Hi, this is Tim. Since this episode was first recorded, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race. As you will listen in the following conversation. We did expect him to drop out pretty soon. We just didn't think it would happen this quickly. Anyway, Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode. Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course Biden
Trump and a presidency in play. The first act in the Republican Party's presidential primary season. The Iowa CAUCUSUS has come and gone. Other contests in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Michigan, and the collection of fifteen Super Tuesday states all lie ahead. Donald Trump registered a resounding win in Iowa. If polls are to be believed, he is situated to easily continue his sprint to the GOP nomination, the flag bearer of
a party shaping itself in his image. Just a year or so ago, mired in legal prosecutions and memories of the January sixth Insurrection, Trump appeared to be politically spent. Voters didn't seem to want to give him another chance to torch the Constitution. Iowa at least has proven that
to be wrong. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, who has presided over a robust and expanding an economy undercut by a savage bout of inflation, a rational and globally minded approach to foreign policy in the time of war, and a lackluster approach to immigration, comes to the race with strengths and weaknesses. A lot does it stake in the race for the White House. And joining me to discuss the presidential battle is Nancy Cook, a stellar political reporter for
Bloomberg News. She has covered both the Trump and Biden white Houses, and she has a wealth of knowledge to share.
Greetings Nancy, Oh, thanks so much for having me Tim.
I want to talk a little bit as we get into this about your background, because you have an interesting path into your current and powerful role, and I always wonder what a nice person like you did to wind up in this dirty little business we inhabit. So tell me a little bit about your first job covering politics, when and where was that.
So, my first job out of journalism school was actually at a tiny paper in Massachusetts called The New Bedford standard times. It's a gritty, old fishing town that has seen much better days. A downtown was cut off by a highway. There's a ton of poverty. There's a big drug epidemic there. It's a huge fishing port. There's a huge migrant population there that works in these fish houses on the waterfront. It's basically a place that a lot of people drive through on their way to Cape Cod.
But it is an extremely gritty, sort of formerly powerful industrial whaling city that has fallen on very hard times. And so I worked there for two years when I was in my twenties, and I do think that that made me very scrappy, because you know, there was twelve reporters on staff. I wrote eight stories a week. I
covered local politics. And the thing is when you cover local politics in Massachusetts, which is the place that people really care about politics, you also run into like the selectmen that you cover at the coffee shop, and you know when you're getting lunch, and so everybody gives you feedback all the time on your stories. And I definitely think it made me realize that journalism is about covering things,
but it's not just about the horse race. It's really about what happens in people's lives, and there's a great responsibility to that.
Yeah, I would argue actually that the horse race coverage off an eclipses coverage of real policy issues that have a direct and pivotal impact on voters' lives, and we could do better to tilt more in that direction than sometimes we do. But we're in an election season and you've covered obviously national elections before. Was your first national reporting job at MPR in two thousand and eight or do I have the timeline wrong?
No, that's right, And so I ended up at NPER in two thousand and eight as a producer during the electtion that Obama won. It was super historic and I learned so much on that campaign. But one thing that I did realize was that horse race politics sort of failed us a little bit in that election, because I do remember that fall of two thousand and eight, there was a huge financial crisis, you have to remember, and
I remember sitting in a big meeting at NPR. You know, it was a very low level employee there, and everyone was trying to figure out how to cover the financial crisis in terms of the presidential race, and political reporters really didn't know what they were doing then, because the financial crisis and the economic downturn that came about really was so much bigger and ended up influencing the campaign quite a bit. John McCain, who was Obama's challenger at
that point, was really caught flat footed by that. And so after that I took a break from covering politics for a few years and covered business and economics in New York and then in DC, and sort of having that background in economic policy in business really ended up informing me quite a bit when I went back to political reporting in twenty sixteen, And I do think that that has been really a hallmark of my journalism career, is sort of this blending of politics and policy, and
that's really what interests me the most.
And in twenty sixteen you were at Politico. Obviously that was an epic race for any number of reasons, but that was obviously Donald Trump's great debut on national political landscape. Were you aware during that election that this essentially seismic moment had arrived or did it sort of reveal itself more gradually to you?
It revealed itself a little bit more gradually in twenty sixteen that fall Politico assigned me and another reporter to basically get to know all of the Trump transition people.
And the transition people are the people who will like go in, you know, if someone wins and sort of form the government initially, and it was funny because I got to know all of them well because they didn't think they were going to win, you know, even the people around tru But you know, you have to remember, in twenty sixteen, the people are on Trump and the people who were closest to Trump did not think he was going to win the twenty sixteen election. They were
surprised by that. So I think the media was surprised, Trump was surprised, and I think all of Republican politics was surprised. And it's never been the same since.
What were the biggest changes, And not necessarily exactly in twenty sixteen, but during the evolution of the Trump presidency in the White House, I mean, we're aware of Donald Trump as a in my mind, you know, a cartoon figure willing to burn down certain civic norms to have his way. I think that's been on steroids more recently,
but we can get to that. But beyond Trump as a kind of human phenomenon and someone bursting the seams of traditional presidencies and raising the specter of authoritarian rule, et cetera, et cetera. What other sort of foundational changes did you see in that twenty sixteen to twenty twenty period that made that political era in that White House different from other presidential races and administrations you had covered.
Well, it was just wild that he won the presidency. I mean, he you know, had sort of no organization, you know, in twenty sixteen in Iowa, he had like no field operation, no one there, you know, no one there to speak up for him at caucuses. And he did lose the Iowa caucuses in twenty sixteen to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, but it was only by six thousand votes. And he really changed the Republican Party in twenty sixteen. He was able to speak to the working
class in a way that Republicans hadn't. He shed a lot of the conventions that Republicans had been talking about for years, Like he didn't want to cut social Security in Medicare, which is what all these other Republicans like Paul Ryan had been talking about for years. He wanted to protect that. He talked about trade. He basically changed the way Republicans talk about trade. Forever Republicans used to be sort of these country club people who wanted to
cut taxes and believed in free trade. He doesn't, you know, he really believes in this whole different trade policy of putting punishing tariffs on other countries, really punishing China and going after them, and that has informed not just the Republican Party, but Democrats too, And then within his White House he continued with that. He changed the nature of immigration and how it looked. He was much more about closing borders, restricting the number of people that could come here.
Trade was a huge thing. You know. I can't overstate enough the extent to which he has remade the whole Republican Party in his image and his policy philosophy. And that started in twenty sixteen, and when he took the White House it was just, you know, really took off well.
And in many ways, it's not about a fully coherent set of governing principles or policy principles. It is about fostering this idea, almost a cult of personality around Trump himself, which I don't think the Republican Party had ever done before. They obviously had people who had great emotional connections with their voters. I think of Ronald Reagan, for example, or Dwight Eisenhower, or even George W. Bush in the early
part of his first term in office. Having said all of that, Trump leaves his mark on this party, but he still loses in twenty twenty. And in your mind, why did he lose that race.
I think he lost that race because of COVID. You know I covered that race and he honestly, before COVID hit, it seemed like he was on track to win. The economy was doing very well, He was doing well in polls. I remember Biden was nothing in Iowa Genmine. Reporters who saw him there for the Democratic caucuses in twenty twenty thought he seemed tired. He didn't seem like he was with it. He was not drawing big crowds. But then
COVID hit in twenty twenty. In February, we really started to see the first hints that this would be a global problem. And then things started to shut down in March, schools, businesses, the whole world change. And Trump responded very poorly to that. He did not want to do mask mandates. He started warring with his health officials. It didn't seem like he took it seriously. He gave these pretty crazy two hour COVID briefings where he urged people to inject themselves with
bleach like it just it became off the rails. And you know, a lot of the infighting in his White House or the influence of family members like Jared Kushner was really laid bare during that time period, and they could not come up with an effective COVID response. Tons
of people were dying. It's funny because they did actually help develop the COVID vaccine very quickly, and I think that if his earlier response had been more measured and more tempered, that he would have potentially won reelection and gotten credit for the COVID vaccine and its development. But
the public handling of it seemed like a disaster. I think Americans felt tired of the chaos in the middle of a global pandemic, and you have to remember that summer, in addition to facing a global pandemic, there was a ton of unrest. George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police
Office us her people were protesting in the street. People were mad about race relations in the country, and it just felt like Donald Trump was adding fuel to the fire rather than resolving it, you know, leading the country in the extreme times of turmoil. And you know, he's never been a president for the whole country. He's always been a president that really speaks to his supporters, and that became very apparent during that time.
He also was impeached twice. He escaped that, but there
were also two impeachments. And the other thing I think about COVID is he was sort of trapped by this populis fervor he had helped unleash because I think there was this widespread belief that government couldn't be a force for good, You couldn't necessarily put your faith in government solutions to big problems, and COVID really demanded the kind of effort that I think ultimately got the country back on the right track, which was this public private partnership
that resulted in the creation of the COVID vaccines. And I think he knew in his books he couldn't really embrace something like that right out of the gates because it ran contradictory to the sentiment of his populace base. And much of his own rhetoric about government getting in people's ways. We wind up with that with Joe Biden in the White House, and you've now covered Joe Biden for the last three and a half years or so. What kind of a report card would you give Biden.
Well, I think that Biden has done a ton of things, actually, but his White House has really struggled with selling it and sort of making that apparent to people. You have to remember they've passed a sweeping infrastructure law. They responded to COVID, Well, they got it under control. They sent a bunch of money to schools to reopen. They made sure people had vaccines, they made sure people had tests.
You know. He had passed the Chips Act, which helps basically bring a lot of manufacturing of pretty key things to the US like semi conductors and chips. He canceled student loan debt that has been blocked by courts, but the Department of Education is still managing to do a bunch of that stuff in a regulatory way. He appointed the first black Supreme Court justice who's a woman. That's a huge accomplishment that the left has really wanted. The
list sort of goes on and on. But for whatever reason, and I think it's mostly both the people around Biden but Biden himself, they have not been able to sell the American people on that record. Biden has never been a great orator. He's not an Obama figure. You know, he doesn't go out there and give these amazing speeches. He's more like a grandpa who has a lot of gaffes and makes the same old jokes. And the people around him too. You know, it's a very insular group.
They have been together for a long time, and I would say one of my critiques of covering them is that they can be very insular and move slowly. And so for instance, when we see things like a low approval rating, you know, he's having problems in swing states with voters. These are like flashing warning signs for this upcoming election. And what they're choosing to do is sort of double down and blame the media or defensive rather than realize this is going to be a tough election for them.
And now the first sort of litmus test of that is what happened in the recent Iowa caucuses, in which Donald Trump, after not really actively campaigning in the state, though he had a much more robust ground operation than he had in the past, which I think is something we can talk about later in the show, because that also should be a warning sign to the Biden crew from a purely competitive standpoint, But he is not physically in the state very much, but he dominates the polls,
he dominates the sentiment of voters, and he winds up with a thirty point victory over the second place finisher, Ron de Santis, and slightly more than that over NICKI Haley, who finishes in third place. All of the other Republican condenders have dropped out of the race so very quickly. Now it is Trump versus DeSantis versus Haley. And I
think Trump was expected to romp in Iowa. But what else came out of the Iowa caucuses that surprised you despite the sort of foregone conclusion that Trump was going to be the victor.
There well two things. One, I think that it's not just that he won the Iowa caucuses. It's said he did well with almost every demographic group that includes. He did well with all of the age groups. He did well all across Iowa rural areas, suburban areas. Do you know what I mean, he just did well. He's always been a president who has spoken to the working class. He did well with college educated Republicans. I mean, he is really just has a commanding lead among Republicans across
the board. And I think that's very hard for his rivals to catch up to because it's not like, you know, they can pick off, Oh, well, he's just the working class guy, but I'll get the college age Republicans. It's like, nope, Nikki Haley got some college age Republicans, but Donald Trump got the same amount. Like he's just doing well with every group. So I think that that is a real lesson to take away, that there is a depth of
support therefore him that is pretty remarkable. The second thing is just that I think Republican voters and voters in general, as we've seen in the swing state polls, sort of have amnesia about some of the things that he's done. Like people don't really talk about January sixth that much. There's a bunch of polling that shows that a huge soauthor Republican Party does not think that January sixth was
a problem anymore. And so he has also been very successful at rewriting the history of what happened sort of after the election in twenty twenty, what he was responsible for, and I think that we'll see that moving forward.
Would a candidate in the past be forgiven for inciting an insurrection of the capitol, for several civil and criminal indictments, for being charged with more than ninety crimes. My feeling is absolutely not. So something in the water has changed, and I'd be curious to know how. Despite all of that important baggage that Trump carries, as well as his sort of own proclamations that he might be a dictator for a day or more, maybe he'll serve another term
beyond this one, etc. Etc. All the warning signs are there, and yet it doesn't really affect his standing at all with his base and now with an expanding part of the Republican electorate as Iowa is shown.
Yeah, it's been fascinating. And I talked with a bunch of polsters in Iowa who have asked questions about if he is convicted on any one of these ninety one charges that he faces, will that hurt him? And they all said no, you know, they do not expect him to hurt him. So it's hard to see, like where The breaking point is. I have been at a bunch of Trump events in the past year, and what I have marveled at is his ability to turn his misfortune to a political advantage. He is out there at rallies
telling people, I am being prosecuted because of you. I am a victim, I am fighting for you, and these people believe it. You know. I was at an event in Florida that he did this fall. There was someone who had been to sixty rallies. You know, people really view it almost like a grateful dead show. They come. It's like a sense of community. It's a movement. People come to the rallies to see people that they've seen at other rallies. They wear T shirts. It's not really
just like a political rally. It is almost like a concert. And he has been so successful at flipping the script around on his criminal charges and making it sort of all about him and to his political advantage. And I will tell you his campaign officials are delighted by this.
Yeah. I think the idea of I'm a victim too. I know what it's like to be persecuted. Even though Donald Trump has walked through life with enormous embedded advantages, he's a white male. He's a wealthy white male. He's had these various rings of protection around him his whole life, his father's wealth, celebrity, now the White House. But he has always sort of, I think, pitched himself historically as the working person's idea of what you would do if
you became rich. You'd have glitzy women around you, you'd have a triplex condo that looked like Louis the fourteenth that built it on acid. You would have a jet with your name on it, et cetera, et cetera, what you do with your lot of money. And he's shrewd about that, you know, he's built a business around that.
What's interesting, though, I guess in the electoral context to me, is while he has this bond of shared victimhood and presents himself as an EmPATH to his voters, he hasn't really come up with a full set of policy solutions that really address the very real struggles working class and middle class Americans are contending with.
Yeah, you're right, he hasn't, and I don't think that we're going to see a ton of policy specifics from him ahead of the election, Do you know what I mean? I don't think we're going to hear from him what would you do on affordable housing, for instance, what would you do to tackle inflation. I think that his campaign doesn't see a lot of value and offering these specifics.
I think that they're going to try to win based on this personality cult that he has and based on the connection that he has forged with his base of working class voters. But this expanding base, which we've already talked about, and that's really going to be coupled with an intense organization this time. They're very organized on the ground. That's going to be how they're going to win the election.
On that note, I wanted just tilt to a break here from one of our sponsors, and then we'll come right back and pick up this very interesting conversation. I'm back with Nancy Cook, who's educating me and you, I hope about the presidential primary season that just kicked off. Nancy, we were just talking about Trump's win in Iowa and the fact that he demographically scored very well with groups who had conventionally been seen as not having an affinity
for him. Of interest to me is college educated Republican voters which were seen as sort of the province of Nicki Haley, and Nikki Haley has closed within several percentage points of Trump in New Hampshire, though that might be her high water mark in this whole campaign. But New Hampshire's a very different Republican electorate than Iowa. New Hampshire has more educated Republican voters, more affluent Republican voters than Iowa.
So it's a very different kind of case. But I wanted to ask you where does Iowa leave Nicki Haley? And if she doesn't really have a standout show in New Hampshire, you know, her next step is in South Carolina, her home state where she was governor, And if Trump beats her in South Carolina, I don't see how she extends her campaign beyond South Carolina. But I want to know what you think about that. And you know what we could possibly expect to see in New Hampshire and South Carolina with her.
So Nicki Hailey has spent a ton of time in New Hampshire over the last year, and New Hampshire people like her, you know, her more moderate style really speaks to them. Also, you have to remember that independence and Democrats can you know, switch over and vote in the
New Hampshire primary, the New Hampshire Republican primary. And so if a bunch of Independents and Democrats come out to vote for her in New Hampshire and she can pick up some of the supporters from Chris Christy, you know, who just dropped out of the race recently, that could really help her. You know, she is closing in on Trump in the polling, but I'm just not sure it will be enough for her to beat him. I'm not
on the ground in New Hampshire. I'm sort of in between Iowa and New Hampshire now, so I'll have to see what it looks like when I'm on the ground there, But I would be surprised if she overtakes him. And then the tricky thing is is that he is still pulling at a huge advantage in South Carolina, her home state, and is definitely expected to win there. And so really I think her best chance to do well and beat
him would be in New Hampshire. And if she does that, you know, it could change the tone of the race. I think it could show some Republicans that maybe Trump isn't as invincible. But the Trump campaign is banking on the fact that Nikki Haley does not have enough of a base in the Republican Party to actually get a path to the nomination. That New Hampshire will proper up potentially because of Democrats and independence, but that won't be the strategy in South Carolina.
And did you pick up that vibe in Iowa? Obviously you were sort of on an Arctic tundra there. You know, there was sub zero temperatures, there was a blizzard. It affected turnout. I think only slightly more than fourteen percent of registered Republican voters actually turned out to vote in the caucuses there. What was it like on the ground in terms of just the sentiment you were able to pick up on in Iowa about Trump and Haley and DeSantis.
Well, I would say when I was in Iowa, Trump just still seemed really dominant. And you know, I talked with some business leaders in Iowa who I think didn't necessarily want to support Trump again, but were already sort of getting back in line because they viewed him as
the inevitable nine. Nikki Haley really surged in the polls in Iowa within the last few weeks, and there was some pulling a few days before the caucus that showed that she could have potentially come in second, but that support was pretty soft, you know, it wasn't people who showed the same enthusiasm level that they did for Trump, and so I think the bad weather really hurt her. She also did not have as much of a ground
game as DeSantis or Trump did. You have to remember that, like she was surging in the Iowa polls kind of late. She got some money from the Koch Brothers a little bit late. So her ground game in Iowa and Iowa is so much about a ground game, like making sure people would basically just go to the caucuses. I think she was just a little late with the organization to do well. You know, DeSantis has a lot of problems. His campaign has had a ton of turmoil. The candidate
himself can be pretty awkward. He has a hard time connecting with people. I heard this from Iowan's both you know, sort of leaders in the Iowa Republican Party but also just rank and file people who I spoke with it rallies and events the days leading up to it. But he did have a really strong ground game and I think that helped him in Iowa. I mean, his campaign was like offering to shovel people's driveways and they needed it.
See. That's why I want them to take a campaign more near my house. You know. The one other thing I want to sort of think about with Haley is Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, has thrown his support very strongly and visibly behind her, but he has also said that if she ends up not being the candidate,
he's going to support Trump. And I think that that's a kind of drum roll you're going to hear across much of the Republican Party that even people who have been openly critical of Donald Trump and call him a threat to democracy and a buffoon and a racist, et cetera, et cetera, when push comes to shove and the political stakes are at play. And I still find this mysterious, but they're willing to throw in with him, and I think that that might become visible in New Hampshire. With DeSantis,
it was interesting to me in Iowa. He gets beaten by thirty points, but he said, you know, I still got my ticket punch. Here we go. But he obviously got that ticket punch for South Carolina because he's not going to New Hampshire at all, and so South Carolina could be in the end of the road for him as well.
Couldn't it. Yeah, he is going to New Hampshire. He just went to South Carolina first after Iowa. But he's not expected to do well in New Hampshire. Some recent polling had him pulling like fourth or even fifth behind Chris Christy before Christy dropped out, and so we're not expecting him to do well in New Hampshire. He's going to kind of make his last stand in South Carolina.
You have to remember the Desanta's people, though, there's always like a lot of chest slumping, then a lot of bravado, but never back down, which is the super pack that did all the ground game in Iowa started laying people off, so you know, there's always a lot of bravado there, but then they end up doing layoffs because they're running out of money. So I know they say they want to go through South Carolina, which is at the end
of February. I do not know if they will actually have the money to do that, which is.
Pretty amazing given the windfall Ronda Santa's had coming into this campaign. A big portion of which they appear to have spent on the jets, so maybe they'll learn some discipline the next time around. After South Carolina, I think Michigan is one of the next big votes, and then we hit this collection of more than a dozen Super Tuesday states in early March. But prior to even Super Tuesday, Trump could have this wrapped up. Is this a primary season in which the primaries don't really matter?
I mean, I just think that Trump basically broke the primary, you know, similar to the way he broke Republican politics and reshaped it in his own image and broke Republican policy long standing policy and trade and immigration and all these things, he has broken the primary. You know. He's done it totally differently, and I will be curious to see if anyone ever does it the same again. He did not campaign extensively in Iowa until sort of the
very final stretch. He is campaigning in New Hampshire a lot this week, but hasn't spent a ton of time up there. And you have to remember that he's basically merging his campaign at this point with all these courthouse appearances, and he's trying to sort of turn the courthouse appearances and speaking after into their own little mini campaign rally. But he has totally changed the nature of the primary. You know. Also, big donors aren't really backing him, and
it doesn't matter. He has a bunch of people who give ten dollars and twenty dollars, you know, all these people around the country, and that's what's fooling his candidacy. One of the most interesting things this cycle is I have never seen such a gap between what sort of upper middle class and wealthy Republicans want from the Republican
primary and what everyone else wants. You know, there's all these super rich donors who are berefed that it's going to be Trump again, or have been, and they've been trying to back to Santis or Nikki Heely but it hasn't been working. They don't want Trump, but he's still likely going to be the nominee.
Why don't they want Trump. He's going to cut their taxes, He'll loosen regulations on their businesses. On the other hand, he is retrogressive in many ways about global trade, and he's probably not, in the most charitable analysis, do anything to really improve national security. I know he positions himself as better on this issue. Than Biden. But the reality is he is ignorant of foreign affairs and hasn't really developed any kind of a consistent policy about some of
the global security threats we face. So what is it that wealthy educated Republicans who can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat but can't detest Trump? What aren't they getting from Trump that they want? Is it simply civility or does it go beyond that.
I actually don't think it's civility. I mean, I think we're just giving everyone way too much credit. I think it's actually just that his white House was chaotic. Every day was sort of this remarkable fight between different factions in the White House. There was sort of like a business faction or a more maga faction, and it was like, if you were a business leader, you kind of never knew what policy was going to come out. It kind of depended like who won the fight in the Oval
Office that day. I mean, it was really fun to report on. But I think if you're a business leader, you want some certainty that policies or executive orders aren't going to come out that you like literally weren't expecting, or that policy wouldn't change one day to the next, and I think it's just this feeling of certainty and a desired not to have chaos that has kept these
people from not supporting him. I do think in the end they will get behind Trump because they would rather have lower taxes, less regulation, and like the few parts of sort of Republican orthodoxy that still remain. They would rather have that than Biden. But for now they've really
been sitting it out. I also think that we may not see some big Republican donors step into the race, simply because if these people are involved in running public companies, there would be big backlash from their employees if they supported Trump. So I think these people may stay quiet, and although they may vote for Trump, they'll sit on the sidelines and instead get involved in things like Senate races.
And issues like Trump weaponizing Justice Department against his opponents, or sending the US military into Mexico to resolve the drug wars, or attacking other institutions across our civic and academic and media and legal landscapes in the US. Those aren't reasons for any Republicans with resources to simply say no, I still can't do this. No.
I think people don't like those things, and I think that people think that those are bad things. I just think the number one thing is total chaos. They don't want the chaos that was around him in the last White House. And then I think a bunch of them are really bothered by those things. You have to remember, too, Trump is totally transactional, and he's into retribution. That's part of his personality, and so I think that there is
a fear when you're dealing with someone like that. If you don't play ball and you don't flatter him and his White House, he could come after you, you know, or your industry, and so I think that is another fear.
Yeah, Ben Carson was on CNN the other night saying that Trump doesn't really believe in vengeance and retribution. I thought, huh, that's not that Donald Trump. I've come to know. But we'll see. There's also been pressure on Biden over the last year not to run and to step aside for a younger, more vibrant, more verbally adept candidate in order to create some energy among younger voters, energy among Latino, Hispanic and Black voters who are slipping away at least
at the margins around the Democratic Party. Why has Biden hung in there thus far? And do you think anything that happened in Iowa is giving him pause?
I think Biden has hung in there so far because you have to remember, he's always wanted to be president. He's run for president several times, and he hasn't gotten far. He was finally made vice president under Obama. He has a real inferiority complex that has just been a hallmark through his political career. There's sort of a real chip on his shoulder about always feeling like, oh, you know, the Obama people looked down at him when he was in the White House as vice president there was some
tension there, and then as president. I think there's a real chip on his shoulder. He and his team they feel like they've done all these great things, you know, for the country. They've changed industrial policy, the unemployment rates low, they tackle COVID well, and they feel like they're not
getting credit for it, and they're mad about it. And I think once he got into the White House, if it's something you've always wanted and you feel like you've done a good job and you're not getting credit for you're not going to walk away from it. He is eighty one years old, and I think that he and the people around him sort of underestimate how much the
age question weighs on voters and even donors. They're trying to overcompensate by this by bringing donors to the White House, you know, by having Biden meet with them and make sure they feel good. But when I talk to people, you know, vote for Biden at this point, I think what's animating Democratic voters is not Biden's candidacy. It's a
threat of another Trump term. And I think people will vote for Biden for that reason, not because people think, oh wow, he's a perfect presidential candidate for twenty twenty four. I want to keep supporting him.
Let's take another quick break here from a sponsor, and we'll roll right back into this conversation. I'm back with Nancy Cook, a Bloomberg News political reporter, and we're talking about the Iowa caucuses, the other looming presidential primaries, and the candidates. If, as it seems likely Nancy, that Trump and Biden will be the nominees at the end of all of this, how do you see them positioning themselves
against one another? How will Biden position himself against Trump, How will Trump position himself against Biden.
So we got some glimpse of this in Iowa. I think the Trump campaign is really going to hammer Biden on the economy and immigration over and over again, and those are going to be their two main themes. Trump's aids are trying to steer him away from talking about his view that he lost the election. They don't want him to talk about January sixth, But they're really going to hammer home economy the fact that they're say the borders are too open, and those are going to be
the two main themes Biden. Those people are really banking on the idea that democracy is at stake. They are going to make January sixth and everything that Trump has ever said about being a dictator for twenty four hours like that's going to be in an ad this year. They're also really trying to make women's reproductive rights and the restrictions on abortion and Roe v. Wade falling as a very key thing. You have to remember that Democrats
did much better than people anticipated in the midterms. Female and suburban women have really turned away from Trump. That's a weak spot for him because of abortion. And so I would just say abortion democracy for Biden over and over again.
Let's unpack a little bit of that. I think you know, in Iowa, both the entrance and the exit polls show that the top two issues were caucus goers, as you noted, immigration and the economy, and the Trump team is obviously latched onto that. You know, the economy. I think the Biden team has a good story to tell if they can figure out their messaging. Because GDP has grown, wages have gone up, job creation has gone up. The US is the most resilient developed post COVID economy in the world.
It's been a very good story. The stock market has performed well, et cetera, et cetera. But there's been this bugaboo of inflation where people, really average people feel the economy more than pointy heads like I do at the gas station, in the grocery store, et cetera, et cetera. And they haven't really been able to get around that narrative. And by the time inflation appears to have peaked and is actually waning, but that might not be in time
for this election. Immigration, on the other hand, I don't think the Biden administration has a good story to tell there. It has been chaotic at the southern border. The administration came in and didn't really try to move beyond where the Trump administration was on this, and states that have but the southern border feel this pain, and they've been exporting, i think, in heinous ways for political points. They're migrants to states like Illinois and New York and Massachusetts, Blue states.
Why hasn't the Biden administration been able to get its act together on immigration?
Well, I think that to really deal with immigration, you'd have to have, you know, probably some sweeping legislation come out of Congress, and there's no sort of bipartisan appetite to do that which you would have to, and that has been the problem for many, many years. Like I don't think that anyone in either party thinks, oh, immigration is going great. There's just not really a political will or consensus in Congress to solve it, and so that leaves the Biden team with things that they have to
do vis a v executive order. But I do think that they have sort of tried not to deal with it as best they can. And what has happened is that a bunch of these Republican governors have sent bus loads of migrants to these blue states. As you talked about creating crisis in New York. You know where Bloomberg
has its headquarters in Iowa. The Illinois Governor J. D. Pritzker was there on behalf of the Biden administration sort of trying to give a counterpro argument in the middle of this Republican caucus as to why Democrats would be better. But at this press conference, I was said, all these questions that he got was what he was going to do with migrants in Chicago. And so it is a
real problem for the Biden administration. They don't have a good answer on it, and they've been trying to hide from it, and the Trump people are going, I can tell you, going to shove it down their throat again and again.
And I think no matter how much the Biden administration says, there's only so much we can do because there's gridlock in Congress and Congress has to act. Republicans in Congress are very happy to hang this particular albatross around the White House's neck because they know the electoral points they'll score off of it. And they're really going to be stuck. And I don't know how they explain their way out
of that one. Getting over to the Trump side, you know, you mentioned January sixth, democracy and reproductive rights for women, and one of the other things that really interested me in the entrance and exit polls in Iowa again, was I think the top two reasons at least an entrance polls that caucas Gooers gave for supporting Trump. The first one was he fights for us, and the second one is he shares our values. You know, he knows he
animates his supporters that way. He's been I think, engaging in pretty craven spirituality, baiting, saying he's the chosen one God sent Donald Trump to heal the voters. He has tried to engage emotionally on almost any path, regardless of whether it's true or not, with his voters, and it has worked so for that voting block, things like January six and the threat to democracy. It's falling on deaf ears.
But I do think for swing voters, independence, moderate Republicans, conservative Democrats, January sixth and democracy are still salient issues, aren't they.
I think that's what the Biden team is hoping. I just think we're going to have the longest general election, potentially ever, because if Trump wins the nomination by early to mid March, will be have a general election fight from March to November. That is a very long time for Trump and Biden to sort of go after each other.
And I think that what we haven't seen is while Trump's support among Republicans is much deeper than we thought, you know, I'm still not totally sure once we do hit a general election and all the media focus is on him day after day and not like him Nikki Haley, DeSantis, avec Ramaswami like once it's just really trained on him, I'm not sure that like his statements or the things that he says off the cuff at rallies or at events, I'm just not sure how those will play with as
you said, moderates, swing state voters, suburban women like these are people that have turned away from him in the past, and I'll be very curious to see that, you know, once we hit the summer.
Although he won the presidency in twenty sixteen, he has lost every national referendum he's been engaged with since then, the twenty eighteen midterms, the twenty twenty election, the twenty two midterms, with more recently abortion being a real key reason for that. That was the last sort of policy thing I wanted to ask you about. Is that made a big difference in the midterms. We've seen voters in unexpected states like Kansas and Ohio really moves strongly to
protect women's access to abortion and reproductive rights. How big a factor is that going to be in the Biden Trump face off.
I think it's going to be huge. And the way that immigration is probably the weakest spot for the Biden administration, abortion is the weakest spot for Trump, but also for all Republicans. It's interesting because Trump really tries to distance himself from the abortion question, when in fact he appointed the three Supreme Court justices who overturned the Dabbs decision, which is overturned Roe v. Wade. But he really tries to act like this is a bad issue for Republicans.
You know, I wasn't involved, like sort of a hands off thing, and I think that that won't fly. Like abortion is the question that he doesn't have a good answer to on his side, and that's why I think Democrats keep hammering him on it.
Yeah. Yeah, On the one hand, when he says that I had nothing to do with this, even though I appointed the Supreme Court justices that made this happen. He also, on other occasions talks about the Court owing him favors for their appointment, so he wants to have it both ways. All of this is probably going to come down to a handful of swing states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, we know them, maybe North Carolina, and then swing voters
within those states. But the sort of characteristics of the swing voters are a little different than we've had in past elections. Right, won't swing voters in this election actually be younger voters and voters of color.
It will be they'll be younger voters, they'll be voters of color. I mean, I just think, well, the Democrats at least expect this election to be very, very close. And it's kind of wild that our presidents at this point are being elected by a tiny sliver of people in basically seven states who don't have strong feelings about Biden or Trump or it's people who hate both of them, but they just have to decide who they hate less. And that's kind of the electorate that we're dealing with.
There's some political scientists or longtime political operatives who call these voters who hate both of them the double haters, and it's like, which one do you hate? Which one are you going to hate less in November? And that's ultimately who's going to decide who's in the White House next.
Yeah, it's sort of emblematic of the United States right now is we are judging things based on who you hate less, not who do you love more. Unfortunately, we've also run out of time, but I want to ask you one last question. I always like to ask guests what they've learned from a certain event or experience. What have you learned thus far that you didn't know, say two years ago or a year ago, about how the Biden Trump face off is shaping up?
So I would say on the Trump side, Trump is still Trump built the way that he has always been built. He has not changed, the people around him have changed. And there is a very competent, smart, small group of people around him that understand politics very well and that executed their strategy and ground game in Iowa pretty flawlessly, and we can expect to see them take that to state by state. And I think the Democrats have not really caught onto the fact that Trump is not staffed
by a bunch of clowns this time. There's no infighting. They get along with each other, and I think that Democrats should take the people around him and his operation this time very very seriously. That's been my takeaway for months dealing with them, But that's really my takeaway from Iowa.
Nancy. I hope you'll come back again and chat with me, because I always learned something from you.
Thank you. I would love to.
Nancy Cook is a Bloomberg News political reporter covering the White House in the twenty twenty four presidential race. You can find her work online at the Bloomberg dot com website and on the Bloomberg terminal. You can also find her on Twitter at nan Cook. Here. At crash Course, we believe the college can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising, and always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I learned that Donald Trump has learned a lot himself about how to
professionalize his political game. That doesn't mean he's going to roll into the White House, but it does mean he's going to be a more formidable opponent for Joe Biden this time around. What did you learn? We'd love to hear from you. You can tweet the Bloomberg Opinion handle at Opinion or me at Tim O'Brien using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course. You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening right now and leave us a review that helps more people find the show. This episode was
produced by the indispensable Anamasarakis and me. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson, and we had editing help from Sage Bauman, Jeff Grocott, Mike Niitza and Christine Vanden Bilard. Blake Maples does our sound engineering. Then our original theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. I'm Tim O'Brien. We will be back next week with another Crash Course