← The Dispatch Podcast
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- [00:07]
A
Morning, everybody. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. Joining me Today are my two Dispatch colleagues, politics editor Michael Warren, senior editor John McCormick, for a discussion about President Donald Trump's primetime address to the nation last night on elections, as well as the confirmation hearings of two of Trump's nominees who could play a role in the midterm elections coming up in November, a little more than three months from now. Gentlemen, welcome. Mike, I want to start with you. President Trump spoke from the East Room of the White House last night for just short of a half hour in remarks that weaved sort of banal conspiracy theories together with end times hyperbole. All seemed designed to undermine confidence in the way the United States conducts its elections and the results of those elections themselves. The speech, I would say, was largely a dud, devoid of the kind of shocking revelations or big news that the President himself, that many of his supporters had promised in the lead up to the speech. But just because a speech is uninteresting and at times unintelligible and ultimately unpersuasive doesn't make that speech unimportant. So what did the President say and why does it matter?
- [01:37]
B
The president began this speech in an interesting way. This is, this was billed as a, you know, going, going to release. He eventually said he was going to declassify a bunch of information about election fraud. There's a very important information and it was important for the American people to know it. And he started it with kind of a quick survey of how great his administration is going. It sounded like a bit like a campaign speech at the very top. I think that's revealing of the substance or lack thereof of the speech that followed. You know, he's talking about the golden era, talking about all of how the border was, had been so open and so terrible and now it's closed. No illegal, all this stuff that doesn't have anything know on its face to do with the premise of the speech. The other thing that he, that, that he sort of didn't deliver on, and then I'll get into what he actually delivered on was, you know, there was the sense in the run up to this speech that he was going to be making some very bold new bold claims. The biggest one that was sort of floated out there and, and never came to pass, was that he was going to claim somehow that the elections in 2020, and particularly in 2021, the, the runoff election in the two Georgia Senate races that were, there were runoffs from the, the previous 2020 general election where you saw two Democratic senators from the state of Georgia win those two seats. He was going to somehow claim that those two races were illegitimate and that, that, that Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff, those two Democratic senators, were, had not been legally or properly sworn in as senators as a result. And that never happened. And it would have been sort of a real kind of explosive claim. Instead, what we heard was kind of a rehash of, as you said, the, the kind of banal conspiracy theories about the 2020 election with a different flavor that, that sort of claimed no longer were, you know, things happening in Venezuela, for instance, where that was one of the claims from back in 2020, if we can remember that far back how Hugo Chavez's regime was tampering with, with the, with the election results somehow, that there were other examples of foreign interference. This was specifically last night laid at the feet of China and that somehow China was in what was somehow interfering in the 2020 election. The, the evidence that he, that he presented. And this was all posted simultaneously during the speech on the White House's website. There's four tranches of declassified documents which by the way, a lot of which are essentially rehashing things that bipartisan groups of, of folks on the Hill and election, you know, monitors in both parties have been claiming have been a problem for years. Which is just the, the idea that, that there are foreign actors who look to, you know, who are seeking to interfere to cause chaos and distrust within our election system. But the actual evidence is pretty much nothing. It's pretty much saying that there are there, it's individual documents that claim that somebody told a source that the Chinese were somehow going to try to interfere with the election. I mean, the, the degrees with away from actual verifiable actions that were taken is, is kind of astounding. So in that sense, it is a dud. On the other hand, I think you, you make this point, you made it as we were kind of chatting privately last night, Steve, that it does seem that this speech was something of a predicate or I view it as like a signal to folks within his government that this is something that's very, very important to him. Newsflash that the 2020 election and sowing conspiracy theories about it is important to Donald Trump and that he would like to see the government under his control take action in various ways. And I think that is for as sort of ludicrous as the claims were, it kind of again, banal and nothing, no real new claims of any, of any real, you know, meaning about election interference or whatever. From, from foreign actors that this is meant to sort of prepare the government for taking some further action either in the upcoming midterms. I think the upcoming midterms is, is definitely one place where we're, we might expect. But also just, I mean there was a moment where he, he, he said that, you know, ABC and NBC that the news networks were not going to carry his speech that he was giving at that exact moment. And he sort of tossed off this idea that, you know, maybe their, that their broadcasting licenses ought to be looked at. This was to me a clear signal to, to Brendan Carr, the chair of the fcc, who has been pretty aggressive about, about know, saber rattling on, on, on looking at these licenses. That seemed like a signal as well to him and across the government that this is going to be a priority. So it is something I think we have to take seriously, even if the claims themselves are just about as unserious and non substantive as you can get.
- [07:26]
A
Yeah, John, I mean that was, that was one of the things that, that I left the speech with last night was that the speech itself and the big revelations that didn't really go anywhere there was reminiscent to me of sort of this moment when the President brought all of these right wing conspiracy theorists to the White House and shared what they claimed were going to be these bombshell revelations about the Epstein files, gave them binders, pushed them out into the White House driveway to talk to the media. And there wasn't anything there, there wasn't anything new and it was a lot of hullabaloo about nothing, at least at that moment. And this had sort of the, the electoral feel of that. But having said that, the President had been saying these things for six years. I think there's likely to be a reason that he gave this speech beyond just wanting yet another airing of the claims that he's making about 2020. And if you listen carefully to the rhetoric of the people around him, Steve Bannon and others, they're expressly calling for the President to rethink how we conduct the elections now, just three and a half months away. What was your main headline out of the speech?
- [08:49]
C
Yeah, I mean my takeaway was that a President obsessed with the 2020 election, this idea that he won and one in a landslide, didn't say that he didn't make these claims. A year and a half into his administration, they've had the FBI seized ballots in Georgia six months ago. They've had FBI agents reviewing these ballots. This isn't the speech that Donald Trump wanted to give. He cares much more about validating him, his own ego, claiming that he won in 2020. I think than about the 2026 elections. It's important to talk about the threats of those 2026 elections. But to me the real takeaway was that, you know, after six years of Republican attorneys general, all sorts of outside mega people, you know, researching, looking for the voter fraud in 2020, after 18 months of Trump controlling the federal government, six months of the FBI having these ballots in Georgia, they've got nothing. I mean, and what they did release was also amazing. I mean there was the headline I would say from the declassified documents. I'm going to read it. We assess, this is from 20 20, an intelligence assessment. We assess that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a wide enough scale to compromise election results. The systems in each voting location are not connected to the Internet. The declassified documents also note that there was an increasing turn towards paper ballots. In all five of the swing states in 2020 they had paper ballots. We had recounts in multiple states and they haven't produced this voter fraud. So to Mike's point, the expectations versus the reality, really stark. This whole idea that this speech was going to talk about how Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were illegally elected in 2021 in these runoff elections, it came from this reporter, I use that term lightly, a Republican basically named Matthew Foley, who reported on Twitter, you know, Trump is going to claim in the coming days. He didn't say in the speech particularly that the elections were illegitimate. I just looked checked that tweet @dc reporter and it got 13 million views. The update a few hours later. Oh, the White House actually tells us he's not going to talk about Georgia. Got 1 million views. So I was in the Capitol a couple of days ago and Raphael Warnick was expecting the speech to be about how he was illegitimately elected. This whole, this one tweets my knowledge. I think that's really the source of all this by Matthew Holdy, who ran for got beaten badly in a Republican primary in, in, in Maryland in 2022. He's written for the Spectator and now he's basically sort of a one man operation. He tweets this out and then, you know, retracts it four hours later. And it sort of sets this expectation. This speech is going to be some sort of wild and crazy Trump speech that wouldn't be surprising for Trump, but actually didn't come to fruition. You know, I think the most outrageous thing said last night was Trump threatening the broadcast licenses of the networks. It didn't air last night's speech. You know, we can get into 2026. You know, Trump's what happened in 2020, what's different? What's the same going to 2026? I'd be happy to talk about that. What is, what might this be laying the predicate for? Obviously somewhat speculative, but we do know we have 11 years of history of Trump being the main character in US Politics. So we do have some. It's informed speculation.
- [12:02]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think it would be at this point, I would be surprised if we don't see the president take concrete steps to change the way that the 2026 elections are conducted, whatever that means. And we'll get into that in some detail. Noah, let's play the clip of Donald Trump talking about the, the threats to the US Elections and whether the Americans should have confidence in the elections and the results. These disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible. Hundreds of millions of US Voter files are in the hands of foreign governments. Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking and manipulation and corruption. China and other countries have been trying to meddle in our elections. Evidence of fraud has been buried. Hundreds of thousands of non citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls. And yet we still have elections with no voter id, no proof of citizenship, and tens of millions of ballots floating aimlessly through the mail. Mike, two questions to you. One, some of the things that the president says are troubling bother me. You know, I think it's ridiculous at this point that Americans aren't required to show voter ID in certain states when they go to vote seems silly. That's a common sense reform. And so when the president stick to those arguments and pushing for this Save act or Save America act or whatever it's being called these days, there are elements of that that I think are common sense voting reforms that have the support of a majority of the country, in some cases a strong majority of the country. But that didn't seem to be the point of his speech generally and of that clip more specifically. And this is one of those moments where, you know, as we covered the day to day of the Trump administration and what's happening and who's saying what and what, you know, who's on Capitol Hill and what does it mean? You do have to stop sometimes and put this all in much bigger perspective. And what we heard from the President, United States, as, as, as shown in that clip was A president who's determined to undermine confidence in the US Election system. Do you think he's likely to succeed in that?
- [14:46]
B
That is a complicated question, because in some ways he already has. I think the fact that, this is the fact that he is the leader of a party and has been sort of spouting this, these ideas for as long as he has more than six years. Remember, this goes all the way back to his first election in 2016, which he, he basically claimed at various times that actually he had won the popular vote. And, and even though he did not,
- [15:16]
A
and even in the, even in the primaries, there was this moment in the primaries against Ted Cruz where, where Cruz won Iowa, and Trump took to Twitter and said that Ted Cruz illegally stole the election. This is February of 2016. Illegally stole the election. Donald Trump just doesn't like to admit when he loses an election. But this is, as you point out, this is not necessarily new.
- [15:39]
B
And he remains, for the, as he has for the past 10 years, the leader of one of the two major political parties as a result. So, so in some ways he has succeeded in, in other ways, people seem to, people have seemed to, I, I don't know, accepted that this is the way that he talks about elections, and yet they're still going out and voting in these elections. And sometimes he wins them, and sometimes Republicans win them. In fact, it was, it's about. And so there is something, you know, it's interesting that he's targeting, oh, this, you know, our elections are so insecure. And yet the last presidential election he won, it was an insecure election, apparently. It was a, it was an election that was terrible and a system that was terrible. And he won, by the way. It's a, it's a real kind of own goal to be criticizing the way that the federal government, I guess, handled the 2020 election. When he was in charge of the federal government in 2020, in that election, you would think, I mean, I guess again, he chalks this up to the de. And he didn't really have control in 2020, and now he has that control. And this is, you know, the manifestation of that. But look, I want to go back to your point about how Trump is identifying certain things that, you know, a lot of conservatives and, and I think a lot of, even not political conservatives, but people with common sense might hear and, and think, well, that makes a lot of sense. Why not have a voter ID at this point in 2026? A lot of people have voter ideas or have, have a, have a photo ID to get in to vote. And it's actually easier than ever if you don't have a driver's license or a passport to even get some kind of photo id. And look, the answer to this, the sort of boring, non conspiratorial answer to why certain states don't require it, is because that's, that's what the law, that's, those are the laws that have been passed in those states. Those states generally have, have liberal governments, democratic governments, and they view the ability to vote as something that should be expansive and expanded to as many people as possible. That's how they do voting in California, for instance. It's not how they do voting in Alabama. This is the federal system. This is the way that our voting system is. We do not have, we have some very specific federal laws and regulations on voting. But for the, for the large part of things, of how elections are run, they are run by the states and in many ways run by locals, localities within those states. That is how elections are done. If Donald Trump really cared about this, if Republicans really, truly cared about trying to change hearts and minds on, let's just take that example of photo ID to vote, there are some really boring but possibly effective ways of trying to change hearts and minds in those states where there is no photo id, you know what that is? That takes hard work. That takes the kind of boring, straightforward work of politicking, of trying to change people's minds, of producing all those eggheady white papers that show it's not discriminatory to have photo ID requirements and that it actually can expand the franchisement enfranchisement of voters. Like whatever the arguments may be, you know, conservatives could try to make those. And in fact, before Trump came along, they were trying to make those arguments, and they were successful in some ways and unsuccessful in others. And that's just, that's just what it's like to live in a democratic republic. Trump is, and I think he is, he is either creating or is feeding off of a political sort of gestures and a system where expediency and not doing the hard work is the kind of, is the kind of approach that, that, that he wants to take. And I think it hurts him in so many different ways. It hurts the conservative cause in so many different ways. And you can see it specifically on this one, on this particular issue, if he weren't going around casting doubt about elections, he, he might actually be able to get some of these states to change their voting laws. And instead he's pushing through the Save America act, which has no chance right now. It has no chance of passing. It's not going to pass. And, and at the end of the day, this speech just felt like a really long bad commercial for the Save America Act. And I think that's a huge reason why it fell so flat.
- [20:15]
A
I mean, John, we're clearly living in this moment of power over persuasion as, as Mike makes clear, I will say, you know, the defense of, of Republicans who are frustrated by this, and I'm speaking and thinking here mostly of Republican rank and file voters rather than the way that the White House is conducting itself, but it is frustrating. I think when you look at these liberal states, it's true that these are elections are run on a state by state basis. It's a federal system. It's one of the reasons why, I think what, you know, what we worry about the President potentially doing in three months is so problematic. But you know, as I pointed out, voter ID and survey after survey after survey has upwards of 80% support. And you know, the president supporters who want to make those reforms, including some Democrats, ask the question, if, if you're not trying to cheat, why is it important to you that you don't require people to show some form of ID to prove that they are who they say they are? I remember covering elections back in Wisconsin. This is now 25 plus years ago. And you know, looking at people who were registered to vote at my sister's house in Milwaukee, there were like nine different people registered to vote at my sister's house in Wisconsin at the time. You didn't have to show id. What's, what's the hold up here? Why is it the case that Republicans can't convince or don't spend more time trying to convince? Is it just because in those states, those blue states, Democrats have control? And so you can try to persuade as much as you want, but ultimately, unless you have the votes, you can't make the changes.
- [22:04]
C
I have to imagine it's just polarization that because Republicans are for something, Democrats are against it, while Republicans big fear paranoia is voter fraud. Democrats big fear and paranoia is voter suppression. You know, you can recall Joe Biden talking about, you know, sort of common sense or at least not extraordinary reforms. In Georgia was Jim Crow 2.0. In fact, you know, Democrats are just fine. There were increased, increased turnout after these reforms. And so I think that's the main reason. It's just as simple, simple as the fact that Republicans want this Democrats and they can hang their hats on, you know, well, maybe at the margins there's Someone who can't get this, who's disabled and can't get to the point. I don't, you know, there are arguments there, but they are just very, very, very ticky tack and marginal cases to be made when, yeah, there's a lot that could be done to increase voter confidence in elections on both sides. It's irresponsible for Donald Trump to say that we can't trust the election results in California. But it's also, I think, indefensible that California really can't come up with some system where their elections counted in a few days at least, or even a week. It shouldn't take a month. I don't think there's anything nefarious going on with this vote counting process, but it is, it is, it does not inspire confidence, especially when there are people on the other side willing to so sow distrust and confusion.
- [23:28]
A
Yeah, I want to play, I want to play next a clip from Marco Rubio and get your response to that. This is an interview that took place in September of 2020. So, you know, less than two months before the 2020 presidential election. Marco Rubio was serving at the time as the, the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He sat down for an interview with Robert Costa, then of the Washington Post to talk about the possibility of foreign interference and the effects of foreign interference. And Rubio's asked a question about what he worries about. He breaks down his answer. He gives a long answer. He breaks down his answer into roughly two different categories. One, he's worried about efforts by foreign actors, adversaries, to sow division in the United States. The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians in particular are looking to divide Americans, to pit American against American, to make, to drive the polarization John that you mentioned even further. And so discord and mistrust. He then gets into a second category which talks about the potential that these foreign actors could try to actually intervene in changing votes or disenfranchising people or taking voters off the rolls so that when they show up to vote, they aren't allowed to vote. And then he gets into, he says he thinks that's a low probability. Some of our adversaries have perhaps the capability to do this, maybe the intent to do this, but haven't done this. And he thinks they would stop short of that. But he imagines what he describes as this worst case scenario. And then in the clip that I want to play, he talks about the effects of the worst case scenario that he's described. And I want to play the effects of that, and then I want to get your reaction on the other side.
- [25:21]
B
That designed to create chaos and questions about the legitimacy of the election, and that would be their dream, and that would be the. That would be the biggest achievement that any adversary has ever scored against us in an election cycle, is to bring us to the point where people honestly believe. Half the country believes that the person who was going to be sworn in was not validly and legitimately elected. It's a grave threat to our republic. And it's, you know, the way I
- [25:49]
C
tell people is think about 2010, the
- [25:52]
B
2000 election, you know, but on steroids and, you know, about 50 times worse than that, breaking out in multiple places. And it won't be about hanging chads, it'll be about whether someone was actually cheating on purpose. So it's a deep concern, and there are multiple adversaries who have the capability to do it and at least three who have the intent to do it to some level.
- [26:16]
A
A deep concern, a grave threat. If you can convince majorities of Americans that the elections they just participated in were not legitimate. Poll after poll after poll of Republicans has shown that usually a majority of Republicans believe that the 2020 election was stolen or fraudulent. Fill in the blank. There was a poll this summer, just a month ago, I believe, by YouGov, that showed slightly less than that. It was closer to half. But I've seen 63. I've seen upwards of 70% of Republicans that think that the 2020 election was stolen. Have we reached the point, John, where Donald Trump is doing the work that Marco Rubio called a grave threat if these foreign adversaries would be successful, and he's doing it without producing evidence to suggest that the vote was fraudulent?
- [27:26]
C
Yeah, I mean, Rubio is talking about that they had actually somehow meddled in a way, and this is in the declassified documents that, well, you know, the threat isn't that they're going to actually change the vote totals, but that they could, you know, so chaos and confusion about the legitimacy of the election by, you know, manipulating poll books or whatever. Trump in 20, he's basically describing, though, the ultimate outcome of people not believing, having the confidence, the grave threat of half the country. That is what Donald Trump did without, you know, manipulating or anything like that. Just the power of his rhetoric. So, yeah, I mean, every. Almost everything Rubio says there is just a premonition, a description of what would happen a few months later in 2020 and is still happening now. So, yes, that is. That is exactly what's going on, Mike.
- [28:09]
A
I want to take a minute and look forward to the 2026 midterms. As I mentioned earlier, you've had some of the President's top supporters, advisors, including Steve Bannon, certainly not limited to Steve Bannon, suggest that the President ought to declare a national emergency, send ICE to polling places to make sure that non citizens aren't allowed to vote. You've had a number of suggestions about ways in which the President could step in. He seems particularly interested in the problems in battleground states. I would say, not coincidentally, you know, on the one hand, we don't like to do a lot of speculation. It's easier and better and healthier for everybody if you spend time actually just looking at the facts and analyzing what's happened. But in this case, if we look back over the past, really past decade, but in particular over the past six years, you've seen, and even more recently the past six months, you've seen the President and his administration take a number of steps to either challenge the power of state and local election officials to replace state and local election officials who aren't, who don't share the President's views. You've seen the President go to great lengths to amplify the voices of election deniers, some of whom are currently serving in election positions, important election positions. What could the President do, given the fact that we have a federal system? What could the President do if he were determined to. To metal.
- [29:58]
B
I think about this a lot. What does it actually look like? And I think it begins with federal law enforcement. And I think we could look at what happened in Fulton county earlier in his. In, in this term with the seizure of some of those Fulton County, Georgia, you know, elections machines and voting machines that were, that were. It was overseen by then dni, Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel, the FBI director involved as well, FBI agents. So I imagine that the federal law enforcement officers, you know, marching into somewhere to seize some kind of, you know, some kind of documents or machines on the premise that something fishy was happening. And actually this is where I think when we're talking about sort of sowing doubt and casting, casting doubt on elections, I am going to be particularly guarded as I, as I watch these elections, which, by the way, just a couple of months, people are going to start early voting. So it will be happening very, very quickly. You know, what gets sort of up into the top of the sort of social media, right wing conspiratorial social media funnel, what gets kind of people talking. There will be videos that will not show the entire situation, but there will be somebody walking out of an election center at the wrong time, or so we think. You know, I mean, these things can be edited and manipulated in ways. I think that's where it will begin. Some of these citizen journalists who have, who have sort of had there with some success or with some reason to doubt, you know, they've been able to go into places and without all the information, without all the knowledge, sort of gin up some outrage about something. Sometimes it's legitimate and sometimes it's not. And it's that gray area where it might be sort of in the middle, where I think you're going to see a lot of kind of online outrage translated into actual action from the federal government. And I think it's going to be really important at that point to watch what, what the courts do, because ultimately this will, I think the, the backstop against this, which was the backstop in 2020 up until January 6, in which the backstop became Mike Pence and, and Congress. The, the, the courts will be the backstop on this because they, you know, the federal government will have to start presenting evidence if they want to stop votes from being counted or throw out votes that were unfairly cast in their view. And, and the courts are going to need that. Need that evidence to do that. So I think it's going to be muddled and unclear in that way. The question is sort of, under what premise does the president sort of get up and give a speech like he gave last night and, and say, you know, is this, is this some kind of federal emergency? Is he going to. Is going to be declaring some kind of, you know, I don't know if it would be martial law, but some kind of emergency in order to send those federal agents and to actually do something.
- [33:18]
A
One of the things that's, I think, been widely commented on, we've talked about it here on the Dispatch podcast before, is the fact that in 2020, during those moments, those, you know, both before the election, but in particular between the time of the election in 2020 and the January 6th riots on Capitol Hill, there were a number of people serving in the Trump administration who were willing to step up and challenge the president on this stuff, most of the people who involved in his campaign, as we later learned through testimony, the January 6th Committee had told the President directly, Mr. President, you lost. You didn't win. The things you're saying aren't true. And the president brought in people from the outside to basically anyone who would tell him what he wanted to hear was given a seat in the Oval Office. And those conspiracy theories were amplified. But you did have people like Pat Cipollone, who was White House counsel at the time, telling the President they saw no evidence of fraud or corruption. The 2020 election that would have allowed votes to be overturned. You had Bill, Bill Barr, the Attorney General at the time, who later resigned because of his disagreements with the President. The president wanted him to seize voting machines in real time. Barr testified to the January 6th committee that what President Trump was asking him to do was crazy. And he told the President that he was, quote, doing a grave disservice to the country. John, I'd like to think that Marco Rubio, even though as Secretary of State, I don't know if he's also, you know, Federal Election Commissioner or head of CISA, or he has all of these other job titles, you know, would be in a position to do this. But Marco Rubio, given what he said in the clip that we played earlier, and given what we knew of Marco Rubio going back several years, seems to be the most likely person to tell the president, hey, this is too much. If the President does some of the things that Mike is suggesting, would it be, would we look to Rubio? Who else in sort of the, the White House orbit might we expect to stand up and say, Mr. President, you can't do this?
- [35:39]
C
Oh, I don't, I can't think of anyone really. I mean, that, I think that's, that's the important way to think about this, is the differences, the similarities and differences between 2020 and 26.
- [35:48]
A
So.
- [35:49]
C
Right. I mean, we know that Donald Trump tried to steal the last election in 2020, that he, that he lost. We also know that he failed at every turn. The court shot him down. Mike Pence shot him down. This time around, he doesn't have the same kind of people like Mike Pence and Bill Barr around him. He has more yes men. So Mike sort of highlighted the maximalist worst case scenario that Trump goes in and federal agents seize ballots or voting machines, something that Trump had discussed in the Oval Office with his former National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn in December 2020. So that's why it is not to think this. He just seized ballots in Georgia, you know, Stephen Richer, our friend, contributing Dispatch writer, former Arizona election official on the last podcast about election security said that's really the biggest threat is that ballots would be seized before they are counted. If they're seized after they are counted, they're simply going to show that the results are what the results are. They're Paper ballots, we've had multiple recounts. FBI agents looking at the paper ballots are going to find the exact same thing. So, yeah, that is the maximalist, you know, case for concern. And maybe you think it's likely, maybe you think it's unlikely, but a catastrophic thing, given Trump's history, is worth taking seriously. Now, let me make the counter argument is that Trump's motive for 2026 isn't as strong as 2020. Trump doesn't seem to care about the results of the 2026 elections that much. Trump cares about Trump to the extent, so he might meddle in the elections, the extent that he could prove that he was. He actually won in 2020. But I don't think he really cares all that much about the outcome of the 2026 elections. I think he cares much.
- [37:22]
A
What about the prospect of him being impeached again? He's desperately afraid of being impeached again. He thinks he was impeached unfairly twice before. He has said, if Democrats take the House, I mean, this is one of the arguments he makes on behalf of Republican candidates. Democrats take the House of Representatives again, you know that they're going to impeach me. This is why it's important to get somebody who, who, you know, will, will, will back him. Is that not enough? It's about Donald Trump.
- [37:51]
C
I think it enough for him. I mean, Trump is mercurial. Who is the last person he spoke to on the phone? I think it is enough for him to think, hey, I couldn't. 12 months, two years of my administration investigating for the voter fraud. Couldn't fight in 2020, but maybe if my guys are there in the moment and catch him in the act, I'll prove that I won in 2020. That could be enough. I think that's enough of a motive for him. I'm just saying that Trump, Trump himself is on the ballot. Part of his ego. He likes the idea that he can. He's the, he has the ma. He's the only one who can win. Right. Without him on the ballot, the Republican Party suffers. But, yeah, that's a consideration. It's all consideration. But I think that he cares most about himself and validating himself that he is a true and rightful winner of 2020. And he wasn't able to say that last night. I think that was an amazing, amazing result. This is not the speech that Trump wanted to give. I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about 2026 or even 2028, but, you know, and also, I'd say one last point on what is different. So, you know, 2026, obviously you don't have, you know, you have the layers of local and state election officials validating this. And the other crazy idea that's been floated by some mega figures is that, you know, the House just shouldn't seat people from California. But that's not going to happen. Mike Johnson, first of all, I actually, for all, for all the ways in which he bows and bends the knee to Trump and does whatever he wants, I actually don't think his character is that low. And more the point. He has a razor thin majority as it is now. He can't pass a rule on the most basic things. I do believe there are, they're not going to get a majority of the House to try to overturn results. I don't believe that's going to happen. But we should be, you know, we should think about the known knowns and the unknown, you know, things that we don't know, that we don't know. There are definitely real threats here, given Trump's record.
- [39:32]
B
Steve, can I, can I throw in one more aspect of this to not, not to throw cold water on your concern, but to kind of throw cold water on your concern, which is, which is that there, we talk so much about power and, and that, that Trump is, is looking to, you know, max, you know, wield it at a maximal level. But there, there remains a huge, a huge part of that power still is, is sort of vested in public opinion and how the American people feel about this. And we, we also have a track record of how voters, you know, process this kind of obsession over elections. And I'm not talking about Republican primary voters. I'm talking about voters as a whole, and particularly in places like Georgia and Arizona where this stuff has been hashed out over and over again. They, they don't like it. It is unpopular. Donald Trump was never less popular than right after he tried to steal the 2020 election. It was, it was a, it was just a killer for his public approval. It is, it is a killer for Republicans. Remember in 2022 when Joe Biden was sort of on the ropes and those midterm elections were supposed to be really, really, really good for Republicans and they were kind of a dud. Yes, Republicans, you know, did end up winning back the House, but it was not at the margins that they thought they would, they, they, you know, they had the Senate as well, but it was not at the margins that they wanted it to be. A large reason for that is because Republican candidates were running on this kind of stuff two years after, you know, 2012, fewer than two years after January 6th, and voters don't like it. And I do think that there is, that is a backstop as well. It's a little less clear how that works. But ultimately voters are used to voting every two years. And I don't think that voting turnout has gone down as a result of these kinds of claims that it's illegitimate, that, you know, people may say what they think, it's all rigged or whatever, but I think we should listen to how what people are actually doing and people are still voting, people still believe in the system. And I think that's a really important thing not to lose sight of.
- [41:50]
A
So I agree with you. I think it's important, important context. I guess. My concern, I have, I have, I have several concerns, but. But only one of them relates to how he could screw up the voting and whether people, as you say, show up. I think you're right to say that voters generally are, are unswayed by his action. They keep showing up to vote. But, but I would add a qualifier. I would say some. The percentage of voters who care and follow the President might be relatively small. It might not be a popular thing for them to do, but they can cause a lot of trouble and they can cause a lot of trouble before the election. And as we saw on January 6, 2021, they can cause a lot of trouble after the election. And what concerns me as much as potentially affecting on the front end and the outcome of these elections, some of which I think could be very close. I mean, we have close elections in districts every two years. You know, could, could a seat potentially change hands because of some tinkering at the margin? I think that's a possibility. But I guess I'm as concerned, maybe more concerned about what happens to these Super Maga voters who are listening to Steve Bannon's work War Room podcast and are being told on a near daily basis that the elections are fraudulent, that this is literally, this is what they say. This is worse than third World banana Republic stuff. Your vote doesn't count. The government that is elected by your votes is illegitimate. I think in that sense, Marco Rubio is right about the effects of these things. There's a reason that our chief foreign adversaries want Americans to believe that. And I think the consequences of that in, in my view, could be profound and, and deeply unsettling. I want to, before we get to not worth your time, talk briefly about the, the two confirmation hearings that are taking place on that have taken place on Capitol Hill this week, one for Attorney general nominee Todd Blanch and the other for Director of National Intelligence nominee Jay Clayton. And Mike, I'll go back to you on this. Jay Clayton, former head of the sec, prominent attorney, I would say generally pretty well regarded and pretty well regarded by people who are not, who don't come from MAGA world. I think he has respect beyond MAGA world, including I've heard strong opponents of the president, conservative opponents of the president say very complimentary things about Jakely. And I've had an opportunity to hear him speak at a couple different times over the past several years and found him pretty impressive as he talked about debt and deficits, big picture items. But in his testimony earlier this week, there's been a clip that's been replayed time and time and time again. He was asked by numerous Democratic senators. And this has been something that Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut has asked, I think virtually every presidential nomination that has come before committees he serves on. Who won the 2020 election. It's a simple question. It ought to be a simple answer. It ought to be very easy. And what Clayton did this week was revert back to a formulation where he says joe Biden was certified the winner of the election, which is a descriptive statement that provides a little out. First of all, can you explain to people why is he doing this? Why can't Jay Clayton, who's going to be the likely the director of National Intelligence, for whom it will be very important to tell the president unpleasant things that president might not want to hear, rather than only tell the president things that he wants to believe even if they're wrong. Why can't he just say, of course Joe Biden won the election. We all know that the, the president lost 61 of 62 court cases. There were deep investigations. It's all the things that we've been talking about. Why can't he just say that?
- [46:11]
B
The real politic answer on this is, look, this is a, this is an, a question that has been polarized and partisanized. And it is just, it, it is, it is the equivalent, the Democrats equivalent of Republicans asking Democratic nominees, you know, is, is someone with, you know, you know, can a biological male get pregnant? You know, those kinds of questions that are meant to sort of highlight how, how silly the sort of the party line has gotten. And you can't get people to sort of give you an honest answer. And so the defense from people who are receiving those questions is to be as descriptive and, and sort of correct. If not fulsomely correct about in their answer in order to sort of not give the other side a win, to not kind of give their own side reason to grumble. And so Jay Clayton just sort of made a calculation and he's been made to look foolish as a result. That's the real politic explanation of it. But just the actual, you know, honest answer to that is that he, he didn't want to be crosswise with the president. And this is something that we've been talking about it with this entire podcast here. This is the most important thing for this president is, is that he did not lose the 2020 election. He's got to continue believing that. And so if you want to be his nominee for, in a very important position, if you do not want to see your name withdrawn for that position, then you've got got to worm and wiggle your way out of questions like these in ways that don't get you in trouble. And, you know, I think it was John Ossoff, the Georgia senator, who sort of posed the question like, I can't remember the exact way he put it. He said, isn't this embarrassing or isn't this exhausting to sort of have to do this? And the answer, of course, is yes, it is. But, you know, at the end of the day, you know, Clayton's going to get confirmed and he'll be in his position. And you know, it's, it's, it's sad, but that's, that's the reality of, of what it's like to be a nominee for, for Donald Trump.
- [48:32]
A
John, I want to talk about Attorney General nominee Todd Blanch, who, as he testified this week, when he was asked what his relationship was with the President, he said, I am his lawyer. I mean, I was his lawyer. Sort of a very telling Kinsley gas as they. Kinsley and Gaff, exactly. You had a piece, a really good piece up at the Dispatch website earlier this week in which you wrote, I think prophetically, that the Todd Blanche hearing was likely to be about everything and about nothing. What did you see as you covered the hearings? You were up on Capitol Hill this week as you covered the hearings on Capitol Hill. And where does his nomination stand? There are potential of a couple Republicans who were suggesting they might oppose it and does it matter?
- [49:32]
C
Yeah. So the first of my piece was about how, you know, 18 months into Trump's second term, this nomination hearing isn't simply about Blanche himself, but every single action taken by the Trump DOJ that's out of the rule of law. So, you know, you've got the subpoena of Jerome Powell, the Fed chair. You've got the politicized investigations of people like former FBI Director Jim Comey over the fact that he tweeted a picture of seashells, you know, with, with, with, with the numbers to, to, to cancel or end Donald Trump being indicted. Over that. You've got, you know, the Epstein files. You've got basically everything. The nothing part of it, though, is that Todd Blanche is already the acting Attorney General, and he has enough time left to, I think, serve out the entire close to, or if not the entire remainder of Trump's term. So I went down to the hearings. I was in the room for a decent amount of it, and I got to talk to both of the key Senate Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who could potentially block Blanche's nomination. The night before the hearings, I ran into Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is not running for reelect election has displayed some, you know, newfound independence, wanting to be a little bit of a check on Trump, particularly on this issue of Jerome Powell subpoena. He said, no one's getting through. You know, I'm not going to vote for any Trump nominees until this thing is put on ice. And in fact, it has basically been put on ice. And I asked him about that. I said, well, what about Blanche? I mean, he's the DOJ you cared so much about this politicized investigation of Jerome Powell. And Tillis responds to me, well, that was little DOJ, not big DOJ, meaning this was U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro, not the top guy. So you would say the buck stops with the top guys. But that's not how Tillis sees it. And I asked him about this, you know, the $10 billion lawsuit that Trump had filed that was settled with this $2 billion slush fund, anti weaponization fund that has now been put on ice.
- [51:35]
A
And also the some of the payouts, some of the payouts which would have gone to potentially January 6th attackers, sort of to compensate them for the trouble that they had when they were prosecuted or potentially held after those attacks.
- [51:52]
C
Yeah. And so in Todd Blanche personally signed off as deputy Attorney General on the provision granting immunity from IRS tax cases to Donald Trump and his sons for all time. I said, what about that? He said, well, I'm not paraphrasing, I don't the exact quote of me, but it was basically that, well, if he was architect of that deal, then that would change things for me. But I mean, if he was just doing what he was told that's kind of the problem. That's what the creators are saying, that this guy will just do what he's told, no matter how unethical or much it flouts the rule of law. So there's Tillis, which pretty much shows you where he is. And I think that his questioning basically showed you that's where he is. He said beforehand he was positively predisposed. He left it. Cornyn was more interesting. John Cornyn, Senator of Texas, who was just defeated by Ken Paxton in a primary, again showing some interest in and some newfound independence. He questioned Todd Blanche about this anti weaponization fund, the $2 billion slush fund. And Todd Blanche repeated his statements this it is dead. Using the present tense. I always wonder why these politicians who are very cagey in talking about the future, they always use the present tense rather than the future tense. They don't ask, could you repeat that this will not happen, that this isn't happening. But so Corner walked away thinking that basically, despite Blanche's cagey answer, he said, no, it's not dead. Basically, Cornyn's conclusion was that it can be revived in multiple different ways. And so does Cornyn ultimately vote yes for Blanche in exchange for some empty promise entirely possible, given the history, or does he actually vote no and say, no, you know what? I'm leaving town. This is absurd. You guys haven't given me any real assurances that the slush fund is dead. Therefore I'm voting no until you guys do. X. I think it's possible. Maybe not likely, but it's possible. If it gets out of committee, then you've got to look at people like Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, who is in the hospital with health issues, and then Bill Cassidy, who also is just Louisiana senator, who was just defeated in a Republican primary as well, and is very angry at times with Trump, and then sort of goes back and forth. So there's still a chance if it gets out of committee, that it gets voted down, but that's the state of play right now on the Blanche nomination.
- [53:57]
A
So the. And just last point on that, that does it matter if, if he's not confirmed, does it matter he'll still be able to serve effectively?
- [54:06]
C
Yeah, I mean, I talked to Greg Nunziata of the Society for Rule of Law. He said, listen, historically, if someone just got rejected by the Senate, they would have the shame or the honor, decency or whatever to just step aside, but that's not necessarily the administration we're dealing with. So, yeah, if Trump wants him there, he wants to stay. He can stay and serve in an acting capacity. Acting capacity. I mean, so legally, and I asked Annie McCarthy, does it legally? It's kind of a speculative question. But you know, we know about Bill Barr deciding not to do all these things, these illegal orders in the 2020, well, what if Blanche makes these orders in 2026 or even 2028? Does it matter whether he's acting or full fledged Senate approved Attorney general? And Andy basically said, not really. I mean, he is legally the Attorney General. It doesn't really matter. I wonder, you know, at some marginal level, does it give people a little more pause that they're doing something unethical or potentially illegal if the guy hasn't actually been signed off on a second time? Again, this is Todd Blanche who is already confirmed as Deputy Attorney General. I don't know. That's, those are the kind of questions that I think are worth asking or pondering. But it's, it's speculative.
- [55:11]
A
Okay, before we go, we have about five minutes left. I wanted to talk about a story yesterday broken by Ms. Now, formerly msnbc, a very liberal cable network. They have some good, good reporters there and they have some, I would say, hysterical commentators there. It's a, it's a mix. But they reported yesterday that the Secret Service was upset with J.D. vance because the vice President had been preparing to use a US Government helicopter to take his son to participate in a golf lesson, maybe a golf round at Andrews Air Force Base, which is about a 30 minute drive, 35 minute drive from the White House. And Ms. Now reported this and said Secret Services sort of had it with JD Vance using the Secret Service, using government property, transportation, employees kind of as his own personal servants. I, I have maybe an unexpected view on, on all this, but I wanted to start by getting your reaction, see if you'd read the story, if you're familiar with it and if so, how do you react to that?
- [56:34]
B
MIKE WARREN My reaction to that was how far things have gone and how different things are from the first Trump term. Remember, there were, there were two members of Trump's cabinet who, who were shuffled out pretty early in early scandals. Tom Price as HHS secretary and Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator for essentially using their security or their staff for personal things, picking up dry cleaning and getting through traffic, if I recall correctly. It's so funny, I don't even quite remember the details about what was so scandalous. I believe Tom Price was using, was using government airplanes to get places that were sort of skirting, you know, ethics rules or whatever. And Price was the first gone. He was gone within several months of his tenure. And Pruitt just, you know, about a year and year and a couple months into his tenure and these were big scandals at the time. And here we have something about the Vice President. You know, be interested to know the, a few more details. I read that MSN Ms. Now story about it, but it looks to be basically the same, the same thing, but a lot worse. And, and nobody's really batting an eye besides the, the liberals reading Ms. Now. So it just just goes to show you how far things have fallen.
- [58:06]
A
John?
- [58:08]
C
Well, you know, you surprised us with the, you know, not worth your time. I believe, based on what I read yesterday, was that the golf lesson that he wanted to take the helicopter was where Vance himself was going to accompany him. Now he's the vice President of the United States and his time is valuable. So, you know, if he had an important meeting to get to, I don't know, there's a, potentially a case to be made. I think that we should be pro family. On the other hand, how might this play? I do think that it's amazing that in a government that spends trillions and trillions of dollars, these small little things can actually capture voters imaginations because they're concrete. So you can talk about the millions of dollars spent on the reflecting pool paint job and people are like, can you believe this? They spent, you know, it was supposed to be 2 million and then it ended up being X million. And that's crazy. And you know, if you're, if you've been in D.C. too long, you think, oh, that's just peanuts, you know, I mean, that's a rounding area. You know, start talking about billions and then we're talking about something. But, but the other detail that was eye popping, I think to an average voter might be that it was $20,000 an hour to operate the helicopter for Trump. So, you know, I mean, talking about, you know, J.D. vance, man of the people, you know, hillbilly elegy, is giving his son $20,000 an hour golf lessons at the taxpayer's expense. I think that can have some bite actually. So I'm not, I don't have a firm view in my own mind. I do think that little things like this, like the reflecting pool, like a $20,000 an hour golf lesson for your son, it can actually have an impact on how voters view people.
- [59:39]
A
Yeah, I think you're, I think you're right that it could have an impact. I think in particular, because he's the Hillbilly ELEGY AUTHOR and because of his own personal upbringing, I've got to say I think I am out of the mainstream on this. Look, if there are rules, you shouldn't violate the rules, you shouldn't can incur extra expenses of taxpayer dollars when you can avoid them. But I think it was a point that you alluded to, John, where I find myself most sympathetic. And maybe this is because I spent, you know, years writing a biography of Dick Cheney and sort of saw up close what a family his children were, all grown at that time, goes through living in the fishbowl that is the Vice President's residence. And, you know, I don't. I guess I don't want us to get to a point in this country where you have people who have a young family that say, I can't possibly do this because I'm not going to be able to see my kids. I'm not going to be able to do. You already know that if you sign up for the job, if you're willing to step into that role, you're not going to see your kids nearly as much. You're probably going to have a very different relationship. They're going to have all sorts of external pressures on them just by virtue of your position. And I would think we would want to do everything we can to allow a young father like J.D. vance to spend as much time as he possibly could with his kids between flying to Germany or Pakistan or what have you. And I'm a deficit hawk. I spend a lot of my time talking and worrying about debt and deficits. I certainly don't want the government to spend needlessly, particularly in this moment. But I think the relative scale of this spending versus other spending isn't that much. So if, if he's breaking the rules, he shouldn't be breaking the rules. If this is, you know, if this is putting the Secret Service out or if it's drawing resources from the Secret Service that they would spend otherwise to protect people, fair enough. But, you know, those kids have Secret Service protection a lot. They can't do anything unless they have the Secret Service going along. And I certainly wouldn't, wouldn't want to make JD Vance's kids sit in the White House. I mean, sit in the Vice President's residence and not live as normal a life as you possibly can lead if your dad is the Vice president. So I guess I'm don't break the rules, but I'm not particularly outraged by this. And if we want to have people with young families be in a position to serve, we ought to make the accommodations we need to make to allow them them to lead the kind of family life that I, you know, I lead not being in the, the Vice President's residence. So look, JD Vance has done a lot in recent weeks and months, years even, to earn the criticism that he's getting. Some of the stuff he said on the Joe Rogan podcast the other day is totally outrageous. The conspiracies he spins, the, the silliness of his role in the Iran deal, which I think he's failed. I think the arguments he makes are bad. I think he's playing footsie with anti Semite. Criticize him on every one of those grounds and criticize him harshly. I don't think he should be a serious candidate for the Republican nomination in 2028. I don't think he's a particularly serious guy. But I'm really not troubled by this, these latest revelations and I would defend him trying to have let his kids have as normal an upbringing as can possibly have while being the children of the Vice President and living in the Vice President's residence.
- [63:13]
B
All right, you can, that's it for today.
- [63:15]
A
I mean I, look, maybe I'm just a softy. Maybe it's the, the, the dad and me, but the more time you can spend with your kids, whether you're Vice president or anybody else, I think is, is good. Thanks all for doing this on a Friday morning. We wanted to, to record Friday morning to conclude our analysis of the President's speech. I thank John and Mike for, for doing that. I'm sure you both would have been probably still sleeping in if I hadn't made you get up to, to do this. So I appreciate you waking up early for us this morning. This morning you, you know we would.
- [63:55]
B
That's not true. We've got kids. We've got young kids.
- [63:57]
A
There's no way that's fair. Maybe I was projecting. Thanks all for joining us. Appreciate it. We'll see you next week on the Dispatch podcast.