[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello, Muck Rakers. Welcome to our weekender edition of our show. My name is Nick Halzmann. I am always co-hosted with Gerald Yates Section, who's on the road today calling in. And so we're excited because we have a jam-packed show to discuss with you. As a reminder, if you want to join our Patreon and get the full-length version of this show, head on over to patreon.com/muckrakepodcast and join an incredible community that has a lot of great discussions on Discord and then the full thing we have every Friday. So, Jared, are you with us, Colin, from the road? You are so much more professional in your intro than I am. Well, you are just an old hand, but it's a little early in the day. You are an old hand at this. And I get on here like a slob, and I'm just like, hey, everybody, I guess we're going to do a show. Hold on. Well, you know what? There's room for every-- any kind of opening. One thing I hadn't done, though, is discuss a little bit of what we're going to talk about today since we're doing the opening. We have a lot of talk about, Jared. We're glad that you're here to join us. We got a lot of pressure on Biden, both from COVID forces and then other people in the government. We had JD Vance's speech last night during the Republic of the National Convention. More details about the assassination of President Trump or attempted assassination. And then how the media is covering Trump out of all this. So Jared, I don't know, where do you want to start? Should we start with Biden and how he's dealing with his-- he's having a heck of a week? It's not great. Yeah, so I'm really glad we're getting a chance to talk about this because I've been traveling and I've been talking with some people and sort of gathering in the temperature and all these different rooms. And it's really good to be able to talk with you and hang out with everybody to sort of discuss it and unpack it. I'll tell you, Nick, this thing has had so many twists and turns. Of course, you were out for vacation for a week. And over the course of that week and the week before it, I counted about four different shifts in momentum in this situation. Immediately after the debate, there was a lot of momentum in the Democratic Party hoping that Biden would step down. Of course, Biden then came out very, very forcefully and said, I'm not going anywhere. I'm the leader of the Democratic Party. It seemed like the Democrats were backing off of that. Then some things started shifting in terms of polls and fundraising. They started coming out sort of leaking out. Then it seemed like Biden had secured a spot again. And now I have to tell you, man, if I had to put my money on it, I think Biden's out. And what has happened over the past few days is what has needed to happen for weeks now, which is not only is it a smattering of Democrats who have come out to say that he should step down, but now we're having Chuck Schumer telling him. We're having Nancy Pelosi telling him. Barack Obama, who I've talked about at length, has sort of kept this at an arm's length distance, is getting closer and closer and closer to not just putting pressure on Biden, but unleashing all of his sort of machinery. I don't know if it's going to take Obama coming out personally or going and talking to Biden himself. This has been a disaster all the way around. It has been so mishandled. And I have a lot to say about what I think about the Democratic Party right now, where things are. But it does feel at this moment, as we're talking, that Joe Biden will likely step down as the candidate of the Democratic Party. I think absolutely. And I think the proper phrase for what happened immediately after the debate, and we thought maybe had the ship had gotten right, it didn't take, I think, is the proper way to say that. I think for a couple of days, people were like, eh, but every little tiny gaff he makes now, which anybody could make, is magnified. And I think it's just broken. He broke it during the debate, and you cannot fix it again. You can't get people back on board who are already ringing their hands as candidacy as it is. And it's just one of those things. The cloud is following him in the Peanuts character. And he's not going to shake it. And I agree, we already saw Obama today, and then Washington Post is being reported that he's, yeah, he's dipping his toe in the let's go, Obama out of this race thing. As he's preparing to, I would imagine, tell him to his face, Joe, you have to step down. Just like he told everybody else in 2020, Joe, you're going to be in the candidate. Now he's going to have to tell him that he's not going to be the candidate. Yeah, and that's brutal work. And I want to be clear about this. Barack Obama, particularly post presidency, is not very eager to be the person who takes the blame on this. He doesn't want to be the person who makes the final call. That's why he's had a lot of his intermediaries do it. Personally, I think it's been a disaster. We talked about this. It should have taken place in the first 48 to 72 hours. This has dragged on and on and on, and it has bled and bled and bled. What I think has finally happened is that, yes, I think Biden has been unable to write the ship necessarily. But I also think what has become clear is that we are looking at a situation where he is harming the down ballot, which is a no-no, but even more importantly, Nick, he's hurting the fundraising. And that's what it comes down to here, is that the money's not coming in. And it's very, very clear that the donors don't feel like things as they are going to win. And they're not really excited about donating millions upon millions of dollars to a lost cause. So you don't mess with the party's money. And I want to say this and I want to be very clear about it. I think that this might be a make-or-break moment for the Democratic Party. They messed this thing up. They didn't set it up for success. We've talked about it. The time to have avoided this was back in 2020. They didn't do it. Now we're here. The problem has been compounded. It's getting worse and worse and worse. People's confidence in the Democratic Party is incredibly low for a good reason. They've mishandled this entire situation. I think the best case scenario is that this might be a moment that shakes the Democratic Party out of its funk and what it has been for the past half century. But there is also a real possibility that this might be the moment where the Democratic Party starts to sink into the muck. They have a choice. The problem is that they haven't been making choices. And now we are at the precipice of something really, really large and it might be good. It might very well rest the trajectory of the campaign in a different direction. And it might also just absolutely devolve into total and utter chaos we can't know right now. And I think that's why they're ringing their hands. It's taking so long. And if it's ego or whatever, why Joe Biden won't listen, or someone else is propping him up to keep him in this race, it's, I don't know, because again, it's not like Diane Feinstein, who probably wasted the last year and a half of her life where she should have been comfortable and resting with her family and spending time with them. I don't think it's that bad. But we're in that moment here where, you know, Joe Biden is simply, you know, this is too much. He shouldn't be going through this. He's clearly struggling to handle the pressure of the situation. And it's unfair for a guy in his position. And then you throw a COVID on top of that, which, you know, I guess he looks OK and he gets it's not a serious case. But I wonder if the COVID thing could give him a little bit of grist to sort of say, OK, I'm going to step down. But either way, it's an interesting thing that it has taken this long. But is it safe to say that, you know, the Democratic party could really use a jolt of electricity right now? Oh, absolutely. I mean, we're going to talk more about the Republican convention in a few minutes. But it is more or less like a fate of complete right now. The RNC, and we're going to talk more about the media coverage in a while as well. Right now, it's smooth coasting. It's smooth seas ahead. And if things continue the way that they are now, god forbid, we're looking at not just a Donald Trump victory, Nick. We're looking at a landslide. We're looking at a seriously, seriously bad situation, the possibility of Donald Trump holding the presidency and the Republican Party holding the House and the Senate. And also the Democratic Party just basically being left out to dry. And I think that this is, you know, sometimes crises like these bring out the best in people. And it has not with the party. It has exposed the problems that have gotten us here in the first place. And when that happens, you have basically two choices, Nick. You either address the problem and you move on from it in a productive manner. Or you just embrace the problem and you go down with it. And it would not only be a jolt. It would be a relief at this point. And I know there are people who are holding on to Biden for dear life. And they're really, really frightened about what could possibly happen. But literally any change right now, I think, would not change the scenario. It would change the narrative. And it would give a boost in the arm. And hopefully the possibility of at least something different happening. And at this point, there's nothing else to lose. I agree. I mean, I think the fear was always the chaos that that would pitch us into. But it's also a timing thing. If they wait more and more, then the chaos could increase and cause it more issues. I suppose we've given our toe into the discussion of who before. It's a very short list in theory. And by the way, I think that they did prepare for this. I think that they thought Joe was going to serve for one term and Kamala was going to take over until the first six months of the administration when she struggled so mightily in her speeches that they probably figured this is not for her. They factored in her race in 2020, which did not go well, wasn't managed well either. And so I suppose that turned very quickly against her. So how would we democratically be able to do this if it was going to be somebody other than Kamala? Well, I want to say, first off, you're correct. The first six months of Harris's vice presidents who were a disaster. But I also want to be clear that, as we've discussed in a prior episode, the Biden administration did not put her in a good position. They used her for all the dirty work that they didn't want him to have to appear next to. They put her in failing situations. That being said, I do not think that Kamala Harris is the most talented politician we've ever seen. She has weaknesses. So the question at this point, and I've talked to a lot of people within the Democratic Party, they are absolutely terrified that moving beyond Biden could present basically a large question, which is, do we automatically go with Kamala Harris and we get enough excitement out of the change of the nominee as well as the naming of a BP candidate? Is that going to do it? Can that be a ticket that wins? There are a lot of people who think that the distaste for Donald Trump is enough that the numbers will stay where they were before what happened with Biden happened. And that has been the prevalent opinion. That you go with Harris and you find the BP. You find a really, really good running mate that gets people excited. Then there are other people who want to roll the dice, and it's been referred to me multiple times as a speed dating primary, which would basically, over the next month, take place in a bunch of events, a bunch of town halls, maybe a debate or two. But as of right now, the question is, will this be a convention that makes a change, or is this going to be basically by acclimation, or is this going to be one of the most drag out, knock down conventions that anybody in our lifetime has ever seen? I mean, has ever been broadcasted on YTV, for that matter? I mean, the problem I have with that is I wonder if the debate really did that much to the polling, at least, into the feeling that people had about him. Because ever since-- I think we have to go back to the Afghanistan pullout when people died, and it looked completely haphazard. That is when the beginning of that bump that he got when he first got elected started to disappear. And then Gaza. Yeah. Yeah, so I don't even know if you want to say, oh, let's go back to before the debate. Because he was not in the great position then. And I don't know if we can even use past races to influence how we predict what's going on now, because we're such a weird territory these days. But it would seem safe to say that there wouldn't be an incumbent who would have any chance of winning when there are approval ratings in the low 40s for most of their presidency. So either way, it became clear after the first year or so that this was going to be a problem. And I think that's why we've built up all of this angst to get to this point. And it's, again, taking longer and longer. I suppose the other issue then is the money, which they can't give to anybody else besides Kamala. Unless there's some sort of sleight of hand with packs that they can figure out. Are there anybody-- is there anybody-- well, let me ask this really quickly. So if Trump had been killed and they had to replace him, does the excitement of the change-- I know it's a tragedy in that sense. But I don't think the excitement improves because it's a different candidate in the Republican side. And I kind of feel like there's an interesting counterpoint to that on the Democratic side. It doesn't necessarily mean any change gives us the excitement we're looking for, right? It has to be somebody specific that would give us that excitement. Yeah, I don't-- you know, I've been thinking a lot because it's really weird with the moment like the assassination attempt. And that's one of the reasons, I think, actually to Nick, why this is so rough right now. Like the conversations I'm having with Democratic politicians, staffers, and also coalition partners is we're all living in sort of-- we're sort of straddling two realities right now, right? And actually multiple realities. It's a reality where the Biden thing didn't happen, where Trump might not have survived the attempt. And the only thing that is for certain-- and I want to say something, Nick. We talked about this for a while. I said to you in late 2023, when it became clear that it was going to be Biden and Trump again. I said, I would put good money on one of these men not being in the race in November. And when I said that, it was because there are so many variables in the air here. It's incredible how many there were. And right now, to look at what happened with Trump, I don't even know-- maybe Nikki Haley would have become the nominee. And I think Nikki Haley would have absolutely thrashed by them. Do you know what I mean? You actually have two parties here that have sort of put themselves behind the eight ball in completely different ways. And this race has just amplified that and shaken it up and moved it around. And so it's really odd right now to be living in the reality that we are, but also have all these counterfactuals. They're just swirling around. I've talked to a lot of people. There's so much angst. There's so much fear. There's so much anxiety and despair. And something just needs to change. And I think we're about to save that change. Fascinating. I mean, the Nikki Haley thing beating Biden is interesting. And I can remember thinking, even when she first appeared on the scene, that despite the fact that the Democrats are considered the progressive party, it was going to be someone like Nikki Haley, who's the first woman president for the Republican Party. And that was how it was going to play out in this weird irony of ironies. And I think you're right. I think it's a unique moment where we have these two candidates who are both horribly, horribly disfigured in terms of their ability to run as candidates. And again, it's like I just don't know who else you turn to anyway and how that would work. I keep falling back to my governor in California, who's the good looking white guy who can raise a lot of money very quickly in California as the only other viable alternative they would have if it wasn't going to be Kamala. Well, JB Pritzer could supply the money himself and is a popular governor. So that's a workaround to that. But also, I got to tell you, the Democratic donors, they've turned off the spigot. They get somebody else and they get the right person. That spigot's going to come roaring back on, especially if they get a feeling of momentum. I like that feel. Now, that said, I mean, if we're not ready to elect a woman president, a Jewish president, it sounds a little bit beyond the pale for me as well. The sorrow stuff that we constantly hear and the dog whistling of that stuff. For however bad it's been and however bad it's going to continue to get if a woman is running and then the Republican Party is running against a woman. And we already experienced that. I can imagine that it would be equally bad if not worse. Well, as a necessary segue, I mean, we're looking at our first living breathing asshole vice president possibility. So we got that going for us. A living breathing asshole. Okay, we can explore that a little bit. I think we've had plenty of assholes for vice presidents, I think. (laughing) - You know what, my mind, it's funny, Nick. My mind just flashed a Richard Milhouse, Dixon. - Yeah. - And not just like Oval Office, Richard Nixon, but that really detestable used our salesman, Nixon, who was with Eisenhower. - You've been listening to the free part of this episode. If you'd like to hear the rest of this great conversation, head over to patreon.com/muckrakepodcast and subscribe for lots more additional content, including Discord server and live shows. We'd really appreciate it if you could give it a try. We know you'll love it and come back for more. (dramatic music) (dramatic music)
