This is a preview episode of The Muckrake Podcast's Patreon show that happens every Friday. To unlock the full show and a host of other great things, visit http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the sudden announcement of two debates between the presidential candidates. They're much earlier than normal, they cut out the middle man, and it's... something. They move on to Mitt Romney appearing on MSNBC to say the Biden should have given Trump a blanket pardon since, obviously, he can't get enough of that sweet Trump buzz. They finish up pulling apart the misogyny of an NFL kicker and the musings of tech bro Palmer Luckey.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Quick Podcast.
I'm Jared Adzis.
I'm here with Nick Hausman.
How you doing, bud?
How's your weekend looking?
My weekend?
What is time, Jared?
I don't know.
I think it'll be fine.
They'll probably be like the other ones that go by.
Nothing too exciting.
How about you?
Your life is on rails during the NBA playoffs.
Let's just be honest about it.
It is, although I went to Trevor Noah last Saturday night in the Hollywood Bowl, no less, outside.
It was a pleasant experience.
Oh, good for you.
I'm painting a room.
You're painting a room?
I'm painting a room.
A room that needs painted.
Why are you not being more specific about which room you're painting?
It's, it's, it's a, it's a spare bedroom.
Okay, good.
I want to paint the picture in my mind.
I'm going to paint it.
I'm going to paint it a lighter shade of blue.
Well, I mean, it's, it's, it's that gray that they paint all of like the, you know what I mean?
Like the houses that they're trying to sell.
A lighter shade of pale.
Yeah, yeah.
So I'm gonna do that.
The room you didn't sleep in when you visited.
Oh, okay.
I'll make sure to sleep in that one next time.
There you go.
Next time you get to sleep in this painted room, I'm gonna do that.
I'm excited about it.
Hopefully it'll be a good weekend.
By the way, the best part about staying at someone's house is you get to try out different shampoos and conditioners.
That is a Nick Haussmann original, but we are happy you're here on The Weekender.
We have a whole lot of stuff to talk about.
By the way, before we even get into the first segment, which is going to be about this weird debate schedule that just popped up out of nowhere, put it on your calendars, everybody.
Two presidential debates, June 27th and September 10th.
You're going to be hanging out here with me and Nick After that, so we can talk about what's going on, in order to do that, go over to patreon.com slash muckraigpodcast.
Keeps the show editorially independent, ad-free, and growing.
Also, by the way, you'll get to hear the rest of the weekender.
I'm telling you, there are stories in here that you're not going to hear anywhere else that we're going to talk about today.
patreon.com slash muckraigpodcast.
Nick, as I've already previewed, weird things afoot in the presidential race.
We're used to these things happening in the late fall, right before the election, but President Joe Biden, President of the United States of America, got on social media and challenged Donald Trump.
Here it is.
Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020.
Since then he hasn't shown up for debates.
Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again.
Well make my day, pal.
I'll even do it twice.
So let's pick the dates, Donald.
I hear you're free on Wednesdays.
What a strange thing, by the way, for people who aren't keeping track at home and maybe aren't cinephiles, to not only challenge your presidential rival for an impromptu debate, but to use 1971's Dirty Harry as the means of doing it.
That is essential Joe Biden.
Donald Trump heard this challenge.
He said, yeah, I'm up for that.
And so now again, June 27th and September 10th, that's on CNN and ABC respectively.
We're going to have the presidential debates between Biden and Trump.
We didn't know if we were even going to get any.
We'll talk more about that.
They also sidestepped the commission on presidential debates.
We'll talk about that.
I assume Nick, like you, like, like myself, that you were a little bit surprised by this.
Questions.
I got questions, Jared.
I got all kinds of questions.
When did this video come out that Biden released?
The other day?
Yesterday?
Today?
I believe it was yesterday, yes.
Okay.
How long do you suppose it takes to pick a date and get anything organized and get even a network involved to agree to air it?
It takes me quite a bit of time to pick a date to go out and see a movie.
But this happened very quickly, and one of the reasons it happened so quickly is because the networks immediately recognized that this was an opportunity to take advantage of this.
I assume CNN and ABC were burning down the phone lines along with everybody else, and they ended up snatching these things.
I guess.
But to me, it's weird, because it sounds like this had to have been somewhat in the works for weeks beforehand.
I don't think so.
You know, like, okay, I guess, because in theory, they haven't said where so now there's probably gonna have to scramble to get a venue, right?
So that because that that takes a while, you can't just find it, whatever, especially in a short notice like this.
So I don't I don't know, maybe we'll do in the South Lawn of the White House.
Who knows?
It's probably they'll have some availability.
But is that the South Lawn?
Is there even a South Lawn in the White House?
I assume there's a South Lawn.
Sounds right, but I don't know.
It's a rose garden.
Who knows?
Nonetheless, so, you know, I suppose this also means that this is how desperate both of them think that they're gonna, or how, well, I guess how confident both of them feel like they're going to win this debate.
That's why they want to have it so badly.
I don't, I don't, I'm not, I'm not quite clear exactly why this happened like this.
I think it happened for a few reasons.
And by the way, I think to break down the dynamics of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, first of all, what we have seen from them From the moment that it became clear in 2020 that they were going to be rivals is that first of all, they do not like each other at all.
Second of all, Biden really seems to enjoy baiting Donald Trump into doing things and getting emotional reactions out of him.
You might remember back in 2020, there were conversations about like physical displays of prowess and pushups and stuff.
I think the Biden administration and Biden campaign did this, first of all, in order to get a debate happening before early voting began.
I think that was really, really important, particularly for the Democratic Party.
That's where they do much better in early voting than the Republican Party does.
But on top of that, Nick, I think what needed to happen here was an attempt to change the narrative.
We talked, I believe it was on Tuesday, about the flagging polls for Biden and how things weren't looking good.
I think this was an attempt to go ahead and get something on the calendar, try and change the narrative early.
I think Biden is very confident in his debating against Trump, which we'll talk about in just a second.
But I also think that Donald Trump more or less got baited into this.
And I think that Biden successfully got his goat once more.
He got what he wanted out of it.
And, you know, I don't know if it's going to work out.
I don't know if it's going to pay off.
There are several things that we need to talk about that are at play here.
But I think Donald Trump got baited into it.
And I think Biden was in a situation where he needed to change the narrative.
It's weird because you're describing the exact opposite of what normally would happen.
The challenger wants the debate because they're not in the White House and they need to have a stage and exposure.
And then the White House or the president might be less inclined to do that.
And by the way, in 2020, you almost would have thought he would have been less inclined to do that.
But again, Trump can't resist this kind of opportunity.
If I said to you, Nick, that Donald Trump announces before the June 27th debate that he will not participate in it, would you be completely shocked?
No, not at all.
And by the way, he could also claim and maybe even truthfully that like he's a little bit too busy with with all these lawsuits.
But and by the way, you know, not only dirty Harry reference, but he mentioned he's got Wednesdays free and I think Wednesdays are the days where he doesn't have court, you know, where he can do it, which is a nice little jab at a guy.
But I don't know if Biden should be as confident as he might feel right now.
And I thought we could play just a little bit of a snippet of what he sounded like in 2020.
Would you like to hear that, Jared?
Let's go.
Let's just hear Joe Biden and how he, you know, performed in the last debate in 2020.
And the justice, and I have nothing, I'm not opposed to the justice.
She seems like a very fine person.
But she's written before she went on the bench, which is her right, that she thinks that the Affordable Care Act is not constitutional.
The other thing that's on the court, and if it's struck down, what happens?
Women's rights are fundamentally changed.
You know, random spot there, but I think there's a definite difference now in the power of his voice and the way he can speak.
Is that fair to say?
I agree.
And let's talk about what this gamble is.
This gamble, first of all, again, is to try and get ahead of early voting.
Let's say, for instance, and Joe Biden has not always been a great debater.
In fact, in the lead up to the 2020 race, when he was trying to get the Democratic nomination, I mean, he really laid some eggs.
There were some really, really bad debates for Joe Biden in that 2020 cycle that have sort of been lost now.
So let's say, and this was sort of the gamble we've talked about with Biden running for re-election this entire time.
We've said, like, what if Biden were to take a spill and he shows up to election day in like a sling or in a walking boot or something like that, right?
I mean, he is an older person and occasionally, like, these things happen.
There's a gamble that on June 27th, like he gets in there and he doesn't debate well, all of a sudden you might lower the numbers in terms of turnout.
And by the way, Nick, that is before the Democratic National Convention.
And a lot of people are wondering whether or not something could potentially change going into that convention.
Let's say theoretically that Biden has a bad debate on June 27th.
And I don't even mean just like sort of bad or disappointing.
Let's say he goes in, he has a really, really bad performance.
We're then treated to basically two months of liberal calls for Joe Biden to step aside and something else to happen.
But again, he has to do something to try and change the narrative of what's going on.
I happen to believe it's rolling out campaign promises and programs, but like, I guess this is a way to roll the dice.
Well, you know, we hit the all time high in the stock market today and inflation is going down.
So they could be trying to figure out a way to calculate those two things that it continues to get better.
Inflation continues to go down by November, which is not, I don't know how manipulatable that is to do, but that might be something they're trying to focus on as well.
I do feel like this is your fever dream, right?
Where they can come in at the convention and I don't know, man.
It's all so strange.
I actually, I look at these dates and none of it feels good.
You know, June is early.
June is really, really early and I understand it's before early voting.
worse than Nixon in 1960, I think, right, to have that happen.
It would, I don't know, man.
It's all so strange.
I actually, I look at these dates, and none of it feels good.
You know, June is early.
June is really, really early.
And I understand it's before early voting.
That's important.
That leads into a possible convention debacle, right?
And, you know, And what are you supposed to do?
You're supposed to go into a convention, you're supposed to get a bounce after it, and then you're launching, like, your main campaign.
So what happens if the conversation leading up to the convention is, should Biden step aside?
Basically, the best thing he can hope for there is to reassert that he should be the nominee, as opposed to getting a bounce.
Let's say something goes wrong on September 10th.
Nick, you still have almost two months of campaign after that.
So like, you're really sort of boxing yourself in.
And what's more, the reason this feels weird is because it's weird.
This isn't how things are done.
And listen, I'm not a Commission on Presidential Debates apologist.
I happen to think it's a duopolistic system that needs to be gotten rid of.
I have no sort of loyalties for them.
But the fact that this is sort of changing, we're watching the landscape change, and we're also watching the rhythm of a campaign change.
You know what I mean?
Like this is not, you and I have been doing this show now, let me see, how many elections have we done every two years?
This is going to be our fourth election cycle, give or take.
This is not the rhythm of a cycle.
And so whenever you start moving out of those things, weird things happen.
We have no idea how this is going to affect it.
Again, we don't even know if these debates are going to happen, but it could really, really sort of throw a wrench into sort of how these, uh, the rhythms of them really work themselves out.
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