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- [00:02]
Lisa
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- [01:04]
Sarah Longwell
hello everyone. Sarah Longwell here, publisher of the Bulwark. And I'm joined by Katherine Rampel who writes our Incredible Receipts newsletter. If you're not reading this all the time, go check it out. But we want to talk about a very non economic topic. But because we're, we're polling people, you and I, we digest polls, we think about these numbers. We decided we wanted to get on and talk about a new YouGov poll. We which asked a serious sample at 2,609Americans. That is a good sample size. Whether they thought an eight year old boy, a typical American, or themselves could win a physical fight with Donald Trump. Catherine, I don't know why YouGov decided to ask this question.
- [01:48]
Katherine Rampel
Oh, I do.
- [01:49]
Sarah Longwell
Okay.
- [01:49]
Katherine Rampel
Do you know, you don't know the background because Trump was at some sort of presidential fitness test boosting event and he like asked an 8 year old boy if he thought that he could beat him up. Something like that.
- [02:04]
Sarah Longwell
Think you can take me in a fight?
- [02:11]
Katherine Rampel
That would be embarrassing. So it was Trump who, you know, threw down the gantlet to begin with. And then YouGov was like, let's see what America thinks. Because that's what YouGov does.
- [02:22]
Sarah Longwell
Oh my gosh. I had no idea. I thought somebody was just like, let's just, you know, be funny just to see whether an 8 year old could beat Trump in a fist fight. I was like, who comes up with these poll questions? And I thought, well, maybe there's like a deeper psychological reason, like they're trying to get at the partisan way, because it does break down in funny partisan ways like everything else. So they were going to make a point about polarization or. Okay, I want to set a, set us up with a bit of a disclaimer because I am very clear all the time that I do not think political violence is okay. And so in no way do I want to set up this conversation to be one, you know, about, about violence against the president. But Trump himself decided that we were going to. Who, who would win a fistfight? Him, an eight year old kid. But I want to run through the, the results of this. So 66% of adults say that an average American would beat Trump, while 10% say Trump would win. This is an important distinction because this is people describing other people. Right. So 66% think that somebody else could beat Trump, but the numbers change quite a bit when it gets to whether or not like you think you could beat Donald Trump in a fight. Catherine, before I get into this too deep, do you think you could beat Donald Trump in a fight?
- [03:38]
Katherine Rampel
Okay, so let me just say that anyone who has ever met me would never describe me as having a particularly physically imposing presence. And Donald Trump, according to his official stats, is like at least twice my weight and more than a foot taller than I am.
- [03:59]
Sarah Longwell
Just circumventing four times your weight according. Times your weight.
- [04:03]
Katherine Rampel
According to his official physical, he's like, exactly, whatever, 210 pounds. I forget what it is, but it's something implausible. I'm saying even if you believe what the White House doctor says, he should have a huge advantage on me. However, however, this is a man who is approaching 80, has probably never eaten a vegetable in his life, likes to eat burnt steak, takes his golf cart onto the green because he refuses to walk. He's worried about running down his, his finite battery of energy. Look it up. And someone who frequently has bruises on his hands because he shakes hands too enthusiastically. So I guess I would say with all of those caveats, yeah, even little old me would probably stand a chance. I mean, I don't, I don't even know if he could get past the handshake, to be honest, given the bruises. And I'm not looking for a fight. I'm a lover, not a fighter. I am, I've never been in a physical fight in my life. So like you, I, I am not condoning any sort of violence. But I will say Donald Trump is building an octagon right on the White House lawn. And so if he is looking to take someone out, I think I could just run around the ring enough times and. And that would exhaust him.
- [05:25]
Lisa
And.
- [05:25]
Katherine Rampel
And that would be sufficient. That would be my guess.
- [05:27]
Sarah Longwell
I forgot about this. He's literally gonna do a UFC fight on the White House lawn. So like we could. This is a testable proposition. Ooh.
- [05:35]
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- [06:50]
Sarah Longwell
Instead of Debate me bro. There's going to be a whole fight me bro culture that comes out of this. Hold on. I want to get to some of these other numbers because it gets better. It gets better. So it's just important to level set by saying for whatever reason. And this is a funny phenomenon about humans. This comes up in the focus groups all the time where it's not what they think, it's what they think about what other people think. That is often part of their analysis. So people would be like I love Pete Buttigieg, but I don't think Americans are going to elect a gay president. Right? This is a constant thing that I hear where people are different when they think about their own opinions versus what they think other Americans will do. So then we get to the question of whether or not this eight year old boy, this hypothetical eight year old boy could defeat Trump in a physical match. And Democrats are more likely to say that an 8 year old boy could beat Trump than Republicans are to think they could beat Trump. Okay, so 33% of Republicans, only 33% of Republicans think they could beat Trump in a fight. Whereas 54% of Democrats say an 8 year old boy could beat Trump in a fight. This is a, this is an interesting psychological test about partisan politics, right? Because Republicans are like, big daddy, Trump could beat me, he could get me, I'm scared of him. Whereas Democrats are like, man, an eight year old boy would kick that guy's ass. I cried. What do you, what do you make of this?
- [08:18]
Katherine Rampel
I mean, I think it tells you a little bit about some daddy issues that perhaps some Republicans may have. I don't know, maybe they're all like reading those memes of him as Jesus, you know, healing the patient. Jesus, slash doctor, doctor Jesus healing the patient. And they're like, wow, that guy has some sort of supernatural energy and therefore he might use it against me, but maybe he wouldn't use it against an eight year old boy. I'm not really sure. I think we're learning that a lot of Americans in the maga cult have like some self esteem issues. Maybe that's what it comes down to.
- [08:58]
Sarah Longwell
Well, I'm going to go to the next one, which is about gender, because I think it gets more interesting the deeper you go into these numbers. Like I read these and I just was laughing so hard because by gender, 64%. This is overall, it was overall. First, 64% of men say they could beat Trump compared to 47% of women. Okay? So more men than women think they could defeat Trump in a physical combat. But by political party, 82% of Democratic men and 71% of Democratic women, you go, girls. Say that they could beat Trump, okay? Which is an 11 percentage point gap between men and women Democrats who think that they could beat Trump. Only 46% of men, Republican men say they could beat Trump. Okay? Republican men, 46% of them, like more than half of Republican men think that Trump would beat them. So it's 36% lower than the share of Democratic men who say that they could win. And Republican women are 52 points less likely than Democratic women to say that they could win a physical fight with Trump and only 27 points less likely than Republican men to say so. All right, I'll give Republican women a pass on this, I think, but it's the men I want to talk about. I want to talk about the beta cuck men in the Republican Party because to me this gets at something deeply psychological about Trump's hold on. You were talking about this before, but it is like Republican men who are like, we are the Alphas. Like we are the ones who are meant. I mean this, all the discourse around men about how we're the protectors and Western civilization depends on these men. And every single one of them is like this 80 year old man who has to chew baby aspirin every day. Like, I'm sorry, you don't think, listen, I'm sorry, but take this seriously for a second. What do you think Donald Trump is doing? Like, let's take Trump out of it, but let's say there was Schlonald Schlump and Schlonald Schlump is a, is an almost 80 year old man. He's big, he's heavy, but like, I'm sorry, I could kick him in the knee and run away. Like if you really think about who could win a fight, like you could, it's not that hard, right? Like what is, what's he going to do? Chase you and run you down? You don't think you could move faster than him? And so the need, the need of Republican men to feel like Trump is able to dominate them. So it's actually, I can't even quite tell whether it's sort of like a cope, like in order to respect him, I need to think that he can best me physically or whether it's like, no, I'm such a cuckoo to Trump that I think he would def. He's so strong, he's so big and strong that he would, I mean many of these men must be like 45 years old, 80 year old man's gonna take you in a fight.
- [11:46]
Katherine Rampel
I mean, I will say probably the MAGA base does skew older, so maybe some of them. We don't have like the total breakdown, right, by by age and political affiliate or partisan affiliation and gender. But yeah, I think this is more about showing deference to Trump. Like they can't suggest that Trump would be beaten by anyone in a fight. I think that's what it's about. I'm not totally sure. But then that, now that I think, now that I say that out loud, I think that kind of cuts against the other finding was like whether the average American could beat Trump in a fight. So yeah, I don't know. I, yeah, I don't know if it's about their own self esteem or like this is how they show fealty to the boss, you know, to the cult leader is by saying he's a, he's a big man, and he can beat anyone, Even though he's 80 years old and bruises easily.
- [12:40]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, Yeah. I don't think, guys, it's like, if someone said, like, fight your grandpa. Like, which, again, you wouldn't do. You wouldn't fight your grandpa, but, like, your grandpa's not beating you in a fight. This is the funniest thing about these polls, is that Democratic women are more likely than Republican men to say that they could win a fight with Donald Trump.
- [13:02]
Katherine Rampel
Yep.
- [13:02]
Sarah Longwell
And to me, honestly, one of the reasons I sort of wanted to talk about this is, like, this is an absurd question, but the absurdity gets to a certain thing going on underneath, which is, I think that Republicans, to your point, there's something in there where it's like, they want Trump to dominate them. They. They've been in this thing where, like, that's important. Whereas Democrats right now, like, they want to dominate Trump. Like, they are like, let me. Adam, put me in the ring with him. The women are like, I got this. I got this. I could take him on. And it's just. It is a. It to me, it's almost a. An enthusiasm gap, like, or, like, for how intense people feel about him.
- [13:41]
Katherine Rampel
I think it's partly that. I think it's also that you see Donald Trump looking like this doddering old man, or at least one portion of the electorate is exposed to examples of Donald Trump looking like a doddering old man and sort of going on, you know, maybe you can call it the weave, but it sure sounds like he's going off on tangents about the ballroom and, like, shower heads and toilets and windmills and, like, all sorts of things that are never really about the task at hand. And that sort of mental frailty, I think, also gets, like, bleeds into a perception of greater physical frailty. So maybe it's just more salient to people who are, like, inclined to see these examples of Trump looking like he's not totally with it mentally. And so that colors how that those audiences, in any event, might think about him physically. Like, he is aged both in terms of how he talks and in how he physically acts. And maybe if you are a Republican and you're watching Fox News or newsmax or OANN or whatever, and you're seeing Trump make these, like, bold, strong, declarative sentences that are maybe perhaps edited together so that they don't look as meandering, maybe that colors your image of him as being, like, more youthful and. And hearty and robust, you know, and it's not as if, like, mental acuity and physical prowess necessarily decline in tandem, but they often do. And so I wonder if that's part of what it's about. I take your point about Democratic women, like, really wanting to battle Trump, but I think it's like, I wonder if there are Democratic women out there who would actually, you know, if there were that many women who would, like, actually take a swing at their grandpa, or they'd be like, this is a sad, maybe malign, but, like, sad old man. And they wouldn't feel great about beating him up because they see him as old and feeble and, you know, not totally with it. I would hope to think that people are not, not, not, you know, angling to beat up grandpa, even if it's like this grandpa.
- [15:59]
Sarah Longwell
Well, this. So first of all, you're making an incredibly smart point and I'm a, I, I've decided you're completely correct. That is, that you're exactly right. That it is, it is a psychological test of how you view Trump's strength. Like it's a Rorschach test for how you think about Trump's strength. And to the extent that Democrats see him much the way Republicans saw Joe Biden, right? As you see him, like, declining, you think, like, this guy's declining mentally, his brain is soup. He keeps bragging about taking these mental acuity tests. Why do they keep giving you mental acuity tests if your brain's so good? You know, I think you're right. And so they're like, yeah, it would be like elder abuse. Yes, obviously I could do it. And no one wants to commit elder abuse. Whereas for Republicans, like, they're very invested in this idea. Like, no, he's strong. He stands above us all. And it's like this idea that he has strength. And therefore, and I, I, even as I think about it, because oftentimes we jump on, it just do takes. Having thought about it for, I just thought it was a really funny poll. But as we really get into it, like, part of it is when people say, like, the average American, I bet they're thinking an average American. Average people just conjure up a 50 year old man, right? That they're like, oh, he could take him. But the second it's you and you start to see it through a totally different lens, really, it comes down to whether or not you see Trump as a really strong figure or as an old, declining guy. Well, now that we've sorted that out, that is, that was, you know, I just, it started to, My kid is really into these, like, who would win books you know, he does a lot of. And so I spend a lot of time in the car with him being like, who do you think would win the Hulk or Spider Man? You know, and. Or who do you think would win a black bear or a rhinoceros? And so this idea of who would win an 8 year old kid and Donald Trump, that was like right in my wheelhouse right now. And I just, you know, I immediately start because I'm like a problem solver. I'm immediately, well, okay, well, here's how an 8 year old kid would be Donald Trump.
- [17:56]
Katherine Rampel
I will also say that YouGov, a few years ago put out some fun polling asking similar questions about whether respondents thought that they could beat various animals in a fight. And like, it was a disturbingly high share of men who said that they thought that they could beat a chimpanzee.
- [18:14]
Sarah Longwell
Chimps are mean.
- [18:15]
Katherine Rampel
They're mean, they're big, they're heavy, they're strong. Yeah, chimpanzees, geese. Geese are also meaner and more aggressive than you would think you could beat. Okay, you have not met some of the Canadian geese that live around me.
- [18:31]
Sarah Longwell
Are they bigger than, I mean, are they bigger than us? You can't, you just, you can kick them, right? They just like run away.
- [18:36]
Katherine Rampel
No, but they come at you. They come at. Anyway, whatever. This is neither here nor there, but I would love to know like what fraction of Republican men think that they can beat a shark or a gorilla or a chimp or whatever, but not Donald Trump, because I think that would be a very interesting comparison. I don't know that we have the partisan breakdown for the older poll, but yeah, lots of men out there do think in some realms when they're asked about these questions about like could they beat a eagle, a chimp, a cobra? I think that they have an exaggerated sense of their own strength and physical prowess. And when it comes to Donald Trump, not so peptides, man. Peptides and protein supplements. They are apparently no, no match for our commander in chief.
- [19:29]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, well, Katherine Rampel, thanks for jumping on and talking about the most important question of our time. Could trump defeat an 8 year old kid in a, in a match? Before we say a goodbyes bull works. Next tour stop is right around the corner. Tim, Sam and I will be in San Diego and LA this month SA San Diego on May 20 and the next night in Los Angeles. So go to bulwark.com events. Get your tickets. Right now we've got some special guests planned on the 21st in LA. Our friend Jon Favreau will be with us from Crooked Media's Pod Save America. And he's bringing some of our other crooked friends. And progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen is stopping by, so come see all the people. All right. Don't forget to hit subscribe. We'll see you guys next time.