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The Political Scene | The New Yorker
An "Anger Olympics" Between Trump and the Rest of the 2024 Republican Field
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An "Anger Olympics" Between Trump and the Rest of the 2024 Republican Field
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- [00:00]
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- [01:15]
Evan Osnos
I think that balloon, we need a different name for that thing. It doesn't sound like spy gear.
- [01:20]
Jane Mayer
It's too happy too. Birthday party.
- [01:23]
Evan Osnos
It's a dirigible or something. I mean, a balloon just seems kind of ridiculous.
- [01:27]
Susan Glasser
It has a very 1930s feel to it. You know, it's like, oh, you know, the Germans have launched a balloon over Montana.
- [01:34]
Jane Mayer
Yeah. Well, I assume we have our own balloons, which may be why we're not shooting it down or something. Flying over, Floating over China.
- [01:44]
Evan Osnos
Yeah, I think it's safe to assume that whatever the Chinese are using, we've got something. But yeah, you know, I think, yeah, you shoot down their balloon, then what happens to ours? I guess. But.
- [01:54]
Jane Mayer
But, you know, they shouldn't have chosen Montana. There are a lot of guns in Montana. There are a lot of people who can do their own shooting, probably.
- [02:02]
Evan Osnos
It is bird hunting season in some places, so the balloon should have its affairs in order, I think.
- [02:14]
Jane Mayer
Welcome to the Political Scene, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. I'm Jane Mayer and I'm joined by my colleagues Evan Osnos and Susan Glasser. Hi.
- [02:26]
Evan Osnos
Hi, Jane.
- [02:27]
Susan Glasser
Hey there. Great to be with you. Hey, guys, look, it is time for a new generation. It is time for more leadership. It is time for the fact that we really start to take our country back. We cannot have another term of Joe Biden. And we have to remember, too, we have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president. It is time that we get a Republican in there that can lead and that can win a general election.
- [02:54]
Jane Mayer
Well, it seems that Nikki Haley is running for president. She's joining a relatively small Republican field. So far, there's definitely the defeated former President Donald Trump, probably Ron DeSantis, and more than a few maybes, including the Mikes Pence and Pompeo. So today we're going to take a look at the key, what they stand for, where they're turning for money, and what all this tells us about the current state of the gop. We should open any conversation about this state in the presidential cycle with the perpetual lament about the, the perpetual campaign. I'll put this to both of you. Why does it take two years to run for president in this country? How did this happen?
- [03:39]
Susan Glasser
Well, you know, Jane, the truth is, is that this is actually going to be a shorter campaign than the last couple presidential cycles. That's the thing that really leaps out to the kind of Washington campaign class is that at this time in the 2016 cycle, you had a huge field full of would be contenders. In the end, I think there was something like 17 Republicans ran against Donald Trump, as we all famously know, in the 2016 campaign, even during the 2020 primary campaign, among the Democrats, you had a huge number of Democrats who had already announced by this period of time and were jostling with each other pretty actively already for the right to face off against Donald Trump. To me, what's notable is that I'll say it again and again and again, but you gotta beat Donald Trump with somebody. And for all of the energy over the last couple months suggesting, well, you know, the air has finally gone out of Donald Trump's tires. In the end, he is still a front runner in the polls. And it's not entirely clear who exactly is going to run against him. So you got to consider him the leader in the race so far since he's really not running against anybody yet. And by the way, Nikki Haley, the one candidate who's about to announce later this month is firmly in the single digits and it's fair to say that's probably where she's going to Stay.
- [04:58]
Jane Mayer
So, Evan, does it actually seem kind of like a slow starter here for you and a late start?
- [05:03]
Evan Osnos
Well, it's certainly a late start, later than usual. And I think all of us are kind of bracing for the ordeal that is gonna be the next couple of years. I mean, there's just something kind of grueling about it. And it goes through these periods when people tune out entirely. And yet, and I will say also coming from having been overseas where in places like Japan, the law actually says that a campaign is 12 days long, and you go to the UK and it's sort of a much more reasonable sc. And yet, and I almost can't believe I'm saying this out loud, I think there is something fundamentally useful about a campaign because it really does put these candidates through the wringer, and it allows the public to assess who is ready. I mean, who's done the reading, who is now. It doesn't work all the time. God knows we have recent presidents who prove the rule, but it allows at least the public to, in this giant country, to get a look at these people and to decide up close, in some cases, whether or not they are ready for the job. But I would put the question to you, Jane, too, which is, as you know, better than anybody, one of the reasons why these campaigns are so long is because of money. And the money drives the scale and the kind of constant inflation of how big these things have become, does it not?
- [06:19]
Susan Glasser
Yeah.
- [06:20]
Jane Mayer
No. There's so much money in American politics at this point that it's become a professionalized business. It's not just a campaign. It's a whole profession of consultants and pollsters and TV stations that live off of the advertisements and everything else. I mean, and so it's permanent, partly because it's a complete income for a zillion people every four years just for the presidential campaigns. But anyway, let's talk about Nikki Haley. So she's the former governor of South Carolina, former UN Ambassador, and she boasts that she's never lost an election race that she's been in, and she's not gonna lose this one. Now, what do you think her reputation in Washington is like? Is she seen as a rising star?
- [07:00]
Susan Glasser
Well, I think she is one of the many former Trump Cabinet members who now are considering running against him, while at the same time continuing to play this awkward dance. The thing that I really think about Nikki Haley is that I don't know what to think about Nikki Haley because she changes her mind so often, at least when it comes to the subject of Donald Trump. She's been, I think, for me, one of the most fascinating case studies of what I call the dance of the enablers. Right, right. She was against Donald Trump ever so hesitantly, after January 6, when it seemed as though the Republican Party was gonna break that way, then she actually not only reversed herself, but she said, I will not run if Donald Trump is running for the 2024 presidential nomination. And then, of course, that is no longer an operative statement now that it appears once again that the political support is ebbing away from Donald Trump. So she's certainly a very. Politicians, shall we say, in her view. She's a very strong campaigner. She's a strong talker. She has an interesting record as governor of South Carolina. She was the person who is well known not only for appointing the state's first African American Republican senator, Tim Scott, but also presiding over the law to eliminate the Confederate flag flying over the statehouse in South Carolina. She is a daughter of Indiana immigrants. So she's got a very appealing political profile. She's much more hawkish, by the way, much more of a traditional Republican than Donald Trump. And so I think she'll stake out that lane to a certain extent. But the most pithy one liner I've heard about Nikki Haley's campaign that kind of sums it up is that she's out there first in the very heated campaign to run for vice president. And I do think that her odds are probably better of becoming vice president at this point than president.
- [08:59]
Jane Mayer
I have to wonder, have to agree and wonder if is the Republican Party going to be the place at this point in time that would elect not just a woman, but a woman of color from an immigrant family to be president at a point when they're waging a culture war on race issues and leading a backlash against feminism? In many ways, I just. It's kind of hard to imagine. Though I have to say, one thing that's been interesting to me watching her is the money behind her. She has a nonprofit group that is a dark money group and an organization called Documented. Got a hold of some of the paperwork on it and could see some of the donors, even though they were supposed to be secret. And she's got some of the big Wall street traditional GOP money bags behind her, including. It was at the time Sheldon Adelson was still alive that this came out. And his wife, Miriam and Paul Singer and Stanley Druckenmiller, you know, big New York money people. Still, I don't know. I really wonder, you know, Evan, do you see her as playing to the sort of the populist wing of the party.
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Evan Osnos
I think she will play to whichever part of the party seems most relevant to her at the time. I mean, as Susan described so well, the challenge of Nikki Haley is knowing what she stands for, because she's been all over the place over the course of her career. But in a curious way, that's also her strength, because she is not to be underestimated politically. I mean, if you go back, it's worth just pointing out a little bit about her story. I mean, she came from this little town in South Carolina. Her family came from India. They were sort of outsiders there, and they ended up kind of in her telling. And this is a big piece of the narrative that she relies on. They sort of succeeded through the American dream. They had a clothing store. It was successful. She became this childhood accounting prodigy in the family store. But what you also see along the way is that she became quite adept at how to manage these different elements of her family story. And she would talk about the fact that she went to this school that had a bl. Black and white, separate kickball teams, or that she was cast in the role, as she says of Pocahontas in the Thanksgiving pageant. But how is she gonna use that narrative in a Republican field that is at this point, so neuralgic around race and is really not in a position to take what she's trying to do, which might be this kind of story of how that is her success, and situate that in a party that is, let's face it, at the moment, much more attracted to Donald Trump's race. Baiting Donald Trump's transparent appeals to the worst instincts in American political culture. But just one note on her is she was known in South Carolina at some points as being so politically adept and kind of changeable that people described her as Bill Clinton in a skirt. Which is to say, don't underestimate her political instincts. She can win people over in a way that you don't anticipate.
- [11:59]
Jane Mayer
Well, it seems that the name everybody's really sort of talking about and waiting for is Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is supposed to be actively preparing for a possible presidential run. Do you guys see him as Trump's Achilles heel?
- [12:16]
Susan Glasser
Well, let's just say that this is the one that everybody is waiting for right now. And he's had a remarkable rise politically since becoming governor just a few years ago in 2018 during Trump's presidency. And by the way, this is one where you gotta say that Trump actually, there's Something to his grievance. He has already begun complaining about DeSantis and saying, hey, wait a minute, he'd be nothing without me. And there's actually a kind of a strong argument that that is the case. DeSantis was a very hard right Freedom Caucus member in the House of Representatives, running in a very crowded Republican primary and not winning. And not winning until he decided to become the over the top pro Trump candidate. And that was how he kind of rebooted his gubernatorial candidacy. He gets the endorsement from Trump. He runs, to me, an ad that everybody should watch, a campaign ad in which he used his two young children as pro Trump props.
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Jane Mayer
Ron loves playing with the kids.
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Evan Osnos
Build the wall.
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Susan Glasser
He reads stories.
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Evan Osnos
Then Mr. Trump said, you're fired. I love that part.
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Susan Glasser
He dressed the baby in a Make America Great Again onesie and essentially market himself to Florida's voters. At the time, they're Republican voters, extremely pro Trump. It was very effective. So, you know, that origin story of DeSantis is very interesting given that he and Trump are now sniping at each other as if it were going to be a two person race. And by the way, it's very interesting if you look at the difference between how Donald Trump greeted the news of Nikki Haley announcing that she was running against him versus looking at how he is already jostling with Ron DeSantis. And basically Trump is every day laying down some covering fire against DeSantis. But he said about Haley, well, she called me if that's what she feels like she has to do. And that tells you about the big difference between somebody who can actually challenge Trump right now for leadership of the race in the polls versus somebody like Nikki Haley who's stuck in single digits.
- [14:22]
Jane Mayer
Well, I mean, he was so patronizing, wasn't he, about Nikki Haley? You know, sure, Han, do whatever you like. Follow your heart.
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Evan Osnos
Yeah, no, exactly. I think in some ways he was damning her with faint praise. But I think when it comes to Desantis, I mean, he goes right at him because he regards him, I think, as a threat. And if you look closely at what message Desantis is trying to craft for himself is, he's trying to pull out this one string from Trump's bow, which is to say, I can be the fighter that Trump was without all of the baggage that goes with it, and that's supposed to be his attribute, is that he will fight for you. And that's partly, I think, a way of neutralizing what is this emerging sense that he's not a particularly likable guy. He's not a person that you come away from saying, gosh, he really. I was the only person in the room when he was talking to me, or I had that kind of overwhelming sense of connection with him. He doesn't have that. So instead, if you make yourself as pugnacious as possible, then you may be able to draw out what it is that attracted people to Donald Trump. That's the theory, at least.
- [15:25]
Jane Mayer
I mean, Haley has also said, I'm gonna be the good of Trump without being the bad of Trump. And DeSantis is basically saying, I'm Trump without the chaos. I mean, in some ways, he's taken the culture wars even further than Trump did with these attacks on the AP course in African American history. I mean, these aren't even dog whistles anymore. These are like the noon whistle that the whole town has to hear. I mean, this is loud. What's going on in Florida in terms of sort of the racial signaling that's going on down there? I mean, you have to. And I can see why Trump might be threatened by this because DeSantis won narrowly the first time when he ran, and he won overwhelmingly recently when he ran for reelection. So it seems to be working for him. Right?
- [16:07]
Susan Glasser
Yeah. A 19 point victory in what we would call a formerly battleground state is obviously a pretty significant win. And I think you're right, Gene, to the point about willingness to do things that even Trump wouldn't. Remember his stunt of shipping migrants from Florida to Martha's Vineyard. This is something that actually Donald Trump threatened to do throughout his presidency. Remember, he was talking about, like the sanctuary cities in the blue states, and I'm gonna send you these migrants. Donald Trump actually never did that. Caused an outcry just by talking about doing that. And then you had DeSantis who was willing to do it, but look, he is also untested nationally. You could say he's Trump without the chaos, but he also might be Trump without the charisma. And that's something that this process is going draw out if he actually gets in. I was speaking the other day with longtime Republican operative. He said presidential campaigns are like the car wash. You go through 300 times. Ron DeSantis has only been through three times.
- [17:09]
Jane Mayer
You know, there's another saying about state politicians, which is that they're kind of like sweet corn. And the further they get away from the garden they came from, the less sweet they taste. And so I don't know he's starting.
- [17:22]
Evan Osnos
Out all that sweet to begin with. So it doesn't leave him much room to fall.
- [17:25]
Jane Mayer
No, we don't.
- [17:26]
Susan Glasser
But he's also had, I think we have to say that he is a remarkable example of what the kind of Republican PR information machine can do for somebody. There has been a sustained, and I mean sustained effort across, say, the Murdoch media empire to turn Ron DeSantis into the putative heir apparent to Donald Trump and the next Republican nominee. He gets more airtime on FOX than any of the other would be rivals. He is constantly featured for the last two years, really in a pretty sustained way. And so I think many voters who are now registering him as either their first or their second choice in these Republican polls, what's striking is that they probably their knowledge about DeSantis is not very deep. What they have been told is that he's Trump without the trouble. And that is a very uncertain proposition for somebody because the voters are going to have to get to know him to a certain extent.
- [18:29]
Jane Mayer
Yeah. And I think probably the reason you see the Murdoch empire and many other sort of parts of the Republican establishment pushing towards DeSantis is the fear that there are going to be so many candidates jumping in that they will divide the field and they will be left with Trump. And as happened in 2016. And so there's sort of an effort, you can kind of see, for people to inch over and make another king if they possibly can, or crown one successor in the batch of the others. Does anybody think that Pompeo is really going to turn out to be a strong contender against his former boss? Susan, you profiled Pompeo. He's been talking about this higher calling. Yeah. What do you think?
- [19:14]
Susan Glasser
I would not expect that Mike Pompeo would be a significant factor in this race. You know, he is for a reason in the coveted 1 to 3% of the field position starting out. Look, you know, Mike Pompeo is a classic example of the Trump cabinet in that he never, in any other administration, Republican or certainly Democrat, would have had the positions that he had. He was essentially an obscure three term congressman from Wichita, Kansas, never ran more than a single contested Republican primary race in terms of campaigning. To go from that and a few years as Donald Trump's courtier and Secretary of State to being a serious presidential contender is a very tough bar to cross. If you read as I had the challenge of doing recently, his new very undiplomatic memoir for a former Secretary of State called Never Give an Inch, what you will see is that Mike Pompeo is a very thin skinned, pugnacious sort of a guy. And that does not combine all that well with presidential politics. What's really fascinating is that none of these former Trump ideas, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, all three of them have been, according to our reporting, extremely willing to be critical of Donald Trump in private, or at least to disagree with him. None of them were on board with his post2020 election effort to overturn the election results. Or they all privately blame Trump for what happened on January 6th. And yet none of them, with the exception occasionally of Mike Pence, has had the courage to come out and publicly air those views. And Mike Pompeo's memoir, in fact, is a masterpiece of simply ignoring unpleasant facts, both about Donald Trump and about his own role in the Trump administration.
- [21:14]
Evan Osnos
I find Pompeo kind of fascinating as a figure in this race, not because I think he's gonna be President of the United States. As Susan says, he seems to be destined for that low single digits. But he is actually pointing us to some themes that are coming up in the policy discussion on the tonally, his book is this kind of venomous document. I mean, it's kind of, in some ways, the first shot of how this primary and eventually the campaign on the right has the feel of a kind of who can be angrier than the next. It's a kind of anger Olympics, really. And he is sort of trying to be the one who is most merciless about Democrats or about the press or about America's opponents. But on the policy side, what's fascinating is the role that he has made China in this, because Pompeo is building his candidacy around the idea that he is going to be the one that is willing to say the unsayable about China, the idea that that is in some ways America's future enemy. And other candidates are kind of edging up to that. But I remember having an interview with Steve Bannon, who is in so many ways unpleasant to deal with, but is not wrong about his own party. And what he said about the upcoming Republican primary was that it was going to be a contest about who can be more and more hawkish on China. And I think Pompeo has to be understood in that context.
- [22:41]
Jane Mayer
The political scene will be back in just a moment.
- [22:50]
Susan Glasser
I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial Director.
- [22:53]
Evan Osnos
I'm Michael Colori, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture. And I'm Lauren Good.
- [22:58]
Susan Glasser
I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show Uncanny Valley, is all about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley. At Wired, we're constantly reporting on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives. So each week on the show, we get together to talk about one of the biggest stories in tech, right?
- [23:16]
Evan Osnos
So whether we're talking about privacy, AI, social media, or a major tech figure, we will always expect the Silicon Valley forces behind these stories and how they affect you.
- [23:26]
Susan Glasser
Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [23:37]
Evan Osnos
But we always have known that this.
- [23:40]
Jane Mayer
Was not the end. It was only the beginning of our fight to rescue the American dream in order to make America great and glorious again.
- [23:49]
Evan Osnos
I am tonight announcing my candidacy for.
- [23:52]
Jane Mayer
President of the United States. So does this mean that the Republican Party is still the party of Trump, even without Trump? Or does it mean that basically everyone's just waiting for Trump and that he still rules?
- [24:06]
Evan Osnos
I think there was this fascinating set of statistics that came out of polling by Sarah Longwell, who is a never Trump Republican who Susan wrote about. I really recommend everybody go back and look at that piece because it captures some of the process that Sarah followed as she sort of left the fold of the Republican Party. But what she does now, which is polls people who are Republicans who are grappling with their affection for Trump. And she found something very important. What she found is that Trump is this permanent piece of the furniture when it comes to attitudes. There's in effect, this kind of floor that support will never go before, basically 28 to 30% of Republican primary voters. But she also found that they are attracted to Ron DeSantis. He would beat Trump in some of these head to head matchups. In some cases anybody. But Trump was also getting into double digits. So what it really described is a trap for the Republican Party, which is that they've got this figure who is occupying a huge piece of the field and yet may not also have enough to be able to win. I think it's safe to say he's no more popular today than he was the last time he lost a presidential election, which was in 2020.
- [25:18]
Jane Mayer
But the thing is, I agree. I think that that poll from the Bulwark, Sarah Longwell, was fascinating because it comes out at a time where Trump has said that he won't necessarily back whoever the Republican nominee is if it's not him. So you've got 28% of the Republican base that will stick with Trump if he runs as an independent. If he takes that chunk with him and doesn't back the Republican nominee, you've got the threat of a splintered Republican Party with a former president running. And the last time that I can think of that happening, I wasn't personally there, but 1912, when you had Teddy Roosevelt running, he had been president. He was a former president in 2012. And his successor, who was running at the time, Taft, he had disagreements with. And so at the last minute, he decided when Taft got the nomination that he would run as an independent. And he called himself a progressive candidate at that point. And so you had a former Republican president running against a incumbent president. And guess who won? The Democrat, Wilson. And you could be looking at something like this.
- [26:34]
Susan Glasser
Again, we don't know yet. What we don't know, but what we do know is that there is this hardcore following for Donald Trump, this passionate super fans that the poll and all the others have identified. And taking that into a contested multi candidate field, it may actually still be enough to win, no matter how flawed Trump is or no matter how much the Republican establishment doesn't want him. Remember, they didn't want him in 2016 either, but they got him.
- [27:02]
Jane Mayer
So how do cults of personality like this die?
- [27:07]
Evan Osnos
Rarely quietly, is the answer. I think the weird thing about Trump's candidacy right now is how dull and overlooked it is. I mean, let's be honest, in the early days, when he was running in 2016, or even when he was running in 2020, there was a kind of energy about him among his followers. And they felt in the first instance that they were being seen. And then when he ran in 2020, they felt like this was revenge for the ways in which they, and I'm obviously just piping their narrative here, that they felt as if they had been wronged this time around. It's not as if that's the energy at all. And I should point out, I think the media, Russia, has learned some lessons from the mistakes it made in 2016, which was just kind of shuffling along and listening to what Donald Trump said and doing his rallies on television. I mean, I think the press did take a beating, rightly, for that kind of behavior. And I think there is more of an understanding this time that the tools that he was able to use to manipulate the campaign are not as available to him. And as a result, you see him, he's about to take on a larger role on social media. He's been restored to Twitter and Facebook and so on. But in some way, the sort of lightning that he was able to capture the first time he ran is just exhausted now.
- [28:23]
Jane Mayer
Well, you can certainly see that in his fundraising, which is very interesting. It's the Mother's milk of politics. And there you are. He's raised very little since he got into this presidential race. This time, since November, it's like less than $10 million, 9.5 million, I think, which is just a little over $200,000 a day. That's anemic, really. Jeb Bush, when he was running, was taking in just under 800, and Hillary Clinton was taking in just under $600,000 a day. And even Mitt Romney was getting over $600,000 a day. So Trump is somebody. One Republican consultant described him as having driven a Ferrari last time, and now he's stuck running around in a lawnmower engine. And so it's pottering along, but not very healthily, I think.
- [29:15]
Evan Osnos
One thing we haven't talked about is the Democratic Party, which after all is waiting quietly think quite hopefully for Donald Trump to be the front runner in the Republican side. Look, there's just no other way to put it. He is God's gift to Democrats because it's risky, it's scary. You never know quite what's gonna happen when you're squaring off against him in a campaign. But he is also, at this point, a proven loser several times over. And they know how to run against him. And that's one of the reasons, I think, why you heard when Ron Klain, the outgoing chief of staff from the White House, was leaving, he made a big public point to say, say we'll see Joe Biden in the race in 2024. And then he also said in an interview with me that right now Donald Trump is the front runner. And anybody who thinks that Joe Biden can't beat him better be able to make a damn good case for who can.
- [30:04]
Jane Mayer
But when it comes to sort of praying for Trump again to be the front runner, all I can say is remember 2016. That's what the Democrats were hoping for then, too. So it's not a gap. Be careful what you wish. Be careful what you wish.
- [30:18]
Evan Osnos
It's as risky as you can get. Except that looking at some of these other candidates, they might be better able to exploit some of the Democrats vulnerabilities. That's the theory of the case.
- [30:29]
Jane Mayer
Well, until next week. And this is gonna be an incredibly interesting campaign. I think that much we can be absolutely certain about, if nothing else. So anyway, thank you guys so much.
- [30:39]
Evan Osnos
Thanks, Jane.
- [30:40]
Susan Glasser
Thank you.
- [30:45]
Jane Mayer
This has been the political scene. And I'm Jane Mayer. We had production assistance today from Alex d' Elia and Emily Elias. Steven Valentino is our executive producer Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next week. Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Charlemagne, tha God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts from prx.