Eye of the Storm (Episode 383)

This week, the gang looks at Stormy Daniel's testimony and how down-ticket Democrats are far out-raising their GOP opponents in key battleground states.

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Episode Transcript

(00:14):
Welcome to the More Perfect Union,the podcast that offers real debate without the
hate. I'm Kevin Calton and asalways I'm joined on the mic by Rebecca
Cushmeider. I'd like to call fora mistrial on the ground set everything you
have said so far as prejudicial.Our audience is going to think this is
a podcast and that we might debateand that we don't hate each other,

(00:38):
and we can't be having that.And I'm be come think in Maryland and
the esteemed DJ maguire, who hasnot agreed to the ceasefire whichever ceasefire you're
talking about from Hampton Rose, Virginia. Else has agreed to a ceasefire either

(01:00):
maybe Joe Biden he seems to beceasing to send firearms to Israelsa or is
that later on the rundown? AndGreg Methusac could not be with us tonight.
But speaking of ceasefires, there's noceasefire in that New York courtroom where
Miss Daniels was testifying today against misterTrump. And I'll just throw this open

(01:22):
and say, what were your thoughtsabout the reports of what went on in
the courtroom. Well, first ofall, I want to I want to
voice my solidarity with Stormy Daniels asa fellow fast talker and somebody who's been
told to slow down. So I'measier to understand. And you know what,
Stormy, I feel your pain.I feel like we could we could

(01:44):
hang. She had a lot tosay. What about you, DJ,
I know you don't watch these things, but did you get a chance to
read news reports? I did?And I think the prosecution has firmly established
their motive now because for a lotof us, the idea that that Donald
Trump would want to keep it quietthat he banged a porn star isn't really

(02:05):
his brand, right because it justgoes against against the green. But the
fact that there was a whole levelof creepiness involved, that there was,
for lack of a better term,a consent penumber, just makes it all
the worse. And that is thekind of thing that almost certainly would have

(02:27):
lost Donald Trump votes among women,among enough women for him to lose the
election had this come out before itdidn't. And now we know, why
can we talk about the creepy thing? He said to her, you can
talk about whatever you like. I'mnot going to sustain any objections. He

(02:47):
told her that she reminded him ofhis daughter. Yes, yes, because
she was blonde, smart, beautiful, and people to estimate his daughter,
that's what he said. Yeah,that's gross. I would have had to
leave, maybe on a gurney ifsomebody I was about to hook up with

(03:08):
said that to me, I wouldhave been dead of the gross. So
let me ask you this. DJbrought up the women vote, which of
course is going to be a keyaspect of the general election this coming fall.
But what about the woman vote onthe jury? My understanding is is
that I think there were five womenon the jury something like that, And

(03:30):
Rebecca, I want to ask you, I have my own opinion, but
obviously we didn't see it. We'rejust going by the reports coming out of
the courtroom. But how do youthink her testimony will play to the women
on that jury? You know,the part about the actual sexual encounter is

(03:51):
really kind of incidental, and ifyou're able to understand that, that's you
know, that's more exposition than crucialto the legal case, like that all
had to happen for the cover upto happen in the record, falsification to
happen. So how you feel aboutwhat happened in that room isn't really material

(04:12):
to how you feel about what happenedin the cover up and if people are
able to be clinical about it orlegal minded, I guess about it and
say, Okay, yes, wehad to hear all that to sort of
establish it's a consistent story that she'stold for many years. But you know,
she's not alleging any wrongdoing that happenedin the room. It sounds like

(04:38):
more like she considers that just aschevee incident in her life, and you
know the legal questions come later.So I'm not sure. You know,
I can look at it that way, but I might be an oddity dj
any thoughts on that because I'm goingto weigh in, but I want to
hear you guys have I was goingto agree with Rebecca had we had this

(04:59):
conversation yesterday before she testified. Nowthat she has testified, and now that
I'm looking at some of the thingsshe has testified about, I do think
what happened in that room is important. I'm gonna bar look at the Washington
Post story on this quote. That'swhen I had that moment when I felt
like the room spun in full motionand I felt the blood leave my hands

(05:20):
and feet, almost like if youstand up too fast, she testified.
Trump quote stood between me and thedoor, not in a threatening manner.
Unquote, though she said she feltan imbalance of power, particularly with the
Trump security guard outside. I thinkI blacked out, Daniel said, adding
there were many details she didn't remember, but insisting she wasn't drugg or drunk.

(05:43):
Quote. Next thing I know,I was on the bed, she
testified. I was staring at theceiling. I didn't know how I got
there. If those words had beenin the Washington Post in October of two
thousand and sixteen, there's a verygood chance Hillary Clinton would be finishing up
her second term right now, andwe'd be arguing about whether Tim Kaine can

(06:08):
actually hold the White House for theDemocrats in a race this close, where
you know where just the smallest kindof thing can turn voters. That kind
of thing is going to turn offa lot of voters, and I have
a feeling it will turn off alot of jurors. On that case.

(06:29):
We now know why Trump didn't wantany of this to come out. That's
what was proven here today. Iwon't say great minds think alike. But
I will say that my mind thinksa lot alike with this great mind of
DJs because we agree on that.Yeah, I totally see it the same
way that you do, DJ,and I'm going to take it one step
further. First of all, Iactually heard a lawyer on CNN say exactly

(06:55):
what you just said about if this, if those details had come out in
twenty s sixteen, he would nothave been elected president. You know,
I think the old stereotype is thatwomen jurors might be a little bit more
conservative, they might be a littlebit more taken aback by a woman as

(07:16):
flashy and as scandalous as Stormy Daniels. But let's remember this is a New
York jury comprised of New Yorkers.And of course I don't know this for
a fact. I'm just guessing,But my guess is that the women that
comprise this jury, if they're diein the woold New Yorkers, will not

(07:40):
be offended by Stormy Daniels. Theywill see her as the exploited party in
that relationship. And I agree withthe way DJ described it and the satin
pajamas and just the kind of itwas expected that she was going to walk
into this hotel room and sleep withhim on his part, I think all

(08:01):
of that whether it's germane to thecase or not, And Rebecca, you're
correct from a legal standpoint, it'sprobably not germane. Although I do think
a part of the defense was supposedto be claiming that this sexual affair never
happened, that he just paid onehundred and thirty thousand dollars to two different
women because he just didn't want thewhiff of scandal reaching his wife's ears.

(08:28):
If the jury buys that, well, then then God help us and God
help the jury system. But Ido think that the way this played out,
and you know, again we didn'thear how she said it, and
you can't guess what's going to bein people's minds, but it sounded to
me like she comes off as asympathetic witness. Circling back to what DJ
just said, you know that Trumphad a motivation to hide the consent questions

(08:52):
are askable in this situation, thenthat Trump was trying to cover that part
up. I think you are makinga real leap of logic to believe that
Trump knew that about that situation.Trump believes he nailed a plorn star and
she loved every minute of it.Oh yeah, that's what he thought he

(09:15):
was covering up, you know,the salient. So did Harvey Weinstein.
You probably thought every actress was exactlyfelt lucky to be with answer. So
Donald Trump was just trying to coverup an extra marital affair. The fact
that it is, in fact sucha me too story is it's probably coming
as a surprise to him, evenif the lawyers who sat down and helped

(09:37):
prepare Miss Daniels are not in theslightest bit surprised. Something tells me that
the phrase me too means something verydifferent to Donald Trump than it does to
the rest of the human populace.The only phrase he knows is me first.
Yeah. We have to remember,though, this is this conspiracy involves

(09:58):
more than Donald Trump. It involvedDavid Pecker, what a name, It
involved Michael Cohen. It involved acouple of other at least one banker's name
I can't remember. And maybe DonaldTrump didn't want didn't want to believe this
story from story from from Miss Daniels, but I'm pretty sure one of the
people who worked with him on thishad heard it, was aware of it.

(10:22):
And knew how explosive that could be. I mean, I suppose that's.
Yeah, it's possible that somebody elseunderstood that it was a really bad
story. But you know, theKaren McDougall's story is a lot less salacious,
or at least it was in theinterview that I heard not long after
Trump was inaugurated, and he workedjust as hard to get that covered up.

(10:43):
So you know, there's there isonly so much differentiation possible in the
mind of Donald Trump. Well whatif that was part of the plan.
Donald Trump's whole thing is if hedoes something wrong, do a whole bunch
of other things wrong so you can'tyou can't notice what the actual wrong thing
was. It's the fire hose.This could very well be. You know
what, I got to pay heroff too, so that people think it's
just that I banged a porn starinstead of I really I really pushed the

(11:09):
envelope on what consent actually was here. It wouldn't surprise me if he if
either he decided because he has akind of cunning or he was told if
you're gonna pay, if you're gonnapay Daniels, you better pay this one
off too, because then they'll thinkit's just about sex and not about creepiness.
I hope you're right. I hopethere are people with that kind of
awareness in Trump's orbit. I'm notconvinced, though, I doubt Michael Cohen

(11:35):
a is a paragon of nubanced emotionalobservation. Well, let me I'm glad
you just actually segued to what Iwanted to talk about in regard to the
case, which is the other aspectthat everybody has talked about ad nauseum on
television. Is Michael Cohen Is hegoing to be a good witness or is

(11:58):
he going to be an an incredibleor uncredible witness? Because of his background,
he's been convicted of lying. Ofcourse, they always forget to say
he was convicted of lying for DonaldTrump. He's not the most upstanding citizen,
at least he wasn't at that timein his life. And the reason
that I want to talk about thatis some of the television commentary from experts,

(12:20):
for legal experts, I find tobe so lacking in understanding the nuances
of criminal law. Because my brotherBruce was a Manhattan District attorney and then
a federal prosecutor for many years before. He actually is now a judge,
and he prosecuted in the Justice Department. He prosecuted rico mafia crimes. He

(12:46):
prosecuted and put it put away alot of mafioso heads, family heads,
and he prosecuted a very famous casein which one of the witness that took
the stand, the star witness,was a man named Jimmy the Weasel Frattiano.
Are you familiar with that name?No, but right there, I've

(13:07):
got all confidence that he actually knowsliterally everything about the mob. If that's
your nickname, you know it all. And they are actually pretty sure you're
going to tell a lawyer someday.So this guy was a mafia hit man.
He'd killed many people, and hewas testifying against the heads of a
couple of families in Los Angeles,mafioso families. And my brother Bruce was

(13:31):
prosecuting, and this was his starwitness, And when it came time to
do his summation, he had todeal with the fact that his star witness
was an admitted murderer. And Bruce'sline that got quoted in all the papers
was, yes, he was notthe type of person that you'd necessarily sit

(13:52):
down to have dinner with. Butremember, you don't find swans in a
sewer. And that's the same thingwith Michael Cohen. He was working in
the sewer of Trump organization. Andjust like Alan Weiselberg, just like Stormy
Daniels, just like so many youknow, the kids, he was no

(14:16):
swan. But that doesn't mean thathe is not a competent and believable witness.
And that's the think Kevin. That'sthe thing. The problem with the
entire political coverage of Donald Trump fromthe moment he came down the escalator.
They have a DC mindset about power, about conspiracies, and about scandals.

(14:43):
They don't have a New York mindsetabout any of this stuff. All of
us who spent any time anywhere nearNew York City in the nineteen eighties and
nineteen nineties or beforehand, we knowwhat this is. This is a mob
operation. He had help from theItalians and now he has helped from the

(15:03):
Russians. And this is not asurprise to any of us in the Tri
state area. But for the DCcrowd, this is that they have no
immune system for this. They haveno way to examine this. And the
biggest and ironically the biggest one whowould have been an expert on it ended
up on the other side. RudyGiuliani, the guy who oversaw the commission

(15:24):
trial. So they have no ideawhat to do. Yeah, I mean,
I think the thing about Michael Cohenis that he's got nothing left to
lie for, Like, lying doesn'tserve him any longer. You know,
he's if he lies on the stand, he goes to jail for perjury.
If he lies, you know,he makes up a story about Trump,

(15:46):
he could get, you know,somehow harmed by Trump. You know,
just Michael Cohen is what happens whenyou have nothing left to lose. He
is Janis Joplin in this story.The premise of the defense's case just it
makes no sense. The premise oftheir cases is that Michael Cohen decided to

(16:11):
pay one hundred and thirty thousand dollarsto this woman on his own, mortgaging
his home, on the assumption thatwhen he finally told Donald Trump, Trump
would say, way to go,Michael, good job, I'm going to
pay you back plus plus the taxesat you. Oh, it just makes
no sense. Well, I don'tknow if you listened to Andrew Weisman's podcast

(16:34):
where he talked about the recording thatCohen had made Dieter discussing one of the
payoff deals, and Weisman's comment was, you don't make a recording like that
if you're expecting the other guy tobe like, what, no, what
are you talking about? We don'tpay porn stars. So you know,
the fact that there was even arecord of it indicates that Cohen knew Trump

(16:56):
was going along with it. Well, the recording gets self is proof.
I don't even understand why there's adiscussion of this. Yeah, well,
I mean I got the recording whereTrump says and wou'd pay with cash?
Right? Oh no, no,no, no, no no, that
was like recording. Yeah, theseare really they're they're very second rate mobsters.

(17:18):
They're not. And I was thinkingabout this actually in terms of Stormy
Daniel's testimony that she, you know, had kind of stayed in touch with
him, thinking that maybe there wasstill a chance he would put her on
the Apprentice, like that was thecarrot he dangled at her as he dangled
his mushroom at her. Right.Sorry, And it struck me that,
you know, on the rungs ofthe entertainment industry Ladder Stormy at that time

(17:41):
would have been fairly low down.And the next rung up was The Apprentice,
which was kind of this joke.You know, it wasn't It wasn't
a show anyone took seriously. Ohthat's you're mistaken there, You're totally mistaken.
There huge that huge hit, butthat didn't like, I don't remember

(18:03):
anyone who was on it. Itwasn't you know, the like Donald Trump
was kind of a dancing bear onthat show, wasn't he. No,
he was one of the biggest starson NBC when that thing. When that
thing premiered, it was it wasmust watch TV. In my house,
I found something else to do.But my my for my ex wife,

(18:27):
that was must watch TV. Andit was not a matter of you know,
dancing bear joke and everything else.You know. Like I said,
she didn't have any immunity on DonaldTrump. She didn't. She she did
not realize who he was. Ihad to actually tell her who he was.
So yeah, yeah, I guessI never tuned into it because the

(18:48):
whole premise seemed stupid. That thatshow is that show is really what brought
him, what brought him back inthe public eye unfortunately. So the other
case that is actually much more importanttoday is the development in the federal classified
documents case. It got very littlecoverage on the news because Stormy Daniels is

(19:10):
such a sexy story to cover.I mean, no pun intended, but
apparently Judge Cannon today decided that thereis so much pre trial work that needs
to be done on all of thesedifferent documents that she is delaying the start
of this trial indefinitely, which meansthat the likelihood of it reaching a jury

(19:34):
courtroom before the election is very veryunlikely. And DJ, I'm going to
throw to you. I mean,obviously we kind of saw this coming.
Everybody knew that she was slow walkingthis case. But this must be very
very disappointing to Jack Smith and histeam of prosecutors. Yeah, it's deeply

(19:56):
unfortunate, but it's not really asurprise. And Judge Cannon as such that
we now actually have multiple reasons forwhy this could be happening. There were
there have been reports that two ofour three low curt law clerks quit on
her before before their term was up, meaning that on top of everything else,

(20:18):
she has been understaffed. She hasnever been she was never a trial
lawyer. She never set foot ina courtroom, as I understand it,
so she was ill informed, unprepared, and understaffed. And even if she
wasn't in the tank for Tom forTrump, and I'm not saying I'm not
saying she isn't, but even ifshe isn't, she would have been in

(20:41):
no position to actually conduct this trialbecause of everything that has been going on.
I don't know if there is anyway, and I don't think there's
any way for Jack Smith to goup to the appeals court or the circuit
and go, look, she obviouslycan't hack it, give it to somebody
else. There's as I understand that, there's no way to say, move

(21:03):
the judge aside. They're just incompetentand in over their heads. But she
is definitely in over her head onthis one. Yeah, And I mean,
this case shouldn't be that complicated.The question is was he in possession
of documents he wasn't supposed to bein possession of And all the delays have
been about, look, who's allowedto look at the documents that he wasn't

(21:25):
supposed to have in the first place. And you know, she surely she
could have hired a consultant asked anotherjudge on her circuit, like called a
lifeline something to get up to speedon what was supposed to be going on.
There are podcasts about it. Shecould have listened to one of them.

(21:45):
Yep, yep. So moving onto other things in the news,
the protests, they seem to haveslowed down, and as somebody said,
have they reached their cell by dateor will they be coming back in force
during the long hot days of summer. Well, it appears that they are

(22:10):
going to be told to leave theircampuses, like if they are living in
dorms, the dorms are going toclose and they're going to have to go
home, you know, because itdoes not appear that they can just camp
out on those dorms and quads indefinitely. And I think it was my little
sister told me she read an articlethat maybe at Columbia, the tents that
were were erected, the kids weren'tstaying in them. They were going to

(22:36):
class all day and just coming backto the tents during their free time to
protest. So their level of commitmentmight be a little limited, shall we
say, Or might they decide tospend their summer vacation in the tent on
campus with their friends camping out andprotesting and being good citizens of the world

(22:57):
in their own eyes. I meanthey might if they're allowed to. It
sounds like the campuses are, youknow, saying it is against policy for
you to camp on this particular greenspace for more than twelve hours or whatever,
and they can point to whatever rulebook that's written in and legitimately move
the students. I just think,I mean, this is the that's dangerous,

(23:22):
DJ, the thinking that you do. I know, I know,
people tell me not people tell menot do it. This just doesn't seem
to have a lot of staying powerwith me, you know, among folks
among the actual age cohort the Israelthe Israel Hamas war remains at or near
the bottom of the issues that interestthem. With their rhetoric and some of

(23:48):
the institutions behind it, this looksmore and more, frankly like a farm
operation. I think the group,the National the American the Americans for Palestine
group are now being sued by victimsof the October seventh attack as essentially a

(24:10):
front for Hamas. And it's notsome you know, whacked out Tom Fitten
lawyer who's doing this. It's areal law firm and that's seriously looking at
this, looking at this kind ofthing. So I just don't see.
Again, I don't see really howmuch staying power they have. You know,
Joe Biden talked about anti Semitism todayand I think it was a very
strong and a very good speech,and I just think, you know,

(24:34):
we'll talk about it when we getinto polling and such. This is not
something we're seeing in polling data either. I mean, Joe Biden is not
really losing ground to Donald Trump overthe last month. In fact, at
least one pole I think of itright said he's probably gaining ground of unlikely
voters. So this is maybe I'mmissing something. Maybe in the summer it

(24:57):
will get worse. Although I can'tsee how nobody el school in a class.
It just doesn't. So their corerequest, yeah, their core requests.
They're not agitating for a cease fireat least that you know, that's
that sort of becomes secondary. They'rethey're aiming their protest at their university administration

(25:18):
saying we want you to divest fromIsrael. And you know that that isn't
a sexy ask, it isn't somethingthat's gonna, you know, gain traction
outside of university campuses, and it'sfrankly not something that universities can just flip
a switch and do. So itbecomes so bureaucratic at some point that it's

(25:40):
almost pointless. So the other thingthat DJ kind of alluded to and we
wanted to talk more about it isthat, for the first time in decades,
it appears that likely voters are tendingor trending to be more democratic than

(26:02):
the all registered voters category in polls, and DJ, you're kind of,
for lack of a better word,the polling wonk amongst us. So what
does that mean for the polls andfor the election in general, Well,
it means a lot of the assumptionsthat we would usually have going into the
fall have to be taken out andlooked at again. Normally, if you

(26:26):
go from registered voters to likely voters, lease in the past, Republicans would
do better as you as you sortof shrink the sort of shrunk the sample
pool. Then there'd be the questionof can the Democrats turn out the base
to counter whatever the heck else isgoing on out there, because they would
do better among adults, among registeredvoters. That's no longer true anymore,
because Democrats are now doing much betteramong college graduates, who usually vote much

(26:51):
more consistently than everybody else. Sonow Democrats, they're going to have seriously
ask themselves, okay, outside ofyou know, yes, we want to
get our base out, but dowe want to make sure that when we
talk about our base, we don'tjust mean this demographic group. We make
sure these folks are actually Democrats andactually support us. And it's going to

(27:14):
be it could be a situation likewhat we saw in two thousand and four
when turnout was way up and everybodyassumed that was great for John Gary and
George Rush won the election. Anyway, if we have a low turnout election
this year, that might be morehelpful for Joe Biden than we thought it
was going to be two three,four years ago, or even last year.
And that puts an entirely different spinon this election. Yeah, very

(27:36):
interesting. Well, you're that youwere actually the first person I heard talk
about the likely voter column in thesein these latest polls, and how Biden's
numbers go up when you go fromall adults to all voters to likely voters.
I heard two other pundits say theexact same thing in the past couple

(27:56):
of days and talking about also thisidea that a low turnout election, that
the disengaged voters might be peel achunk of Trump's support away. And it
takes us back to Rachel Bitakoffer andher theory that elections come down to not

(28:18):
swing voters, but activated voters.And if Democrats remain more activated, as
we have been in the special electionsin the midterms, that could be what
pushes Joe Biden over the edged toT seventy. Yeah, absolutely, Republicans
were more afraid than Democrats in twentysixteen. Democrats are more afraid than Republicans
in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty.Democrats are more afraid in twenty twenty two.

(28:41):
Frankly, and from what I've seen, Democrats are more afraid in twenty
twenty four And with apologies to FDR, fear is a good seller. Fear
has been winning. And the otherthing that seems to bode well for Democrat
is in the Senate races in theswing states, the Democratic candidates appear to

(29:06):
be far far out raising their rivalsin campaign donations and DJ I sent you
a link earlier today. I don'tknow whether you had a chance to look
at it, but I posted someof the stats on our rundown here.
In Arizona, Democrat Reuben Diego,who's running against Carrie Lake, Diego has

(29:30):
raised twenty million, five hundred thousanddollars. Carrie Lake has raised five million,
six hundred thousand dollars, So theDemocrat has raised four times what Lake
has has raised so far. Goingto Michigan, incumbent Democrat Elise Slotkin has

(29:52):
raised almost sixteen million dollars compared toThere are two Republicans who were still in
the race, and between them they'veraised under six million, So sixteen million
against six million between the two ofthem. So three million apiece is what
you're saying about three million apieces.In Montana, John Tester a whopping thirty

(30:18):
two point five million dollars. HisRepublican opponent, someone named Tim Sheehy,
has raised eight million and change.And that, by the way, that's
a hotly, hotly contested senate race. Nevada, Jackie Rosen, the incumbent
Democrat, has raised over twenty threemillion dollars. Her opponent Sam Brown just

(30:42):
over five million dollars, and inOhio Sharon Brown, also considered to be
a pivotal Senate race, he hasraised almost forty million dollars. His Republican
opponent, a guy named Bernie maReno, has raised a mere eleven million

(31:03):
dollars. Two more states Pennsylvania,Bob Casey, the Democrat twenty three million
dollars, Dave McCormick, the Republican, eleven million dollars, And in Wisconsin,
Tammy Baldwin running for reelection. She'sthe Democrat she raised has raised so
far over twenty six million dollars.Her Republican opponent, Eric Hovedy has raised

(31:26):
nine million dollars. So, Iknow, I just threw a lot of
numbers out there. The takeaway isDemocrats far, far, far outraising Republicans
on the Senate level. I don'tknow whether this has anything to do with
Laura Trump's piloting of the of theRNC. Yeah, no, I was
actually going to say that. Yeah, I mean, obviously she hasn't been

(31:49):
in place for that long yet.But if what the RNC is doing is
directing all of its fundraising to DonaldTrump and not getting into downticket races that
could be seeing. The other thingis is DJ's been saying, you know,
a lot of these candidates were makingtheir major fundraising halls off of the

(32:09):
five and ten dollars donors who weresigning up to be monthly donors or being
signed up to be monthly donors.And if that's dried up, like if
they're not you know, if peopledon't feel activated again enough to be donating
to whatever you just said. Theguy's name was in Ohio is run against
Shared Brown, then there's no othersource of money. There's no money from

(32:30):
the top, there's no money fromthe bottom. You're stock just trying to
get donations from business people in yourstate. And let's not forget that not
only are they raising a mere fractionof what their Democratic opponents are raising,
but Donald Trump says he wants ataste, he wants a skim off of

(32:50):
their fundraising, just going back tobeing like a mafia boss, you know,
he wants a little taste of everybody'sfundraising if he endorses them. So
all of these people are going tohave to take ten percent or fifteen or
twenty percent of their very harder donationsand funnel them to the big guy.
This is Donald Trump has been adrain on Republican resources for the last eight

(33:15):
years because he either he wants toprofit off the party or he needs it
for his legal fees, or whateverthe heck it is. The Republicans are
just going to come in at adisadvantage on all of this stuff, so
none of this really surprises me.However, I will say this, looking
at looking at the numbers here,I am heartened by the fact that the

(33:38):
candidates with the biggest abs, withthe biggest advantage in terms of dollars,
are the ones who I think wouldbe the most threatened. That's Tester and
Brown. I think they've got thehardest states to win in, and the
fact that they each have a twentyeight twenty four to twenty eight million dollar
advantage is very very good news becausethey're going to need to spend each and

(33:59):
every red scent of that money.This also points to the fact that Donald
Trump is not a good choice asparty leadership because he doesn't know Diddley squat
about running a party. He justknows how to be kind of a cult
leader, a dancing monkey, andhe doesn't know how to create a distribution

(34:21):
network. He doesn't know how todo customer service or constituent service. He
just knows how to squeeze every pennyout of something for himself and then walk
away from it. We're talking nowabout money, but has that paradigm shifted?
Is money really as big a factoras it was ten twenty years ago

(34:44):
because it could buy more media time? Or conversely, in the twenty four
to seven news cycle, maybe acandidate who can be like a Carrie Lake
or like the governor of Montana whosename is escaping me now, Christy Nome.
Maybe they do things so outrageous thatthey don't need paid media. Well,

(35:04):
to be fair to Montana, SouthDakota elected Christine Home governor. Okay,
but she's the governor of Montana eventhough South Dakota elected her. Right,
that's funny. I got it wrong. It's not the first time.
It surely won't be the last misstrial, miss trial. Look, I
am among those who know who.I have always thought that people have overestimated

(35:29):
the importance of money and campaigns,and I still do. There have been
there have been too many times wherethe person who who raised more money still
lost. Anyway, what matters isif you turn it into reachability, if
you turn it into voters being informedabout who you are and of it who
your opponent is, and whether youdo it through pay through regular TV media,

(35:53):
whether you do through social media,and that requires money too, but
not necessarily as much. Perhaps thefact that you have the resources to reach
people is what is important. Andwhat we're seeing here is that a lot
of Republicans running for statewide office don'treally have those resources as much as the
Democrats do, and that is agood thing. It's never the decider in

(36:16):
an election, but it is anadvantage and he should take it. The
other thing that we talked about amongstourselves is the Trump doctrine on Israel.
I mean, Israel obviously is goingto be an issue. There's been a
debate about where it ranks among theissues for voters, especially young voters.

(36:38):
But let's assume that it's going tobe an issue in this election. Why
doesn't the media explore what the Trumpdoctrine on Israel will be? They talk
so much about Biden's positions and havethe expectation that somehow Joe Biden can push
a button and tell BVBDT Yahoo whatto do and what not to do,
But why don't they make more ofa study of what would happen if Donald

(37:02):
Trump reascended to the presidency and inheritedthis foreign policy quagmire because we don't know
what it is, because he doesn'tknow what it is. He's been all
over the map on this kind ofthing, you know, He's why don't
they Why don't they talk more aboutWell, that would be something that they
should talk about. Yes, thathe can't get anything coherent out of him,

(37:25):
but bizarrely enough, that might actuallyhelp him, because essentially what Joe
Biden is as has tried to do, is noble and it is the right
thing to do as president of theUnited States. But as a candidate it
is highly problematic because if you takeessentially the middle position, even if it's

(37:45):
a correct position, which I thinkit is on this kind of thing,
then basically, so long as youropponent doesn't say anything, you're the people
who disagree with you to your rightand the people who disagree with you to
your left can all find solace inthe guy so long as what he says
is incomprehensible, And with Trump,everything he says is incomprehensible. So frankly,

(38:07):
I don't think it would help muchif they said, oh, Donald
Trump is incomprehensible on Israel, andnobody knows what the hell he's going to
say is what he was going todo, because then the anti Biden right
and the anti Biden left can allconvince themselves that Donald Trump is going to
do what they want, what theywant him to do, and they can
go back to what they want todo all along, which is hate Joe

(38:28):
Biden. Well, and he's inthe past week or so, he's made
some comments about the demonstrators on thecollege campuses that you know, really sound
very anti Palestinian, anti Muslim,and you know, for all the folks
who are trying to make a pointby voting uncommitted and the people who are

(38:49):
who are very pro Gaza, he'snot going to endear themselves himself to them.
And I'd actually like him to sayit louder so more of them here.
Yeah, Essentially, what he's doingis the reverse of triangulation. He's
triangulating by taking no positions instead oftaking three, two or three positions.

(39:12):
He's just bad at life. He'sbad at life. I don't know give
it the but everyone gives them thebenefit of it. Out They're like,
look at him, he's a whiteguy in a suit. He must know
what he's talking about. And thenhe says, you know, something completely
incomprehensible. Can we just give Canwe just give a quick shout out to
Nikki Haley who's getting one hundred andtwenty five thousand votes in the Indiana primary
despite not having run for two months? Is that is that happening against we

(39:35):
speak? Yes? Oh wow.The Indiana primary was today and Haley's getting
between I think of that a sixthto a fifth of the vote, and
she's over one hundred and twenty fivethousand votes right now. Wow. I
just I went voted in my primarytoday and I still have the option of
voting for Mary and Williamson or DeanPhillips. I didn't, but I could.

(40:00):
Yeah, you should have thrown avote to Dean. You know,
I really should not have thrown avote to Dean. That was not why
I was there. There's a schoolboard race, and that is that's the
whole reason I was in that room. Very well said, and with that,
we want to thank everybody for listening. If you enjoy what we do
here, please follow us on Instagramat MPU Fan Club. Don't forget to

(40:23):
share our link on your Facebook timelineso your friends can discover us as well.
And also we have a new substackblog page called MPU Podcast. Rebecca
has been adding a lot of materialto that. DJ and I have had
some interesting back and forth about thecandidacy of RFK Junior, So if you

(40:44):
want to read some of our opinionsand see us debate in print between episodes,
please check that out. And wealso want to thank Alan Keyey for
our theme music and with that.By the way, Rebecca, do you
know what you have in common withStormy Daniels. I found this out today.

(41:05):
We both own horses. Yes,that's right. She and I had
a conversation about that once on Twitter. Yet she had posted somebody was making
fun of her and said, whyaren't you broke? And she goes,
I own horses, I don't know, And I posted a picture of my
horse and I said, tell meabout it. This guy might as well
eat dollar bills, and she responded, yeah, but then you just call

(41:27):
it and need more, which isa very funny joke among horse people.
And non horse people don't find itfunny. But Stormy and I are are
bfs bonding about the cost about Marymedicine. There's your healthcare issue, DJ.
What Stormy and I spend on betbills? M