March 6, 2024 • 16 mins
Fifteen states voted in the presidential primary contest on Super Tuesday, marking a decisive point in the election cycle. Former President Donald Trump’s campaign notched a clear victory as he marches down the path to clinching the Republican nomination. For President Joe Biden, between Super Tuesday and his State of the Union on Thursday, it’s officially the beginning of campaign season.
Is Trump’s grip on the GOP’s future solidified? Will Biden be able to rekindle Trump angst to compete with Trump nostalgia?
Host Saleha Mohsin and Bloomberg politics editor Mario Parker talk about the vulnerabilities each candidate faces, and what lies ahead in 2024.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's just past eleven pm on the East Coast on Tuesday,
March fifth, from Bloomberg's Washington Bureau. This is the Big
Take DC Podcast. I'm Seleia Mosen. Fifteen states voted in
the presidential primary contest on Super Tuesday. Traditionally this is
the decisive point in the election cycle. Trump's campaign has
(00:30):
been working towards securing the nomination by mid March. Tonight
is a clear victory for him. For Biden. Between Super
Tuesday and his State of the Union address on Thursday,
it's officially the beginning of campaign season. Is Trump's grip
on the GOP solidified? Will Biden be able to rekindle
Trump angst to compete with Trump nostalgia. We'll get into
(00:54):
all of that and more with Mario Parker, Bloomberg's White
House and Politics editor, overseeing our twenty twenty four election coverage. So, Mario,
we could sit here and talk about all of the
ways that this Biden Trump matchup is going to feel
like a twenty twenty rerun. But I actually want to
(01:15):
hear from you. What are some of the bigger ways
that it's not just like twenty twenty all over again.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well in some ways, And this is what's kind of
got our coverage is that as much as the primary
cycle has essentially been cruise control for months now, I
think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects
a rematch of the twenty twenty election. These are unprecedented times. Right,
When was the last time that we've had a rematch
to this degree. When is the last time we've had
(01:41):
a former president make a comeback bid? When is the
last time we had a former president make a comeback
bid with ninety one felon accounts? When is the last
time that that former president was up against an incumbent
eighty one years old who would presumably be eighty six
at the end of their second term, Which brings into
question whether or not the first African American Indian American
(02:06):
woman vice president would essentially take the reins. And so
that's a very long winded answer to saying, just as
much as things stay the same when we look at
the marquee, there's a lot under the hood.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Let's dig into a little bit on the Trump side.
You mentioned the ninety one felon accounts. How are Trump's
legal problems playing into his campaign.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
He's made the traditional campaign trail and his courtroom appearance
is one of the same. Some of the cases are delayed,
for example, there's still the uncertainty as to whether or
not they will take place before the election or after
the election. We saw that the Supreme Court ruled in
his favor that he could stay on the ballot. That
was largely expected. But those sorts of challenges, right, one
(02:52):
could expect to continue to kind of crop up during
the course of the cycle.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
So we've obviously seen Trump sweeping primaries since the Iowa
Caucuses for the most part, and now Super Tuesday. Has
there been anything about the beginning of the election cycle
this year that surprised you.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
The momentum that he gained last summer on the back
of some of the legal cases and the way that
the party, the GOP coal leased around him. I guess
the follow through has been quite surprising, and it looks
like he's going to be the presumptive nominee. Now the
devil is in the details, right. Nikki Haley was able
to get, at least in some of the earlier primaries
(03:35):
twenty thirty percent of support, and so the question now
is about whether or not Trump still has some more
work to do in terms of getting the rest of
the party unified around him by November.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
I want to pick up on that theme about the
interesting moment that the Republican Party is at right now,
because it seems to be now firmly becoming the party
of Trump. Do you think that Trump's grip on the
party is solidified?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Not only is his grip on the party solidified, but
this completes his remaking of the party in his own
image right. So, over the coming days, the Republican National
Committee will vote as to whether or not to place
his daughter in La Lara at the top of the committee,
the primary apparatus for the Republican Party. He's hand picked
(04:29):
almost every part or had an impact on every part
of the Republican Party at this point. Mitch McConnell last
week stepped down. He was one of the most powerful
leaders of the Senate in history, and he stepped down
because he feels as though he doesn't have a place
in the party and a leadership role in the party anymore.
(04:51):
And again that's because he's directly at odds with the
Trump doctrine. So I think what we've seen here with
a sweep that you mentioned Celeia, He's remade the party
in his own image.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
What about policy? Are his policies now the Republican Party's
policies officially.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
They seem to be I mean, there's still semblances of
the more traditional Republican stances. But look no further than
just the House's inability to pass aid for Ukraine. Right,
this is something a few years ago there would have
been anathema to the party that had touted itself as
(05:29):
one for foreign policy, American leadership abroad, et cetera. The
fact that the House still has yet to pass aid
for Ukraine against Russia aggression no less kind of signals
where we are with the party.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
So, Mario, do you think that the traditional Republican voter
is going to fall in line and vote for Trump
or do you think that they will stray and either
go for Biden, a third party candidate, or just not
vote at all.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
That's a great question. When we look at some of
the vote totals that Nikki Hayley has been able to
put on the board. Right again, it's a small one.
Looks at something that's seventy thirty win, that's a blowout, right,
But for someone like Trump, you need that one hundred
percent or as close to one hundred percent of the
party voting for you as you possibly can, just as
(06:18):
a hedge against any losses that you may have among
independent voters. Right. So, the polling, including a Bloomberg News
Morning Consult poll, shows that even as Republicans largely characterize
Donald Trump as dangerous, right, they still plan to vote
for him.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I've been talking to White House and Politics editor Mario
Parker about Super Tuesday and what Trump will face in
this election cycle. I want to turn to Biden. We
haven't seen Biden on the trail much leading up to
Super Tuesday. Do you think that now that we're past
that we're going to see him actively campaigning.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yes. From what we understand, the President will pivot immediately
out of his State of the Union speech on Thursday,
hit the road, which is a traditional kind of posture
from the president. He'll be going to Philadelphia, which is
the key swing state of Pennsylvania. He'll be going to Atlanta,
Georgia on Saturday. We know that that's a very hotly
(07:20):
contested swing state as well. And then also just landing
on surrogates and dispatching them across the country.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And what's the narrative that Biden is hoping to sell
to American voters.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
We'll get a little bit more of his vision for
a second term agenda at the State of the Union
on Thursday. Some of that will be how he plans
to argue that he's going to further lower costs for
voters and along the lines of prescription drugs, make housing
more affordable, those kitchen table issues that he frequently speaks about.
(07:53):
And then he'll also try to make the case that
his policies have already improved the lives of Americas. One
source of frustration for the White House, for the President himself,
is the fact that he feels as though he hasn't
gotten credit for some of the policy accomplishments that have
benefited Americans. That's the Inflation Reduction Act, that's the Bipartisan
(08:15):
Infrastructure Bill. And Americans have so far been showing not
just that they're not giving him credit, but they're given
a credit to Trump. They're giving Trump more credit on
the economy, They're giving Trump more credit on foreign policy.
They're even giving Trump credit on things like some parts
of democracy. Right while Biden holds a lead in that regard,
(08:38):
you would expect this would lead to be much wider
than what the polls are bearing out. Maybe that's a
messaging issue that the White House has to solve. They're
looking at the State of the Union from what we
understand as a seminal moment to pivot and kind of
rejigger that messaging going forward, But as of right now,
it's just not really setting it in with voters.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
What are some of the other challenges that Biden is
facing in the campaign this year.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, I think the subtext to some of this is
his age. There's just no way around it. Even Democrats
imposed express concern about whether or not he's fit to
serve a second term. And again this is to the
frustration of the campaign as well and to the White
House as well. But Americans have this view of Biden
(09:25):
that he's much older than the four years that he has.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
On Trump, I would ask the same question I asked
earlier about Trump. Do you think that traditional Democratic voters
are going to fall in line and vote for Biden?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
This is where it gets tricky. The calculus on the
Bidens side is a little bit different than the calculus
on the Republican side. On the Biden side, the Biden campaign,
they want to rekindle the angst that the electorate had
toward Trump some four years ago, and right now what
they're confronted with is just this odd nostalgia for the
(09:58):
Trump years that, oh, you know, but it wasn't as
bad as I thought it was, and so now you've
seen people kind of go back in Trump's column.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Are there specific policy issues that you see Biden leaning
on in order to convince voters that he's the best choice.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
He'll lean on democracy, for sure. If Trump has made
his campaigns anonymous with America first, Biden has essentially made
his campaigns anonymous with saving democracy, not just here in
the US, but also in places like Europe, where again
he's advocating for sustained and continue aid to Ukraine and
(10:32):
made that existential issue right. He'll again try to mention costs.
He'll try to lean into his blue collar background and
talk about how he's lowered costs and prescription drugs, how
his policies have worked to lower the rate of inflation.
And then just in terms of just social issues, you'll
(10:53):
expect him to lean on that. This past weekend, he's
spoken more about the George Floyd Policing Act. You'll see
him entreaties to blackened, his batting voters, voters of color
large as well. You'll see abortion. I would be remiss
if I didn't mention that abortion will feature prominently, particularly
given that every couple of months that issue flares back
(11:15):
up with Alabama and being the latest with IVF. And
so you'll see him campaign on advocating for women's reproductive rights.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
So you've laid out what Biden's obstacles are on the
road to reelection. But Bloomberg News has reported that Biden
donors have committed more than seven hundred million dollars to
help him to beat Trump. And that is on top
of one hundred and thirty million dollars that his campaign
reported that they had at the beginning of February. Mario,
do you think that, considering everything that Biden is up
(11:45):
against with Trump and the obstacles within his own party
and campaign and messaging that that is a competitive war chest.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Absolutely, you'd rather have more money than not in this instance.
Right in twenty twenty, part of the reason Trump's campaign
was undone in the final months was essentially they ran
out of money, they had to go dark on advertising
in some of the key swinging states that we've mentioned,
and Biden will still flush with cash. It seems to
(12:13):
be bearing out this time as well. There are reports
out over this past weekend and how the Trump campaign
has been minding money a lot more closely than previous
cycles when we get into that September October window right
where Americans are super attuned to the election. If you're Biden,
(12:37):
you're able to advertise in those airwaves and get your
message across.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
What about Trump? How does Biden compare to the fundraising
that Trump has done and what his war chest looks like.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Well, Trump's war chest is considerably smaller. There's been the reports,
including our own, about how much money is Super Political
Action Committee has been devoted to or funneled toward some
of his legal woes. As we just mentioned, those legal
woes aren't going to go away, and so money is finite, right,
(13:11):
that's money that could otherwise been going in North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada,
Michigan that they won't necessarily have.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So on this podcast, we've previously covered how GOP donors
were reluctant to get behind Trump before and even during
the early primaries. Do you think that that's going to
change now?
Speaker 1 (13:28):
That part is a bit unclear. There's still seems to
be big dollar donor concern about being associated with Trump.
During the primary, they were solidly with Nicki Haley. We
know that Trump's made a threat to those donors, saying
anyone that continues to front Nicki Haley's campaign isn't maga
(13:49):
and won't be welcome should he get another term in
the White House. We'll see whether or not those that
type of threat will impact whether or not the deeper
pocketed donors come back to him during the summer.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Let's talk about some of the smaller donors and the
regular voters who give money to campaigns.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Trump is essentially cast himself as the fighter for these
everyday Americans who aren't rich. He's got a juggernaut in
terms of small dollar campaign donations. Those retirees, those as
you just mentioned, aligned with more blue collar union workers
who have been more willing to chip in thirty bucks,
(14:28):
fifty bucks, one hundred bucks here and there. They vote
with their money in some ways, and so we see
the fundraising appeals when Trump goes to cord or some
type of legal development happens, and Trump's blasting out a
text message to those individuals. They're answering the bill. But
(14:48):
with again increments of fifteen twenty thirty fifty one hundred dollars,
Biden has the deep pocketed voters. He goes out to California,
Los Angeles, San Francisco pretty frequently to raise money, and
he's been quite successful doing that. But in terms of
tapping in and translating that energy that we see from
the Trump folks into tangible money, Trump's been pretty good
(15:12):
at that conversion.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Mario, do you think that we might see voter turnout
drop this election given how unhappy and unsatisfied people are
about the options that they've got.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Twenty twenty was an election in which was held amid
a one hundred and year pandemic, spelling over and dovetailing
with the country's largest wrecking race in some fifty sixty years.
All those things led to just record turnout, mail in voting,
(15:47):
just an electorate that was extremely engaged. Now you can
kind of see the apathy, right, So this election is
looking a lot more like twenty sixteen than it did
in twenty twenty. In twenty sixteen, a Lore turnout election.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
All right, Mario, thanks so much for joining. This was great.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Thanks for having me, it was great. I look forward
to join you again anytime.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Bloomberg News. I'm Salaia Mosen. This episode was produced and
fact checked by Julia Press. It was edited by Aaron
Edwards and Michael Shepherd. It was mixed by Alex Sugira.
Our senior producers are Naomi Shaven and Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole
Beemster Bower is our executive producer. Stage Bauman is Bloomberg's
(16:34):
head of Podcasts. Thanks for listening. Please follow and review
The Big Take DC wherever you listen to podcasts. It
helps new listeners find the show. We'll be back on Thursday.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's just past eleven pm on the East Coast on Tuesday,
March fifth, from Bloomberg's Washington Bureau. This is the Big
Take DC Podcast. I'm Seleia Mosen. Fifteen states voted in
the presidential primary contest on Super Tuesday. Traditionally this is
the decisive point in the election cycle. Trump's campaign has
(00:30):
been working towards securing the nomination by mid March. Tonight
is a clear victory for him. For Biden. Between Super
Tuesday and his State of the Union address on Thursday,
it's officially the beginning of campaign season. Is Trump's grip
on the GOP solidified? Will Biden be able to rekindle
Trump angst to compete with Trump nostalgia. We'll get into
(00:54):
all of that and more with Mario Parker, Bloomberg's White
House and Politics editor, overseeing our twenty twenty four election coverage. So, Mario,
we could sit here and talk about all of the
ways that this Biden Trump matchup is going to feel
like a twenty twenty rerun. But I actually want to
(01:15):
hear from you. What are some of the bigger ways
that it's not just like twenty twenty all over again.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Well in some ways, And this is what's kind of
got our coverage is that as much as the primary
cycle has essentially been cruise control for months now, I
think the American electorate has been signaling that it expects
a rematch of the twenty twenty election. These are unprecedented times. Right,
When was the last time that we've had a rematch
to this degree. When is the last time we've had
(01:41):
a former president make a comeback bid? When is the
last time we had a former president make a comeback
bid with ninety one felon accounts? When is the last
time that that former president was up against an incumbent
eighty one years old who would presumably be eighty six
at the end of their second term, Which brings into
question whether or not the first African American Indian American
(02:06):
woman vice president would essentially take the reins. And so
that's a very long winded answer to saying, just as
much as things stay the same when we look at
the marquee, there's a lot under the hood.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Let's dig into a little bit on the Trump side.
You mentioned the ninety one felon accounts. How are Trump's
legal problems playing into his campaign.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
He's made the traditional campaign trail and his courtroom appearance
is one of the same. Some of the cases are delayed,
for example, there's still the uncertainty as to whether or
not they will take place before the election or after
the election. We saw that the Supreme Court ruled in
his favor that he could stay on the ballot. That
was largely expected. But those sorts of challenges, right, one
(02:52):
could expect to continue to kind of crop up during
the course of the cycle.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
So we've obviously seen Trump sweeping primaries since the Iowa
Caucuses for the most part, and now Super Tuesday. Has
there been anything about the beginning of the election cycle
this year that surprised you.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
The momentum that he gained last summer on the back
of some of the legal cases and the way that
the party, the GOP coal leased around him. I guess
the follow through has been quite surprising, and it looks
like he's going to be the presumptive nominee. Now the
devil is in the details, right. Nikki Haley was able
to get, at least in some of the earlier primaries
(03:35):
twenty thirty percent of support, and so the question now
is about whether or not Trump still has some more
work to do in terms of getting the rest of
the party unified around him by November.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
I want to pick up on that theme about the
interesting moment that the Republican Party is at right now,
because it seems to be now firmly becoming the party
of Trump. Do you think that Trump's grip on the
party is solidified?
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Not only is his grip on the party solidified, but
this completes his remaking of the party in his own
image right. So, over the coming days, the Republican National
Committee will vote as to whether or not to place
his daughter in La Lara at the top of the committee,
the primary apparatus for the Republican Party. He's hand picked
(04:29):
almost every part or had an impact on every part
of the Republican Party at this point. Mitch McConnell last
week stepped down. He was one of the most powerful
leaders of the Senate in history, and he stepped down
because he feels as though he doesn't have a place
in the party and a leadership role in the party anymore.
(04:51):
And again that's because he's directly at odds with the
Trump doctrine. So I think what we've seen here with
a sweep that you mentioned Celeia, He's remade the party
in his own image.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
What about policy? Are his policies now the Republican Party's
policies officially.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
They seem to be I mean, there's still semblances of
the more traditional Republican stances. But look no further than
just the House's inability to pass aid for Ukraine. Right,
this is something a few years ago there would have
been anathema to the party that had touted itself as
(05:29):
one for foreign policy, American leadership abroad, et cetera. The
fact that the House still has yet to pass aid
for Ukraine against Russia aggression no less kind of signals
where we are with the party.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
So, Mario, do you think that the traditional Republican voter
is going to fall in line and vote for Trump
or do you think that they will stray and either
go for Biden, a third party candidate, or just not
vote at all.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
That's a great question. When we look at some of
the vote totals that Nikki Hayley has been able to
put on the board. Right again, it's a small one.
Looks at something that's seventy thirty win, that's a blowout, right,
But for someone like Trump, you need that one hundred
percent or as close to one hundred percent of the
party voting for you as you possibly can, just as
(06:18):
a hedge against any losses that you may have among
independent voters. Right. So, the polling, including a Bloomberg News
Morning Consult poll, shows that even as Republicans largely characterize
Donald Trump as dangerous, right, they still plan to vote
for him.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I've been talking to White House and Politics editor Mario
Parker about Super Tuesday and what Trump will face in
this election cycle. I want to turn to Biden. We
haven't seen Biden on the trail much leading up to
Super Tuesday. Do you think that now that we're past
that we're going to see him actively campaigning.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yes. From what we understand, the President will pivot immediately
out of his State of the Union speech on Thursday,
hit the road, which is a traditional kind of posture
from the president. He'll be going to Philadelphia, which is
the key swing state of Pennsylvania. He'll be going to Atlanta,
Georgia on Saturday. We know that that's a very hotly
(07:20):
contested swing state as well. And then also just landing
on surrogates and dispatching them across the country.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And what's the narrative that Biden is hoping to sell
to American voters.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
We'll get a little bit more of his vision for
a second term agenda at the State of the Union
on Thursday. Some of that will be how he plans
to argue that he's going to further lower costs for
voters and along the lines of prescription drugs, make housing
more affordable, those kitchen table issues that he frequently speaks about.
(07:53):
And then he'll also try to make the case that
his policies have already improved the lives of Americas. One
source of frustration for the White House, for the President himself,
is the fact that he feels as though he hasn't
gotten credit for some of the policy accomplishments that have
benefited Americans. That's the Inflation Reduction Act, that's the Bipartisan
(08:15):
Infrastructure Bill. And Americans have so far been showing not
just that they're not giving him credit, but they're given
a credit to Trump. They're giving Trump more credit on
the economy, They're giving Trump more credit on foreign policy.
They're even giving Trump credit on things like some parts
of democracy. Right while Biden holds a lead in that regard,
(08:38):
you would expect this would lead to be much wider
than what the polls are bearing out. Maybe that's a
messaging issue that the White House has to solve. They're
looking at the State of the Union from what we
understand as a seminal moment to pivot and kind of
rejigger that messaging going forward, But as of right now,
it's just not really setting it in with voters.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
What are some of the other challenges that Biden is
facing in the campaign this year.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, I think the subtext to some of this is
his age. There's just no way around it. Even Democrats
imposed express concern about whether or not he's fit to
serve a second term. And again this is to the
frustration of the campaign as well and to the White
House as well. But Americans have this view of Biden
(09:25):
that he's much older than the four years that he has.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
On Trump, I would ask the same question I asked
earlier about Trump. Do you think that traditional Democratic voters
are going to fall in line and vote for Biden?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
This is where it gets tricky. The calculus on the
Bidens side is a little bit different than the calculus
on the Republican side. On the Biden side, the Biden campaign,
they want to rekindle the angst that the electorate had
toward Trump some four years ago, and right now what
they're confronted with is just this odd nostalgia for the
(09:58):
Trump years that, oh, you know, but it wasn't as
bad as I thought it was, and so now you've
seen people kind of go back in Trump's column.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Are there specific policy issues that you see Biden leaning
on in order to convince voters that he's the best choice.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
He'll lean on democracy, for sure. If Trump has made
his campaigns anonymous with America first, Biden has essentially made
his campaigns anonymous with saving democracy, not just here in
the US, but also in places like Europe, where again
he's advocating for sustained and continue aid to Ukraine and
(10:32):
made that existential issue right. He'll again try to mention costs.
He'll try to lean into his blue collar background and
talk about how he's lowered costs and prescription drugs, how
his policies have worked to lower the rate of inflation.
And then just in terms of just social issues, you'll
(10:53):
expect him to lean on that. This past weekend, he's
spoken more about the George Floyd Policing Act. You'll see
him entreaties to blackened, his batting voters, voters of color
large as well. You'll see abortion. I would be remiss
if I didn't mention that abortion will feature prominently, particularly
given that every couple of months that issue flares back
(11:15):
up with Alabama and being the latest with IVF. And
so you'll see him campaign on advocating for women's reproductive rights.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
So you've laid out what Biden's obstacles are on the
road to reelection. But Bloomberg News has reported that Biden
donors have committed more than seven hundred million dollars to
help him to beat Trump. And that is on top
of one hundred and thirty million dollars that his campaign
reported that they had at the beginning of February. Mario,
do you think that, considering everything that Biden is up
(11:45):
against with Trump and the obstacles within his own party
and campaign and messaging that that is a competitive war chest.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Absolutely, you'd rather have more money than not in this instance.
Right in twenty twenty, part of the reason Trump's campaign
was undone in the final months was essentially they ran
out of money, they had to go dark on advertising
in some of the key swinging states that we've mentioned,
and Biden will still flush with cash. It seems to
(12:13):
be bearing out this time as well. There are reports
out over this past weekend and how the Trump campaign
has been minding money a lot more closely than previous
cycles when we get into that September October window right
where Americans are super attuned to the election. If you're Biden,
(12:37):
you're able to advertise in those airwaves and get your
message across.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
What about Trump? How does Biden compare to the fundraising
that Trump has done and what his war chest looks like.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Well, Trump's war chest is considerably smaller. There's been the reports,
including our own, about how much money is Super Political
Action Committee has been devoted to or funneled toward some
of his legal woes. As we just mentioned, those legal
woes aren't going to go away, and so money is finite, right,
(13:11):
that's money that could otherwise been going in North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada,
Michigan that they won't necessarily have.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So on this podcast, we've previously covered how GOP donors
were reluctant to get behind Trump before and even during
the early primaries. Do you think that that's going to
change now?
Speaker 1 (13:28):
That part is a bit unclear. There's still seems to
be big dollar donor concern about being associated with Trump.
During the primary, they were solidly with Nicki Haley. We
know that Trump's made a threat to those donors, saying
anyone that continues to front Nicki Haley's campaign isn't maga
(13:49):
and won't be welcome should he get another term in
the White House. We'll see whether or not those that
type of threat will impact whether or not the deeper
pocketed donors come back to him during the summer.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Let's talk about some of the smaller donors and the
regular voters who give money to campaigns.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Trump is essentially cast himself as the fighter for these
everyday Americans who aren't rich. He's got a juggernaut in
terms of small dollar campaign donations. Those retirees, those as
you just mentioned, aligned with more blue collar union workers
who have been more willing to chip in thirty bucks,
(14:28):
fifty bucks, one hundred bucks here and there. They vote
with their money in some ways, and so we see
the fundraising appeals when Trump goes to cord or some
type of legal development happens, and Trump's blasting out a
text message to those individuals. They're answering the bill. But
(14:48):
with again increments of fifteen twenty thirty fifty one hundred dollars,
Biden has the deep pocketed voters. He goes out to California,
Los Angeles, San Francisco pretty frequently to raise money, and
he's been quite successful doing that. But in terms of
tapping in and translating that energy that we see from
the Trump folks into tangible money, Trump's been pretty good
(15:12):
at that conversion.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Mario, do you think that we might see voter turnout
drop this election given how unhappy and unsatisfied people are
about the options that they've got.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Twenty twenty was an election in which was held amid
a one hundred and year pandemic, spelling over and dovetailing
with the country's largest wrecking race in some fifty sixty years.
All those things led to just record turnout, mail in voting,
(15:47):
just an electorate that was extremely engaged. Now you can
kind of see the apathy, right, So this election is
looking a lot more like twenty sixteen than it did
in twenty twenty. In twenty sixteen, a Lore turnout election.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
All right, Mario, thanks so much for joining. This was great.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Thanks for having me, it was great. I look forward
to join you again anytime.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Bloomberg News. I'm Salaia Mosen. This episode was produced and
fact checked by Julia Press. It was edited by Aaron
Edwards and Michael Shepherd. It was mixed by Alex Sugira.
Our senior producers are Naomi Shaven and Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole
Beemster Bower is our executive producer. Stage Bauman is Bloomberg's
(16:34):
head of Podcasts. Thanks for listening. Please follow and review
The Big Take DC wherever you listen to podcasts. It
helps new listeners find the show. We'll be back on Thursday.
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