The NPR Politics Podcast - Unlike Trump, Folks Who Don't Like Biden May Vote For Him Anyway

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

Both men are strikingly unpopular — two-thirds of Americans don't want Trump to run for president again and just 41 percent approve of Biden's job performance, according to a recent poll from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist. But the Democratic performance in the 2022 midterm elections and other recent polling suggests voters who don't like Biden might cast a ballot for him anyway.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Scott Detrow, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, television critic Eric Deggans, and disinformation correspondent Shannon Bond.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. This episode was edited by Lexie Schapitl and Eric McDaniel. 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

Hey NPR, this is Tyler calling from Hollywood, Florida, celebrating the best Friday because today we celebrate the finalization of our adoption of our son Grant. This podcast was recorded at 1 26 p.m. on Friday, April 28th. So things may have changed by the time you listen to it, but my wife and I will be over the moon with our brand new baby boy. Thanks. Enjoy the show. That's wonderful news. Congrats to your family. That's so exciting, and it's such a difficult process. And Hollywood's great. I mean, a great place to take, you know, a baby on the beach, big wide open beach there.

Good weather all year round. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And right now, the 2024 presidential election looks like it could be a 2020 rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But there's a new poll out from NPR PBS NewsHour Marist that suggests that is not what the country wants. Domenico, let's start with Trump. I mean, big majorities of Americans say they do not want him to be president again. Yeah, two-thirds of Americans say that they don't want Trump to be president again. But it's a totally different story as we've been talking about all the time for the past, you know, feels like years of how Republicans feel differently.

71 percent of Republicans said that they want Trump to be president. And get this, 63% of Republicans said that they would want Trump to be president even if he's convicted of a crime. A jury of his peers finds him guilty. They still would want him to be president. It also drives home a dynamic of the Republican presidential primary that we've been talking about, Domenico. It's like, how does any non-Trump candidate get a footing in that race when you look at those loyalty numbers to the former president? It's nearly impossible. You know, I followed up with a couple of poll respondents. And one person I talked to, Richard Holton from Beaver Creek, Ohio, is basically convinced of all of

the things Trump has said. You know, he really, really, really starts with the idea that he dislikes Democrats quite a bit. But he said that everything Trump has ever been accused of has come out to be false, which isn't true. He said that everything he's accused of, it's all been made up. He can't get a fair trial in New York. It's all fake. So he believes all not a fan. He said DeSantis thought he would make a good one. But when I hear Trump's explanation of it, he helped him and he turned on him.

There's no loyalty. Scott, there is echoes of the 2016 Republican primary that I see playing out now in that Trump was really good at attacking and defining his opponents to voters. They believed what he said. And you're seeing that happen again with a guy like Ron DeSantis, who had a really good brand. But you hear voters like this echoing and parroting Trump talking points. You're seeing that and you're seeing the flip side of that, where all the other Republican candidates had no idea what to do when they were attacked. They had no idea what to do when they were attacked. They had no idea what to do when Trump did present them an opening.

To me, like we've talked a lot about Ron DeSantis the last few weeks and how the vibe has shifted from, you know, I mean, I think November when he wins Florida by a bigger margin than Gavin Newsom wins California. It feels like, wow, this is a new powerhouse. To me, the moment where I know lots of things were happening, but when Ron DeSantis went out and said, I'm not going to extradite him to New York, even though nobody asked me to, and Trump's willingly turning himself in after Trump was charged with a crime. To me, that said everything you need to know about the rest of the field, just kind of giving Trump a free pass or in one way or another, making it seem like they are agreeing that Donald Trump is the dominant figure of this primary. Yeah, no one's really shown a willingness whatsoever to try to prosecute the case against Trump. They're really pointing fingers at each other. I think they'd hope that somebody else

would walk the plank, but they just don't want to be it. You know, what we've also found, though, is that Trump's message, as much as the people who are supporting him are echoing his talking points, as you said, the hypnosis really doesn't seem to be filtering over to persuadable voters. I mean, just 29% of independents, 29% said that they think Trump should be president again. So even as far down as President Biden's approval ratings have been languishing, and the fact that he is 80 years old, the oldest person to serve in office, and as some of you continue to hear from not just Republicans and independents, but also Democrats. You know, he doesn't get that same animus that Trump gets from independents. One of my big questions about independence in 2024 is also the issue of abortion, because abortion is going to be a huge issue in that election. But

independents largely tend to support some access to abortion care. And the Republican Party right now is moving to restrict and restrict and restrict on that issue. And that could be a really losing place to be with independent and swing voters. Yeah, Republicans really risk going too far. And how many times have we said that about how many issues can we possibly talk about? And abortion rights, which was one that really fired up the Democratic base, especially white college educated women. This is a huge issue. And when you look at what Republicans in red states are doing, a lot of these things that they're pushing just are not popular. Even, you know, this case that went to the Supreme Court that was originally started at a lower court in Texas about whether or not

there should be bans on mefepristone, which is a prescription drug used in early stage abortions, you know, wildly unpopular to cut that off, to ban that within states. Six-week abortion bans are unpopular as well. And that includes a majority of Republicans. So there are a lot of these issues over and over again, we've seen Republicans not, you know, in line with where public opinion is. And two things. One, it was interesting that just in the last couple days, you saw two Republican controlled states, South Carolina and Nebraska, halt themselves in the process of trying to pass six week or even less bans, which is an interesting moment. I don't know what happens next, but you had just enough Republican lawmakers saying, wait a second, perhaps this is a political mistake. And secondly, you really saw the Biden administration talking a lot about that Mifepristone case. On the policies, they were certainly very

much against it and had deep concerns, but it was also really good politics for them because certainly Joe Biden has lackluster approval ratings, right? But he feels like he and his team feel like anytime that it's a choice, which is what the election is going to boil down to, they feel comfortable with this matchup with Trump again. And they feel like anything they can do to paint Republicans as just wildly out of step with the country, they are going to do. And that's why Joe Biden's going to be talking about attempts to ban books a lot. And that's why he's going to be talking a lot about abortion access and why Kamala Harris was framing the Princeton ruling as a backdoor national abortion ban. But at the same time, this poll wasn't exactly great news for Joe Biden either. He's got a

disapproval rate of 50 percent. Only 41 percent of Americans say they approve of his job. You know, this poll was taken before he made his official announcement this week, although it was pretty clear he was going to run for reelection. Those aren't great launching numbers either, Scott. No, they're not at all. And I think yet the Biden team remains incredibly confident in the case that they're going to be making over the next year and a half. Is that because of this idea that when it's a binary choice, the swingable ones will swing to Biden? I think it's two things. That's the main one. And they feel like the midterms really validated that view, right? The Democratic overperformance

compared to how the election should have gone compared to the expectations. And they feel like Donald Trump has not done anything to win over any swing voters in the last two years since he left office in the haze of January 6th. I mean, I think just this week he was autographing items from people who stormed the Capitol and basically telling them he would pardon them. But I think the other thing is like I just think the Biden campaign has this mindset. Biden, like the people who have been around him forever, have this mindset of years now of we've been counted out every time. We've we've over exceeded expectations every single time. And I think that's something you need to think about when you take a look at what they're trying to do with this campaign, because it's such an ingrained mentality of the people around him. You never thought that we'd get through the primary. You questioned how we handle the general election.

You thought we'd be a flop as president, not pass any of these bills. Look at us now. Like that's such a core part of the camp there. Domenico, I do wonder, too, you know, you look at these approval numbers. They're consistently low in the low 40s, but they also echo Donald Trump's approval. I mean, Trump always hovered in the low 40s at his high points. And I wonder if we just live in an era now of the 40-something percent approval rating president and the people who feel meh about them decide the election. Yeah, I mean this is a hyper-partisan environment. Democratic strategists and Republican strategists will say – have said to me over the last couple of months that it's really kind of false to say whether an election is a base election or if you have to win over persuadables. Like we're at a point where you've got to do both. And that's a tough line to walk for a lot of them.

I do think the case for Biden is the idea that the threat to democracy is very real and a lot of people do see that. And his sense of trying to say we're going to bring some normal back to politics and in a nonpartisan kind of way, you know, having debates over what to do policy wise for Social Security or Medicare that's based in, you know, a premise of truth and shame ability. That's something that we haven't seen for quite some time. You know, if I can, at some point, I'm going to try to push to get a question in like, which candidate do you view as most normal? I do think that that is something of a litmus test and might explain some

of these feelings. All right, Scott Domenico, don't go too far. We're going to have you back for Can't Let It Go, but we need to take a quick break. And when we get back, America's top cable host Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News. What does it mean for our politics? And we're back. And Fox News made a stunning announcement this week. Fox News media and Tucker Carlson have mutually agreed to part ways. Carlson was one of the most watched primetime personalities in all of cable news and a major and growing influence in far right Republican politics. Eric Diggins is NPR's TV critic, and this is his first time on

the NPR Politics Podcast. Hi, Eric. So honored. Thank you for having me. It is a pleasure. And longtime friend of the pod, NPR correspondent Shannon Bond joins us as well. Hey, Shannon. Hey there. So, Eric, let's start with the very basics. What do we know about what led to this parting of ways, which is like conscious uncoupling for the cable news industry? That's exactly what I was going to say. What is remarkable about this situation is that according to some reports, even Tucker Carlson doesn't know why he was fired. And there are so many reasons why it could have been, why it could have happened. So let's run through a few. Fox News had to cut a settlement with Dominion Voting System, $787.5 million. And in the course of that lawsuit, Discovery produced a bunch of damaging texts that revealed not only that people like Tucker Carlson didn't necessarily believe the material they were putting on their shows about supposedly the 2020 election being

invalid. But also, he was saying very disparaging things about Fox executives and colleagues at Fox. And now there's reporting in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times that suggests that that may have been one reason why they decided to get rid of him. But there's also another couple of lawsuits filed by a former producer on the show named Abby Grossberg, who claims that there was a harassment vibe, a toxic work environment at the show. And so could that have been a factor? Could it have been the things he was actually discussing on his show? There are just so many reasons they might have decided to fire this guy. But Tucker Carlson is someone who has weathered a lot of controversies at the network before. But this isn't the first time that this is a network that has decided to part ways with some of its biggest names. Exactly.

You know, Fox News previously ousted the star that Tucker Carlson replaced, Bill O'Reilly. Now, that was clearly a result of a bunch of sexual harassment settlements that the company had to settle for him. And they also ousted the founder of the news channel, Roger Ailes, over sexual harassment claims. And Glenn Beck, many years earlier, who was also a rising star at Fox News, was ousted. You know, there's a sense that when a star gets uncontrollable at Fox News, when they begin to act as if they are bigger than the company, when they begin to act in ways that seem to be counter to what the company strategy is, that's when the Murdochs may decide, and Rupert Murdoch in particular may decide, you know, this person is more trouble than they're worth, and they get rid of them. Now, that's maybe what happened to Tucker Carlson, ultimately, but we still need

more reporting, I think, to fully understand what happened here. Shannon, Tucker Carlson was a media personality, but he was also in many ways a political figure as well. His show had become arguably one of the most influential platforms in Republican and conservative politics. And you have reporting this week about how he used that platform in many ways to expand or try to legitimize conspiracy theories. That's right. I mean, if you were tuning into Tucker Carlson's show every night, I mean, you were just getting this sort of full plate of grievance, white grievance, right? Really, you know, a lot of racial animus, really toxic nativism and straight up conspiracy theories.

And a lot of it was around this sort of us versus them frame, like they are out to get you, they being the government, the media, the Democrats. And so, you know, you had how he treated the January 6th insurrection. He at one point described it as a false flag by the FBI. He later described it as a peaceful protest. He claimed that immigration was making our country, quote, poorer, dirtier and more divided. He said, you know, white supremacy is a hoax. And a lot of what he was pushing kind of falls under the category of what's known as the great replacement theory, which is this really vile white nationalist idea that in the U.S., but not just in the U.S. and other Western democracies, there's this sort of intentional effort to replace white voters with non-white immigrants. And, you know, it's really this effort to sort of play on people's fears about, you know, changing demographics. And it's something that Carlson really mainstreamed.

I mean, these are ideas that are popular in far-right spaces. And he gave them this platform on, you know, Fox News, which, and his show that reached, you know, 3 million people a night. And, you know, that had very much did have influence over the greater Republican Party. I mean, you would see over and over again, he kind of played this role where he would kind of pull conservative politicians in line. If you said something that sort of went against the ideas he was pushing on his show, whether it was anti-immigration, whether it was attacks on trans people and on gay people, he would have politicians on and basically excoriate them and they'd have to sort of apologize if they had

crossed the line. I mean, it was really pretty remarkable. Shannon, the thing I think about with this, though, is that, yes, Tucker Carlson used this platform, but there was an audience really primed to find a television show or a host that validated a lot of these theories that they had. I mean, the rise of conspiracy theories, and particularly within the Republican Party, aligns very much with the rise of Donald Trump. No, that's right. And I think, you know, it would be a mistake to think that was sort of a purely causal direction in one direction, right, of like, you know, Fox says something and people believe it. I mean, Fox is very driven by what its audience wants. I spoke with Melissa Ryan of Card Strategies,

which is an outfit that tracks disinformation and extremism online. And here's how she described the role Tucker played. Tucker is a chameleon. He's very good at reading the room and figuring out where the right wing base is at and adapting to give them as much red meat as they want. And so I think you have this sort of reciprocal relationship. And it's been influenced by the fact that, you know, the conservative media landscape has changed. Right. There are more outlets. There are outlets that are further right of Fox and that has pushed Fox to the right. And the audience has sort of gone to the right as well.

And it's this whole sort of mess where it's all reinforcing each other. But you are definitely seeing this just shift into often into particularly the conservative media ecosystem to see this presidential election. distinguished himself when he took over Bill O'Reilly's time slot was to be more extremist, to be more provocative, to offer more misinformation and disinformation, to be more openly racist than O'Reilly was. And so whoever takes over that time slot full time after Tucker Carlson is going to face the same pressure to galvanize the audience that was once there to stand out in a field of people who have guest hosted in that time slot and to make Fox News stand out in a sea of competitors that are chomping at the bit to try and take back some of the viewership that Carlson amassed during his tenure. So the chances that whoever takes that time slot is going to be more extreme and going to push the envelope even more is pretty high. And I think you can extend that dynamic to what we're going to see during the election cycle, where there's going to be pressure for these pundits to stand darker and darker and more and more extremist communication leading up to the election. People really can be sort of fully removed from reality. And, you know, I think there's also a question, you know, Tucker Carlson, I think, you know, yes, he will not have this huge platform at Fox anymore. But, you know, I wouldn't count him out as starting his own venture, right? I mean, he has the profile to do something like Alex Jones potentially has done with InfoWars.

You know, he could start his own broadcast. He could, you know, join a site like Rumble, which is this, you know, right wing video website. And I think you're just going to that is also going to continue to kind of pressure where Fox is. And as Eric says, like, I just I think, you know, we've fractured so much any sense of trust in shared reality in a lot of ways. And I think that all of this is going to contribute to what could be a much darker tenor of the 2024 race. Eric Deggans and Shannon Bond, thank you so much for joining the podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for having us. Let's take another quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back and it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go. The part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop talking about, politics or otherwise.

Domenico, what can't you let go of this week? You know, what I can't let go of is the idea of failure, what it means, what success means. And what really stood out to me this week was an answer by Giannis Antetokounmpo, the basketball player from the Milwaukee Bucks, and their team lost. They were the top seed in the playoffs, and their team lost this week. A reporter asked him kind of a curt question and said, you know, do you chalk this season up to be a failure? That sent Giannis into a bit of a, you know, speech that he winds up making about failure. It's a good listen.

Let's take a listen to some of what his response was. There's no failure in sports. There's good days, bad days. Some days you are able to be successful. Some days you're not. Some days it's your turn. Some days it's not your turn. I love that.

Yeah, right? I mean I think that's great perspective. He's obviously a great competitor. He's got different perspective on a lot of this and has worked really hard in the NBA and has won a championship. But it's an interesting thought. Is it a failure if we don't get the pinnacle of everything we want every single time we think we're going to try to get there? I think this is something I feel a lot different about the older I get than before. Yeah, for sure.

Right? So, like, I grew up idolizing the Derek Jeter Yankees and Derek Jeter every year would answer this question is, of course, it was a failure. If we didn't win the World Series, it was a failure. I might speak to Derek Jeter too. That feels reductive to me. And like, I think just speaking professionally, I feel like the times I didn't get what I wanted and failed in like semi-public ways, I have actually learned a lot about myself and it has made me a much better person in the future.

That being said, I'm not paid to win championships. That's true. It is kind of a binary thing in the end. Yeah, you know. Hey, we got that iHeartRadio podcast. Hey! Did we get it last year? Because was that a failure?

No, we got it this year. Hey. But I think, I thought it was a really good answer. Because like obviously you want to strive to win every year and do everything you can to win. But like there are positives that you learn from and build on when it doesn't happen. Yeah, and sometimes the stories about your biggest failures are way more interesting stories than your biggest successes. What about you, Sue? What can you not let go of? You know, maybe there's a theme here because mine also is slightly about failure as well and what you learn from it.

The thing I can't let go this week is a short Twitter thread that went viral this week by a guy named, I don't know how to pronounce his name, Jason either Coupe or Coupette. He's a professor at Georgia State University. But he tweeted this week. I can't fully read the Twitter thread because there is some expletives in it. But essentially, he recounts a tale of how he went to a new gym at the Y because his boxing gym was closed. And he signed up for a fitness class and he goes in and he realizes it's all older women in there. And at first he's like, this is embarrassing. But he's like, I didn't leave because I didn't want to be disrespectful.

And then he recounts how this was like the hardest fitness class he has ended up taking in like his entire life. And he was like, you know, I box, I spar, like I'm not that out of shape. I work hard. You know, this class kicked my butt. I almost got beat in the sprints by someone my mom's age. He goes on to say, these women must not do, I'm paraphrasing because there's some cussing. These women must not do anything in retirement, but work out and do pushups, gospel t-shirts on to fool people.

They had the conditioning of NBA players. And I loved it, one, because I feel like there is something very relatable. Just this week, our colleague Barbara Spratt and I were talking about, like, the gym and all this stuff. And she was saying how she's going to a gym and a lot of the classes she takes has older women in it. It's, like, kicking her butt. And I think there's a very humbling lesson in there. Like, do not underestimate, as one of the increasingly older ladies at the gym, do not underestimate the old ladies at the gym, men. You know, it reminds me of Stephen Colbert going along with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and trying her famous workouts and him kind of struggling with them, to be honest.

Scott, what can you let go of this week? So mine is that the perfect nexus of politics and otherwise altogether. That's what we strive for. Here, I can't let it go. So I was covering different elements of the state visit this week between President Biden and President Yoon of South Korea. During the day, this was a serious affair. I was at the press conference in the Rose Garden. It was all about nuclear deterrence, the United States sending a nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea in the threat,

the increased threats of North Korean missile tests and nuclear belligerence. Serious business, right? They end the visit with a state dinner celebrating 70 years of the American-South Korean alliance, among other things. These are kind of formalities, right? And then at the very end, the entertainment was severalway stars came and were like singing different medleys and president biden and joe biden come up and say we've got one last song president yoon we heard that you love american pie this is your favorite song and you know he says and and you had not been speaking english the entire trip speaking

korean through a translator and he says through translator yeah i love that song and biden says why don't you sing a little bit and And he does the perfect, it was like in Anchorman when they're like, Ron, play some flute. He's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I can't. And then whips out a flute. Yoon grabs the mic and proceeds to just start singing. A long, long time ago I can still remember

how that music used to make me smile. And now I knew he fed my chains. He's pretty good. That I could make those people dance and maybe they'd be happy for a while. And meanwhile,

we should point out that Joe Biden is like fist pumping next to him. Like, yeah! The whole time. He was shocked. Bad news on the doorstep. I couldn't take one more step. I can't remember if I tried when I... I think he really feels it.

...well, I'll raise Willow Bright. He's putting emotion into it. Touch me deep inside. The day the music dies. I wanted to hear him keep going. That's a good place to stop. He quit while he was ahead.

Well, he quit just before the entire crowd had to get into it. It kind of reminds me of my college days at the 80s bar. I love this song because my kids love this song. Lou loves the whole thing. And oftentimes we explain time to her in American Pies because it's like an eight-minute song. And if something's going to take a while, we're like, it's like three American Pies.

And that first verse that he just sang, I sing to my son a lot of times, randomly as his bedtime song because it's, I don't sing the whole thing because it would be like an eight-minute long bedtime song, but the first verse is a good little melody. Well, Sue, that's why we have the microphone in front of you. I would do it, but I'm not going to do it. I would torture you two with my singing, but I will not torture our listeners with my singing. You don't want to give it to President Yoon and step on his big moment. That's exactly. I'm not trying to steal a spotlight over here.

All right. That's a wrap for us today. Our executive producer is Mathoni Mottori. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers this week are Elena Moore and Lexi Schapittle. Yay. Thanks to Christian Evkalimer and Casey Morrell. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.