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Good morning everyone, Welcome to Breaking Points. Sober is out for the best of possible reasons. He is getting married this weekend. But we have a jam pack show. We got Ryan in the studio, we got Emily on the ground at the RNC. We're I'm Dave Weigel in the show later to break down a lot that is happening in Biden world. Dandie Vance made his debut last night. We've got polls showing actually interesting little post assassination movement.
So the very certain predictions that this would have a huge impact on I should say post assassination attempt movement. Let's be clear here, but all those predictions seem not to have totally come to fruition. Biden has COVID, he also was saying, hey, if he's diagnosed with the medical condition, he might get out of the race, so kind of changing his tune there. There's a huge flood of pressure coming to bear on him right now, so a lot
of things moving there as well. We also have new revelations about what the hell happened with regard to that assassination attempt. That really raised a lot of stunning question. Secret Service very much under pressure right now and morning Joe quite upset that they were pulled from the air on Monday.
Great to see you guys.
How are you both doing great? Doing great?
And glad you're back and glad everything's well with your family. We were worried for you, but we're excited that things seem to be going in a positive direction.
Yeah, if I can take a moment of personal privilege, I just want to thank all of you guys out there who sent your thoughts and your kind words our way. It was it's been a very difficult week, but thankfully my daughter she had to be rushed in for emergency surgery. She is doing much much better now, she is recovering. Thank you so much to Emily Ryan, you guys for stepping up Sager in particular, who has Heace Game married this week?
His own grandfather just passed.
He has a hell of a lot going on personally, really picked up the slack Griffin mac our entire team. And also, if I can, you know, I really want to send a shout out to the whole pediatric surgery team at VCU. They were incredible and truly I can never say enough about how amazing they were and how much they changed our family's lives. So thank you, guys. And with that out of the way, let me go ahead and get to the show.
Emily.
You're on the ground there at the RNC. Jd Vance made his sort of national debut there, big primetime speech last night just give us a sense of what the energy is there. And then we've also got a little bit of a clip from him that we can thrip to.
Yeah, well it was very very let's say, relatively boring, given how crazy the news side. But jd Vance did basically what you would expect to hear from Jdvance. He actually tore into NAFTA, he tore into the Iraq War. And I went back and looked at the Republican National Convention in two thousand and four, So twenty years ago, and of course everybody knows who was on the ballot, that it was Dick Cheney, vice president in JD.
Vance's slot, and George W. Bush.
Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke at the two thousand and four Republican Convention and referred to people who were pessimistic about the American economy, especially as compared to the Chinese economy, as economic girly men. He was championing the war in Iraq, and so I look back at that not to just say, wow, this is a new Republican party, because JD. Vance obviously specifically tore into China and our sort of elites.
He used the words ruling class.
He actually described it as the ruling class, just like you would sort of about a conservative movement.
Sort of organizational gathering.
When he said that, he was talking about how a lot of our jobs have gone to China.
And so that is a stark contrast with.
The economic girly man sentiment of Arnold Schwarzenegger twenty years ago. And I say that not to you know, just be focused on the past, but also it made me wonder, what does the RNC look like in twenty twenty eight, What does it look like in twenty thirty two. Would you have Sean O'Brien, would you have the mayor of He's Palestine, And would you have JD Vance, you know, being cheered like this for lines about the kind of
decadence of America's ruling class. And I don't think that's a settled question because this was a new version of JD.
Vance in the.
Extent that he's like talking about unity, he made a pitch to or on behalf of unity. He said that this is a party of a big tent and that everyone can you know, debate.
And hash things out.
I don't think he's ever said that to Mitch McConnell before, but now that he's the vice presidential nominee, he made that bench from the stage. But otherwise it just is very polished. It is buttoned up, and it's not, you know, like it doesn't feel like a reality television show except for one thing, which is nobody knows what Donald Trump is going to say.
Really, nobody knows what Donald Trump is going.
To say, and that is a huge outstanding factor in what happens at this convention.
And we won't know until like ten PM.
Let me go ahead and queue up, and then right I'll get you in on the other side. Let me go ahead and que up. The clip that we have of Jade Vance speaking talking about the opioid crisis and the impact it's had on communities like the one that he's from.
Let's take a listen to that.
My friends, things did not work out well for a lot of kids I grew up with. Every now and then I will get a call from a relative back home who asks, did you know so and so? And I'll remember a face from years ago, and then I'll hear they died of an overdose. As always, America's ruling
class wrote the checks. Communities like mine paid the price for decades that divide between the few with their power and comfort in Washington and the rest of us only widened from Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnating wages. The people who govern this country have failed and failed again. Our movement is about single moms like mine who struggled
with money and addiction but never gave up. And I'm proud to say that tonight my mom is here, ten years clean and sober.
I love you, mom, Rian.
You know the speech came the same day.
I believe that we also heard Trump was considering Jamie Diamond for a Treasury secretary, So very different direction in terms of you know, that potential move. And so of course this raises the key question is this different rhetoric just rhetoric or does it symbolize some sort of actual shift in terms of policy, because we all know Ryan what the first Trump term looked like, in which his there were some shifts, especially on China that was a
you know, significant change in direction. There were others, but his main achievement was a giant tax cut for the rich.
Yeah, and on some level, rhetoric is real in the sense that you know, a lot of the things that he said on stage you just wouldn't have heard on a Republican stage twenty years ago. And there's something real. There has to be something real underneath that. It can't it can't just be taught, because why piss off all of your donors if you don't see at least some kind of cynical value in it.
The hostility to the war, Like it's nice to see.
That now from you know that getting some actual purchase inside the Republican Party, I get nervous that they'll become like liberals. A joke about liberals is that, you know, they're against every war except the current war. And so here you've got Republicans who are against the war from twenty years ago.
Which, okay, that's that's better. It's better to be against it in real time.
But you know, if it represents a kind of a going forward opposition to intervention, as it does for advance when at least when it comes to Ukraine, then that does seem like progress. But yeah, Emily, I'm curious from your perspective, because Crystal's question is the key one. The question has always been, is this is this like a feint towards the working class? Is this is this kind
of is this is this fake? Is this just a tiny rump group that is kind of funded by Peter Teal with inside the Republican Party that doesn't actually represent a real faction, or is this becoming kind of a main a kind of mainstream through line of the new Republican Party And the fact that you've got you know, both members of the ticket at you know, espousing some elements of this, even as Trump still right exactly, says well, Jamie Diamond might be my tre secretary. I still want
to take corporate taxes down to fifteen percent. If the oil companies will give me a billion dollars, they can have whatever they want. Like, you still have that whole thing at the same time you've got this, So color me confused, Like, what are you seeing out there in Milwaukee?
Yeah?
I mean, color everyone confused, honestly, because this is clearly where the momentum is. If you're talking to people who are you know, just delegates, or if you're talking to the kind of movement conservative movement people who are here in Milwaukee.
They love the JD Advance pick.
You know, everyone I've talked to is extremely excited about it, save for a couple folks that I would say are more members of the Republican establishment.
But they're not being.
Loud about it.
They're not out there, you know, being loud about.
It, which I think raises one of the biggest points, which is is it durable beyond Trump? Is it just something that Donald Trump can get away with because he didn't have those pre existing so decades long relationships with conservative donors in the way that a lot of people who come through thenservative.
Machine or the dem machine have.
So is this just something that people really love when it comes attached to Donald Trump? And that's why I'm thinking, like rn C twenty twenty eight, they're really going.
To have Sean O'Brien.
Is Sean O'Brien really going to want to be there if Donald Trump isn't at the top of the ticket, which sort of dictates all of those kind of downstream trappings of what it means to be conservative in twenty twenty eight. And what's clear is that conservatives, people who vote Republican in this country, a lot of them love what Donald Trump says about China, They love what jd Vance says about the border.
They love all of this.
And so can the Republican Party sustain it? I think is an interesting question because certainly the sort of infrastructure of the right is not set up to sustain it. That's changing a little bit, but it can only change like that change has to last if they really want to be the party of the working party, beyond the Party of the working class, beyond just the rhetoric. So what Trump says tonight, I still think is like the huge outstanding variable.
Here, Yeah, and that on that question real quick. On the on the billionaire infrastructure, I want to get your take on this. What has made the Democratic Party so fun to cover for me for the last like fifteen years is that the Democrats have their kind of values that they state and they've always claimed to be the party of the working class and of working people, of f FDR, LBJ, and then you can report on what they're actually doing and the gap between their values and
their rhetoric and what they're actually doing. That's that's where they that's where the real good journalism lies. So what I love is to hear the same stuff from Trump and from jd Vance because then you can set the marker, all right, this is what they say they're going to do on X, y Z, here's what they're actually doing, and the journalism can live within that. But I'm curious on the billionaire infrastructure, and this kind of fits into that. Jd Vance's career has been has has been adjacent to
these billionaires the whole time. You know, Peter Thield dropping was ten or twenty million, ten or twenty million dollars into his Senate superpack. And then as soon as Trump picks jd Vance as his VP. Elon Musk immediately is like, I'm in forty five million dollars a month. It certainly seemed like Tucker, Carlos and jd Vance the others that in that world were arguing strongly for jd Vance And when they got Advance, He's like, Okay, now the checks are coming.
How do you square that with.
The kind of working class values that they're professing.
I guess, like, how do they square that?
Yeah, And as we discussed on yesterday's show, run Mark Andresen and Ben Horowitz immediately jumped from the vandwack this week two and so, yeah, I remember about this this morning. Actually, It's like there was this tug of war over the VP slot between the likes of Rupert Murdoch and then also sort of the VC Silicon Valley group.
So are you replacing one group.
Of billionaire with another group of billionaires and replacing one war with you know, hawkishness in another war. There were a lot of cheers for a student who came out and railed against Harvard. He's suing Harvard over allegations of Nancy Semitism. There were a lot of cheers for him. As I've said, there have been some Israeli flags that have been in the audience being waved. Nothing huge, but there were a lot of cheers for that young man last night.
So yeah, it's just an open question.
And one thing that's clear is that they can tap into those populist sentiments and do that in directions that many of us might not agree are populist at the end of the day. So a lot of energy around this stuff here. People are really excited about JD.
Vance.
Like I said, I'm really really excited about Jdvans. He feels young and fresh. His wife gave an excellent speech that was very well received last night when she introduced him. Everybody happy about it, except for a couple of kind of old GOP hands. But where it goes is a huge open question.
Yeah, I'd love to see a Harvard student complaining about microaggressions.
At the RNC.
Why not?
Why not?
You know? In terms of JD.
Vans on foreign policy, like, he's very pro Israel, tied into his religious beliefs. He is a dissident on the Ukraine War, but he always frames it in terms of because we need to focus on He doesn't say it exactly this way, but on the next war with China. So I don't think you can say he's anti intervention or anti war.
He's just against this particular war.
He's looking forward to a different, much larger war, and is also in favor of the other war that we're currently you know, proxy engaged in Israel. You know, I wanted to put up some slides from our friends jail partners that they asked voters what they.
Think about JD. Vans. We can put the first one up on the screen.
So overall people just don't know, right, he's not particularly well defined nationally. Literally, the biggest thing that people said about him is don't know. The next largest thing appears to be Republican. Then you have unknown Senator Trump, the sort of highest rated positive signifier here, you've got good, You've got smart among people who do know who he is, which I have to guess skews more Republican at this point. We can put the next piece up on the screen.
Even within here, it's very vague. It's like Republican, Okay, Senator unknown, good, nothing, strong, smart, So he's very much undefined in the public view. And you know, I can tell you we can put this next reporting up on the screen from the Lever. There's already been a lot of reporting about his views on abortion. Now this piece of reporting from the Levers is jade Vance wants police
to track people who have abortions. Basically, the Democrats tried to put into place a privacy rule that would bar law enforcement from having access to private information about whether people had an abortion or not. Jade Vance was opposed to that privacy rule and attempting to block it. There was also a new reporting from CNN about a twenty twenty two interview from jade Vance saying he would certainly
like abortion to be illegal nationally. Was sympathetic to the view that a national ban was necessary to stop women from traveling across states to obtain an abortion. So emily, you know, the Democrats are certainly going to try to fill in the blanks for people real quick about who jd.
Vance is talk to us about. You know, do you have a sense that there was an electoral calculus that went into this pick, because in other areas, Trump seemed to be very wary of picking a vice presidential candidate who had baggage on an issue that he knows is a key vulnerability and so what is your sense of this sort of strategy here or is the is it just the like Listen, I think we're going to win in a landslide, So I'm a pick whoever the hell I want to pick.
Yeah, it's a great question from what I've been able to tell just talk you know, folks, and you know, having covered Donald Trump as we all have for a while now, is there are two things he really liked JD Vance's personal story, that kind of arc, and I think that was vindicated. That take was vindicated yesterday because it's a huge element of what Jade Vance talked about.
We rolled that clip earlier of him celebrating his mom's ten years of sobriety and talking as a lot of millennials who come from you know, so called flyover country know about seeing those names come up and seeing the fentanyl overdoses time after time. I think that is really resonant with a lot of folks. And I think Donald
Trump knows that JD. Vance's background is honestly just objectively impressive achievements, you know, being a marine and enlisting and then going to law school, basically coming from nothing and ending up where he is is really resonant with people.
It's a good story.
Donald Trump loves a narrative, There's no question about that. The other hand, he also not only does Jade Vance have that going for him, but he also is going to be loyal to Donald Trump.
I think Donald Trump knows has sensed with jd. Vance that he's.
Somebody who is a true believer, which was actually funny enough one of the left knocks against him.
But jd. Vance has become a true believer to all of this.
And if you're spending time with him and talk to him, even though he used to be really anti Trump, that is very clearly no longer the case. It's not cynical with him. He's really thought through these things from that sort of intellectual point of view and buys that kind of flight ninety three election mentality that a lot of people Claremont circles on the right and those the new right national conservative circles absolutely by into. So I think
those are two critical factors for Donald Trump. I will say abortion has been conspicuously absent from this RNC that started with the platform, but you are.
Just not hearing a lot about the issue at all.
And one thing that I have heard is people think that jd Vance's kind of his statement right before he was picked on meph pristone that is sincerely something that's concerned a couple of people that I've chatted with that it signals that maybe Jadvance will be open to blowing along with the Trumpian wins kind of and will be easily sort of co opted by Trump's inner circle, which a lot of people in New Right circles don't trust.
So there's just like a lot going on, but we will see.
Yeah.
I mean, if you're looking for somebody who's not going to change his position on something, jd Vance is not your man for sure. But I'm curious what the kind of talking point is going to be in response to what Crystal brought up, because that Lever story is one of the few kind of independent news scoops that wound
up on MSNBC. Like Rachel matt I was like, I love Lever News, great scoop here from David Serota's team, and she was waving it around and saying, look, look at this letter that Jade Vance signed saying that he wants to know surveil you as you're going out of state.
So you can so that the Mississippi.
Can catch you, you know, trying to get an abortion out of state. And then there's that unearthed onearthed as it like the OPO team had it and like within an hour of him being named, the OPO team dumps it on somebody and it's unearthed, but it wasn't buried very long ago. We're just talking twenty twenty two. So what is the Republican response going to be? You think
you think you're dead on that. The projection out of Milwaukee is just let's just not talk about it because we've got all eyes on us, not a lot of noormies, like, don't talk about it. But when they have to actually do combat, hand to hand combat where Democrats are saying, this is what you've said. Is there a line yet that Republicans are going to have in response or are they still is that still being fought over?
Yeah?
I mean, I think sadly the kind of anti aborsion movement knows that the issue with as long as Donald Trump is at the helm of the Republican Party, which feels indefinite to be honest, the issue they have lost, you know that one on Dobbs and Row. But they've lost the sort of battle for what happens afterwards and how the Republican Party handles it. That's the sense that you pick up, and so, yeah, I think that that read on things basically that they're just not going to
talk about it because Donald Trump. People may remember a couple of months ago, Donald Trump sort of unveiled rolled out his new kind of language, the way that he thinks Republicans should talk about abortion and what sort of policies should be off the table.
Et cetera, et cetera. That that very much has won the day, and that's.
Very much going to be how Jadie Vance is talking about the issue. I would expect for the next couple of months. Unless you know, someone gets him in a quiet moment talking about his Catholic beliefs on life or something like that, you know he's gonna be talking a lot in the next couple of months. I'm sure he'll have to answer these questions pretty often.
My sense is that it'll be a punt.
Yeah, it's going to be interesting to watch out unfolds up. In my own sense of the choice for what it's worth, I have no inside knowledge here, but that you know, Trump feels very confident. Apparently the pitch was made from Tucker Carlson and others that this would make him quote assassination proof because maybe if it was Mark or Rubio, people would want amount of the way.
I mean, that's a pretty dark way direction to go in.
But you know, I think there was a thought that basically he bought into that logic.
He liked JD.
Vance personally, and JD has gone out of his way to say that if he didn't think that Mike Pence should have gone forward with the electoral count vote. And so to your point, Emily, I mean, it's strange from a guy who at one point one point said Trump maybe America's Hitler and who not that long ago. And this was also quote unquote unearthed this morning that Trump was a fraud he said on a podcast a few years back, and you know, made some very aggressively critical
comments of this president. So it's odd that loyalty would be the thing that Trump was after in this pick. But I think because Vance has gone out of his way to say, you know, I even would have followed you into the breach in terms of stop the steal and throwing the whole country into chaos by not moving forward with the electoral account in the way that Mike that Mike Pence did. Mike fans like that, My brain is so addled this.
Week, Guys, you gotta bear with me.
That's true, But I think that was the key, a key part of this selection as well. We're going to get to more Biden news in a bit, but I wonder if that calculus would have been different if they were staring down the possibility of a different candidate at the top than Joe Biden, which may in fact be the case. But I want to move on to just quickly hear some of the polling that we've gotten post assassination attempt. Only I wanted to get some of your
take on this. We can put this up on the screen now.
Listen. Joe Biden was losing before.
The assassination attempt, and he is still losing after the assassination attempt, but at least from the minimal pulling that we've seen so far, it didn't actually move the needle that much. And so there were a lot of confident punnet predictions of like, oh, it's over, and you know there's going to be this huge movement in Trump's direction.
So far that hasn't really hasn't really shown up. And I wonder what you made of that, Emily, because my own thinking was that you'd already had a lot of movement away from Biden in the wake of his disastrous debate performance. And I'm just not sure, given how polarized, like partisan polarized, we are, how much more of a shift there can really be towards Trump among those who are on the fence, since a lot of that had already come right after the debate disaster for Biden.
Yeah, you know, I've always thought Donald Trump had a ceiling, and I think most people have made the same assumption that you know, and they're numbers, by the way, two on two. You know, nobody's really ever getting over fifty percent. I think Biden may have in his favorability at the beginning of his presidency, but obviously polarization makes that such that it feels like anybody with the sort of r D next to their name and the presidential ticket is
going to have a ceiling. And does Donald Trump, you know, sort of rising after taking a bullet to the ear, change that maybe a little, but I don't think significantly. There's just any room for that in American politics now. But I will say, uh, the RNC people here are projecting confidence.
And I think JD. Vance, the pick of JD. Vans is a projection of confidence.
He Donald Trump didn't pick someone who would, you know, bring in a critical swing state, didn't bring someone who would shore up support among a demographic. You know, maybe the logic was that Tim Scott could help continue to eat away at Democrats' margins with the black vote in an election where that will matter.
A whole lot. That's what he did with JD. Vance.
And so I do think there's a sense of confidence in shifting priorities. But you know, there's also a let's see av an attempted pivot to boringness. You know, that's kind of what I meant earlier about JADU Vance, that it is just it was very buttoned up and contained, and I think they want to Biden now to be the chaos candidate, and that's what Republicans are going for.
But I think even that in and of itself speaks to the fact that everyone has a ceiling, which is a little bit of wiggle room where independents are involved and turnout is involved, and that's where the fight really is from now until November, right.
I wanted to get your take on this pole if we can put this next one up on the screen, because you know, Republicans have been aggressively making the case JD fans in particular, that Democratic rhetoric is to blame the root cause of Trump shooting, the attempted assassination, and I'm not sure that that was really a smart direction for them to go in, because if you're fighting an election on the grounds of which party has more sort of inflammatory and divisive rhetoric, that's just not really the
rep that Joe Biden has at this point. So the number one route cause that people point to is Durin shooter, which we have some new reporting will get to you later about what he was searching for. That I think very much matches that root cause determination. The next highest, just barely behind that, was Trump and his own rhetoric, and then you get to the rhetoric of Biden and Democrats at just thirteen percent of people who are putting
the blame there. So you kind of reminded me, in a bizarre way, Ryan of when Biden gave that disastrous debate answer about abortion where Democrats were like, oh, this is easy. You knock this out of the park, and then he turns the conversation immediately to an undocumented immigrant raping and murdering someone. You're like, why would you ever bring this up? Because this is the worst possible landscape
for you to fight on. I sort of feel like that with Republicans and now wanting to fight on the ground of like which party is more buttoned up and responsible with the nature of their rhetoric at this point.
Yes, and that poll is done Harris X, which is a terrible polster, but lean's very Trumpian, and so you know, if those are the results that they get, you can you can you can pad them. Actually probably a little bit higher in that direction. I think I think it
might have mattered if the shooter's motivations had been different. Like, let's say we turned out it's some Antifa kid, you know, who was you know, really out there to like stop Trump from becoming present again, Like for a second, that's what it's you know, that's what the right thought they had with this. They started blaming this poor Italian guy who was asleep at the time. If if that had proven to be the case, maybe the numbers move slightly in there and you get some kind of bump one,
you know, towards towards Trump. But when it when it emerged that and it's also kind of a sad testament to American culture that we were so quickly able to code this shooter. Like we started hearing from his fellow students, and we started, you know, understanding just the basics of him and seeing him, and we're like, oh, this is a standard issue school shooter who we don't know a whole lot about because so many of them just die, but so many people have known them before they carried
out the school shooting that it's a loner. It's somebody miserable and depressed going through a mental health crisis and combined with some psychosis that leads them to want to kind of go out of this world in this like blaze of bizarre glory. And once I think American people were like, oh, that's what happened here, then it just
doesn't have any political balance anymore. And the idea that that person is going to be inspired by Joe Biden, you know, saying the word bullseye in a private donor call is too absurd, I think to latch on anywhere. The most thought provoking comment that I saw from anybody on the day of the shooting was I forget who posted at this point, but they said, this might sound crazy, but in two weeks we will have metabolized this and
completely forgotten about it. And I saw that, I was like, that's crazy, And then I started think, is that crazy? Like we're in such a fast moving, polarized, crazy world that it's quite possible two weeks from now we haven't forgotten it. Well, we'll know what happened, but it won't have kind of left a mark on our kind of culture the way that it would have, you know, fifty years ago, forty years ago.
Yeah, to be honest, that's my sense of things as well. I mean, you can look at our own show and the fact that this is the latest details of the massive, astonishing security failures are towards the end of the show to show you how quick the news is moving at this point. But Emily, I wonder what you make of any or all of this.
Yeah, I mean it's I think a lot of this depends on a couple of moving parts right now. One just in the last twenty four hours, it has looked like we are getting signals from Joe Biden's camp, although they are still vehemently denying them publicly, that lay the groundwork for a potential dropout. So it started with I think it was Jeff Zeleny who said that a senior Democratic advisor said Biden may now be opened to dropping
out of the race. And then Biden himself was diagnosed with COVID and is looking rather feeble in some of the videos of him getting on and off the plane into a car. So I mean it was this entire RNC against the ghost, as my old editor Tim Carney put it a Washington Examiner, because Biden himself has figured heavily into it. They were chanting constant chance last night of Joe must go from the delegates on.
The floor, a b sign and a lot of Democrats would co sign it too, and.
That may all be for that may but I'll be a moot point.
Not so long in the future.
So I think that depends les Pens really heavily on that. Because Trump with his fists in the air jexaposed with some of the memes of like Biden tripping up the Air Force one stairs, that I think does give some power to what Donald Trump went through and the second one. We keep coming back to this, but it's what Donald Trump says tonight, And we have basically no indication of what Donald Trump is going to say other than he swapped out what he called a.
Real rip roarer for a new speech. But we don't know what that means, and we still don't fully know.
Donald Trump has been very consciously stoic all week. You see him, I'm been looking down at him during every speech, like focused on his reactions.
He has not been giving a lot of reaction.
And so how he handles this personal trauma, honestly and kind of a national trauma for everybody too. How he handles that, I think is still an open question. And how it might affect numbers going forward I think does kind of depend on both of those two things a lot.
Yeah, I mean again, let me be clear, Joe Biden is losing this race. He's losing every battleground state.
You know.
He we already had all the images of him being incredibly feeble. We've got a new one we can show you today of him like having to be helped into his car seat by his aides, and he was just diagnosed with God mean, all of that is already there. It's just it's not that surprising to me that it didn't move the numbers even more against Joe Biden. But Emily, thank you so much. You're doing a fantastic job on the ground there. We're so lucky to have you on
the ground. Brands reporting from the RNC, and you know, I'm sure we will be talking to you more about what Trump does have to say when he speaks primetime tonight.
Thanks guys.
Yeah, they actually brought the old breaking Points set to Wisconsin.
So it's nice to be comfortable prison.
No, I will never escape it, all right, lovea Emily, so you.
Soon, Thanks guys.
So a whole lot going on with Joe Biden this morning. He has now been diagnosed with COVID. There is a now very public effort to pressure him out coming from the top echelons of Democrats. We're talking Schumer, Pelosi, Jeffries, et cetera. But Ryan, before we jump into that, just a reminder to all of you guys that Ryan just launched drop site News Understanding.
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a half. It's been really gratifying. I think I think we're in liftoff, Like I think I think we're going to make it, and I think we're going to be around for a long time to come, doing a lot of doing a lot of damage. Thanks and Crystal, Thanks to Thanks to you guys too. The Breaking Points community has really come out for it, which is that's who you want to be beholden to, Like, if you've got to be behold of somebody, if you got to starve somebody, that's who you want to serve.
I could not possibly disagree with that. So guys, go ahead and do that.
Ryan and Jeremy have already broken some incredible stories just in the first what are you a week into this, a little more than a week into this and already have made some major news. So it's definitely worth you guys giving your support if you're able. Let's go ahead and get to the news. With regards of Biden, we can put this tear sheet up on the screen, so he has tested positive for COVID nineteen. He's having to
cancel events because of this diagnosis. We can also put this video up on the screen, just continuing to show how feeble he is at this point in his life. You can see there through the window him really having to be assisted, almost like lifted into the car. You can sort of make that out through the rain from the side here see him being put in. And part of why this is so significant is because let's go
and put the next piece up on the screen. Diagnosis is significant because it came right after news leaked that Biden had privately said he might quit the presidential race
if a medical condition emerged. Now I don't know that COVID was the medical condition that he was referring to there, but this was in an interview with bet He was asked, is there anything that you would look to you personally to say if I see that I will reevaluate, And Biden said, quote, if I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said you got this problem, that problem, Biden indicated that he would be receptive to getting out of the race.
Ryan, this comes.
We've got like a whole slough of Biden developments that we're going to get to. As I said, you've got now Pelosi and Schumer really making more public their desires to push him out. You have him seemingly more open to the conversation. Not that he's saying he's going to get out, but he's not just like out and out ruling it out. What do you make of these most recent developments.
Well, he had also said that he would only take advice on this question from the Almighty, So you can read into that what you want about the timing of this. Right after he says medical condition, I looked it up.
The last time that he had COVID, he was in isolation for sixteen days, which is with CDC recommendation is like five minutes at this point, So you know, sixteen days when you have just a few days left of the entire presidential campaign, and this pushes you close to the Democratic National Convention does put I think, you know, extra pressure, especially as Democrats are, and we're going to talk about this, getting much more public and vocal about
the pressure that they're putting on him. And not just Democrats, not just the two thirds of Democratic voters who say they want him to step down, but the most powerful Democrats aside from the President in the country are now telling him, very directly into his face, exactly what the RNC crowd was chanting.
You know, Joe must go.
Yeah, yeah, it could have been Nancy Pelosi in the crowd, leaving those chances. Well, I mean, the COVID diagnosis it kind of cuts both ways, doesn't it, Because on the one hand, it's another indication of like, hey, the Almighty might be sending you those signals, buddy. And also, listen, everybody gets sick, but you know, at his age, it once again raises the specter. Okay, this is a much more serious illness for someone at his age and in
his whatever his health condition is. But the COVID diagnosis also gives him an excuse to stop doing the interviews and appearances he has been doing that have not been going particularly well. We have a little bit of a mashup of his appearance at the ENDABACP and this was put together and you can see, even on a teleprompter, he's struggling to complete sentences, finish his thoughts, and is completely oblivious to his own major policy announcement with regard
to housing. He means to say at one point that he's going to cap rent increases at five percent, and says he says he's going to cap rent at fifty five dollars. So just you know, a horrific blunder, which in other conditions maybe say, are I really just screwed up once? But obviously this is not just a one time screw up. Let's take a listen to a little bit of how this appearance went.
I know, I know't say, Joe, you may not have a Congress. Well, guess what y'all told me. I couldn't pass the Inflation Reduction Act. Y'all told me I couldn't face it.
Anyway, we did it.
We're gonna bring rents down, as I said, We're gonna build two million affordable homes. The cap rent increases of five percent a year, So corporate landlord can't God.
Anyway, I don't wanna get going.
I'm gonna get very upset.
But but there's gouging in America.
By the way, not only saves lives, we'll save taxpayers. Just what I did on the first round on Daln Medicare. It saves the taxpayer one one hundred and sixty billion dollars because they don't have to pay these exorbitant prices to these anyway, the idea, the idea, the corporate owned housing is able to raise your rent three four hundred bucks a month or something under what I'm about to announce, they can't raise it more than fifty five dollars.
I mean, you can just see the confused look on his face in that last part as he leans in. This is off a teleprompter, Ryan, this is the one thing we thought maybe he could still sort of like you know, stumble his way through.
It's you know, and just wanted to confirm this. On my keyboard, the percentage sign is above the five. Like did some intern write fifty five and forget to hit the hit the shift key and so it says fifty five. But if you're the president, you got to know your
own policy. It makes no sense like there's no democratic policy it's going to say that rent can't go up by more than fifty five dollars, Like, no matter what your rent already was, Like, if your rent is one hundred dollars, you can still go up by fifty five ors if it's five thousand, goes come on, like, like, your mind has to be able to say, even if it was a typo on the teleprompt, your mind has to be able like, oh, I know what my policy is. It's five percent, yeah, five percent increase.
As people who read off teleprompters sometimes sometimes, especially because we write our own stuff, so obviously got to be aware enough when we're reading it to be like, wait a minute, that's not the shit that I'm meant.
To say, Yes, yes, exactly.
It can't be like, oh, well, I guess, I guess the new policy is fifty five dollars. I wish though, that that was the rule that like, whatever the president says goes. He said it, and the crowd ratified it by cheering, that's the new law done.
That's it, that's happening.
You know.
It's also interesting because just before the assassination attempt on, Trump completely shifted the conversation and sort of put the Biden drop out conversation on hold at least for a few days. You had reporting about this disastrous zoom call that he had with this group of moderate Democrats. You can put this up on the screen because we now have the leak to audio. I knew it was going
to come out, the leaked audio of this video. And he in particular goes after this Democratic representative, Jason Crowe, who is a military veteran. And they say in this reporting, right before the Trump rally, Butler Pennsylvania, group of moderate Hill Democrats had a tense zoom call to express concern. According to one of the participants, they said the call was even worse than the debate.
He was rambling.
He'd start an answer and then lose his train of thought. Then when just say whatever, sort of like that clip we just showed you where when his mind wanders off, he just says anyway to get out of the fact that he has no idea where a sentence is going. He really couldn't complete an answer. They go on to say, I lost a ton of respect for him. Another participant in the call confirmed that characterization was rambling, dismissive, of
concerns unable or unprepared to present a campaign strategy. Had a particularly troubling exchange with Jason crow saying to him, quote, tell me something you've never done with your bronze star, like my son, this member of Congress told me, had the assassination attempt not occurred? An hour later, I imagine fifty people on that zoom were ready to come out
publicly against him. And you know that comment to Jason Crowe to Congress and Crowe Ryan, it kind of has it all because it's got this like tone of disrespect and belligerence, but is also a completely incoherent sentence.
Right, And it has the public has finally gotten to see what his ex staffers have been saying about him for fifty years, which is that he's not the happy Joe, the happy warrior. Internally with staff, he's very short tempered, and his ego and his arrogance get the better of him, and he lashes out at people in really cutting in and nasty ways. And you could not have a better example of that than incoherently attacking a guy over his bronze star, like exactly like you said, Like, what are
you even saying here? Are you criticizing him for it? But you're not because you're saying, like your son had it also. But and then that same answer is where he went on this like tirade about how he had brought together Alcus and all of the foreign policy work that he had done in the Indo Pacific, and he's also the guy that brought together NATO. Nobody else can make that argument to the American public Alcus Alcus Aucus.
And it's like, what do you, like, you are supposed to be a good politician with your finger on the pulse, Like find me a single voter anywhere in the country who does not have as his job like working for a foreign agent, who's like involved with this kind of security packed in the Indo Pacific, who cares about that?
And Jason Crow said that Jason grows like that that's not breaking through, mister President, and Biden, according to that audio, was like, well, I'm tired of this crap, Like this is not doing it man.
Yeah, Well it is interesting.
It goes back to the decision that his team made to have his big boy press conference be about NATO, because that's clearly the area where he's still the most comfortable, most codent, I mean the borderline obsession, and that was that was.
Smart, because you don't have to be remotely smart on foreign policy to impress Western journalists. All you have to do is name the countries correctly half the time. Because he got them wrong the other half the time. But at least he got them like, he was able to name them, and it's like, oh wow, okay, that's pretty good. Those those are foreign countries and he said their names and probably knows the capitals.
That's impressive.
The irony here is listen.
You know, before or Joe Biden was complicit involved in funding and committing a genocide, I was making the case for his domestic policy because there are genuinely things there that are worth talking about and celebrating. And you know, this is why I think Bernie and AOC and others foolishly and you know, without any sort of moral character are his jauntest allies at this point. But if you look at anti trust, if you look at labor, it
is a break in a major improvement from Obama. But you know, if you support those sorts of policies, it makes no sense to try to push them through such a damaged vessel that it's going to do nothing but undercut the power of that sort of politics, because people will say, hey, Joe Biden ran on you know, rent control and ran on anti trust in this program, you guys won, and he got absolutely wiped out across the country. So I think it's an incredibly foolish direction to go.
And I have a couple of poles I just want to put up to before we bring in Dave Weigel to talk about this sort of you know, major Democratic elite push to get him out, because I don't want people to have the impression that this is just an elite push to get him out.
Let's put this up on the screen.
Seventy percent of the country in a new poll says they want Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.
And oh, by the way, that includes sixty.
Five percent of Democrats and seventy seven percent of Independence. By the way, fifty seven percent of the country also wants to Donald Trump to withdraw, in a sign of how not enamored the country is with having these two men engage in a rematch.
Here.
And then let's put this next piece up on the screen from Politico, because this is also interesting, you know, Biden is. Biden indicated that if he could be convinced that he couldn't win and someone else could, then maybe that would be a factor in consideration. Well, you've got new polling that looks at a range of alternative Democratic candidates. They all run ahead of Biden by an average of
three points across battleground states. Now it's interesting here, though, Ryan is that and this won't be a really surprise to us, But Vice President Kamala harrisil runs better than Biden, but he's the weakest of the potential alternatives. And effectively, the more closely tied you are to the Biden administration,
the worse you perform. So the strongest potential candidates were Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Wimer, all for out paced Biden by roughly five points across battleground states. So you can see this pulling and it being leaked to Politico Playbook, which is the ultimate you know, DC
insider group. You could see this also as a play against Kamala Harris of making the accurate case that Listen, if you really are prioritizing defeating Donald Trump, and you're willing to push out Joe Biden to do it, why are you then going to go automatically for the next weakest possible candidate here in Kamala Harris.
Yeah, and putting in.
The astronaut hero Mark Kelly feels a little bit too nineteen nineties, but of course, yeah, like all of them are going to outperform Kamala Harris. I feel terrible saying it to the our coconut pilled audience, who is really rallied behind her.
But yeah, she's not. She's not the most electable of that bunch.
I don't think now she might have it locked up anyway, Like that be just because of the nature of the Democratic Party establishment that you know, they're only willing to kind of rock the boat so much.
On the other hand, like if.
You're rocking the boat so much that you're ousting your presumptive nominee two months before the election, like you're in revolutionary time, just go all the way, like take the final step and open the process up and let these candidates compete and see who wins. And if Kamala Harris wins, then great, she shouldn't just fall out of a coconut tree, right.
That's right.
Yeah, And I think there's a chance she would win in that open process that you know, quote unquote open process. Listen, we're at a place where the chance for a truly democratic process unfortunately has passed, and that is the fault of Joe Biden, his aides and democratic elites who closed down really a primary process. I mean, in some cases literally, first of all, they had no debates. Second of all, in certain states they literally did not have a primary
agents pulled everybody off the ballot. So, you know, the chance to have a truly dramacratic process has unfortunately passed.
But I agree with your assessment that even through an open convention process, where you have a public watching these beaches and watching this all unfold, sort of celebrity Apprentice style, it could create a lot of energy and excitement, and I think really could be a problem for the Trump vance ticket, who right now think that they are you know, sailing free and clear and are on their way to a historic landslide in which they're very likely to take
the I mean, they're almost definitely going to take this at it and very likely to take the house along with them.
Yeah, you get a Bravo production crew and you put the cameras around each one of these jab pritz Kershapiro, Whitmer.
All of them.
You have them them follow them around just like their reality TV stars. You edit that, you roll the episodes out. You've got to have meach do confessionals, you know, talking about how they're thinking about each each scene.
Then you roll that through the convention.
You will have a public I'm half choking, but not really like you will like you will have a public that is actually connected to you as a political party. Like imagine that a sense of legitimacy between the public. The public feels like there is a sense of legitimacy between themselves and these reality TV empires that have have grown up, like they feel like their sentiments are democratically represented on the screen because the way that they feel, the way that they post on on social media, is
then reflected back to them in the show. As people respond to that and feel the heat that is American culture now. And whichever political party recognizes that first, it is going to be the one that makes a real connection with the American public and the current Republican Party is led by a reality TV star. He happens to be a deranged one. So that's the only thing that
gives the Democratic Party an opening. But it's right there for the taking if they would just, you know, open up their imaginations.
A little bit.
Yeah, let's build some parasocial relationships with.
Jamie Mark, Kelly Crest, Whitmer, Gavin Newsom, the whole, the.
Whole lot of them.
Got to be first name with all of them. And that's right, JB.
Yeah, all right, Ryan, let's go ahead and get to Dave Wigel.
Joining us from her home Crystal Ball and joining us from Milwaukee, Dave Weigel, Dave, welcome to the program.
It's gonna be bad. I have all my lanyards today.
Excellent.
I would love it if you were like one lanyard short and live during the interview. You just get dragged, drag you out, kicking and screaming before we start real quickly. Uh, as I told all of you, Jeremy and I launched drop site news last week. Breaking points viewers can get a discount code for that uh drop site news dot
com slash counterpoints for that code. I actually interviewed Dave Weigel last week about that he got to see our little like we had a whole what do you call that thing where it's a giant banner that has the logo I called.
The steppen repeat.
It.
That's right.
They take the photos of what they're wearing and then they walked the next thing.
Yeah, carpet situation, Dave.
Dave and I did the red carpet in front of the drop site logo. We were both looking very good. But so thanks thanks for joining us from Milwaukee. Let's let's first roll Jonathan Carl from last night with some with some exclusive reporting here. Good nice little get from Jonathan Carl about the pressure that Democratic Party leaders are putting directly on Biden, and.
I am told that the pressure from Democratic leaders for Biden to get out of the race is intensifying. In fact, one person who has been out there publicly defending Biden told me just a short while ago, Biden is going to see the whole house of cards come down soon.
As for that meeting in Rehoboth, Delaware, I am told that this was a one on one meeting just the Senate leader and the president and the Chuck Schumer forcefully made the case that it would be better for Biden, better for the Democratic Party, and better for the country if he were to bow out of the race. And David, when I went to Schumer's office to ask them about to tell them I was in to report this and tell you this tonight, absolutely no denial from Senator Schumer's office.
They only said this Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus, in other words, the views of Democratic senators. I am also told that Jakim Jeffreys, the Democratic leader in the House, has expressed similar views directly to the president.
Now, Dave, the Democratic leaders would probably prefer to do this quietly. The fact that it leaking out tells us what about how this situation is unfolding.
Yes, and it was frozen for really maybe forty eight hours, and then I've gotten corked again over the week.
I remember talking to people in the Trump.
Campaign in Milwaukee on Monday evening, and one point they.
Made was this is good.
The current climate is good for us, as horrible as it is what happened in Butler, because Democrats are frozen and they're stuck with Biden. And they started thawing out hours later, really the next day, they're getting data all the time. I've we've a lot of us are recovering this, are sent screenshots of data, recaps of conversations, polling. There has been nothing that suggests that Biden to recover his position. He's been doing poorly generally in interviews since then. And yes,
the timing is interesting. It feels like from what we know, Democrats were talking to Biden on Saturday. Had the shooting not happened, we might be seventy two hours ahead. What's happening right now with a lot of Democrats being willing to call on him to leave.
Yeah, and it's not just Schumer in that reported conversation. We can put a next piece up on the screen. Adam Schiff came forward publicly and called on Biden to drop out, citing serious concerns he can't win. SHIFT being a very close ally of Nancy Pelosi, and this being seen sort of in the same way that Clooney was seen as like a proxy for Obama, Shift is seen as being a proxy for Nancy Pelosi. But we also have news specifically with regard to Pelosi we can put
up on the screen. DEM's are calling her with concerns she's taking detailed notes, they say, of district polls. In one call, she gave a clear indication she wanted Biden off the ticket. One dem who spoke to her said she's the political voice of the dem caucus right now. We also have reporting with regards to Hakeem Jeffries making these having direct conversations as well, and also indicating the
deep concerns of himself and his caucus. So, Dave, it seems like there's been sort of like closing of the ranks, and perhaps while the conversation was frozen in the wake of that assassination attempt, there was a lot happening behind the scenes that we weren't aware of.
Yes, there was Pelosis and key figure in this publicly if you went on Morning Joe. And the way the Democrats talk about the decision has been fascinating because Biden has made a public decision, and they keep repeating this mantra that he needs time to make make a decision meaning the other one meaning that he needs to come come around and leave and leave and leave the race. Yes, the fact that she has been mobilizing people who are worried about saving their seats says everything, and it is a.
It's even the conspiracy is a little bit too messy for that.
Here's another example of I was working, uh the idea of this virtual vote to be held as early as possible before the convention because of state vaalid deadlines, state out deadlines that are not necessarily more because they got changed even this week that was getting that was getting moved, and Democrats we run able to keep a story straight on it.
I was talking to them yesterday or sorry, two days ago.
Their argument was they needed at a press conference in Milwaukee, even the chair of the Democrat part Milwaukee all saying we need to have a virtual vote early, probably in July, to get over these deadlines. A day later, the DNC's rules committee says, all right, we still want to do a virtual vote.
We want to do it in August. That was another move.
It was a much more wonky inside baseball move, but something the party was confidently talking about doing as early as next week. They're now saying they're going to do in August. And that is all to make space for Biden to make this other decision and.
Not to run.
They're really trying to phone the runway for Biden to leave and for the Party, the delegates that are all almost all committed in ninety nine percent of them to get used to the idea that for the good of the country they had to dump them.
Yeah, and the reporting is that it came Jefferies and Chuck Schumer directly weighed in to push this deadline back, while that while the Jamie Harrison and Biden administrator trying to trying to cling to it because they they somehow keep thinking that something is going to save them and change change the reality. We've got Chris armand did you did you put up C three this tweet on? Yeah,
so you can put up C three. That's which is reporting showing basically what I was just saying that Schumer so and shoot, that Schumer and Jeffreys were responsible for this. If you move on then to see four, David want to get your get your take on the whole kind of Bernie and AOC world standing so firmly behind him.
Great.
Isaac Chatner interview with Bernie Sanders. His argument, it's it's it's worth reading this as C four, he says, responding to you know whether or not Biden is a good Kennedy said, I'm not aware that anyone thinks maybe Dave can do a better Bernie, I'm not aware that anyone thinks that Joe Biden is the best candidate in the history of the world, or that he's an ideal candidate. And nobody will argue with you that he has a well, he had admitted it. Sometimes he gets confused about names.
You're right, Sometimes he doesn't put three sentences together. It is true, but the reality of the moment is, in my view, he is the best candidate that Democrats have for a variety of reasons, and trying in an unprecedented way to take him off the ticket would do a lot more harm than good. So Dave, there's an incredible argument there. I would rather have a present. He doesn't put three sentences together, but he's still the man.
What's going on here?
Yeah?
Yeah, that journey has been, as usual consistent on this.
I followed him in Wisconsin right after the debate, and his arguments to me there was Biden's not the best debater, he might not even be the best speaker, but he's the nominee and he is worried about replacing him. There's something you hear, especially from older Democrats who have memories in the sixties and the seventies that it would be so chaotic the base witch Biden that it wouldn't be worth it. And I've talked to him Bolster, you say
the same thing. We look at the data. The incumbency advantage is so powerful that if you replace that with chaos, you're going to be worse off. I don't I didn't
read this as Biden worrying about Tamal Arris. I do know people on the left who are worried about that, who say that Biden has had incredibly strong pro labor, instance, anti trust instincts, anti monopoly instincts, getting out of afghanistank consistant that she might bring in different people who are more friendly to Silicon Valley and into big tech, and I had that was not the same. That's not been the Sanders argument out loud. I don't think that's much
from the left. You see what the left is doing right now of getting more concessions from Biden on what he's running on.
That is the progressive game here and again, Brady's done this forever. This.
Bardian's argument sixteen and twenty when he had influence on the platform was to excite people and to give them a positive reason of book for you. You need to get off of Trump fashion and you need to talk about progressive things you can do for people that improve their lives. So he's been successful with this mediatory in doing that, where he departs from a lot of the party, including a lot of senators, is thinking Biden is southigible
enough that he can he can deliver that. A lot of them think they distn't disagree, all right, the party should be talking more about Medicare, price caps, affordable housing, rent caps, et cetera.
But Biden can't do it.
Biden tried to do it at the end of a doubcapty event this week you saw in Las Vegas, and couldn't state properly the rent control policy like that.
That's the disagreement, right.
Whereas on NATO, you know, we talked earlier about this leaked call with the moderate Democrats where when he's really forcefully trying to make his case, it's all about NATO and what he's done in the Asian Pacific and things that you know, frankly, middle class American the working class Americans really don't care about.
But that's his that's what is ossified there.
That's what remains in terms of what he can make the most forceful case on I saw the podse Bros. Saying yeah, Project twenty twenty five, that's you know, it's bad. It's too bad that the president of the United States and the Democratic nominee never brings it up or mentions it, or talks about it, or seems capable of, you know,
articulating that argument against the Republican Party. Dave, I wonder what you make of some of the sort of tea leaves reading and reporting that we're getting of Biden being a little more open to the conversation. He made these comments to be et about, Hey, if I got a medical diagnosis, then maybe I'd changed my mind. Of course he got diagnosed with COVID, but I don't think that
was necessarily the medical diagnosis he was talking about. You also had some of this behind the scenes reporting that now rather than just saying, you know, I'm in and that's it, he's saying, well, do you think Kamala can win? He's more open to seeing some of the polling and the data in that direction. You know, do you what are you hearing and what do you make of those indications?
Well, if you listened about Biden's statements, especially interviewers were pressing him on the polling and electability.
He'd often just see the polls are wrong.
He could say that he was often polls where every public piece of data said that he wasn't. And that was that was a result of in getting different feedback, different information from a close circle of advisors and Steve Schetty from Valerie Biden. It became clear to Democrats that he was very poistered and being told just different things
that they were seeing. This is it is very data driven, this attempt to get him off the ticket, because what Pelosi and other Democrats are using is their own polling that says, no, we are now underwatering districts that Biden won by fifteen points, and that's we can't possibly win the election. We're now underwater Wisconsin. They still have polling that says their Senate cans a running ahead. But they realized that was not what Biden was reading. Biden was
just in disbelief. Briden would go to Wisconsin get a good crowd in Madison, which not not to be too disparaging.
The Democrats should get a good crowd in Madison.
It should be a place where you can get a Democratic crowd and came away saying, oh, I'm still popular in Wisconsin, but all of their data outside that that wasn't getting to him.
Said, no, he's not.
It is a winnable state where our message resonates and not with him because of the age question.
So that's part of what they're doing here.
He has been he has been getting information from close friends and Biden loyalists who were were with him when he was losing forty years ago.
That was wrong. That was not what the data they were seeing.
And as when it comes to the common stuff they're trying to get him at, there's data all the time that says even though the vice president is not popular, that she doesn't have the age problem and that she performs him by two three points in polls. Mean you really did see this the importance the New York Times Ciena Pool, which we were all got familiar with in twenty twenty, when it came out saying Biden was more electable in.
Swing states than Bernie and especially than Larren. That was important. The Democrats read that too. Democrat members read that too.
Sienna comes out and says, Harris is in the scoring position and Biden isn't.
And that's the kind of data they went him to see.
Interesting on the spectrum of whether it will be Harris or whether it will go to an open convention. If like ten is like, certainly it would be Harris. If Biden steps aside, zero is like, it would definitely go to an open convention. What's your sense of the conventional wisdom among kind of Democrats at this point of you know where where we are on that spectrum.
Oh, it's like nine that it would be Harris and it would be a different running mate, which if you saw yesterday, Republicans are sort of making fun of that and not agreeing to the VP debate because they said it be they named you know, JB. Pritzker and a bunch of other Democrats is the likely person. Devance is going to debate.
No Democrats apart from outside.
Strategists who just doesn't know that the vice president is not that popular and they think Democrat acts to do better, which isn't crazy inside the party, just delegates.
Again, we're bround to the Biden Harris ticket.
Really liked Kamala Harris and like the idea of mobilizing behind the first female president in a high state scenario where they're bigger underdogs they were in twenty sixteen. But the idea of pushing her aside for a this has been the problem for six months. Right for vision her aside for somebody who is not a black female vice president, you would also be saying the entire four year Biden administration cannot cannot be defended to both members of it
who got elected. Sorry, she's not popular. There's not a reason that to keep her off the ticket. Apart from polling. There are two reasons keep Biden off polling, an age which suggest that he can never recover from a polling for her is that she is not popular now. But if she just gets there and articulates even the message of Biden is supposed so should be better. So I have not I have not heard from people actually involved in democratic politics closely as opposed to people who just
talk about it or donate. I've not heard we need to dumb Harris and replace somebody else. It would be we need to stage manage this so that Biden finds a way to say I cannot continue this, but to pass the literally pass the torch, and the group passed the torch Progressive group of what wasn't this day? Want Harris, I will pass the torch to my vice president, defend our record, remind voters of how great this record is, and get past the Republican lies about it, which are fair.
For example, I heard Republican.
Convention last night the wages are down and oil production is down, which are not true. You have to do that with Harris and then a governor. That's where the party moved to.
So Dave bottom line it for us if you could, like, what are the odds at this point that Biden is going to drop when you've got Obama, Schumer, Pelosi, Jeffrey's most Democratic donors moving against him.
Is that enough to push him out?
Or can he just you know, him and Hunter and Jill and Raschetti and Donalin just hang on for dear life and grind it down, as I think you said to us last time.
Yeah, I moved to fifty to fifty, which feels a little coward.
I mean, really, just if Biden doesn't want to give this up and become a lame duct if he cannot be convinced that he would be a great figure in the party if he was willing to give give this up for a chance to win, then no, no one can force him to. People always ask me, what about the delic rules? Is their way to force him out? If you handle those rules, it is clear he's the only person who can say Joe Biden's not running for president anymore.
But I think it's fifty to fifty because he is getting this data and.
The message they're trying to import to impart to him is you have the choice of a one legacy of a term in passing the baton to vice president. And it was always very important to him that he was a vice president for the verse black president. He said that, Or you can be the guy who handed the keys back to Donald Trump and a Republican majority Republican Supreme Court. If they impress that on him and he buys it, then that's why he goes. But I do think that's only fifty to fifty.
Imagine how pissed the Republicans would be if they've done a whole convention against the wrong candidate.
Yeah.
I was talking to Charlie Kirk on the floor last night and he was saying he was saying, he's trying to get the word to Trump, please put more Kamala in your speech on Thursday, because he's very work It wouldn't say he's worried he thinks they can beat Kamala.
He was a little bit worried.
Yeah, as you said, the RNC was very Biden focused and a lot of that messaging would go out the door and they need to reboot, so they definitely the vibe I get in our Milwaukee is probablycause it's still rather run against Biben.
Gotcha all right, Dave, thank you so much for your time and giving us some reporting there from on the ground in Milwaukee as well.
It's great to see you.
Thank you great to be here.
So we have a lot of updates about possible motivations of the shooter or lack thereof. We have lots of updates with regard to just what is an increasingly mind blowing security failure finger pointing between the Secret Service in the local police who were involved in attempting to protect the president in Butler, Pennsylvania.
But let's start with this.
We had the FBI briefing members of Congress on what they were able to find on the shooter's phone and his electronic devices, and apparently he had searched along with things like major depressive disorder. He had also searched images of a variety of public figures, including Trump and Biden, along with dates of Trump appearances and the DNC in Chicago.
According to a person who was on the call, Ryan, you had some interesting commentary earlier in the show about you know, the profile that is emerging of the attempted assassin at this point.
Yeah, the people's first impression, I think of this of this guy once they started to get just a little bit of information, was that it's this he is a standard issue school shooter, which is the fact that such a thing exists is maybe the fiercest indictment of contemporary American culture that you can come up with. So it appears that he had some depressive personality and was just searching around for, you know, the locations of Biden and Trump.
You know, Biden, you know, by not really campaign, not going not really going out in the public, may have saved himself here. But imagine Trump's like, horrible luck that you've got this depressive, intelligent, you know, twenty year old who is just looking to go out in a blaze of glory. He's searching around for you know, famous figures and celebrities, and it's like, oh wow, Donald Trump is
coming to Butler, Pennsylvania. And then further like there's a ladder is leading up to this low roof that is just one hundred and fifty yards away from where he's going to be, and oh look at that. Nobody's going to be guarding. It just literally unbelievable.
Actually, yeah, no, it truly is.
I mean, as far as we can tell at this point, it's everyone. And of course immediately passes through his any political background leanings. You had some reporting about this scam pack Democratic scam pack that he gave fifteen dollars to on Joe Biden's inauguration day. But then on the other hand, he's a registered Republican and so based on this search history, yeah, portrait really starts to emerge of someone who I think, you know, the portrait of a school shooter is exactly correct.
Just it's almost like suicide by cop. Wanted to be notorious, wanted to be known in the history books, and was looking for any opportunity to do so, whether it was Trump, Biden, or some other famous political or other figure that he was going to try to take out, and then you know, the mounting information about the stunning nature of this security
failure is really is mind blowing. One of the latest comments from the Secret Service director Kimberly cheatles she was pressed on why no one was stationed on this roof, which seemed like a you know, very basic obvious. You don't want someone to have a clear line of sight at the former president's head from within very easy striking distance. Why wasn't there anyone on the roof? She says that it was a little sloped, so it may have been a security concern.
Let's take a listen to that.
When you saw the events unfold on Saturday, shock.
And then concern obviously for the former president.
Investigators now trying to determine whether roof access had been properly locked down. The shoulder climbing up seemingly unimpeded about four hundred feet from the stage with a direct line of sight on the former president.
Should that roof have been secure? Period?
That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point, and so you know, there's a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn't want to put somebody up on a sloped roof, and so you know, the decision was made to secure the building from inside.
This is of course being roundly mocked, as it should be, because even if I mean, first of all, the safety concern, okay, the safety concern you're supposed to be concerned with is protecting the former president of the United States and the Republican presidential nominee. And second of all, Ryan, you look at that rub and it's also barely sloped, so it's just an utterly mockable, preposterous dodge here from the Secret Service director.
It would be like saying, you know, why did you leave him exposed to the shooter for so long? And it's like, well, you know, you know, bullets can kill people, and so if our agents would have, you know, covered the president while he was being shot, you know that that's a real security concern because the agents, you know, could have been shot, which is true, but also that's
the job of the Secret Service. And also that's like a two degree slope, like it's okay, like you're you're gonna you're gonna be okay, uh, And the inside versus outside is also you know, completely preposterous. How do you secure the roof? Of a building from inside of it. I mean you don't obviously, but like that that that this executive director or whatever title is, it's still in her role, is itself shocking?
It truly?
Is?
It?
Truly is at this point because the basics of the failures here, the more we learn about how long they had identified the shooter and flagged him as suspicious because he tried to bring a rangefinder into the secure area, so he was flagged and identified, and then they just lost sight of him. You had local police, you had him identified thirty minutes before the shooting occurred. You had people, local residents on the ground saying we see this guy bear crawling up the roof with a gun. You see
people on the ground at the rally. There's videos that we see him. He's got a gun, and Trump is still allowed to go out and give his rally speech and come within millimeters of this bullet completely.
Taking him out.
I mean, if you've looked at these animations, it's utterly insane. The Secret Service director was also grilled by a CNN reporter about how this rooftop was unsecured and how small the protect perimeter ultimately was.
Let's take a listen to this as well.
The Secret Service increased security for former President Trump because of a credible threat from Oran. You know, I've spoken with several people who look at the perimeter hearing that news, look at the perimeter and say, how, knowing that there was a credible threat against the former president, how could that perimeter be so small that it excluded a building just one hundred and fifty yards away from the pobium.
I can't get into the specifics of any threats, but obviously, with all of our protectees, we're constantly monitoring the threats that are out there, and we design our security plans based on that.
Also depending on the.
Venue and the environment that we're in, and on that particular day, a full advance had been completed. But this is also why we are doing an internal review, and we look forward to the external review as well. And obviously, if you know, there are things that we need to change about our policies or our procedures or our methods, we are certainly going to do so.
Was that perimeter too small?
The perimeter encompassed the area that we needed to secure for the event that we had on that day. What happened is a terrible incident and should never happen, and we are obviously going to make sure that moving forward we take whatever lessons that come out of this and adjust accordingly.
Was every element, every part of his from the intelligence to the counter assault team, to the detail agents, the shift agents, I mean, every element top to bottom of the advance in the operation. Was every element increased after you learned of this credible threat.
What we increased was what we felt was appropriate for the former president and for that particular event on that day. We have been increasing the assets and the resources and the staffing that we have been providing to the former president since he was a presidential candidate and then the presumptive nominated.
That's what I can tell you.
That sounds like a no.
I am not saying I know at all. I'm saying that we have continued to increase the resources that we've been providing to the former president.
So you've got the slope roof excuse.
You've got here a whole bunch of non answers effectively, and then the other effort from the Secret Service has been to put the blame on the local police who were enlisted in the protection effort. And there may be some blame to be laid there by the way, but let's put this up on the screen.
New reporting.
Apparently the local police had alerted the Secret Service before Trump's rally on Saturday that they lacked the resources to station a patrol car outside a key building where that gunman later positioned himself and shot at Trump. This was confirmed by the way by the Secret Service that the local police department did not have the manpower to assist in securing that building. So what it appears from this account is that the Secret Service asked them to secure it,
they said, no, we can't. We just literally don't have the resources, and then it wasn't secured. We also have more reporting in this article about the early warnings with regard to this shooter being identified. Local media reported that before the shooting, a municipal counter sniper had called in with a report and a photograph of that man, who
turned out to be crooks acting suspiciously. Another local news station reported that officer called in around five forty five pm, that is, twenty six minutes before crooks opened fire from the roof, and a local newspaper in Beaver County, Pennsylvania also reported similarly that that counter sniper Gregory Nicoll made a warning of this kind just astonishing.
Ryan, Yeah, it really is.
And my early speculation was that perhaps the local police that were supposed to secure this building got lazy and it was just too hot in the parking lot and went inside of the building.
But it sounds like no, can't even can't even blame him for that.
They said, look, we don't have the manpower to do this, and the Secret Service did not respond by then filling the gap, which is their job. The answers from the secret Secret Service chief just utterly ridiculous.
Was the perimeter too small?
She responds by saying, well, the perimeter was the area that we were defending. Like stop just giving us definitions of things like we know that, but you know you were one hundred and fifty yards away. There's a guy scampering up a roof and squeezing off like eight shots or whatever at the president of the United form president
of the United States. Just complete and utter failure. And it's really impossible to blame Trump supporters who look at that and think like they didn't care, like either they were actively involved in this or they or they wanted it to succeed and so they didn't. They didn't give him the resources that he needed. And that was the
question that the CNN reporter asked there. It's like, Okay, the reporting here is that you're claiming I think this is I don't believe the reporting on this, but they're saying that Iran, you know, there's recent threats that that you know, that Iran wants to take out Donald Trump in response for him killing Costum SOLMANI. You know, who knows if that intel is remotely act or not. But if that's the case, that the Secret Service was told there's a heightened risk on President Trump.
And.
As you can tell from her answer, that they did not up the resources that were going to him in every in every capacity. You know, she used this kind of present tense, like we were increasing the resources that we were offering, which suggest that maybe they were pretending that they were going to do it in the future. You can't really blame Republicans for being paranoid and asking questions about, you know, how how firm the Secret Services
commitment was to this. Now, you know, I still think that you know, in competence, but is there some malicious incompetence here?
It's impossible to.
Say, yeah, I agree with you. There's plenty here too.
If you're inclined to think that there is some sort of conspiracy or, as you put it, very optly malicious incompetence, there's plenty of fuel for that narrative.
There's no doubt about it.
And we also have an interview with local police talking about because one of the things we've also learned is that local police had responded to these indications from normal citizens on the ground, Hey there's a guy up on that roof. They went and attempted to climb up on
the roof. Then the shooter points at the local police officer, he drops to the ground, and then the shooter takes aim at the former president at that point, so, you know, learning this was part of like, well, what the hell you just let him take shots at the former president? What the hell happened? Here we have their side of the story of how this all unfolded. Let's take a listen to that.
In fact, see an individual on the roof with.
A weapon, he saw the shooter. He did.
Your officers are on patrol, they hear that there is a suspicious person on the rooftop.
What did your officers do so.
Our officers in the area started to converge on the building by understanding as they did a full perimeter walk of the building, weren't able to see up on the roof. Two of the officers went to what appeared to be the lowest point from ground to roof. One of the officers actually boosted the second officer up high enough for him to grab hold of the roof. When he was able to pull his head up over the roof, he did, in fact see an individual on the roof with a weapon.
He saw a shooter, he did, and what did the shooter do?
Turned towards him, had the barrel of his weapon pointed at the.
Officer at that point the officers hanging on to the side of the roof.
Yes, unable to pull a gun out, unable.
To unable to defend himself, unable.
To reach his radio, any of that.
Yeah, Yeah, strictly defensive movement for him to lower his head. Duck lost his own grip right, fell approximately eight feet to the ground. It's a steep drop, that's a good drop.
Yes.
Did he get hurt? He did?
In that moment.
Did they realize there's a threat right now? To the former president.
They did so, both the boosting officer and the officer that fell were both on the radio, indicating that there was an individual on the roof that did in fact have a weapon.
Who did they radio?
So there was a blanket tactical channel. Everyone everyone it was on that tackle channel heard it.
Yes, how much time between that radio communication and the gun being fired at the former president?
I don't have that information.
I mean, it really is like a Keystone Cops type of situation that he's spelling out here where they're getting these reports or someone on the roof boosting each other on their shoulders to get up there, dropping to the ground, completely failing to prevent the threat. And then that key question at the end of okay, well, when you put this notice out to the blanket tactical channel that everyone had access to, how long between then and when shots are fired?
And he doesn't have an answer to that one.
That's the key question. The reporting is that it's just kind of seconds, but that is a key question. If there's anything more than seconds involved there then because at the same time, the counter sniper for the Secret Service had identified and was in communication with leaders at that moment and they're saying, no, you don't have authorstion to to take this to take this shot. And then that's why the counters ever was able to, you know, take
take the shooter out within seconds of him starting. But then it raises the question of just why not get Trump down? Okay, let's you don't have to necessarily blow the guy's brains out if you're if you're not one hundred percent certain of what's going on here. But what's so eerie about all of these videos of the crowd yelling you know the gun on the roof is you
can hear Trump speaking in the background. It's like, just tackle the guy, take him down, and then if you screwed up and it's a false alarm, it's okay, like the old man, I'll have a couple of bruises, but then he can get back.
Up and continue delivering his speech.
So that that is really the moment where kind of they're their their refusal to kind of act leave so much responsibility on them. It's because we're not expecting them to be like Tom Cruise or Jason Bourne and like hold onto the roof with one hand and duck down and grab their weapon and like shoot behind their back or whatever like that. This is not Hollywood, but you can like surround the president and protect him right well?
You also, I mean you would think as a lay person they would have some ability to get on the roof in a way that if there is you're being told there's a credible threat.
But you got up there. This twenty year old kid got up there, right and you're not.
Able to approach this in any sort of manner other than getting boosted on someone's shoulders and then falling to the ground. I mean, it's just that's insane. And then the fact that we know that there were reports of the shooter being suspicious and trying to come in with a rangebinder, and then they lose sight of him twenty six minutes before Trump goes on. It also raised the question why was he allowed to go on stage at all when there were such questions being raised and such
concerns being raised. So I agree with you, it is absolutely insane. The Secret Service director is still in place. I cannot imagine how that is the case. The slope roof thing is utterly preposterous. Non answers and obvious failures, utterly preposterous. Like I said, I don't think the local police are off the hook here, but if they told the Secret Service, we can't. We don't have the manpower to secure this roof. The Secret Service was just like, I'm sure it's fine, I have will to deal with.
It's no big deal. Just go inside and you know, stay cool inside the building that is supposed to be secured. It truly, is it truly is astonishing?
Yeah, very much.
All right, Let's get onto the least important story of the Morning. The crew over at Morning Joe very incensed being taken off the air on Monday because of concerns that they may say something inappropriate, inflammatory, et cetera, either them or their large panel of guests. They responded to this on the air, let's take a listen.
I wanted to briefly talk to our friends and viewers that watch us every day and.
Talk about what happened yesterday.
We were told in no uncertain terms on the Sunday evening that there was going to be one news feed across all NBC News channels yesterday, the Today's Show would be Lester hold other people that what you worked with on Sunday, and that that was going to be one news feed across all NBC News channels, that we were going to stay as a network in breaking news mode throughout all day yesterday. That did not happen. We don't
know why that was didn't happen. Our team was not given a good answer as to why that didn't happen, But it didn't happen. We were also told it was going to happen throughout the day, and I guess after there was such a strong blowback about yesterday morning, I guess they changed their plans and so those plans changed as well. So it didn't And you know, we've talked about it off the air, We'll talk about it on the air, because as we talked about everything on the air,
we were very surprised, we were very disappointed. And if we had known that there wasn't going to be the one news feed from NBC News across all NBC News channels, Willie, we obviously would have been in yesterday morning.
Yeah, we al wish we would have been here yesterday.
We were still or would like to.
We'd like to figure out exactly why there wasn't that one news feed.
And I think the reason why is this show began and continue seventeen years later on being the place where you can go to have the hard conversations in a civil way. And so it seemed like now more than ever is a day time that we would like to be on, and I think our viewers agree with that. So we continue. We are five minutes past the top of the hour.
And let me just say we next time we're told there's going to be a news feed replacing us, we will.
Be in our chase sitting here, yeah, and the news feed will be us, or they can get somebody else sitting here.
Their audience of one Joe Biden is very upset. I'm sure that they were taken off there for this day, but Ryan, what did you make this whole situation?
And so what happens if they show up in their chairs but nobody turns the cameras on, because I think you have to do more than just sit in the chairs. But that would be amazing if they sat in their chairs and kind of set up a tripod with their phones and just went live on his periscope, still a thing. It'd be whatever whatever they are like comfortable with at
that moment. I'm trying, I'm trying to think, like what kind of event could make it so that we're like, oh man, we can't have Crystal on tomorrow morning.
It's couldn't go to say or me or Emily or Sagar.
But it certainly is not a sign of confidence in your report, in your team of quote unquote journalists, if when things are sensitive you can't actually trust them to not embarrass you, or you know the other thing that it's possible here that's going on. MSNBC is part of a gigantic corporate conglomerate which is susceptible to government action
and government in action. And it doesn't necessarily mean congressional There are a lot of you know, administrative actions that that a avengeful government could take that would influence all the different tentacles corporate tentacles that the parent company of MSNBC has, And maybe they're looking at the polls and seeing, oh man, you know, it looks like Trump is coming back. Trump is known to be, you know, a man that has a long memory when it comes to slights, and
so we needed to start closing up to him. Now that is that that is probably more likely than them being concerned about them saying something that would anger like viewers.
So I don't think. I don't think this was about a viewership.
I think this was a kind of straight up kind of political you know, lack of power play.
Were like asking what is it that they thought that they would say that would be so unacceptable because.
Like it's got to be you're worried about.
Yeah, like just speculating about or even just like openly talking about, well, what if he had been hit and how would that play? Like, yeah, what else can what else could they be afraid of? That's because you're right, this this doesn't seem like a particularly difficult news environment to broadcast into.
Right, It's all you have to do is say political violence is wrong, even if it's someone I don't support as a candidate. It's you know, you would think that they could be trusted just to handle the basics.
Of that, you would think, But apparently not, because I can't think of anything else that they would say that would get them in that kind of hot water.
Yeah, and just to take people like a little bit behind the scenes from my now dated cable newsic experience, but it's not unusual to have a show that's more of an opinion show be preempted by like, you know, what's considered sort of the hard news reporters you stick a luster hold or whoever their go to now is
in these breaking news situations. And so it's not like that's that crazier than usual, but it sure seems like they lied to the Morning Joe people who are like, yeah, we're just doing rolling coverage and so we're preempting everyone, when really they just were preempting them because they had
specific concerns about this group. And so, you know, the last comments there from Joe basically like we're not doing that again, and they're going to have to, you know, pry this camera off my face with their cold dead
hands or whatever. It's kind of a shot at the NBC bosses and also an indication of them feeling like, especially because of their cozy relationship with this president and being his official mouthpieces at this point, that they actually have more power in this situation than the NBC bosses do.
Yeah, and in fact, specifically in this situation, Mike dropsite College Jeremy Scahill was scheduled to be interview by Aimin at I think seven forty that evening because Amen has
his opinion show basically on the on the weekend. He was going to talk about this new interview he'd done with the Palestinian Islamic Jahad second in command, And as soon as the shooting happened, I told him, you know, use the MSMZ term you're off the hook, Like that's what they always tell you when you're canceled, you're off
the hook. Like and sure enough, like about fifteen minutes later, he got an email from the producer like, Yeah, we're obviously not going to be talking about to Jeremy Scale about this interview that he did. It's just walla wall news now about the assassination. That is that is a normal thing, but your main show, you know, ought to be able to handle news. Like that's the weirdest part.
And also two days later, we're talking Monday morning, it's not as if it's not as if it happened like an hour before they went on air, and they're like, oh, they'll have time to get their heads right and they're going to say something crazy like they had two days to cool down.
Yeah, it's a great point too. That's amazing that Amon wasn't even going to have Jeremy on, to be honest with you, Aman's great. Yeah, full disclay. Aman's an old like one of the few people and some REMMBC days, and it's shown a lot of courage, especially in the face of many being let go clearly for his views on Israel Palestine and his willingness to conduct difficult interviews.
So Aimon being willing to host Jeremy for this conversation he had with Palestinian Islamic jihad leaders is good on him for that one, and hopefully he'll he'll be able to get Jeremy back on to.
Have some of those conversations.
Actually it might have been about Thamas Fishers. I don't think his Pija.
Interview was out yet, but either way, I hope, I hope that our kind words about Aimin are not used against him in ternally.
Yeah, we hate it.
He's terrible, all right, Ryan, thank you so much for helping me out with the show this morning. It's always great to hear your thoughts and insights on all of these issues, so I'm really grateful to you for that.
Yeah, it's just a pleasure to be here. And we don't we don't get to do this enough because it's what I'm feeling. I'm filling in for you.
Yeah, that's great chance for the left wing dominance of the show today.
That's right.
We did get Emily in there at the top, so people got their their dose of right wingness into the show as well. Canvas Dot on that all right, guys, thank you so much for watching, bearing with us and what has been a very tumultuous personal week both for myself and for soccer. We're going to continue to have breaking news updates for you as things unfold with Trump's speech tonight and god knows what's going on with the
Biden campaigns. Will be watching that as we all also head two soccer speading, so that'll be interesting, and we will see you back here next week