Biden, Trump, and a Presidency in Play

The first act in the Republican Party’s presidential primary season, the Iowa caucuses, has come and gone. Other contests in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, and the collection of 15 Super Tuesday states all lie ahead. Donald Trump registered a resounding win in Iowa and if polls are to be believed, he is situated to easily continue his sprint to the GOP nomination – the flagbearer of a party shaping itself in his image. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden comes to the race with his own strengths and weaknesses. Nancy Cook is a political reporter for Bloomberg News. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, this is Tim. Since this episode was first recorded,
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race.
As you will listen in the following conversation. We did
expect him to drop out pretty soon. We just didn't
think it would happen this quickly. Anyway, Thanks for listening
and enjoy the episode. Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast

(00:23):
about business, political, and social disruption and what we can
learn from it. I'm Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course Biden
Trump and a presidency in play. The first act in
the Republican Party's presidential primary season. The Iowa CAUCUSUS has
come and gone. Other contests in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan,

(00:45):
and the collection of fifteen Super Tuesday states all lie ahead.
Donald Trump registered a resounding win in Iowa. If polls
are to be believed, he is situated to easily continue
his sprint to the GOP nomination, the flag bearer of
a party shaping itself in his image. Just a year
or so ago, mired in legal prosecutions and memories of

(01:05):
the January sixth Insurrection, Trump appeared to be politically spent.
Voters didn't seem to want to give him another chance
to torch the Constitution. Iowa at least has proven that
to be wrong. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, who has presided
over a robust and expanding an economy undercut by a
savage bout of inflation, a rational and globally minded approach

(01:28):
to foreign policy in the time of war, and a
lackluster approach to immigration, comes to the race with strengths
and weaknesses. A lot does it stake in the race
for the White House. And joining me to discuss the
presidential battle is Nancy Cook, a stellar political reporter for
Bloomberg News. She has covered both the Trump and Biden
white Houses, and she has a wealth of knowledge to share.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Greetings Nancy, Oh, thanks so much for having me Tim.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
I want to talk a little bit as we get
into this about your background, because you have an interesting
path into your current and powerful role, and I always
wonder what a nice person like you did to wind
up in this dirty little business we inhabit. So tell
me a little bit about your first job covering politics,
when and where was that.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
So, my first job out of journalism school was actually
at a tiny paper in Massachusetts called The New Bedford
standard times. It's a gritty, old fishing town that has
seen much better days. A downtown was cut off by
a highway. There's a ton of poverty. There's a big
drug epidemic there. It's a huge fishing port. There's a
huge migrant population there that works in these fish houses

(02:37):
on the waterfront. It's basically a place that a lot
of people drive through on their way to Cape Cod.
But it is an extremely gritty, sort of formerly powerful
industrial whaling city that has fallen on very hard times.
And so I worked there for two years when I
was in my twenties, and I do think that that
made me very scrappy, because you know, there was twelve

(02:57):
reporters on staff. I wrote eight stories a week. I
covered local politics. And the thing is when you cover
local politics in Massachusetts, which is the place that people
really care about politics, you also run into like the
selectmen that you cover at the coffee shop, and you
know when you're getting lunch, and so everybody gives you
feedback all the time on your stories. And I definitely

(03:19):
think it made me realize that journalism is about covering things,
but it's not just about the horse race. It's really
about what happens in people's lives, and there's a great
responsibility to that.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, I would argue actually that the horse race coverage
off an eclipses coverage of real policy issues that have
a direct and pivotal impact on voters' lives, and we
could do better to tilt more in that direction than
sometimes we do. But we're in an election season and
you've covered obviously national elections before. Was your first national

(03:50):
reporting job at MPR in two thousand and eight or
do I have the timeline wrong?

Speaker 2 (03:54):
No, that's right, And so I ended up at NPER
in two thousand and eight as a producer during the
electtion that Obama won. It was super historic and I
learned so much on that campaign. But one thing that
I did realize was that horse race politics sort of
failed us a little bit in that election, because I
do remember that fall of two thousand and eight, there

(04:15):
was a huge financial crisis, you have to remember, and
I remember sitting in a big meeting at NPR. You know,
it was a very low level employee there, and everyone
was trying to figure out how to cover the financial
crisis in terms of the presidential race, and political reporters
really didn't know what they were doing then, because the
financial crisis and the economic downturn that came about really

(04:36):
was so much bigger and ended up influencing the campaign
quite a bit. John McCain, who was Obama's challenger at
that point, was really caught flat footed by that. And
so after that I took a break from covering politics
for a few years and covered business and economics in
New York and then in DC, and sort of having
that background in economic policy in business really ended up

(04:58):
informing me quite a bit when I went back to
political reporting in twenty sixteen, And I do think that
that has been really a hallmark of my journalism career,
is sort of this blending of politics and policy, and
that's really what interests me the most.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
And in twenty sixteen you were at Politico. Obviously that
was an epic race for any number of reasons, but
that was obviously Donald Trump's great debut on national political landscape.
Were you aware during that election that this essentially seismic
moment had arrived or did it sort of reveal itself

(05:33):
more gradually to you?

Speaker 2 (05:35):
It revealed itself a little bit more gradually in twenty
sixteen that fall Politico assigned me and another reporter to
basically get to know all of the Trump transition people.
And the transition people are the people who will like
go in, you know, if someone wins and sort of
form the government initially, and it was funny because I
got to know all of them well because they didn't

(05:57):
think they were going to win, you know, even the
people around tru But you know, you have to remember,
in twenty sixteen, the people are on Trump and the
people who were closest to Trump did not think he
was going to win the twenty sixteen election. They were
surprised by that. So I think the media was surprised,
Trump was surprised, and I think all of Republican politics
was surprised. And it's never been the same since.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
What were the biggest changes, And not necessarily exactly in
twenty sixteen, but during the evolution of the Trump presidency
in the White House, I mean, we're aware of Donald
Trump as a in my mind, you know, a cartoon
figure willing to burn down certain civic norms to have
his way. I think that's been on steroids more recently,
but we can get to that. But beyond Trump as

(06:38):
a kind of human phenomenon and someone bursting the seams
of traditional presidencies and raising the specter of authoritarian rule,
et cetera, et cetera. What other sort of foundational changes
did you see in that twenty sixteen to twenty twenty
period that made that political era in that White House
different from other presidential races and administrations you had covered.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Well, it was just wild that he won the presidency.
I mean, he you know, had sort of no organization,
you know, in twenty sixteen in Iowa, he had like
no field operation, no one there, you know, no one
there to speak up for him at caucuses. And he
did lose the Iowa caucuses in twenty sixteen to Senator
Ted Cruz of Texas, but it was only by six

(07:22):
thousand votes. And he really changed the Republican Party in
twenty sixteen. He was able to speak to the working
class in a way that Republicans hadn't. He shed a
lot of the conventions that Republicans had been talking about
for years, Like he didn't want to cut social Security
in Medicare, which is what all these other Republicans like
Paul Ryan had been talking about for years. He wanted

(07:44):
to protect that. He talked about trade. He basically changed
the way Republicans talk about trade. Forever Republicans used to
be sort of these country club people who wanted to
cut taxes and believed in free trade. He doesn't, you know,
he really believes in this whole different trade policy of
putting punishing tariffs on other countries, really punishing China and

(08:05):
going after them, and that has informed not just the
Republican Party, but Democrats too, And then within his White
House he continued with that. He changed the nature of
immigration and how it looked. He was much more about
closing borders, restricting the number of people that could come here.
Trade was a huge thing. You know. I can't overstate
enough the extent to which he has remade the whole

(08:26):
Republican Party in his image and his policy philosophy. And
that started in twenty sixteen, and when he took the
White House it was just, you know, really took off well.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
And in many ways, it's not about a fully coherent
set of governing principles or policy principles. It is about
fostering this idea, almost a cult of personality around Trump himself,
which I don't think the Republican Party had ever done before.
They obviously had people who had great emotional connections with
their voters. I think of Ronald Reagan, for example, or

(08:59):
Dwight Eisenhower, or even George W. Bush in the early
part of his first term in office. Having said all
of that, Trump leaves his mark on this party, but
he still loses in twenty twenty. And in your mind,
why did he lose that race.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
I think he lost that race because of COVID. You
know I covered that race and he honestly, before COVID hit,
it seemed like he was on track to win. The
economy was doing very well, He was doing well in polls.
I remember Biden was nothing in Iowa Genmine. Reporters who
saw him there for the Democratic caucuses in twenty twenty

(09:34):
thought he seemed tired. He didn't seem like he was
with it. He was not drawing big crowds. But then
COVID hit in twenty twenty. In February, we really started
to see the first hints that this would be a
global problem. And then things started to shut down in March, schools, businesses,
the whole world change. And Trump responded very poorly to that.

(09:54):
He did not want to do mask mandates. He started
warring with his health officials. It didn't seem like he
took it seriously. He gave these pretty crazy two hour
COVID briefings where he urged people to inject themselves with
bleach like it just it became off the rails. And
you know, a lot of the infighting in his White
House or the influence of family members like Jared Kushner

(10:17):
was really laid bare during that time period, and they
could not come up with an effective COVID response. Tons
of people were dying. It's funny because they did actually
help develop the COVID vaccine very quickly, and I think
that if his earlier response had been more measured and
more tempered, that he would have potentially won reelection and

(10:41):
gotten credit for the COVID vaccine and its development. But
the public handling of it seemed like a disaster. I
think Americans felt tired of the chaos in the middle
of a global pandemic, and you have to remember that summer,
in addition to facing a global pandemic, there was a
ton of unrest. George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police
Office us her people were protesting in the street. People

(11:02):
were mad about race relations in the country, and it
just felt like Donald Trump was adding fuel to the
fire rather than resolving it, you know, leading the country
in the extreme times of turmoil. And you know, he's
never been a president for the whole country. He's always
been a president that really speaks to his supporters, and
that became very apparent during that time.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
He also was impeached twice. He escaped that, but there
were also two impeachments. And the other thing I think
about COVID is he was sort of trapped by this
populis fervor he had helped unleash because I think there
was this widespread belief that government couldn't be a force
for good, You couldn't necessarily put your faith in government

(11:44):
solutions to big problems, and COVID really demanded the kind
of effort that I think ultimately got the country back
on the right track, which was this public private partnership
that resulted in the creation of the COVID vaccines. And
I think he knew in his books he couldn't really
embrace something like that right out of the gates because
it ran contradictory to the sentiment of his populace base.

(12:08):
And much of his own rhetoric about government getting in
people's ways. We wind up with that with Joe Biden
in the White House, and you've now covered Joe Biden
for the last three and a half years or so.
What kind of a report card would you give Biden.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
Well, I think that Biden has done a ton of things, actually,
but his White House has really struggled with selling it
and sort of making that apparent to people. You have
to remember they've passed a sweeping infrastructure law. They responded
to COVID, Well, they got it under control. They sent
a bunch of money to schools to reopen. They made
sure people had vaccines, they made sure people had tests.

(12:45):
You know. He had passed the Chips Act, which helps
basically bring a lot of manufacturing of pretty key things
to the US like semi conductors and chips. He canceled
student loan debt that has been blocked by courts, but
the Department of Education is still managing to do a
bunch of that stuff in a regulatory way. He appointed
the first black Supreme Court justice who's a woman. That's

(13:06):
a huge accomplishment that the left has really wanted. The
list sort of goes on and on. But for whatever reason,
and I think it's mostly both the people around Biden
but Biden himself, they have not been able to sell
the American people on that record. Biden has never been
a great orator. He's not an Obama figure. You know,

(13:26):
he doesn't go out there and give these amazing speeches.
He's more like a grandpa who has a lot of
gaffes and makes the same old jokes. And the people
around him too. You know, it's a very insular group.
They have been together for a long time, and I
would say one of my critiques of covering them is
that they can be very insular and move slowly. And
so for instance, when we see things like a low

(13:47):
approval rating, you know, he's having problems in swing states
with voters. These are like flashing warning signs for this
upcoming election. And what they're choosing to do is sort
of double down and blame the media or defensive rather
than realize this is going to be a tough election
for them.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
And now the first sort of litmus test of that
is what happened in the recent Iowa caucuses, in which
Donald Trump, after not really actively campaigning in the state,
though he had a much more robust ground operation than
he had in the past, which I think is something
we can talk about later in the show, because that
also should be a warning sign to the Biden crew

(14:27):
from a purely competitive standpoint, But he is not physically
in the state very much, but he dominates the polls,
he dominates the sentiment of voters, and he winds up
with a thirty point victory over the second place finisher,
Ron de Santis, and slightly more than that over NICKI Haley,
who finishes in third place. All of the other Republican

(14:47):
condenders have dropped out of the race so very quickly.
Now it is Trump versus DeSantis versus Haley. And I
think Trump was expected to romp in Iowa. But what
else came out of the Iowa caucuses that surprised you
despite the sort of foregone conclusion that Trump was going
to be the victor.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
There well two things. One, I think that it's not
just that he won the Iowa caucuses. It's said he
did well with almost every demographic group that includes. He
did well with all of the age groups. He did
well all across Iowa rural areas, suburban areas. Do you
know what I mean, he just did well. He's always
been a president who has spoken to the working class.

(15:29):
He did well with college educated Republicans. I mean, he
is really just has a commanding lead among Republicans across
the board. And I think that's very hard for his
rivals to catch up to because it's not like, you know,
they can pick off, Oh, well, he's just the working
class guy, but I'll get the college age Republicans. It's like, nope,
Nikki Haley got some college age Republicans, but Donald Trump

(15:52):
got the same amount. Like he's just doing well with
every group. So I think that that is a real
lesson to take away, that there is a depth of
support therefore him that is pretty remarkable. The second thing
is just that I think Republican voters and voters in general,
as we've seen in the swing state polls, sort of
have amnesia about some of the things that he's done.
Like people don't really talk about January sixth that much.

(16:14):
There's a bunch of polling that shows that a huge
soauthor Republican Party does not think that January sixth was
a problem anymore. And so he has also been very
successful at rewriting the history of what happened sort of
after the election in twenty twenty, what he was responsible for,
and I think that we'll see that moving forward.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Would a candidate in the past be forgiven for inciting
an insurrection of the capitol, for several civil and criminal indictments,
for being charged with more than ninety crimes. My feeling
is absolutely not. So something in the water has changed,
and I'd be curious to know how. Despite all of

(16:55):
that important baggage that Trump carries, as well as his
sort of own proclamations that he might be a dictator
for a day or more, maybe he'll serve another term
beyond this one, etc. Etc. All the warning signs are there,
and yet it doesn't really affect his standing at all
with his base and now with an expanding part of

(17:17):
the Republican electorate as Iowa is shown.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, it's been fascinating. And I talked with a bunch
of polsters in Iowa who have asked questions about if
he is convicted on any one of these ninety one
charges that he faces, will that hurt him? And they
all said no, you know, they do not expect him
to hurt him. So it's hard to see, like where
The breaking point is. I have been at a bunch
of Trump events in the past year, and what I

(17:40):
have marveled at is his ability to turn his misfortune
to a political advantage. He is out there at rallies
telling people, I am being prosecuted because of you. I
am a victim, I am fighting for you, and these
people believe it. You know. I was at an event
in Florida that he did this fall. There was someone

(18:01):
who had been to sixty rallies. You know, people really
view it almost like a grateful dead show. They come.
It's like a sense of community. It's a movement. People
come to the rallies to see people that they've seen
at other rallies. They wear T shirts. It's not really
just like a political rally. It is almost like a concert.

(18:22):
And he has been so successful at flipping the script
around on his criminal charges and making it sort of
all about him and to his political advantage. And I
will tell you his campaign officials are delighted by this.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah. I think the idea of I'm a victim too.
I know what it's like to be persecuted. Even though
Donald Trump has walked through life with enormous embedded advantages,
he's a white male. He's a wealthy white male. He's
had these various rings of protection around him his whole life,
his father's wealth, celebrity, now the White House. But he
has always sort of, I think, pitched himself historically as

(18:58):
the working person's idea of what you would do if
you became rich. You'd have glitzy women around you, you'd
have a triplex condo that looked like Louis the fourteenth
that built it on acid. You would have a jet
with your name on it, et cetera, et cetera, what
you do with your lot of money. And he's shrewd
about that, you know, he's built a business around that.
What's interesting, though, I guess in the electoral context to me,

(19:22):
is while he has this bond of shared victimhood and
presents himself as an EmPATH to his voters, he hasn't
really come up with a full set of policy solutions
that really address the very real struggles working class and
middle class Americans are contending with.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
Yeah, you're right, he hasn't, and I don't think that
we're going to see a ton of policy specifics from
him ahead of the election, Do you know what I mean?
I don't think we're going to hear from him what
would you do on affordable housing, for instance, what would
you do to tackle inflation. I think that his campaign
doesn't see a lot of value and offering these specifics.
I think that they're going to try to win based

(20:05):
on this personality cult that he has and based on
the connection that he has forged with his base of
working class voters. But this expanding base, which we've already
talked about, and that's really going to be coupled with
an intense organization this time. They're very organized on the ground.
That's going to be how they're going to win the election.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
On that note, I wanted just tilt to a break
here from one of our sponsors, and then we'll come
right back and pick up this very interesting conversation. I'm
back with Nancy Cook, who's educating me and you, I
hope about the presidential primary season that just kicked off. Nancy,

(20:43):
we were just talking about Trump's win in Iowa and
the fact that he demographically scored very well with groups
who had conventionally been seen as not having an affinity
for him. Of interest to me is college educated Republican
voters which were seen as sort of the province of
Nicki Haley, and Nikki Haley has closed within several percentage

(21:04):
points of Trump in New Hampshire, though that might be
her high water mark in this whole campaign. But New
Hampshire's a very different Republican electorate than Iowa. New Hampshire
has more educated Republican voters, more affluent Republican voters than Iowa.
So it's a very different kind of case. But I
wanted to ask you where does Iowa leave Nicki Haley?

(21:27):
And if she doesn't really have a standout show in
New Hampshire, you know, her next step is in South Carolina,
her home state where she was governor, And if Trump
beats her in South Carolina, I don't see how she
extends her campaign beyond South Carolina. But I want to
know what you think about that. And you know what
we could possibly expect to see in New Hampshire and

(21:49):
South Carolina with her.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
So Nicki Hailey has spent a ton of time in
New Hampshire over the last year, and New Hampshire people
like her, you know, her more moderate style really speaks
to them. Also, you have to remember that independence and
Democrats can you know, switch over and vote in the
New Hampshire primary, the New Hampshire Republican primary. And so
if a bunch of Independents and Democrats come out to

(22:11):
vote for her in New Hampshire and she can pick
up some of the supporters from Chris Christy, you know,
who just dropped out of the race recently, that could
really help her. You know, she is closing in on
Trump in the polling, but I'm just not sure it
will be enough for her to beat him. I'm not
on the ground in New Hampshire. I'm sort of in
between Iowa and New Hampshire now, so I'll have to

(22:32):
see what it looks like when I'm on the ground there,
But I would be surprised if she overtakes him. And
then the tricky thing is is that he is still
pulling at a huge advantage in South Carolina, her home state,
and is definitely expected to win there. And so really
I think her best chance to do well and beat
him would be in New Hampshire. And if she does that,

(22:53):
you know, it could change the tone of the race.
I think it could show some Republicans that maybe Trump
isn't as invincible. But the Trump campaign is banking on
the fact that Nikki Haley does not have enough of
a base in the Republican Party to actually get a
path to the nomination. That New Hampshire will proper up
potentially because of Democrats and independence, but that won't be

(23:14):
the strategy in South Carolina.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
And did you pick up that vibe in Iowa? Obviously
you were sort of on an Arctic tundra there. You know,
there was sub zero temperatures, there was a blizzard. It
affected turnout. I think only slightly more than fourteen percent
of registered Republican voters actually turned out to vote in
the caucuses there. What was it like on the ground
in terms of just the sentiment you were able to

(23:38):
pick up on in Iowa about Trump and Haley and DeSantis.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
Well, I would say when I was in Iowa, Trump
just still seemed really dominant. And you know, I talked
with some business leaders in Iowa who I think didn't
necessarily want to support Trump again, but were already sort
of getting back in line because they viewed him as
the inevitable nine. Nikki Haley really surged in the polls
in Iowa within the last few weeks, and there was

(24:06):
some pulling a few days before the caucus that showed
that she could have potentially come in second, but that
support was pretty soft, you know, it wasn't people who
showed the same enthusiasm level that they did for Trump,
and so I think the bad weather really hurt her.
She also did not have as much of a ground
game as DeSantis or Trump did. You have to remember that,

(24:27):
like she was surging in the Iowa polls kind of late.
She got some money from the Koch Brothers a little
bit late. So her ground game in Iowa and Iowa
is so much about a ground game, like making sure
people would basically just go to the caucuses. I think
she was just a little late with the organization to
do well. You know, DeSantis has a lot of problems.
His campaign has had a ton of turmoil. The candidate

(24:48):
himself can be pretty awkward. He has a hard time
connecting with people. I heard this from Iowan's both you know,
sort of leaders in the Iowa Republican Party but also
just rank and file people who I spoke with it
rallies and events the days leading up to it. But
he did have a really strong ground game and I
think that helped him in Iowa. I mean, his campaign
was like offering to shovel people's driveways and they needed it.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
See. That's why I want them to take a campaign
more near my house. You know. The one other thing
I want to sort of think about with Haley is
Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, has thrown his
support very strongly and visibly behind her, but he has
also said that if she ends up not being the candidate,
he's going to support Trump. And I think that that's
a kind of drum roll you're going to hear across

(25:30):
much of the Republican Party that even people who have
been openly critical of Donald Trump and call him a
threat to democracy and a buffoon and a racist, et cetera,
et cetera, when push comes to shove and the political
stakes are at play. And I still find this mysterious,
but they're willing to throw in with him, and I
think that that might become visible in New Hampshire. With DeSantis,

(25:53):
it was interesting to me in Iowa. He gets beaten
by thirty points, but he said, you know, I still
got my ticket punch. Here we go. But he obviously
got that ticket punch for South Carolina because he's not
going to New Hampshire at all, and so South Carolina
could be in the end of the road for him
as well.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Couldn't it. Yeah, he is going to New Hampshire. He
just went to South Carolina first after Iowa. But he's
not expected to do well in New Hampshire. Some recent
polling had him pulling like fourth or even fifth behind
Chris Christy before Christy dropped out, and so we're not
expecting him to do well in New Hampshire. He's going
to kind of make his last stand in South Carolina.
You have to remember the Desanta's people, though, there's always

(26:31):
like a lot of chest slumping, then a lot of bravado,
but never back down, which is the super pack that
did all the ground game in Iowa started laying people off,
so you know, there's always a lot of bravado there,
but then they end up doing layoffs because they're running
out of money. So I know they say they want
to go through South Carolina, which is at the end
of February. I do not know if they will actually
have the money to do that, which is.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Pretty amazing given the windfall Ronda Santa's had coming into
this campaign. A big portion of which they appear to
have spent on the jets, so maybe they'll learn some
discipline the next time around. After South Carolina, I think
Michigan is one of the next big votes, and then
we hit this collection of more than a dozen Super
Tuesday states in early March. But prior to even Super Tuesday,

(27:15):
Trump could have this wrapped up. Is this a primary
season in which the primaries don't really matter?

Speaker 2 (27:22):
I mean, I just think that Trump basically broke the primary,
you know, similar to the way he broke Republican politics
and reshaped it in his own image and broke Republican
policy long standing policy and trade and immigration and all
these things, he has broken the primary. You know. He's
done it totally differently, and I will be curious to
see if anyone ever does it the same again. He

(27:43):
did not campaign extensively in Iowa until sort of the
very final stretch. He is campaigning in New Hampshire a
lot this week, but hasn't spent a ton of time
up there. And you have to remember that he's basically
merging his campaign at this point with all these courthouse appearances,
and he's trying to sort of turn the courthouse appearances
and speaking after into their own little mini campaign rally.

(28:05):
But he has totally changed the nature of the primary.
You know. Also, big donors aren't really backing him, and
it doesn't matter. He has a bunch of people who
give ten dollars and twenty dollars, you know, all these
people around the country, and that's what's fooling his candidacy.
One of the most interesting things this cycle is I
have never seen such a gap between what sort of

(28:25):
upper middle class and wealthy Republicans want from the Republican
primary and what everyone else wants. You know, there's all
these super rich donors who are berefed that it's going
to be Trump again, or have been, and they've been
trying to back to Santis or Nikki Heely but it
hasn't been working. They don't want Trump, but he's still
likely going to be the nominee.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
Why don't they want Trump. He's going to cut their taxes,
He'll loosen regulations on their businesses. On the other hand,
he is retrogressive in many ways about global trade, and
he's probably not, in the most charitable analysis, do anything
to really improve national security. I know he positions himself
as better on this issue. Than Biden. But the reality

(29:06):
is he is ignorant of foreign affairs and hasn't really
developed any kind of a consistent policy about some of
the global security threats we face. So what is it
that wealthy educated Republicans who can't bring themselves to vote
for a Democrat but can't detest Trump? What aren't they
getting from Trump that they want? Is it simply civility

(29:29):
or does it go beyond that.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
I actually don't think it's civility. I mean, I think
we're just giving everyone way too much credit. I think
it's actually just that his white House was chaotic. Every
day was sort of this remarkable fight between different factions
in the White House. There was sort of like a
business faction or a more maga faction, and it was like,

(29:52):
if you were a business leader, you kind of never
knew what policy was going to come out. It kind
of depended like who won the fight in the Oval
Office that day. I mean, it was really fun to
report on. But I think if you're a business leader,
you want some certainty that policies or executive orders aren't
going to come out that you like literally weren't expecting,
or that policy wouldn't change one day to the next,

(30:14):
and I think it's just this feeling of certainty and
a desired not to have chaos that has kept these
people from not supporting him. I do think in the
end they will get behind Trump because they would rather
have lower taxes, less regulation, and like the few parts
of sort of Republican orthodoxy that still remain. They would
rather have that than Biden. But for now they've really

(30:34):
been sitting it out. I also think that we may
not see some big Republican donors step into the race,
simply because if these people are involved in running public companies,
there would be big backlash from their employees if they
supported Trump. So I think these people may stay quiet,
and although they may vote for Trump, they'll sit on
the sidelines and instead get involved in things like Senate races.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
And issues like Trump weaponizing Justice Department against his opponents,
or sending the US military into Mexico to resolve the
drug wars, or attacking other institutions across our civic and
academic and media and legal landscapes in the US. Those
aren't reasons for any Republicans with resources to simply say no,

(31:21):
I still can't do this. No.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
I think people don't like those things, and I think
that people think that those are bad things. I just
think the number one thing is total chaos. They don't
want the chaos that was around him in the last
White House. And then I think a bunch of them
are really bothered by those things. You have to remember, too,
Trump is totally transactional, and he's into retribution. That's part
of his personality, and so I think that there is

(31:43):
a fear when you're dealing with someone like that. If
you don't play ball and you don't flatter him and
his White House, he could come after you, you know,
or your industry, and so I think that is another fear.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah, Ben Carson was on CNN the other night saying
that Trump doesn't really believe in vengeance and retribution. I thought, huh,
that's not that Donald Trump. I've come to know. But
we'll see. There's also been pressure on Biden over the
last year not to run and to step aside for
a younger, more vibrant, more verbally adept candidate in order

(32:14):
to create some energy among younger voters, energy among Latino,
Hispanic and Black voters who are slipping away at least
at the margins around the Democratic Party. Why has Biden
hung in there thus far? And do you think anything
that happened in Iowa is giving him pause?

Speaker 2 (32:32):
I think Biden has hung in there so far because
you have to remember, he's always wanted to be president.
He's run for president several times, and he hasn't gotten far.
He was finally made vice president under Obama. He has
a real inferiority complex that has just been a hallmark
through his political career. There's sort of a real chip
on his shoulder about always feeling like, oh, you know,

(32:55):
the Obama people looked down at him when he was
in the White House as vice president there was some
tension there, and then as president. I think there's a
real chip on his shoulder. He and his team they
feel like they've done all these great things, you know,
for the country. They've changed industrial policy, the unemployment rates low,
they tackle COVID well, and they feel like they're not
getting credit for it, and they're mad about it. And

(33:16):
I think once he got into the White House, if
it's something you've always wanted and you feel like you've
done a good job and you're not getting credit for
you're not going to walk away from it. He is
eighty one years old, and I think that he and
the people around him sort of underestimate how much the
age question weighs on voters and even donors. They're trying

(33:37):
to overcompensate by this by bringing donors to the White House,
you know, by having Biden meet with them and make
sure they feel good. But when I talk to people,
you know, vote for Biden at this point, I think
what's animating Democratic voters is not Biden's candidacy. It's a
threat of another Trump term. And I think people will
vote for Biden for that reason, not because people think,

(33:58):
oh wow, he's a perfect presidential candidate for twenty twenty four.
I want to keep supporting him.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Let's take another quick break here from a sponsor, and
we'll roll right back into this conversation. I'm back with
Nancy Cook, a Bloomberg News political reporter, and we're talking
about the Iowa caucuses, the other looming presidential primaries, and
the candidates. If, as it seems likely Nancy, that Trump

(34:26):
and Biden will be the nominees at the end of
all of this, how do you see them positioning themselves
against one another? How will Biden position himself against Trump,
How will Trump position himself against Biden.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
So we got some glimpse of this in Iowa. I
think the Trump campaign is really going to hammer Biden
on the economy and immigration over and over again, and
those are going to be their two main themes. Trump's
aids are trying to steer him away from talking about
his view that he lost the election. They don't want
him to talk about January sixth, But they're really going

(34:59):
to hammer home economy the fact that they're say the
borders are too open, and those are going to be
the two main themes Biden. Those people are really banking
on the idea that democracy is at stake. They are
going to make January sixth and everything that Trump has
ever said about being a dictator for twenty four hours
like that's going to be in an ad this year.

(35:20):
They're also really trying to make women's reproductive rights and
the restrictions on abortion and Roe v. Wade falling as
a very key thing. You have to remember that Democrats
did much better than people anticipated in the midterms. Female
and suburban women have really turned away from Trump. That's
a weak spot for him because of abortion. And so

(35:40):
I would just say abortion democracy for Biden over and
over again.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Let's unpack a little bit of that. I think you know,
in Iowa, both the entrance and the exit polls show
that the top two issues were caucus goers, as you noted,
immigration and the economy, and the Trump team is obviously
latched onto that. You know, the economy. I think the
Biden team has a good story to tell if they
can figure out their messaging. Because GDP has grown, wages

(36:05):
have gone up, job creation has gone up. The US
is the most resilient developed post COVID economy in the world.
It's been a very good story. The stock market has
performed well, et cetera, et cetera. But there's been this
bugaboo of inflation where people, really average people feel the
economy more than pointy heads like I do at the
gas station, in the grocery store, et cetera, et cetera.

(36:27):
And they haven't really been able to get around that narrative.
And by the time inflation appears to have peaked and
is actually waning, but that might not be in time
for this election. Immigration, on the other hand, I don't
think the Biden administration has a good story to tell there.
It has been chaotic at the southern border. The administration
came in and didn't really try to move beyond where

(36:48):
the Trump administration was on this, and states that have
but the southern border feel this pain, and they've been exporting,
i think, in heinous ways for political points. They're migrants
to states like Illinois and New York and Massachusetts, Blue states.
Why hasn't the Biden administration been able to get its
act together on immigration?

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Well, I think that to really deal with immigration, you'd
have to have, you know, probably some sweeping legislation come
out of Congress, and there's no sort of bipartisan appetite
to do that which you would have to, and that
has been the problem for many, many years. Like I
don't think that anyone in either party thinks, oh, immigration
is going great. There's just not really a political will
or consensus in Congress to solve it, and so that

(37:31):
leaves the Biden team with things that they have to
do vis a v executive order. But I do think
that they have sort of tried not to deal with
it as best they can. And what has happened is
that a bunch of these Republican governors have sent bus
loads of migrants to these blue states. As you talked
about creating crisis in New York. You know where Bloomberg
has its headquarters in Iowa. The Illinois Governor J. D.

(37:54):
Pritzker was there on behalf of the Biden administration sort
of trying to give a counterpro argument in the middle
of this Republican caucus as to why Democrats would be better.
But at this press conference, I was said, all these
questions that he got was what he was going to
do with migrants in Chicago. And so it is a
real problem for the Biden administration. They don't have a

(38:15):
good answer on it, and they've been trying to hide
from it, and the Trump people are going, I can
tell you, going to shove it down their throat again
and again.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
And I think no matter how much the Biden administration says,
there's only so much we can do because there's gridlock
in Congress and Congress has to act. Republicans in Congress
are very happy to hang this particular albatross around the
White House's neck because they know the electoral points they'll
score off of it. And they're really going to be stuck.
And I don't know how they explain their way out

(38:44):
of that one. Getting over to the Trump side, you know,
you mentioned January sixth, democracy and reproductive rights for women,
and one of the other things that really interested me
in the entrance and exit polls in Iowa again, was
I think the top two reasons at least an entrance
polls that caucas Gooers gave for supporting Trump. The first
one was he fights for us, and the second one

(39:07):
is he shares our values. You know, he knows he
animates his supporters that way. He's been I think, engaging
in pretty craven spirituality, baiting, saying he's the chosen one
God sent Donald Trump to heal the voters. He has
tried to engage emotionally on almost any path, regardless of
whether it's true or not, with his voters, and it

(39:30):
has worked so for that voting block, things like January
six and the threat to democracy. It's falling on deaf ears.
But I do think for swing voters, independence, moderate Republicans,
conservative Democrats, January sixth and democracy are still salient issues,
aren't they.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
I think that's what the Biden team is hoping. I
just think we're going to have the longest general election,
potentially ever, because if Trump wins the nomination by early
to mid March, will be have a general election fight
from March to November. That is a very long time
for Trump and Biden to sort of go after each other.
And I think that what we haven't seen is while

(40:09):
Trump's support among Republicans is much deeper than we thought,
you know, I'm still not totally sure once we do
hit a general election and all the media focus is
on him day after day and not like him Nikki Haley, DeSantis,
avec Ramaswami like once it's just really trained on him,
I'm not sure that like his statements or the things

(40:30):
that he says off the cuff at rallies or at events,
I'm just not sure how those will play with as
you said, moderates, swing state voters, suburban women like these
are people that have turned away from him in the past,
and I'll be very curious to see that, you know,
once we hit the summer.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Although he won the presidency in twenty sixteen, he has
lost every national referendum he's been engaged with since then,
the twenty eighteen midterms, the twenty twenty election, the twenty
two midterms, with more recently abortion being a real key
reason for that. That was the last sort of policy
thing I wanted to ask you about. Is that made

(41:06):
a big difference in the midterms. We've seen voters in
unexpected states like Kansas and Ohio really moves strongly to
protect women's access to abortion and reproductive rights. How big
a factor is that going to be in the Biden
Trump face off.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
I think it's going to be huge. And the way
that immigration is probably the weakest spot for the Biden administration,
abortion is the weakest spot for Trump, but also for
all Republicans. It's interesting because Trump really tries to distance
himself from the abortion question, when in fact he appointed
the three Supreme Court justices who overturned the Dabbs decision,

(41:44):
which is overturned Roe v. Wade. But he really tries
to act like this is a bad issue for Republicans.
You know, I wasn't involved, like sort of a hands
off thing, and I think that that won't fly. Like
abortion is the question that he doesn't have a good
answer to on his side, and that's why I think
Democrats keep hammering him on it.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah. Yeah, On the one hand, when he says that
I had nothing to do with this, even though I
appointed the Supreme Court justices that made this happen. He also,
on other occasions talks about the Court owing him favors
for their appointment, so he wants to have it both ways.
All of this is probably going to come down to
a handful of swing states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,

(42:23):
we know them, maybe North Carolina, and then swing voters
within those states. But the sort of characteristics of the
swing voters are a little different than we've had in
past elections. Right, won't swing voters in this election actually
be younger voters and voters of color.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
It will be they'll be younger voters, they'll be voters
of color. I mean, I just think, well, the Democrats
at least expect this election to be very, very close.
And it's kind of wild that our presidents at this
point are being elected by a tiny sliver of people
in basically seven states who don't have strong feelings about
Biden or Trump or it's people who hate both of them,

(43:00):
but they just have to decide who they hate less.
And that's kind of the electorate that we're dealing with.
There's some political scientists or longtime political operatives who call
these voters who hate both of them the double haters,
and it's like, which one do you hate? Which one
are you going to hate less in November? And that's
ultimately who's going to decide who's in the White House next.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Yeah, it's sort of emblematic of the United States right
now is we are judging things based on who you
hate less, not who do you love more. Unfortunately, we've
also run out of time, but I want to ask
you one last question. I always like to ask guests
what they've learned from a certain event or experience. What
have you learned thus far that you didn't know, say

(43:40):
two years ago or a year ago, about how the
Biden Trump face off is shaping up?

Speaker 2 (43:48):
So I would say on the Trump side, Trump is
still Trump built the way that he has always been built.
He has not changed, the people around him have changed.
And there is a very competent, smart, small group of
people around him that understand politics very well and that
executed their strategy and ground game in Iowa pretty flawlessly,

(44:10):
and we can expect to see them take that to
state by state. And I think the Democrats have not
really caught onto the fact that Trump is not staffed
by a bunch of clowns this time. There's no infighting.
They get along with each other, and I think that
Democrats should take the people around him and his operation
this time very very seriously. That's been my takeaway for

(44:32):
months dealing with them, But that's really my takeaway from Iowa.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Nancy. I hope you'll come back again and chat with me,
because I always learned something from you.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Thank you. I would love to.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Nancy Cook is a Bloomberg News political reporter covering the
White House in the twenty twenty four presidential race. You
can find her work online at the Bloomberg dot com
website and on the Bloomberg terminal. You can also find
her on Twitter at nan Cook. Here. At crash Course,
we believe the college can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising,

(45:04):
and always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I learned that
Donald Trump has learned a lot himself about how to
professionalize his political game. That doesn't mean he's going to
roll into the White House, but it does mean he's
going to be a more formidable opponent for Joe Biden
this time around. What did you learn? We'd love to

(45:26):
hear from you. You can tweet the Bloomberg Opinion handle
at Opinion or me at Tim O'Brien using the hashtag
Bloomberg Crash Course. You can also subscribe to our show
wherever you're listening right now and leave us a review
that helps more people find the show. This episode was
produced by the indispensable Anamasarakis and me. Our supervising producer

(45:49):
is Magnus Hendrickson, and we had editing help from Sage Bauman,
Jeff Grocott, Mike Niitza and Christine Vanden Bilard. Blake Maples
does our sound engineering. Then our original theme song was
composed by Luis Guerra. I'm Tim O'Brien. We will be
back next week with another Crash Course