The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Trump Dumps Heritage; Harris Has Meme-entum

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Former president Trump is still working to distance himself from the Project 2025 policy proposals created largely by his former aides in cooperation with the Heritage Foundation. And young voters' enthusiasm for Harris buoys her effort to rebuild President Biden's 2020 coalition.This episode: national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, campaign correspondent Franco Ordoñez, senior political editor and correspondent Elena Moore, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Melissa and Brett, and we're in Moab, Utah, on vacation away from our five kids. This podcast was recorded at 12.05 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, August 2nd, 2024. Things may have changed, but we'll still be sweating under the hot desert sun, enjoying the beauty of Arches National Park. Get free time. It's priceless. Did you like how Melissa's voice rose a little bit when she said, without the kids? Five kids. I mean, that's a job. I get it. I get it. You're like, I'd rather be in the desert sweating.

I'm just kidding. Oh, that's a beautiful place. And you know the second they go home, they're going to be so happy to see the kiddos. That's how it works. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Franco Ordonez.

I cover the campaign. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Today on The Roundup, a busy week for the Trump campaign and a look at what we know about how Vice President Harris is performing relative to President Biden with younger voters. But let's start with Trump. Franco, in the news this week was the departure of the man who leads Project 2025. You've done a lot of reporting on this. It, of course, is the much discussed policy roadmap that was put together by the Heritage Foundation

with an eye toward being ready for another potential Trump administration. What does this leader's departure from the project mean for it? It's a significant development. He was the leader of Project 2025. Project 2025 obviously is the plan to kind of transform the government that the conservative heritage group put together, but it came under a lot of criticism from former President Donald Trump, who was really trying to distance himself from this project that was essentially, essentially written for him and written by people who were very close to him. But it became kind of a problem for his campaign. Democrats, others were kind of latching on to some of the more controversial aspects of the plan,

the 900-page policy plan. And that became an issue for them. Trump started criticizing it, saying he didn't know anything about the group or what was being put in it. So what ends up happening is Paul Danz, he's the director of the project. He pulls out. But despite all that, the 900 pages have already been written. There's a few different pillars part of it. There's a 180-day plan for executive actions to be taken, though still exist. There's also a personnel database of conservative allies, potential federal workers that could be immediately grabbed and put into the system. You know, it's very important for former President Donald Trump because he doesn't have a transition team in place. If he wins, he's going to need policy. He's going to need people to kind of execute some of the things that he has promised. So it's very likely that, you know, all this work is going to be used. Yeah. And Paul Danz is gone, as you say. But as you also said, the groundwork for Project 2025 has been laid in many ways. And Trump has

said positive things about it in the past, hasn't he? Yeah. I mean, you know, he says now that it's ridiculous and that he knows nothing about it. But it was actually two years ago that he was actually at a foundation event. And he told the group that their work was going to be essential going forward. This is a great group and they're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America. And that's coming. The Harris campaign also sent out, you know, some video of Trump saying to the group that they'd be working together, he thinks, lots in the future. But you can hear it from the campaign, you know, during the Republican convention, for example, when the campaign head, Chris Lasavita, said that they've become a pain in the you-know-what.

That sort of signaled how much Trump sees them as a political problem and how much he was going to try to put some distance. But there really is no squeezing this toothpaste back in the tube. The fact that Project 2025 for so long had been covered by the media, but then really hadn't sort of been in the zeitgeist. And then it did. Once something like that gets into the, you know, the sort of the popular idea or thought among voters, they're not really going to be able to push that off away

from Trump, because suddenly, you know, one guy who was in charge of it has stepped aside. Okay, we talked yesterday about Trump's comments about Vice President Harris's race, that she somehow had changed her identity from Indian to Black, which of course is not true. How else has Trump been trying to draw a contrast with Harris on the campaign trail? I mean, this past week, I think he's really simply been trying to kind of wrestle back attention from Harris. You talked about all his inflammatory remarks yesterday. I think the contrast that, you know, he's trying to make and that, you know, his comments kind of obscured is that Democrats is something that he's tried to do for a long time, kind of framing this election as between strength and weakness and Democrats are weak and Trump is strong. What happened this week really kind of distracted that and obscured from that because another message that he had at the NABJ conference was about the border. And therefore, the jobs of the people in the room and African-Americans, you know, who they were in contact with, were their jobs were at risk. I mean, he was literally in that meeting trying to pit African-American workers versus immigrant workers. And again,

it's this strength and weakness thing that he's trying to put, you know, put out. But I do think it was kind of obscured by this controversy. And it really kind of prevented him from making the contrast that he wanted to. I think it's interesting, frankly, uses the word wrestle. And it made me think of a piece that I read the other day from a writer from the bulwark, Jonathan Last, who described what Trump was doing at the National Association of Black Journalists as cheap heat, a phrase I'd never heard before. But it's kind of when a wrestler goes into an arena just to make the crowd angry. When somebody, let's say there's an event in Cleveland and a wrestler goes in to say, the Cleveland Cavaliers are terrible and I hate your city,

just to get the crowd riled up and angry so that he can get attention. That seems to be some high level strategery if that's the case with Trump. It may be the case because he's so desperate for attention because Harris has gotten so much good press of late that he has really been sort of out of the spotlight. I don't know that I necessarily assign that kind of level of four dimensional chess to Trump. I think he got asked a direct question and he said something that he believes. Let's talk quickly before we go about a couple of other things Trump has said this week. There have been a few occasions where he's been encouraging particular groups to turn out and vote and then saying afterward that actually they won't have to vote anymore. And again, Christians get out and vote just this time.

You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It'll be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you. Get out. You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote. That was Trump talking last Friday to Turning Point Action's Believer Summit. Now, this is in a lot of ways, very classic Trump. You know, it's hyperbolic, the idea that he'll somehow fix everything in such a way that nothing else will matter. But a lot of people hear these words from Trump in the context of the fact that he did try to stay in office despite losing the election last time.

Yeah, I think he's intentionally vague about a lot of provocative things on purpose, right? Just to try to get people talking about it, get what he'll see as trolling liberals, owning the libs to make their heads sort of explode about these kinds of things. But he does flirt with these anti-democratic ideas. And also, frankly, in four years, it doesn't matter to Trump anymore because he can't run again. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. And Franco, you can go get some coffee,

do whatever you want. We'll see you again in a minute for Can't Let It Go. See you soon. When we get back, young moment and give you a big update in the world of NPR+. The NPR Plus bundle option is now available to everyone in the U.S. By signing up, you get 20 sponsor-free NPR podcasts with more on the way. You also get exclusive podcasts, discounts for the NPR Shop and NPR Wine Club. And depending on the show, you get bonus episodes, archive access, even early access. Thank you. And more of your donation goes directly to support public media. It's only available at plus.npr.org.

So if you want to make a bigger impact and get more in return, visit plus.npr.org and select the bundle option today. And thanks to everyone who's already signed up. Now, back to the show. And we're back. And NPR's Elena Moore is joining us. Hi there, Elena. Hey, Sarah. We've been talking a lot about the Democratic Party's campaign reset. And Elena, you've been reporting on this. You've been talking to voters. What are you a big role in the 2020 election in supporting President Biden. But over this last year, we've seen a drop in that excitement for him.

A lot of people weren't sure if they were going to vote for him again. They wanted someone new. And the last week or so since the Democrats have changed their ticket, I've seen a lot more excitement. I put out a call out on social media in the day after President Biden decided to exit the race and asked people under 30 what they thought about Harris being the potential Democratic nominee. And I got lots of responses around 100. And people were saying, you know, I was really dreading the race. And now I have some hope. So there was definitely, at least from what I was hearing, an increased excitement. And so I decided last week to head down to Atlanta.

There was this conference hosted by the group Voters of Tomorrow, which is this democratic leaning youth voter organization. And they just kind of convened all these organizers from across the country. And I heard similar things. But they talked about hearing that their community was more excited. I talked to these two young men who go to school at Indiana University in Pennsylvania, Andrew Muth and Jacob Engberg, both in their early 20s. Prior, when it was Joe Biden, something we were really leaning heavily into was the negatives of Donald Trump.

However, now we have something to give the college students to run against and give them something to fight for in Kamala Harris. I personally strongly believe that if Joe Biden had another four years, more and more great things would happen in America. But he just had a problem of communicating that. And it was even hard for us to communicate that to other young voters.

But with Kamala Harris, that has changed completely. You know, it is, you just look at her and it's a new face of the Democratic Party. So lots of excitement, Alina, a sense that there's sort of a new start. Yeah, exactly. A new start, a new face, as, you know, Jacob said. And, you know, we've seen that online. We've seen that in some pre, you know, beginning polling. But I'm really curious to see if this lasts. OK, excitement's one thing. But Domenico Harris, without being in the race for very long, has also raised a lot of money, right? I mean, a huge amount of money since this change. Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's been a

ton of grassroots excitement, you know, over $300 million that they say that they've raised now. And certainly young people are a big piece of that. And, you know, I think you can't overlook how important young people and Black voters are to the Democratic Party. And it's someplace that Joe Biden was struggling mightily with and where Kamala Harris, according to early polling, and a lot of the volunteers, volunteer base that the campaign says that it's gotten, really come from both of those groups. I mean, just for example, that Atlanta rally that the Harris campaign had where over 10,000 people were at, they said they got about 1,000 people to volunteer just from that event. About 15,000 new volunteers, they say, in Georgia, and they're seeing lots of activity in places like North Carolina and Nevada as well.

Okay, you touched on polls just a second ago, some good signs for Harris there. But what are we seeing and also how much can be read into that at this stage? Well, I mean, I think that it's very important considering that was a big reason why Joe Biden wound up dropping out, because there really was a path that had been shut off after his June 27th debate performance. And Harris just is doing a lot better than Biden did with some of the groups that Biden was struggling with. Of course, she's got some room to make up, it looks like, in polling when it comes to white voters and suburban voters. The campaign says they think that she will be able to retain a lot of those same people who were voting for Biden. But in this kind of campaign, what's hard to measure is that sort

of base turnout. When you have an election that's expected to be lower turnout than in past years, that floor being raised with the voters who are supposed to be on your side is a pretty big deal and why we've seen such a huge turnabout in the last couple of weeks. You know, one of the places we've seen this energy for Harris show up, especially with younger voters, is online. There've been a lot of viral moments. She's on TikTok. I think it's safe to say the memes have been in her favor. Elena, I mean, can she keep that energy up? Yeah, I mean, the memes are getting to this point where it's like, feels like I'm like drowning in brat content. But it was all over this conference. They had coconut water, and they had all of these Kamala Brat stickers that had like the Brat album cover, but it's like Kamala in the same font. So like it's everywhere. It is existing

in all of the contexts in which we live and what came before us. But I think that I'm very, I'm very curious to see exactly what you said. If this can stay, this is a generation that is extremely issue focused. They do not care as much about voting blue, no matter who or whatever the expressions that, you know, millennials and Gen Xers say about voting. But I think that they're really curious to see how Harris defines her policy and how she differentiates her policy from President Biden, because she can run on some of the successes of their first term, you know, major gun violence prevention actions, some big climate moves. But there's still some work. We know that there is still a movement that

has largely rallied some young progressives around the anti-war movement, protesting the US handling of the Israel-Hamas war. There's also criticism of how the Democratic Party continues to field and act on the wants and needs of Black voters, a key pillar of the Democratic base. And I've heard from one young organizer, a young Black man in Georgia, Jaden Williams, who's 21, still a college student, also a grassroots community organizer. And he told me he's looking for further, you know, movements from Harris on how she's going to bring it for his community. I want a black agenda to be to be pushed. And honestly, that's something President Biden promised but did not do. So I want to see a black agenda push. But I also

want her to see because this is a battleground state. I want her to see I want to see a black agenda push. But I also want her to see, because this is a battleground state, I want her to see, I want to see her boots on the ground. I want to see her involvement in the state because this is a huge state when it comes down to the election and just your support overall. And so I want to see her get down in the South and put her hands, get her hands dirty a little bit. So still some work to do there. You know, Domenico, we've talked about some of the groups that Harris looks like she's doing better with compared to President Biden. Are there groups where she's underperforming? You mentioned the need to go after those swing voters in the suburbs. Are there still some groups where she's underperforming compared to President Biden? Yeah, I mean, I did a little bit of a deep dive on kind of where the limited but significant

number of polls are now and what they show in the two regions that the campaigns really value most, which is those blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and then the other four sunbelt states of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. And what you're seeing is that Trump's lead has basically been erased in the blue wall states. And this is a place where, you know, Harris and the campaign really feel like that they have been able to kind of make a push. A place like Pennsylvania, they're still, they could use a little bit more of a boost in that state. Don't know what could help that, you know, I mean, if you're looking at VPs, just saying. And the Sunbelt states, on the other hand,

you know, you have more of this emerging electorate, the sort of changing demography of the country, younger voters of color, AAPI voters, you know, Latino voters, especially in Arizona and Nevada, where the campaign really feels like she can do better than Biden did because of her strength in California. We'll see if that translates to places like Arizona and Nevada. But you have seen Trump's lead, for example, having been something like five to seven points in those Sunbelt states now down to under three points. Still, you know, Trump has an advantage in those places. But Harris does seem to be cutting in. But yeah, I mean, white voters, overall, suburban voters, they sort of took a step back when we looked at our last poll to move to more undecided. And we'll see what happens in the weeks coming up, whether or not they are sold on Harris's message. It's certainly been a very good week and a half, I'd say, for her as compared to Donald Trump, who is gaining attention in all of

the wrong ways when it comes to trying to win over swing voters. Okay. Domenico, thanks for being with us today and enjoy your weekend. Thank you. It's almost time for a break, but first, we're in the market for your summer timestamps. You know, the things you hear at the top of the show. Tell us about any fun things you've done, places you've gone, food you've had, dogs you've pet. Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to nprpolitics at npr.org with the subject line timestamp. And you just might hear it on the show. Okay. Time for a quick break. Then time for Can't Let It Go.

And we're back and Franco is back with us. Hey, Franco. Hey there. It's time for us to end the week with Can't Let It Go. That's the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. And I'm going to start today. What I can't let go is the incredible women's gymnastics team, the USA, that just absolutely killed it in Paris this week. Killed it. Always loved gymnastics, but this was a special week. They won the gold in the team event. And of course, the big star of the team, Simone Biles, brought home the individual all-around final title. It was a huge comeback for Biles, of course, after she stepped away four years ago. And we said this is politics and otherwise.

She made a reference to politics. On X, she posted, I love my black job. So congratulations to Simone and the rest of the team. I love these women so much. They are so talented. And they also are just like so, this is so stupid to say as a 27-year-old loser compared to them. But when the team won gold a few days ago, there was a clip that went viral of them talking

about what TikTok dances they were going to do with their medals. And I was like, wow, they're just like me, except for everything else about them. Watching Women's Olympics takes me back to being a little girl watching the Olympics, you know, in the 1980s. You just are so proud of them. You just admire them so much. And I got to say, I still, as a, you know, 40-something, I love the sparkly costumes. It's just a fun sport and such impressive work that they've been able to do. There's nothing like watching them. You know, every night I've been doing it with my daughter and my son. You know, I'm pretty excited. My wife's very excited. And then my kids are actually trying to do these moves on our carpet or, you know, my son's trying to turn

three times on a fake balance beam like Simone Biles does. It's just so inspiring. And it's such an incredible combination of mental and physical strength that it takes to do what they do. When you're the GOAT, you can do it. So, Franco, why can't you let go? So I'm going to build on the Olympic theme. One part of the Olympics that I love, kind of you spoke to this, is just all those stories, is watching them, not only the sport, but also the stories behind these athletes and where they came from. And one story that just really caught my attention was Erin Gamal. She's one of the swimmers. And she actually dressed up like

Katie Ledecky for Halloween when she was eight years old. And now she is swimming in the Olympics with Katie Ledecky on the 200 meter relay and winning a silver medal with your hero. I think that is just so amazing. Elena, how about you? Why can't you let go? Well, I feel like every time I do can't let it go, I do need to talk about dogs. So I'm going to pivot. But I saw the news.

I think it was published at the news outlet, theinformation.com. There is an ex-OpenAI engineer that's trying to make up Doug's dog collar from the movie Up. You remember that dog that's like, hi, I am a dog. I'm like kind of obsessed with this because I have a dog and me and my boyfriend constantly speak for the dog. And I hope this is a thing that other people do or I'm just like ruining my life right now. But like it's going to translate dog barks into English so that users can better understand their dog's expressions, as the article says. I just think this is going to probably be a disaster. But it sounds amazing.

And like me and my boyfriend always joke, like if our dog could text, it would be like, hey, where did you go? You know what we should do? We should probably go play. Like we should go play with the ball. Let me know. I mean, would this hurt your jokes though with your boyfriend? I mean, it feels like you guys got a good running joke. I mean, to get the real feedback might be a little bit competitive. Yeah. What if the dog's jokes are better than your jokes? I mean, let's think about this. One of us is going to have to leave.

There are pitfalls to every form of new technology. All right. That's it for the week. We will be back in your feeds on Monday. Our executive producer is Mithoni Mutturi. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Jung Yoon Han, Casey Morrell, and Kelly Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs.

Special thanks to Roberta Rampton. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Frank McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the campaign. And I'm Elena Moore. I also cover the campaign and dogs. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.