The NPR Politics Podcast - President Biden Is Sharpening His Attacks On Former President Trump

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

For a while, President Biden was treating former President Trump a little like Lord Voldemort: He Who Must Not Be Named. But now, Biden is saying Trump's name a lot. With his approval rating hovering around 40 percent, Biden has been invoking his predecessor more often and more aggressively on the campaign trail. This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram. This episode was edited by Lexie Schapitl. It was produced by Lexie Schapitl and Jeongyoon Han. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Stephanie. This is Avia. And we're in Columbus, Ohio. I just finished the first draft of my novel as part of my 10th National Novel Writing Month, where the goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. This podcast was recorded at... 1239 p.m. on Thursday, November 30th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it.

Okay, here's the show. Okay, here's the show. Okay, here's the show. 50,000 words is a lot of words. That's quite an accomplishment. Is she now reacquainting herself with her child after a month of writing 50,000 words? Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Geith. I cover the White House. And I'm Deepa Shivaram. I also cover the White House. And President Biden is recalibrating his re-election campaign messaging. Specifically,

he is going after former President Trump more often and more aggressively. Tam and Deepa, you've both been covering this change. But Tam, let's start with you. What changed? There was a long period of time, and that time has passed, where President Biden and the people around him treated former President Trump like Voldemort, like the one who shall not be named. And now they are naming him with increasing frequency and essentially like ignoring Trump didn't work. Yeah. So now they are amplifying him, like truly amplifying him. They do not believe that people are paying attention. They think people have tuned out Trump. They think that the media isn't really paying attention or that people's media diets are so diffuse that they just he just isn't breaking through in the way he has before.

And they're like, he's saying some really wild stuff about what he would do if he's reelected and people don't realize it. We're going to make sure they realize it. Yeah, absolutely. I think to Tam's Voldemort point, it's like somewhere in the fifth or sixth Harry Potter book when all the characters kind of realize that they should start saying Voldemort's name and it's like a show of strength. Yeah, like that's kind of what's happening with Biden here. I was just traveling with him on a trip. We went down to Rosalind Carter's funeral and then made it over to Colorado where he did an event and also a fundraiser. And at this fundraiser in Denver, I swear it was like every other paragraph he was he was talking about Trump. And what I thought was really interesting was that in a lot of these fundraisers and these events that Biden's done in the past, you kind of get this laundry list from him of, you know, you like your $35 cap on insulin? Like, we did that. Like, we've done this to protect women's rights. We've done this to protect this. And this speech that he gave at this fundraiser, it was kind of the opposite. It was saying, like, you

know, you like your health care? Well, guess what? Donald Trump's trying to take that away. You like your abortion rights? Donald Trump's trying to take that away. And it was naming Trump over and over and over again in a way that he really hasn't been doing to this extent so far. And let's be clear, former President Trump essentially gave Democrats an early Christmas gift by suggesting he wants to repeal Obamacare again. Yeah, I want to go through the life cycle of this because it's really interesting and it's instructive about how the Biden campaign is operating in this new, we talk about Trump, world order. So on Saturday, in the middle of the long holiday weekend, when no one was paying attention, Trump put out a message on Truth Social that said he was actively looking for alternatives to the Affordable Care Act. And that, you know,

failing to repeal and replace Obamacare was one of the great failings of the of his first administration or of Republicans during his first administration, and that they shouldn't give up. Well, President Biden, Monday, when everybody's paying attention again, makes sure that nobody was going to miss that sort of obscure truth social post. And my predecessors, once again, God love them, call for cuts that could rip away health insurance for tens of millions of Americans in Medicaid. They just don't give up. But guess what? We won't let these things happen. To be fair, my five-year-old could have told the president that that was an easy political hit that he shouldn't leave laying around and not respond to. Right. I think it's also interesting because it's twofold, right? You've got the attacks on Trump that have to do with his policy suggestions. And then, of course,

it's really hard to ignore and also a really easy pickup for Biden to, you know, focus on the rhetoric that Trump has been putting out as of late. Obviously, this is nothing new for him, but some of the stuff where he's been talking about vermin and the language that he's using, that Biden is very quick to say, you know, this is reminding us of of dictators of 1930s era Germany. Like this is something that he's also been harping on a lot recently, which kind of gets at that root of like, you know, if you haven't been paying attention to Donald Trump, you might want to start paying attention to some of the stuff he's saying right now. Yeah. In September, I was traveling with President Biden and in one of these closed door fundraisers where he often says more of what he's thinking

than he does out in public, he said that he had grown convinced that Trump was going to be the Republican nominee, that he was going to be taking on Trump. And during that swing, Biden's warnings about Trump by name got much more stark. And although recordings of fundraisers are not allowed by the press, conveniently, someone posted audio from one of these fundraisers in New York on the internet. 2024 democracy is on the ballot once again. And let there be no question, Donald Trump and his mega Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy. And I will always defend, protect and fight for our democracy. That's why I'm running. But Deepa, whenever a campaign switches strategies, it suggests that the past strategy wasn't working as well as they wanted. And frankly, if you look at

polling numbers, not just ours, but across many outlets, President Biden's numbers aren't doing that well right now. No, they're not. And you look at Trump's polling numbers and he's kind of doing better and better. It's not really looking good for President Biden. And the White House will continue to point out that, you know, look, his policies, his ideas, they're very popular, right? And this is a problem that he's had for months. No one's giving him credit for the things that he has done, even if they are popular. So, you know, they might push back and say, you know, this isn't a shift in strategy. This is the same message we've been trying to put out over and over again. But that hasn't really been working. And so this change in tune is

definitely a reflection of that. Biden's approval rating is in a pretty bad place. He's, you know, bumping around 40 percent on a good day. And he benefits and people who are close to him will acknowledge he benefits from the comparison. Yeah. Also, Trump, you know, trying to reinvigorate the Obamacare debate is a big red flag for Republicans. It was notable to me, you know, whenever he says things that then requires people like me to go talk to Republicans on Capitol Hill or in other places and say, hey, do you agree with him? Do you want to do this? And it was almost comical to me how much Republicans on Capitol Hill were trying to distance themselves from Donald Trump's

statement and saying, I hadn't really heard about that or I'm not thinking about that. I don't think that's on our agenda. Like it is a good reminder, too, that like Trump isn't Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, but he does not always do things that makes the Republicans in the party want to follow him. Right. This is exactly what the Biden campaign, what the White House wants to happen. Like they in terms of drawing these contrasts, which is something you said earlier, Sue, they need to do that on paper. They're trying to do that with like, you know, look at all the legislation I've gotten done. Look at all these investments in the economy, in climate change, things like that.

But they want this fight to happen. And people that I've talked to, Adam Green, he's the director of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. He said that this is part of the strategy that Biden needs to take on going forward, which is drawing out these smart fights with Republicans. And that's kind of what Biden was trying to do when he traveled to Colorado earlier this week. He went to Lauren Boebert's district, the third congressional district, which, you know, she won the last election in 2022 very close. So it's something that, you know, Democrats could potentially pick up. But to go to her home district, to go to her turf and say, you know, these are all the things that I've done to benefit this community and you're trying to repeal them. That's a new strategy that

this White House is trying to take on, not only to draw those contrasts from Washington, but to do it out in the country as well. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about this when we get back. And we're back. And this shift in strategy from President Biden isn't just about Donald Trump. Obviously, he's talking about the former president more and more. But the word that you hear from both the president and Democrats is they're running against MAGA Republicans or MAGA extremism. And I think we are hearing this in many races, not just the presidential. But this was something that was heard a lot in the Virginia races that just happened.

I mean, it seems like the Democratic Party has all gotten the memo that this MAGA Republican that they're trying to brand the party with is a central message of 2024. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you hear this line from Biden all the time. This is not your father's Republican Party. And so when he's talking about, you know, drawing these contrasts with Republicans, he's not talking about the John McCain Republicans. He's talking about drawing contrasts with Donald Trump. He's talking about drawing contrasts with Lauren Boebert, with Marjorie Taylor Greene. I would say he's trying to toe this line of trying to say that, you know, I can work with anyone, I can get things done,

but these are the folks who are trying to walk back. So much of the progress that his administration has made is what he's trying to argue here. And so it is that process of drawing these contrasts and focusing on the most extreme wings of the Republican Party and trying to draw attention to that to make a new cycle about it, which is what he was trying to do in Denver this week. Tim, do you think it'll work? Is it effective to try to tag down-ballot Republicans to Trump, especially when Trump seems to exist in a singular space in a lot of voters' minds? Well, I guess the question is, did it work in the midterms? Sure. Democrats sure think it did. Yeah.

And so they are planning to run this play again. You know, MAGA Republicans is a header that they are applying to abortion rights, voting rights, democracy concerns, a lot of things that get beyond just Trump himself. And it's a little bit of a hedging bets on the presidential level, just in case somehow the opponent they think they're going to get isn't the one who they actually get. But they absolutely think it'll work down ballot. I was talking to Ben Wickler, who's the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. And he was talking about, you know, we've got to build this anti-MAGA coalition.

And I was like, you didn't say a Democratic coalition. You said an anti-MAGA coalition. And I was like, you didn't say a Democratic coalition. You said an anti-MAGA coalition. Let's talk about this. In the United States of America, which is kind of a 50-50 split for the last several election cycles, Democrats can't win with just Democrats. You have to turn out voters who don't normally vote. You have to persuade some Republicans, people who've been Republican before to cross over and make sure that every Democrat, everyone who identifies as a Democrat, not only votes, but volunteers and helps to spread the word. When your freedoms are being ripped away, you need to bring more people in. That's exactly what they are trying to do is build this bigger coalition. And it goes back to 2016 and 2020. In 2016, the voters who disliked both Trump and Hillary Clinton voted for Trump in the end. And in 2020, the haters went for President Biden. And right now, polls show that the haters are going for Trump. And Biden and his team and Democrats need to shift that. It seems like when you add this all

up together in terms of the tone of the 2024 election, that this is just going to be a uniquely negative campaign. When you think about the fact that most people in the country don't have a very positive view of either Trump or Biden, both men are basically going to spend the next year just trying to tear each other down in the eyes of those independents, those swing voters, those moderates that they might be able to persuade next year. Yeah, that doesn't really do a lot for like enthusiasm among voters. And I would say especially among like some of the at least positive enthusiasm, negative enthusiasm. Right. That is doing so, so well. Yeah. But I would say, yeah, there's not really a lot of positive enthusiasm coming out of this. And that is kind of alarming for someone like Biden right now, who we mentioned already not really doing well in terms of his polling and really not doing well among, really unhappy about how Biden has handled the Israel-Hamas conflict.

I mean, these are things that people are now saying. I've talked to a lot of younger voters who are saying, you know, I'm not going to go out there and vote for Trump. Right. But you might catch me staying home on Election Day. And that is is really concerning coming out of this. Tim, I can hear Mara Eliason in my ear because she said it so many times on the podcast that 2024 is going to be a turnout election. And is there a risk that the base feels pretty down about not only the messaging, but Biden himself, about the state of the issues? Like, does he have a positive enthusiasm problem as he campaigns more negatively? That is always a risk. I will say that although we are focusing on the negative here, Biden's message,

like you sit down with Joe Biden for more than 30 seconds and he will say, I have never been more optimistic about America than I am today. And you look at him and you're like, really? But that that's actually who he is at his core. And and part of his message against Trump is like, can you believe how negative this guy is? He's he's talking about retribution. He's you know, what is this vision of America that he's offering? Right. So, yeah, I would say, I mean, he is being very negative about Trump. Right. But I do feel like there's this element of like existentialism where it's like, look, look at what he's saying. And look how democracy is quite literally on fire. Like these are these are the things that, you know,

are coming up in this election where it's not just like, oh, he's negative because he said this one thing. And, you know, the word bashing gets thrown out. It's more dire than that. And the language that he's been using as of late to talk about Trump is not necessarily just like hitting back at his opponent. Right. Like he's bringing up these very, very, very deep, serious thoughts and then trying to say at these fundraisers at these events saying, me and Kamala, the vice president, need your help to save democracy, to protect democracy. And that message is also, you know, something he's trying to tie in here too in the middle of everything else. Man, if or when we get to a presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, I feel like that's going to be one ugly rematch right there. Oh, my God. We're not ready. We're

not ready. All right. We're going to leave it there for today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Deepa Shivram. I also cover the White House. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.