Like that is not going to be the game changer there. These are, these are very, these are very white states. Thank you, sir. Great to get the

back and forth going here. You're listening to our debate today on whether Trump is a viable, an attractive general election candidate. Patrick, you're arguing in favor of the motion. Sarah went exactly where I wanted to take this conversation for the benefit of our listeners, this idea that the election, first, let's see if you accept this contention, that the election will be decided by a very small number of voters. And it's really about the composition of whatever it is, these two, 300,000 people. Maybe you have different states than Sarah that you think are important, but let's hear the argument from you as to why Trump is effective with this critical cohort. that will have the outside effect, possibly the determining vote as to who is America's next president?

Well, I think we heard earlier Sarah reframe the debate, right, for trying to reframe the debate is like, well, he doesn't perform as well as Nikki Haley, and therefore he's a bad candidate. Well, look, I mean, I think that the point is if you're leading in all the polls or leading pretty consistently in the polling averages, you know, I don't think you can say that that person is a weak candidate, objectively, right? I mean, if they are, if they are winning, ultimately we are judged against their competitors. But I think the difference, right, between a Brian Kemp and a Donald Trump would be perhaps the difference. If you had that ideal contrast for Republicans, right, the difference, that would be the difference between, you know, Donald, Republicans winning

in a landslide if they were somehow able to recreate guidance, tense, reform, nationally, and winning a solid, you know, 300-ish electoral votes or 290-ish electoral votes. In both cases, right now, based on voters' evaluation of the Biden record, that's what we're talking about. But I do think that, you know, in particular, Trump does have an opportunity, I think, to claw back some gains. I make the argument, right, that really all the action here is with non-white voters if Trump can deliver at least a substantial part of the gains that he is making in the polls, then he is well positioned

to win. But I don't completely dismiss the possibility that we could see further shifts or shift back, particularly among these white suburbanites. And particularly over these issues of cost of living that are particularly hitting home with suburban women, people who are going to, to the grocery store every week and very much responding to these cost of living issues, these very tangible material concerns for their day-to-day life. And that is really what's been driving, the fact that, you know, Biden's job approval rating recently hit its lowest in his presidency in the 538 average. So I don't think that's happening, right? I don't think we're seeing these numbers. If you're not, if Biden is not also seeing erosion, we're

within some of the coalition of voters, and particularly white suburbanites, who voted for him last time, who now just feel like the economy just matters a lot more than it did in 2020 when the main issues were the virus or the chaos in the Trump White House, right? So the issue environment has just fundamentally changed. I mean, I think a lot of folks want to rerun the 2020 playbook.

And I don't think you, can do that necessarily. Sarah, let's come back to you and move this amazing debate forward. Talk to us a little bit about the issue set. Because Patrick, I think it was in one of his opening marks or rebuttals, brought up this pretty striking poll recently, the Times-Sienna poll. I'm sure you know it well. That did seem to indicate that on basically most of voters' top issues, Trump was winning

in terms of policy, not simply popularity. but policy. So why wouldn't that make him, you know, the preferred or more likely the successful of these two general election candidates? He's not only ahead in the popularity contest. He's winning on the big policy files that seem to matter to Americans. Yeah. And look, I think that if it wasn't like Nixon running again after Watergate, then it was all about policy. And you have to have to be a lot of policy. and you had a normal Republican candidate, I think they would do very well. I don't think it's just about Trump.

I think people, when they think about who is sort of tougher on immigration, and people are feeling like they want somebody to be tough on immigration right now. They look at Republicans. Republicans, despite Trump's, I mean, they do have a little bit of, you know, Trump was president for the year of 2020 when his mismanagement of COVID led us into a deep economic depression that I actually think Joe Biden, Biden's done a pretty good job of managing his way through. And I think if the election, I think people's feelings about the economy, voters tend to be a lagging indicator. The economy, the economy's been improving

in every, by every measure. And if it continues to improve, I do think that Biden will be in a stronger position. But I also think it's important that this debate is not about whether or not Biden is a strong general election candidate. It's a question about whether or not Donald Trump is a strong. I wasn't trying to reframe the debate. I'm trying to debate the actual point, which is you are arguing that Donald Trump is a strong general election candidate. And I think that that is preposterous based on the fact that, like, he did a coup. That's a pretty bad thing. And it's, and I want to say the Times-Syana poll specifically, what is going on with voters right now is that Joe Biden's the president. And so when the economy isn't going how they want it to go, when they're frustrated on.

immigration, they blame Joe Biden right now. And they sort of voters like Joe Biden's top of mind and they know what they don't like about Joe Biden. And they've sort of forgotten what they dislike about Donald Trump. But I have the benefit of doing focus groups every week for the last like five years. And so I have watched what happens when swing voters start to get a look at Donald Trump on a regular basis, which is they say, oh yeah, I hate this guy. And the persuasion, group this time around. It's actually really interesting. I think just as somebody who's an observer of politics, I've never quite seen anything like this where you have this phenomenon of two people who are essentially incumbents running against each other. And so people know a lot about them. And so the persuadable group is actually a people who don't like either candidate, right? And you call them double doubters or double haters or a pox on both their housers. They don't like either of these guys. And these people are going to make this election, people who don't like either one of them. And so it's going to matter a great deal, which way they break. And I think that once Donald Trump is back in people's frame, right, once he is, and this happened in 2020, the more people see of Donald Trump, the less they like him. Because right now, they are running on the idea of like, oh, pre-pandemic, I thought the economy was good.

But when they see Donald Trump talk, right? I think Joe Biden right now, he's getting, he's getting hurt because of his age. He's getting hurt because people think, does this guy have it? They don't see a lot of Donald Trump. He's over on truth social saying the most insane. things, talking about suspending the Constitution, insulting people constantly, the average American voter doesn't know what Trump is doing over on truth social. And they don't see his call-ins on Fox morning programs. They will see him when he has to run as a general election candidate. They will see him much more often.

And I do think you will see the contours of this race start to shift as it moves from the negative polarity that right now is working against Joe Biden to the negative polarity that is historically in every election since 2016 worked against Donald Trump. That's not something I found in terms of my focus groups in my surveys. And what we're seeing is that voters are paying actually more attention to what Trump is doing than what to Biden is doing, which is remarkable for somebody who is the sitting president to be getting less attention than his opponent. And the things that people report seeing and reading and hearing, a lot of that has to do

with the criminal trials right now. And yet that still hasn't changed, really, the fundamental trajectory of the race. Now, it's eight months, right? We've got eight months to go. Anything could happen in that time period. A lot can still change in that time period. But the idea, I think, that Americans are under-exposed to Donald Trump is a little bit, you know, a little bit of a, to me, it just strikes me a little bit as wishful thinking. I also just think, like, we just had a much more intense in 2016 news cycle, right, with Donald Trump, every single statement he made. You know, you had CNN with Kairons of empty Trump podiums. You had obsessive media coverage of Donald Trump and every single one of his controversial statements was dissected. And yet he won the

that election, right? He won that election even after Access Hollywood. I don't have to like the way he won the election, but he won that election. And it seems like we are reverting to more of a 2016 dynamic where both candidates are pretty equally hated. And I think that's just inherently a dynamic that favors Donald Trump, somebody who I think knows how to fight dirty, right? Rather than, And the reason why, right, Joe Biden was able to win in 2020 was that he carried just much stronger favorability ratings than Donald Trump. You know, he ran a basement campaign. He was very, you know, he wisely stayed out of the limelight. But as he's been president, right, his position against Trump has only decadent.

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Sarah, let me come back to you with the question. I think I'm certainly fascinated with, and I think many of our voters are too, why is it that black Americans seem to have warmed to Donald Trump? You know, this is a double threat. It's a threat in terms of pulling into the Republican Party, a constituency which historically has not voted Republican. And second, it's pulling a key voting constituency away from President Biden's coalition. Why are black voters suddenly warming, bizarrely, one might think, given some of Trump's comments to his candidacy? I did a group of black voters who had voted for, very recently, who voted for Hillary Clinton, voted for Joe Biden, and we're now leaning toward Donald Trump. And I think there was a couple of things going on.

One was they did feel like Donald Trump would handle the economy better. And I will say there is something, Trump's celebrity factor has not gone away. Like, and this is true, not just of black voters, but sort of voters in general who sort of warm up to Trump, they tend to take him not that seriously. And they think he's funny. I mean, I just hear this all the time when these voters where it's like, you know, politics was always boring. to them. And again, I'm talking, like this group that was leaning, the group of black voters that was leaning toward Trump sounded like every Trump voting group I talked to. And a lot of it is, you know, politics became accessible to them. It became more interesting. And, you know,

they like the idea of a businessman running the economy. And these tend to be just sort of these top line things that people, when they think about Trump. And I do try to caution Democrats about this, that, you know, when Donald Trump says things like my mugshot makes me more appealing to black voters, I think a lot of us hear that and think, boy, that's a very racist thing to say. But I did hear, I don't think it always lands that way with voters. I think a lot of voters here, like I heard in this group, there was one young man that said, I think Trump gets it. He gets what it means to have like trumped up charges against you and have everybody after you.

And this is, and this is, again, saying that this is about. a lot of these voters, Trump's ability to connect with people over grievance is a potent weapon that he has. Because for people who feel aggrieved, they're able to kind of say, like, yeah, the deep state is out to get him or the media is out to get him, just like people are out to get me. You really hear that thread through the way voters talk. I do think, though, part of Trump's problem, once he is actively campaigning, people do want to hear their grievances reflected by the candidate. And Donald Trump only reflects his own grievances, typically. I think that he does have this time around.

I think surprisingly, he's got a real team this time around. And I think they are working on trying to keep him more disciplined because when he's undisciplined, which has been sort of always, he says things that are deeply offensive. He does go on these tensions. Like him not having Twitter, like this is, again, not about policy. Him not having Twitter is one of the best things that ever happened to him because he is not. He's saying all the insane things, but it is out of public view almost entirely. Right. Final question for you, Patrick, before we begin to wrap up this debate, and I guess it goes to

Trump's personality, that this is a candidate that is a wizard at own goals. You know, sometimes the most important moments of campaigns, of his political life in the White House, he seems to have a kind of suicide by cop mentality. Why isn't that really something that just counts fundamentally against him as a good general election candidate? He doesn't understand what his own interests are. Well, I just wanted to first say, I was struck in Sarah's last answer. I just want to, I think she's on a phenomenal job in doing these focus groups and bringing a part of polling and public opinion in research that is seldom seen into view. And that, roughly speaking, is also consistent. That finding in particular is something I was nodding my head pretty vigorously at because it is something that I have seen.

Look, I mean, there is no question that Donald Trump is an extremely unconventional political figure, to say the least. And it's kind of like your ballot sheet right after you buy a house that you've got this huge liability. You've got this huge mortgage you have to pay off, but now you have this asset as well. That's also, you know, you have a set of assets. That's also a pretty big number. And you hope that those sets of assets really outweigh the liabilities. But that doesn't, that doesn't, you know, dismiss the fact that, yeah, he does have liabilities. He does have 91 indictments under his belt right now.

I guess, or I guess, as of recently, maybe 85. It's counting. Right. But there's no question about that. But who else could escape that? Right. Who else? Any other figure would be just dead.

They would not have gotten out of the starting gate. Right. So I think that that is something that he said he's a wizard of many things. You know, he could be a wizard too at just escaping from these very dangerous situations that would completely destroy any other politician. Last questions before closing statements. A little bit off the resolution, but you guys are thoughtful people. So I think it would be a service to our listeners.

Sarah, what's at stake at this election? If Donald Trump is successful and does end up being not only a viable, but a winning general election candidate, what do you think ultimately is at stake? come November. I think what would be at stake is less what it would say about Donald Trump and a lot more what it would say about us as a country. Because it would mean that as a country, we said that we didn't care that he didn't engage in the peaceful transfer of power in the last election.

We didn't care that he said he was going to suspend the Constitution. We didn't care that he ran on a platform of retribution against his enemies. We don't care that he is saying one of the first things he'll do is release the hot. as he calls them, the people who are arrested for storming and defacing the Capitol and committing violence against police officers. If we do that as a country, that I think will be very difficult for us to come back from in terms of who we are and our moral authority in the world. And then there's just the specific things he'll do. Donald Trump, his praising of dictators, his relationships with dictators, his antipathy for the Western alliance that has kept the world safe and stable for a long time,

pulling us out of NATO, is a deeply frightening thing, his relationship and clear admiration for Victor Orban and Vladimir Putin. And look, I don't think that when sometimes people are talking about, you know, Trump as a dictator, I don't think he'll necessarily be a Putin-esque dictator. I think he'll be a Victor Orban-type autocrat who slowly erodes civil liberties. Orban came in sort of quite the same way, right, talking about cutting tax. and regulatory reform, and then began the crackdown on the media, the erosion of civil liberties, the attacks on LGBT people, and then just slowly becoming a more autocratic, less democratic

place. And I think that's what we're facing. And I think that people who treat this moment as normal politics, I don't understand it because this is about, look, I don't blame the voters. I do the focus groups all the time. And I think the voters are great. I love listening to them. keeps me grounded instead of playing fantasy politics. And I don't blame them for not following every twist and turn of everything and knowing every little thing that's going on. But I blame the media. I blame the pundits. I blame the Steve Bannons of the world who are pouring poison into these people's ears and acting like this is just normal politics and it's all just equivalent. Joe Biden's just as bad. It's just not true. We've never seen anything like this before in our

politics, and it could tear us apart as a country and betray everything this country is supposed to stand for to reelect Donald Trump. Thank you, Sarah. Patrick, same question for you. What do you think is ultimately at stake here? Well, I think that for voters, right? I mean, you know, and I try to lead with, you know, really the perspective and what we hear from the voters themselves, I think what is, you know, what they think this election is about is that you have seen just a very difficult few years as a country with a lot of anxiety. And the results are not necessarily what they had been promised in 2020 when, you know, Biden certainly, you know, tried to promise a return to normalcy, a return to a normal politics.

And a part of that, a big part of that meant governing number one in a competent way, which seemingly went out the window, right, during that Afghanistan withdrawal. And that seemed to be a moment that we saw just kind of a fundamental break in public opinion with the Biden administration that he has not been able to fully recover from. And then you had the reopening of the border or, you know, relaxing of border policies that was done for ideological reasons that didn't make any sense necessarily. And you've since had eight million people cross the border. Now, many, you know, this is both legitimately a humanitarian crisis and a security crisis. But we are seeing, right, for Americans, the reason why this election.

is close, right? Or why Trump is winning, despite all of his vulnerabilities, is because, you know, the Biden administration has fallen down specifically on governing the country and has, you know, when it comes to voters evaluating these two choices that they have, they are often kind of flocking back, right? I mean, Donald Trump now seems to be the candidate of stability and safety. right, whereas Joe Biden was that candidate in 2020. Well, you know, Donald Trump scuttled the best immigration deal we had seen. And because Republicans follow him blindly, they refuse to bring to a vote a very good border deal that would have done a lot.

But they didn't want to give Joe Biden the political win. And he's had a lot of bipartisan wins in this administration. They have not been very good at telling that story to Americans. And as a result, I think Americans don't see his achievements in the light that they would like them to, but I have been watching closely. And the failure of Republicans to governing Congress has been an absolute joke. We are on the brink of shutting down the government every five minutes. They can't elect a speaker. The replacement of normal Republicans who believe in limited government, free markets, and American leadership in the world with Lauren Bobert, Marjorie Taylor,

Green, Matt Gates, and a bunch of other, forgive me clowns, has shown that the Republican Party is no longer a governing party. It's a performative party because if it cared about governing, it would have done something about the border when it had the chance. And its abandonment of Ukraine has been immoral and one of the biggest shifts I have ever seen a political party make ideologically away from something that it used to believe in. Okay, let's go to closing statements in our debate today on whether Donald Trump is a viable, a good, a strong general election candidate. Patrick, as per debate convention, you're going to go first. We're going to give the last word to Sarah. Take us away with your closing remarks.

So as I've said, I mean, I do think that you can't look at a candidate who is leading in the national polls and is doing even better in all the key electoral battleground states or almost all the key electoral battleground states than he is even in a national polls is anything but a viable candidate and, you know, objectively a strong candidate, right? You know, if he, He can win both the popular vote and the electoral college. That would be the first time a Republican has done so since 2004. Now like Sarah, I originally came from, let's say, the old school of the Republican Party, right? And I was very skeptical of Trump's ability to win in both 2016 and in 2020, he

came one in 2016 and came a lot closer than people anticipated in 2020. And that's from a just a raw political standpoint, right? I mean, I think that certainly arguments are and will be made, right, about Donald Trump's fitness as a moral leader. But from the standpoint of the question of this debate, which is winning, you know, who can, who is, you know, is he a strong general election candidate, he has done so by tapping into constituencies of voters, black voters, Latino voters, even younger voters, and white working class voters who did not use to be such a strongly Republican group who represent a decidedly the demographic majority of the country, right? That is something that the kind of Republicans, right, that I, you know, started my career working for,

we're not ultimately able to accomplish. And I think that we just as professionals, right, we may have differences, right, about what Donald Trump represents, what he believes. But I'm willing to, despite some of those differences, acknowledge, you know, what makes him perhaps a stronger version of a Republican compared to some of what came before. Thank you, Patrick. Let's give Sarah the last word in our debate today, be it resolved. Donald Trump is a weak general election candidates, Sarah, bring this debate home. 2018, 2020, 2020, all of them.

Trump lost. His candidates lost, he lost. He lost running against the person he's going to run against again in 2024. There's one number I want to leave with listeners. And that is 30%. So when you ask voters, do you think, that the election was stolen. And I'm specifically talking right now about Republican voters. So if you ask Republican voters, do you think that the election was stolen? It's about 70% say yes, 30% say no.

If you ask Republican voters, will you vote for Donald Trump if he's convicted of a crime before the election? About 30% say no. When you look at Nikki Haley's margin in of self, from self-identified Republicans in places like New Hampshire and South Carolina, it's about 30%. It's like 28%. Now, That is about the group of people who don't really want to vote for Donald Trump. They are Republicans and they are in the suburbs. And look, some of those people in that number, some of them are going to go vote for Donald Trump. Some of the people in that number are already Joe Biden voters. Hear from these voters all the time.

They're people who've been moving out of the party and away from Trump and candidates like him for a while now. But there is a segment of those voters who really do not want to vote for Donald Trump. And Joe Biden, one of his superpowers ultimately is that people don't hate him more than they hate Donald Trump. That when it comes down to having to pull a lever, they can take sort of this milk toast old man who hasn't tried a coup. And instead of voting for somebody that they think is an actual threat to the country and also a bad person. because that is the number one thing I hear from swing voters. They believe Donald Trump is a bad person. And it's hard for people to vote for a bad person because most Americans are good people.

Here, here, I'll agree to that. We don't. That's a debate resolution where everyone's on the pro side. So Sarah, Patrick, thank you so much for a terrific debate today, approached with great knowledge, expertise, civility, and substance. We did what I just, I hoped we would for spending this 45 minutes or so together. So again, on behalf of the Monk Debates community, thank you both for your time and contributions today. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Sarah and Patrick. They certainly gave us a lot to think about. If your feedback, reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com. Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to bring back the art of civil

and substantive debate, one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. The Monk Debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk charitable foundations. Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gerwitz are the producers. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.