They're convinced Trump will win, but why? | Bill Scher

Speaker 1: We welcome back to the program today, Bill share politics editor for the Washington Monthly and co-host of the online show the DMZ, with also somewhat recent David Pakman Show guest, Matt Lewis. Bill, let's start with the Washington Monthly article, No More Bloodbaths or How to Avoid Stupid Debates over Trump semantics. So you know that this, of course, refers to to Trump's bloodbath comment about if I don't win, it's going to be a bloodbath for the auto industry because they will sel

l no vehicles. You know, my take on it was we should report honestly that as a formality. Trump was talking about the auto industry, but it's also reasonable to include in our analysis his references to violence as a solution to political problems and the violence he's incited in the past, and that it's not problematic to include that as part of the analysis. But does that miss the bigger point about breaking down the language of Trump in this way? Speaker 5: Well, I mean, if you're a if you're

a reporter, you know, it's not your job as a reporter to approach this in a way that's conducive to Biden's reelection. So everything you just laid out would all be legitimate ways for reporters to explore the comment. The point of my article is, I think it's incumbent on the Biden campaign and others who want to see Trump lose to frame the overall, the frame, Trump's entire approach to rhetoric in a way that avoids semantic debates about what did he really mean? Because if every time Trump says

we Trump speaks in word salad constantly. Yeah. So it's pretty easy for him to say something seemingly incendiary and then the next day say, oh, that's not what I meant. I meant this you're taking this out of context. If that's the debate we're having for the next eight months, that money is the waters in a way that I think is advantageous to Trump. So it's not really about what did he mean? And we have we have the we have the advantage here of having four years of Trump as president to look ba

ck to. We don't have to speculate about what is he trying to get out here? You might have had to do that in 2016, but we're 2024. We know what happens after four years of a president of the United States spewing this kind of hatred. Whether it's over the line or just behind the line. What? How are you want to describe it? We know what the impact of it is. And that is literally cities burning, rioting in the streets, vigilante shooting protesters and culminating with a literal insurrection on the

US Capitol, because the guy at the top set a tone that turned Americans against each other. So once you look at things in that framework, it doesn't matter what he meant, because what he did leads to that horrible and and I and I think if you put the entire campaign through that kind of framework, you can pull almost anything he does into that framework. And it's not a question of the journalist trying to deliberately echo what I'm seeing here. But if one if one team is putting in things in tha

t frame, invariably that bleeds into mainstream media coverage just as much the way Trump saying things were awesome on my watch in 2020 2019, that bleeds into mainstream coverage, too. That's what that's what both that's what campaigns do. So that is my strategic advice to the Biden campaign and to others who want to see Trump lose. Speaker 1: But in a sense, it is an argument about context, right? Which is the words don't matter so much as the fact that the context for four years has been what

you laid out. It's a differently worded argument about context. Unless I'm misunderstanding. Speaker 5: What it means a frame, a narrative frame creates a context. Yes. And and what I'm arguing is you want to create that frame in a way that makes it much harder. I mean, there's always going to be a rejoinder. You know, Republicans aren't going to accept your frame there and, of course, push back at it in some way. But. To. Let me take another example, where Trump said that if you if you if you'

re Jewish and you vote Democrat, then you hate Israel and you and you hate your own religion, right? The response from a lot of Democrats was you're being anti-Semitic. The response from Republicans was, well, I mean, I wanted to use those words, but he he was basically right. I mean, Democrats do hate Israel these days. You're debating the meaning of anti-Semitism, whereas if you were in my frame. Yeah. Trump always pits Americans against each other. And that leads to our cities on fire. That i

s what happened four years ago. Whether the meaning of any cynicism is not relevant to that framing. So the pushback to what I'm saying, if you're a Republican is, hey, don't blame Trump for that. That's the the riot that was Black Lives Matter. And, you know, he didn't tell the insurrectionists to storm the Capitol. Well okay you can say that. But I'm looking around right now I don't see my city is on fire. I've been a different president for the last four years, and things aren't like the way

they were four years ago. You can try to claim it's not his fault, but this didn't happen under other presidents. It only happened under him. So you connect the dots. Speaker 1: I was, a few weeks ago, invited to the white House for a state of the Union thing and had about an hour and 15 minute meeting with the vice president. And one of the really interesting things was it was off the record. So I need to be respectful about maintaining that. But the atmosphere behind the scenes was one where I

felt like not only are they paying attention to what's happening in corporate media with regard to coverage of this race, but they have all of the right things to respond with. And I was left wondering, why aren't we hearing some of these responses from the Biden administration publicly? Now, obviously, behind closed doors, sometimes elected officials are willing to say or maybe say things with certain language that they have calculated is not to their advantage to use publicly or whatever the

case may be. But there is the impression that despite everything you write about and talk about, and I write about and talk about that, the Biden administration is not communicating well. The state of the economy, the contrast you're talking about when cities were burning and now they're not, etc.. Why do well, first of all, do you agree that there is some kind of public facing issue with how this administration is communicating the state of the country now versus four years ago, the state of th

e economy, etc.? And do you think that it is because they haven't figured it out, or because they think it's to their advantage to communicate in the way that they're communicating? Speaker 5: Well, look, it's obviously it's it's always easier to be the pundit sitting at home behind his laptop and sketch out a little piece of strategy. It's easier for me to do that than actually be president. Yeah, and run a presidential campaign at the same time when you actually have to govern the country and

deal with international crises, and sift through, I mean, you know, Donald Trump's a target rich environment, which is a blessing and a curse. There's like a thousand things you could say, but you can't do them. All right. So it may be, you know, in an off the record meeting, you might put forth a thing. And the vice president says, I think in response, like, oh, that one, that one made sense. I like that one. But how does it work in in a constellation of activity in a way that cuts through all

the clutter? And, so the average person who doesn't follow the news every single day is really going to feel it when there are a lot of things that go on. And to give a news cycle that are totally out of your control and may not be to your advantage, right? I don't like playing the role of I know everything and these numbnuts in the white House to know what they're doing, you know? Well, let me. Speaker 1: Put it a different way. I look at the economy by saying, here's the 6 to 8 economic indica

tors that I think are the most important. They all look pretty good. Unemployment looks pretty good. GDP growth looks pretty good. Inflation's down. Stock up. Stock market performance is good right I look at all these things and I go by any objective measure this looks pretty good. And yet I get calls from people obviously on the right. But even some on the left who say the economy's really not doing that well, it was good under Trump, etc.. Okay, so obviously it doesn't seem to be about just pr

esenting data and economic metrics. Speaker 5: Thirdly, is. Speaker 1: There some what what would be the right way to communicate the state of the economy in an electorally advantageous way? Speaker 5: Well, I've, I've actually written about this. So, and I looked at the Reagan 84 campaign as my model, and I think you might know, on probably the Morning in America campaign. Yep. And what I think is really and, you know, Q and there are a lot of parallels here, you know, old incumbent president,

running under an improved economy, but not a perfect economy. We might have romanticizes that. Well, the economy in 94 was just gangbusters. Yeah. Interest rates 84 were like more than double what they are today. You know, things weren't perfect. But inflation was down. Unemployment was down, but still much higher than it was today. So like a lot of incumbents, you have to deal with a, a mixed record that might be better than the way things were, but still have elements of frustration to them an

d spin that away, that people focus on the half the glass, half full amount, the glass half empty. And what what morning in America did was it was not a data heavy presentation. You did. They didn't drown you in statistics. There was a little bit of it, but there was a story. There was a narrative. There was a, and the story was that, America coming together, going back to work. You can be a young couple and get married and be confident that you can afford a new house and build your wonderful, y

ou know, 2.2 kids, suburban American life, you know, and it was a story that felt right because things. Felt better than they did in 1980, when you had stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis was going on. So yeah, but keep in mind, there was a really sharp recession in 1982 that people were coming out of, but there were still residual effects, that unemployment was still elevated and interest rates were still elevated. So they had to lean into the positive part of it. And so I think Biden's cam

paign is starting to do this. I don't think they're hitting the I don't want you to see a narrative that is as potent as what I think Reagan did. But I think they're a little farther along. And, you know, America's weak, and there's elements to a you Bible say, you know, we're coming together, America and the way they were the greatest country in the world. We're manufacturing is coming back. We're building jobs for the future. Like there is some of that. So I want to be overly critical here. Ri

ght. I would like to see a clearer contrast between sort of Biden's morning in America, and how we are coming together and buildings in America again, and nightmare in America with four years, Donald Trump. Literally, our cities are on fire. I like to see that more clearly done, and not just in like one ad or two ads as a consistent theme that you do every single day. Speaker 1: So as we are entering April and now we're seven months from this election. The polling is kind of a mixed bag. A lot o

f the polls, you know, Trump. Plus Biden adds up to 85. So there's this other 15% in there that, depending on who you talk to, means means different things. The predictions that I'm hearing confident predictions about, it's obvious what the outcome in November is going to be. Strike me is so silly because it seems that the most likely outcome is somewhere between 3 and 500,000 votes in 5 to 7 states decide this election. That seems to be the most likely outcome, and it really could go either way

as far as I'm concerned. I think if we look historically, incumbents generally get reelected when the economy is good, incumbents are more likely to get reelected. If we start with 2020, where Trump already lost and you had 91 indictments. Civil liability for rape, all these other things, it's hard to imagine. Well, it's going to go way better than 2020 for for Trump, but I don't really know. So I'm curious, as we are now just seven months away, it's no longer, you know, Rachel Bitter Coffer wh

en we were 15 months away, said David. The polls mean absolutely nothing. Well, we're talking April now. So how do you see the polls? What do you think of the confident predictions that are being made? Give us a sense. Speaker 5: Well, I wouldn't make any confident predictions either way. You know, seven months out, you know, things can break late. Look, a lot of times in presidential elections, the polling is pretty stable all year long. But there are other cases, like, say, 2004, where Bush ca

re was pretty tight, you know, all the way through. And then it really breaks in Bush's direction after after the conventions. Right. And we have other examples, where, you know, in your Reagan 84 and Clinton 96, where, again, I, you know, the polling, they were both ahead, you know, at this point. But there was a lag going point going a little further back into the timeline. There was a lag between them getting credit wreaking havoc improvement and the and the metrics showing improvement. So an

d and one more factor here. And you, you alluded to this. I mean, we we have four cases of incumbents losing in the last 100 years. Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump. In every one of those cases, you had pretty severe economic distress, heading into Election Day, which we currently do not have. So it would be highly, highly unusual for an incumbent to lose with the I mean, it's not a perfect economy, but on the whole, this is pretty darn good, historically speaking.

You can find things nitpick about, but, you know, GDP, growing unemployment, low wages, beating inflation, real disposable income, you know, growing incumbents get reelected in that environment, right? So I am definitely more focused on that right now than I know about the polling. I think the polling can catch up to the metrics. Well, we often look at is GDP growth in the first two quarters of an election year. So we haven't seen those numbers yet. I did look at the Federal Reserve of Atlanta,

does a GDP now thing where they sort of try to track it in real time. And I didn't look at the uploaded every week. So forgive me if I like Google while I talk to you. Well, I looked at it last week. It was a 2.3, which is not like a gangbusters. Speaker 1: But it's fine. It's certainly not a sign of a problem, I guess I would say. Speaker 5: Yeah. You know, I mean, but it could change you. I mean, yeah, if we if we had a downturn between now and you, would I be more right. Sure I would. Okay.

So now it's a 2.1 as of, earlier this week. Speaker 1: What's less thrilling? I guess I would say, but still not a sign of distress. Speaker 5: I'd also, and you wouldn't say, want to be too high because that might pick inflation back into gear. Yes, yes. You want things to be not too hot, not too cold. So if we were staying at that's kind of the slowest trajectory, I would feel very good about about balance chances. Now, of course, there is this X factor. Well, a couple there's H. Yeah. There's

the border and there's Israel. Gaza. Yep. And, I can't think of immigration, you know, as, as an issue runs hot. Cold, all the time. I've never seen a case of immigration really determined an election. So I'm skeptical of that being the issue. Not that Biden has the should do nothing on the subject, but I'd be surprised if that like, was the thing that ended his campaign and Israel Gaza. Also, you can't find an example of an international crisis that did not involve American troops dying. That

determined an election. Now, if you don't mind me talking on going on and on and on. There is one caveat to look at. Which is 1948. Harry Truman, his famous, you know, comeback victory against Thomas Dewey. This is also the year where he recognizes Israel. That's in May of 1948. And it was not a slam dunk decision. His own secretary of state told Truman. Don't do that. The only reason to do it is political. Because you want to get Jewish votes in New York. And New York was the biggest electoral

college prize. So it's not in our national interest to do this. I've another secretary of defense said, look. 40 million Arabs are going to push 400,000 Jews into the sea. That's just the reality. Our interest here is oil. So do what makes sense to extract oil from this region. Not not help Jews. And Truman ignores all that, and recognized Israel. But there was an arms embargo in place in the region. I mean, at this point, the British are leaning towards the Arabs, not the Israelis. And the Brit

ish tell the Truman administration, if you guys lift this arms embargo and try to arm the Israelis, we're going to arm the Arabs. And then the Secretary of State, George Marshall, was like, okay, Truman. Like, okay, we didn't agree on the recognition of Israel. But Frank having say, don't get us in a proxy war with our closest ally. So Truman does not lift the arms embargo. Yeah. The third party candidate, Henry Wallace, who is FDR, V.P. Kim Truman's commerce secretary, quits because he disagree

s with Truman's approach to the Soviet Union. Wallace was was lean toward the Soviet Union. He was it was, you know, socialistic goes called the Communist. A lot of Jews, New York were socialists. Wallace campaigns in New York, October 1948, saying there's blood on Truman's hands because he's not lifting the arms embargo and arming the Israelis because they're in a war with the Arab countries. At this point, he's in Madison Square Garden telling New York Jews Truman has blood on his hands. He is

not a true, steadfast supporter of Israel. Wallace gets 8% of the New York vote, and Thomas Dewey wins New York by one point. So you could argue, right, that this issue actually flipped the state away from the president. However, it's so happened that Trump that Truman won a bunch of other states that offset the loss of New York. So. Right. There's that one candidate that maybe, maybe, maybe if all this sort of stars aligned that, that a middle East crisis can flip the state and you're looking

at Michigan, the Arab communities there to think that might happen here. But it is so rare. So it's not to, to be ignorant of, but I would still be very surprised that, again, we and we can't even know what you feel God is going to look like, in November, how high it's going to be on people's, priority list. Yeah. So it's going to be cognizant of. But I do think it's only highly unusual for that to be a turning factor. And if it is a determining factor, there's like other things going on there a

re bogging Biden down anyway. But those are those are the factors here to worry about. But on the whole, I say economics are the biggest driver of these things, and those are all point in the right direction. Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's all. If you look at opinion polls, economics is ranking far higher than foreign policy or Israel Gaza as well, which I don't think comes as a shock to anybody sometimes not even really showing up. Vaguely. Foreign policy is sometimes eighth. And some portion of t

hat presumably is Israel Gaza. So that seems to be mirroring what you're saying. Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean, well, look, it's not going to be the case that Israel is the number one issue. No, no, the question is, might it be somebody who's number one issue. Speaker 1: Such that it could flip one state? Speaker 5: Right, exactly. And yeah, if Michigan is like on a knife's edge, yeah. Then maybe Dearborn can flip the state. But if by November the economy is doing well enough where it's like, you know

what, you know, Biden's really I don't need to change forces here. You know, things are going all right, and Biden is up by, you know, 4 or 5 points in Michigan that I don't think Israel guys, is going to be the determining factor. Speaker 1: All right. Bill Cher is the politics editor for The Washington Monthly and also co-hosts the online show the DMZ with Matt Lewis. Bill, always a pleasure. Thank you. Speaker 5: Thank you. Take care. Speaker 1: Data brokers are constantly collecting huge am

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ognito can accomplish is amazing. I use it myself. Go to incognito com slash pacman and you'll get 60% off with the code Pacman. That's incognito. Com slash pacman use code pacman for 60% off. The link is in the podcast notes soldiers and troops at the polls on Election day. That is what Donald Trump's current press secretary for his campaign, Caroline Levitt, is promising. What is she alluding to? Certainly it can't be actual members of the military patrolling polling places. So what is it? It'

s arguably something even scarier. This is something that we need to take very seriously. The attempts at voter intimidation, what they have up their sleeves, should not be ignored. We saw what they tried to do in 2020. We know the sorts of things they're going to try to do again in 2024. Here is Caroline Levitt again. This is Trump's current press secretary for the campaign, not to be confused with Trump's former white House secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who's now on Fox News. Levitt was intervie

wed by Donald Trump Jr's wife or fiancee, I don't know, Kimberly Guilfoyle. And she says we are going to be in order to fight fraud, irregularities, cheating, that all nonexistent things, they are going to have soldiers and troops at the polling places on November 5th. I hope law enforcement's listening because we got to be all over this. Listen to this. Speaker 3: The momentum for the America First movement, you know, on the ground, what you guys are seeing for your ground game, how strong and

unified of a place you know, the campaign will be going into with the convention this summer. Well, we're so excited about our recent merger with the Republican National Committee and the new leadership we have there in both Lara Trump and Michael Whatley. Our team is already working hand in hand with the staff at the RNC. Speaker 1: So by the way, this this also isn't it. Before we even get to soldiers and troops, remember that there has been a Trump takeover of the Republican National Committe

e. Trump's own daughter in law now is a member, a staffer at the Republican National Committee. They have pledged total undying loyalty to President Trump's. And money is going to go to him. Legal fees, etc.. And the failed former president is going to benefit greatly from taking over the RNC. But let's continue to the soldiers and the troops at polling places. Speaker 3: As one very lean and mean machine, as we like to call it, with one goal. And that goal is victory for Republicans up and down

the ballot on November the 5th. We have the team now. It's time to deploy the troops on the ground. Yeah, we have an amazing volunteer led effort right now in all of the battleground states, in addition to our great paid staff who will be making direct voter contact every single hour of every day between now and November the 5th to get out the vote. A large part of this is also educating voters on this the laws within their state. If you live in an early voting state, we encourage you to get ou

t and vote early. Speaker 1: By the way, remember early voting, voting by mail, anything other than one day go in, one day go in, anything short of that? On the one hand, we were told in 2020 and Trump is still saying to this day that that's all fraudulent. That's how the Democrats cheat. But officially, Republicans realize if we only allow the left to actually take advantage of all of these more convenient ways to vote, we'll probably lose. So even though it's all fraud when the left does it, t

hey also are telling their voters you should go out and vote early. Vote whenever you can. Okay, now we're getting to the soldiers. Speaker 3: Asked your ballot. You don't know what can happen to you on Election Day. And then we're also. Investing a lot of money into voter integrity efforts to ensure that every American. Knows their ballot will be cast and counted and matter. And we're going to play offense this time around. We're not going to play defense like we unfortunately did in 2020. We'r

e going to have soldiers, poll watchers on the ground who are making sure that there are no irregularities and fraud like we saw in the last election cycle. I love it, I cannot wait, it's going to be fantastic. Speaker 1: So of course, I will remind you that the irregularities and fraud that Caroline Levitt asserts as a point of fact in 2020 did not exist. We did all sorts of interviews about this, including with Ken Block, who was hired by Trump to investigate it. He couldn't find it. Courts co

uldn't find it. Nobody could find it. So that didn't happen. I like this this notion of this time we're playing offense. Last time we played defense, no. Last time you played offense, you tried to steal an election. You lost with frivolous court cases, strong arming elected officials in a variety of states, and attempting to assemble fake slates of electors to go and say, oh, Trump won our state when actually it was Biden who won it. Now, as far as soldiers. I can't imagine that these would be l

iteral soldiers, because I just can't think of any way that actual members of the military, in their capacity as members of the military, are going to be deployed to polling places by Trump, because Trump isn't even going to be president in November. But they are being very clear. They plan a campaign of intimidation. They are planning it. We saw the videos, purportedly of armed members of the military when Vladimir Putin was incredibly, overwhelmingly reelected recently in Russia with 80 someth

ing percent of the vote. What a victory for him, right? They would love to do that. They may not be able to get away with it. So instead they will have whatever they can. You've got to be how many feet away from a polling place? Well, we will be one foot beyond that intimidating voters. We are going to do everything we can. They are telling us. So whether it's literal soldiers is less relevant than the fact that they plan to have a presence. The presence is to intimidate. And we have to hope. An

d you know what? Last time a relatively good job was was done as far as this particular piece was concerned. We have to make sure that every state is prepared and that they aren't going to allow these intimidation tactics. They plan to use them. Let's hope that they're not allowed