This is an abbreviated version of our weekly Patreon show. To access the full-episode and support the pod, head on over to http://www.patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the latest polling that indicates Trump might be losing his ironclad grip on the Republican Party as Ron DeSantis moves in for a potential presidential run in 2024. They also dissect how the abortion argument is being framed by both parties as we approach the midterms.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast, the Weekender Edition for our patrons.
By the way, thank you, everybody.
You are showing up big to support the Muckrake Podcast.
You're showing up to keep us editorially independent, ad-free, but also, I gotta tell you, my colleague Nick Halseman is up to his eyeballs in Ronald Reagan books.
He is prepping hard.
He is ready for the next episode of our Certain Route to Failure audio documentary.
How's that treating you, buddy?
You know, it's a fascinating experiment to read three books at the same time, like one chapter, and then one chapter, and then one chapter, and then kind of covering the same era or same section of time, but like from different perspectives, like Rashomon style.
It's fascinating, and I hope I can sustain it.
I might end up having to just sort of stick with one for longer, but we'll find out.
But as a result, there's a lot of interesting things to go through as we begin the process of making this new show.
You know, one of the things that really did it for me when I was like, I decided as I was like trying to understand modern politics, I was like, I really need to jump deep, deep into the Reagan mythology.
And I don't know how you're feeling about it, but it's just like total bullshit all the way up and down.
And you just look at it and you're like, oh my God, like this rabbit hole never ends.
Like this absolute asshole of a person and this cult of personality that the right has built up around him.
It's incredible.
Well, you know, what's funny is I, you know, I lived through this and I was young, but I was like, I wanted to say, I mean, I was in second grade, I think, when the inauguration happened in 1980.
I remember them showing it to us on the TV at school, and I also remember being really upset that Carter lost, and that when they had the 21-gun salute or whatever with the big tanks or the big, you know, big artillery shooting, I wanted them to turn the guns the other way, you know.
I have a memory of that, like, just being so upset.
And it's interesting, because I wonder if, like, going to the school I went to, which is a Hebrew Day school, which obviously taught, like, the propaganda of how Israel was formed, I wish I could remember exactly what their take on it was, because you have to remember Carter Had tried to, you know, actually successfully negotiate a peace between Israel and, like, Egypt, for instance, in a way that, you know, they should have been sympathetic to Carter as well, but I cannot remember how that worked.
But nonetheless, having lived through that, through my high school years, it's a real trip through my youth, in a way, and touching upon all those feelings I had then, really even unaware of, like, the political reality of what was going on, but, like, sensing it somehow Right?
Subconsciously, what was happening.
So, yeah, it's fascinating.
Well, we're going to be diving deep into that in the next episode of the Audio Documentary, A Certain Route to Failure.
So, a reminder, we need your support.
Go over to patreon.com slash schmuckcrankpodcast to support the podcast, the audio documentary, but also, if you're listening to this in a free preview, jump in the pool.
The water's fine, right?
Absolutely.
And I got to tell you, the Discord It absolutely is.
But now, and by the way, just a little bit of a spoiler, we're going to have to talk about the mythology of Ronald Reagan a little bit later today as we get into this first segment.
Big news!
That's better breaking news.
That's better breaking news.
It sounds like Donald John Trump is telling everybody who will listen to him that he has, quote unquote, made a decision to...
To run for presidency of the United States of America.
I know everybody just groaned, but let's go ahead and give this a little bit of context.
The story that we've been covering over the past few weeks in terms of what the Republican Party is doing, where it's going, how it's looking at Donald Trump, particularly during the January 6th hearings.
New shock poll out, Nick, and it turns out that half of Republican voters are ready to move on beyond Donald Trump.
I'm surprised it took this long, but is there a coincidence between that poll and the January 6th committee in the midst of their hearings?
I don't think so at all.
I mean, you know, when we were, when we were starting to watch the January 6th hearings begin, one of the things that we talked about was how Liz Cheney was actively laundering the Republican Party's reputation, right?
It was the story that the grand old party, there's still a lot of reasonable people.
There's her, you know, Mike Pence did the right thing.
You've got Mitt Romney, so on and so forth.
The problem was always Donald Trump.
It was one bad apple who was spoiling the bunch.
If you could only take care of that, and by the way, pay no attention to the people behind the curtain, the donor class that completely not only supported this but funded it and organized it.
If you just did that, that's fine.
The January 6th committee has had an incredible effect.
On the political environment.
And we have to remember, as we're starting to go through this, and as we're starting to go through the numbers, Nick, we have to remember that a lot of the Republican Party didn't want Donald Trump to begin with.
They thought he was brash, they thought he was stupid, but then they looked around and they were like, this is an incredible weapon, this is really helping us do things.
Now they have control over the Supreme Court, they have all the ideology, the conspiracy theories, all of this stuff set up that they want Trump is just kind of superfluous at this point, right?
He's kind of yesterday's news, they're ready to move on.
These numbers are kind of seismic, and we're going to jump into them in just a second, but what's your initial reaction to this?
Right, you jumped me on, you pretty much said everything I wanted to say just right now, where the fever, the Trump fever broke, or is breaking, but it doesn't mean that they're moving away from everything, anything else besides what Trump is.
And that is the big lie.
And this is what the kind of government they're going to want.
So all the things that Trump was able to stir up and get everybody on board with is still there and locked in.
So when there's there's no notion of we're moving on to a greener pastures now that he's going to go away quietly, which he probably hopes would happen when Biden won so decisively.
Right.
We kind of this notion, OK, maybe we're all kind of waking up to this, but instead double down, triple down.
And DeSantis is now filling a vacuum.
It's fascinating because this is, even for the modern political landscape, declaring September of 2022 for a 2024 race is really early, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, but we're in... You and I had talked about this a little bit.
I want to say we didn't record about it.
How absolutely batshit the 2024 race is already shaping up to be.
And we're talking about scenarios that you really couldn't hardly imagine, right?
And we've been predicting this since this turn against Joe Biden has been happening in the liberal press.
We've been watching what's happening in the Republican Party.
We're literally looking at a primary season Where the sitting president of the United States might either be challenged by a member of his own party and or pushed out the door by his party and sitting as a lame duck.
We might have a former president, disgraced former president, running for a nomination against his party that has no interest and only has the base.
And then meanwhile, and by the way, for anybody who's listening to the free preview of this, I have some scoops.
I've had some conversations about what this environment is starting to come together to look like.
We have, by my count, three to four separate groups.
That are starting to coalesce within the Republican Party that are going to fight it out over the next couple of years.
But here we are in 2022.
And I got to tell you, a lot of the work for 2024 is already taking place.
Like we are in a quintessential moment that is going to determine a lot of what's going to happen over the next few years.
And, you know, when we're talking about this, we're not talking about horse races.
We're talking about ideology.
We're talking about movements.
We're talking about groups.
We're talking about jockeying, which is, you know, part of the horse race culture.
But you have to understand that, like, the foundation right now, it's shaking.
Like, it's really one of the weirdest political environments, at least in modern history, if not in American history.
Well, greed, I think, is at the top of that list.
You get the list because, in my mind, Trump would want to delay his announcement as long as possible so that all the money he's raising is dark and no one knows where it's going.
He can keep more of it.
Once he becomes an official candidate, all of a sudden that money becomes a lot more easily traceable and he can't just sort of steal it, I guess.
And this is probably part of DeSantis' triangulation as well.
By the way, here's the spoiler.
Here's what's going to happen.
That's the Nick Halseman.
DeSantis goes against him and then DeSantis becomes his vice presidential candidate.
I bet you that's some version of that's going to happen.
It won't be the other way around because no way Trump would ever do it.
But Trump is going to take him as the vice president and then they'll run.
That's the Nick Houselman blocking in, is it?
Well, and by the way, that won't preclude a completely and utterly bloody primary season that will just record new depths of low from that party.
It'll be as disgusting as, you know, who's going to get more disgusting?
You know, I just keep thinking about Mike Pence getting out on debate stage, but the GOP makes sure that in the background, instead of just star-spangled banners, it's like the gallows that were at January 6th.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, and you know he's going to tell them, he's going to use it.
Trump is going to use it.
He's going to say, look at you Mike, they wanted to hang you.
How could you possibly think of anyone?
But by the way, DeSantis is still, he's the only guy who has double digit polling, but Trump is still way ahead of him anyway in the polls.
So real fast, and by the way, I'm glad you brought up the political action committees that are behind Trump.
I have to tell you, as somebody who is sort of locked into the Trump world, and as a result, I keep track of their fundraising, I have to tell you, they do not stop.
Like, it is constant.
It is a barrage of appeals constantly.
And I'll tell you where the money is going right now.
Part of it is going to Trump and Trump-related properties and all of that.
The other thing, legal bills.
Right now, the MAGA base is paying for all January 6th related legal bills within Trump's world.
And one of the things Trump has been able to do is he's been able to sort of hang that out there for people.
We know that he's already, you know, tainted and messed around with witnesses.
One of the things is that this is a large group of people, a large group of conspirators, who are all in on multiple griffs.
They all have their own, you know, fundraisers.
They all have their own packs.
All of that stuff.
And basically, they're fleecing all these people and they're doing it.
Now, let's see who's left in this.
Now, the official poll that came out shows that Donald Trump right now, in a primary field, has 49% of the vote, which of course is under 50%.
Now, that does not mean that he could not bring along the other part of the electorate, because the Republican Party will fall in behind Trump.
That's straight up what would happen if he were to gain momentum, and we'll talk about what the defining thing very well may be in between Donald Trump versus everybody else.
The closest to him is Ron DeSantis with 25%.
And I have to tell you, that's a really strong showing at this point in the process.
Because one of the things that you see about the numbers is that DeSantis' recognition, talking about political brand, how many Republicans who are being asked about this know him, it's way under 50%.
But even the people who don't know DeSantis, they're already being influenced by Republican media coverage of DeSantis, and they have a favorable opinion of him.
He's set up really, really well.
After you get past him, you start looking at the so-called Messiah Ted Cruz, Mike Pence at 6%, Nikki Haley's not going to do anything, Mike Pompeo, who we'll talk about in just a minute.
But the thing that we keep coming back to in all of this is who supports Donald Trump?
It's Republican voters don't have a college degree and aren't considered affluent and also older Republican voters, younger voters with a degree with more money.
They're going against Trump, which means again, the donor class, as we've been covering over the last few weeks, it's migrating over to Ron DeSantis.
That's where the numbers are.
But here's something really interesting right now is that DeSantis is still running for governor in Florida.
That's right.
And I think I saw a poll that said that he might kind of be trailing Charlie Crist right now, the Democrat.
So that says something very fascinating, because you have to remember, he took on Disney and also just politics and rage and fear, which again, it's not supposed to work, although, and this is a different age than it used to be, but it's possible, right, that he can lose the governor race.
And that would be disgraceful.
And by the way, would you be surprised to find out that let's just say part of Trump's war chest went, you know, against Ron DeSantis to sink him now so that that would hurt him so profoundly that he wouldn't be able to run effectively in 2024.
What do you think about that?
Well, we have right now, and this is something we've got to talk about in a second more in depth, we have a lot of these political action committees.
And I know this is shocking to everybody.
The best way to understand where politics are going and what's actually happening in politics is to follow the money.
And what's happening right now is you have a lot of PACs.
The Trump PACs absolutely are going to turn a laser on DeSantis as long as this is continuing to happen.
Right now, the donor class, Is leaning towards DeSantis and some of them are hedging their bets, just sort of straddling both.
We'll get more into that in just a second.
The question in all of this and one of the things that this poll shows that that I think it's important for us to sort of get into even deeper.
Is that surprise, surprise, Fox News is going to play an outsized role in all of this.
Now, in this in this little microcosm of voters, what we're talking about, this developing situation right now, Trump has a lead, a substantial lead.
It's about 30 points above DeSantis in terms of Fox viewers.
But I got to tell you, Fox News is not necessarily completely in Donald Trump's corner.
And before we jump into the history of that and how that worked out previously and what to expect, I just want to remind everybody a little bit of what happened with Donald Trump and Fox News.
Mr. Trump, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don't use a politician's filter.
However, that is not without its downsides, in particular when it comes to women.
You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.
Your Twitter account... Only Rosie O'Donnell.
No, it wasn't.
Your Twitter account... Thank you.
For the record, it was well beyond Rosie O'Donnell.
Yes, I'm sure it was.
Now, if you might remember, this was back during the 2016 primary, the Republican primary.
I was actually at this debate in the area watching this, talking with voters.
This is Megyn Kelly, who was with Fox News, who went after Trump.
And, you know, basically accused him of being a misogynist.
And people don't remember this now.
But leading into the primaries, Fox News was not squarely behind Donald Trump.
They had him on.
He obviously was a Fox News creation in terms of punditry.
But Fox News was putting their money basically behind your Ted Cruz's, your Marco Rubio's.
They looked at Trump as something that maybe was a phenomenon that they could use, but they weren't interested.
And you've been listening to a free preview of our Patreon-exclusive Weekender Show.
up leaving Fox News and they became basically a propaganda organ for Donald Trump.
That right there, that hinge point made all of the difference in 2016.
And you've been listening to a free preview of our Patreon exclusive weekender show.
If you want to get in on all the fun and get that bonus episode every week, not to mention exclusive content, live hangouts, question and answer sessions.
We're even going to do some of these live so you can come and watch how the sausage is made.
All you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
On top of that, you get to hang out with the muckrake community, which are a really good group of people.
