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You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad. Reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lipson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a reproduced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Lipson Ads. Go to LipsonAds.com now. That's L-I-B-S-Y-N-Ads.com. Jeff, one word take on Oppenheimer. Explosive.
I had to, right? Amelia, one-word take on Barbie. What do you got? Pink. Nathaniel, one-word take on Barbie. Fun. Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. And then there were three. Or so we expect. It is widely believed that former President Trump will be indicted for a third time in the coming days or weeks after he received a target letter from the Department of Justice last week.
These potential federal charges involve the January 6th attack on the Capitol and possible attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election leading up to that day. This is, of course, distinct from Trump's first two indictments involving alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and the retention of classified documents. So two and a half years later, what do Americans think about January 6th, Trump's role in it, and whether he deserves to be charged?
This also comes at a time when the fortunes of Trump's rivals in the Republican primary are being shaken up a little bit. For the first time, according to our polling averages, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has displaced Mike Pence as the third-place candidate in national polls. He's at about 7%, behind Trump at 51%, and DeSantis 8%.
at 20%. So today, we're going to imagine for just a minute a scenario in which Trump's legal troubles do catch up to him and create an opening for a more competitive Republican primary. To do that, we're going to host a 2024 Republican primary draft. And here with me to play along is senior elections analyst Jeffrey Skelly. Hello, Jeff. Hey, Galen.
Also with us is senior reporter Amelia Thompson-DeVoe. Hey, Amelia. Hey, Galen. And also with us is senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Hey, Nathaniel. Good morning, Galen. Good morning. All right. So I warned you all that we were going to begin today's podcast by talking about the real news of the weekend, which was Barbenheimer. So a raise of hands here. I believe, Jeff, you're the only one who saw both, right? I did see both.
I think the rest of us only saw Barbie. So you're going to have to be the person to discern which was better, Barbie or Oppenheimer, Jeff. I feel like these are two movies that are sort of difficult to compare. Oh, come on. It's like plastic politician and atomic bombs. How could you not compare those two? I enjoyed both movies. I think Oppenheimer is an excellent drama. No, I think it's an excellent drama. And then I thought Barbie was like, whatever.
What a comedy drama, dramedy. It's like a fun dramedy. So I don't know. I thought they were both really good. Choose, Jeff, choose. I look, I think, look, the type of movies that I enjoy tend to be more like Oppenheimer because I'm a history nerd and I like politics. And there's a lot of both of those things in Oppenheimer. So I would probably choose Oppenheimer. However, Oppenheimer is an hour longer. So like, you know, timing wise, Barbie might be more your speed. Based on everything I know,
And having only seen Barbie, I choose Oppenheimer. Me too. 100%. Wow.
Even though it was an hour longer, which is a big deal to me. You liked it. I thought you tweeted that you liked it. I thought Barbie was fine. Yeah, I liked it. I think a lot of people went in thinking that it was going to be just like fun and pink and light and whatever, and like maybe more funny. And you could tell by the audience, I saw it Thursday night. Everyone went in wearing costumes and every single thing that happens for the first 15 minutes, everyone's just cheering at, applauding, laughing. You know, it's a very rowdy crowd.
And then it kind of becomes just like a somewhat shallow millennial sort of interpretation, dissertation on feminism and sort of tries to get to this place by the end of the movie where they're resolving something that's like unresolvable, which is gender politics in 2023. And like, who should men be and who should women be and who should men be in relation to women and who should women be in relation to men?
And then at the very end of the movie, it just, instead of, it really can't come to a conclusion because people are going to feel differently about those things. There's no conclusion that you can really come to that's going to be satisfying for any broad swath of the American public. And this is a movie that's made for a lot of Americans to see, and a lot of Americans did see it. And so instead of really coming to any sort of conclusion at the end, it's just like a shruggy emoji where she's like, ha, ha, ha, I went to the gynecologist. So like, I don't know. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert! Ha, ha, ha.
And you could feel the crowd sort of deflating throughout the movie as it turned from, oh, I thought this was just going to be people dancing and having fun the whole time to like, oh, actually, this is trying to disentangle gender politics. At least that was what happened. This is not. Right, exactly. What Jeffrey said. Like a Greta Gerwig movie wasn't going to have like, you know, like, come on. Yeah.
I think this is the audience, Galen. I just thought it would be more deranged. It was pretty deranged. Why was it not more deranged? I don't know. It was surreal. No, I disagree. Nathaniel. Okay. It was not sufficiently deranged. It is still fundamentally like a movie that was licensed by Mattel and Mattel wanted this movie to kick off its whole toys story thing. But I think considering that, Red River, we did a good job. Exactly. The Mattel Cinematic Universe, MCU for short.
I think Greta Gerwig did a good job. Like she was like pretty subversive more so than I would have thought she'd be able to get away with. And like Galen, I think that that audience is very different. Like I saw it in a theater on Saturday in Washington, D.C. And I think the crowd was much more into the politics of it. I don't I don't think the energy won't go figure. Right. Exactly. Number one, I will never live in D.C.,
All right, Amelia, take the floor because I know you side with me. Yeah, I completely side with you, Galen. I just thought like Barbie does not deserve to have like a feminist manifesto attached to it. And this was a very shallow one. I mean, you're just like sitting there and listening to all these speeches. And I mean, maybe it felt like very Instagram to me, you know, like, yeah, it's hard to be a woman. And then Galen,
Ken was the one who got to have the really fun arc and discover something about himself and, you know, go drift into the dark side and then wear his amazing faux mink and then come back. And you could see that. I mean, like, Ryan Gosling was having so much more fun than any of the female actors in that movie. Yeah.
And I think that's really telling. Like, because Greta Gerwig was not allowed to do anything really subversive with the movie. It was all in service of Mattel, you know, trying to make Barbie look like a feminist thing, which it's just not, which is fine. Like, people can play with Barbies. They can enjoy them. But...
It's just not. Okay, Amelia, what about the fact that Barbie has run for president every year since 1992? What about the fact that she went to space, she went to the moon before Neil Armstrong? I mean, I think people do see Barbie as- Who's the president, Galen? Galen, Galen, Galen. Who's the president? Barbie, obviously, it's Margot Robbie. I don't think- Okay, so- I don't think-
That's the point is that Barbie has failed to fix every problem. Yeah, I don't think anyone claims that it worked. But a lot of feminist movements haven't worked. And pointing that out is subversive. But the Barbie world stays the same. The Barbies win. And the way the Barbies defeat the Kens, like, come on. It was so pathetic. They were so pathetically easy to defeat. It's just like, come on, guys. You didn't learn very much about patriarchy. Yeah.
If that's the kind of fight you're going to put up. Interesting. So it was like it wasn't feminist enough in a way or it was too feminist. I can't tell which. No, I didn't want it to try to be feminist. I just wanted it to be fun. I wanted it to be deranged. I wanted more dance sequences. There were a lot of dance sequences. There should have been more dancing. It should have been all dancing. Or it should have been a horror movie.
Those are the choices, dancing or horror. Should have run strongly in one direction. We've come to a clear conclusion. There should have been more dancing or it should have been a horror movie. You know, okay, fine. I can get on board with that. I will say after all this, I did like it. It was just a different movie than I expected. All right, we're going to leave things there. Maybe we'll get back to you with a future review of Oppenheimer, but...
Last week, Trump announced that he received a target letter as part of the Department of Justice's investigation into January 6th and the attempts to overturn the 2020 election leading up to it. It appears likely that this is the precursor, as we discussed, to a third indictment of the former president. It also may well not be his last, as we're still waiting for the final results of a Fulton County investigation into attempts to change the results of the 2020 election in Georgia specifically.
So we still don't know what the likely charges are in this Department of Justice investigation, if indeed there are even charges, although there's been some reporting on what they could be. So, Amelia, I want to begin there.
What are we thinking are the possible charges and how serious are they? As you said, we don't have an indictment in hand, so we don't know exactly what things are going to look like. But we do have reporting about the target letter that Trump received, which is essentially a way of prosecutors letting people know in advance that they are the likely target of a prosecution. This is very common. It's happened with other Trump indictments.
And the target letter mentioned three different statutes. And so that does not mean that those will be statutes under which charges are brought, but it gives a kind of roadmap about prosecutors thinking. I'll run through those. The first and the second are not big surprises. One is conspiracy to defraud the government. One is obstruction of an official proceeding.
These are charges, you know, one of them has been used to prosecute other people who participated in the January 6th insurrection. They were both recommended as charges by the House January 6th Committee. So these are potential charges that have been discussed widely up to this point. Not a huge surprise. Noteworthy, though, that the other two charges that were recommended by the January 6th Committee,
one of which included insurrection, were not mentioned here. So again, that doesn't mean that we won't see it in the charging document, but just interesting to note that we're seeing two of the four statutes that the House Committee recommended charges under in this letter, not the other two. The last statute is a bit of a curveball. It's a law that was passed during Reconstruction as part of the Ku Klux Klan Act.
And it prohibits conspiracy to, quote, injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate any person in any state, territory, commonwealth, possession or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States. I mean, this law has been used in hate crime prosecutions, but it's also been used in connection with efforts to deny people the right to vote.
So what could this mean in the context of a Trump January 6th indictment? There's been a lot of speculation. Possibly it could have something to do with the fact that Trump was inciting violence and that that
in some way is connected to a violation of this statute, potentially related to Trump's efforts to rig the election in other ways, like his now infamous call to the Georgia Secretary of State. This one was really a surprise to people who had been watching this case. And it's been interesting to see reactions. You know, we don't know
what Smith's case against Trump will look like yet, or even if he'll bring charges under this statute. But it does seem like this is a much more novel approach than people were expecting and potentially a riskier approach than going down the paths that folks had been expecting and anticipating. So it'll be really interesting to see what the charges ultimately are. But just to answer the other part of your question,
These are all serious crimes, although insurrection is the crime where arguably, if convicted, it would include a ban on future federal office holding. And that was not mentioned in the letter. So again, we need to see the actual charges, but that was the one with kind of the biggest concern.
obvious relevance for Trump's immediate political future. Um, but all of these are, all of these are really, really serious crimes and if convicted could have very serious consequences for Trump. All right. So that's what we know so far, of course, when and if we get more information, we'll be back with you on terms of actual specific charges, but turning to the politics of all of this, Nathaniel, we know that after the first indictment, which was a, you know, New York state based law, uh,
surrounding alleged payments to Stormy Daniels, that Trump standing in the GOP primary polls actually improved a bit over Ron DeSantis. And then after the second indictment, which was federal charges, as these would likely would be if there are charges, we saw not much change at all. So here, maybe the question is, does the substance of it all make a difference? Does January 6th having a particular weight in Americans' eyes change anything?
Yeah, I think so. So I think there are two hypotheses here. So as you mentioned, Galen, you know, it seemed not only like the first indictment, it helped him in the GOP primary polls, and it hurt him in overall favorability among the entire electorate, but only temporarily. He bounced back from that relatively quickly. The second indictment,
as you mentioned, was flat. He didn't seem to affect him on the Republican side. And it did make him less popular nationally in a way, actually, that he hasn't recovered from yet. On June 1st, he had a 42% favorable rating and a 54% unfavorable rating, according to our average. Today, he is at 40% favorable. So that's down two points. And then he's also at 57% unfavorable. So that is up by three points.
Not huge, but, you know, I mean, first seven years, right, when we've talked about Trump's approval rating or favorability, like, you know, we've had we've kind of made a big deal out of like shifts of a couple of points because this approval has been so steady. But anyway, so I think there are two hypotheses here. One is that the second indictment was taken more seriously by Americans because they viewed the substance of the classified documents case as more serious than the hush money payments. And the second is that it's
It's kind of a cumulative effect, right? And of course, these hypotheses aren't mutually exclusive. Now, turning to a poll I found from YouGov and Yahoo News. So there is support for the first hypothesis. So according to this poll, 52% of Americans thought that falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star
was a serious crime. But 63% of Americans said that taking highly classified documents from the White House and obstructing efforts to retrieve them was a serious crime. Then when you look at the question of is inciting or aiding an insurrection against the
federal government a serious crime, 64% said that it was. And then finally, with regard to the Georgia case, conspiring to overturn the results of a presidential election, 66% view it as a serious crime. So I think it's interesting. So obviously those last three are all kind of within the margin of error, but I think it's interesting that we're kind of roughly ramping up in terms of more and more serious charges against him. And that when you combine that with the fact that there could be this cumulative effect of
I do think there's reason to believe that each subsequent indictment that happens, if they happen, would be worse than the one before it for him. I'm curious in all of this how Americans view January 6th today, because in the immediate aftermath, it seemed like there was somewhat of a consensus that it had been a really dark day and that Trump was responsible. You know, you remember speeches from Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell on the floor of the House and Senate yesterday.
describing the events in such a way, pointing a finger at Trump and describing the January 6th attack as a bad thing. Have things changed at all as we've gotten two and a half years away? I mean, Galen, it seems like polling and also the attitudes of
Some Republican leaders and politicians would suggest to me that Republicans are maybe less concerned about it than they once were or are less critical about it than they once were. Trump is leading in the endorsement tracker. So if you're looking at sort of Republican elites, members of Congress, senators, et cetera, he's getting endorsed. And at least some polling has suggested that
Republicans are less likely to take a critical view, in some cases, notably less. I know that there was what a Yahoo News or sorry, Economist YouGov, let's clarify which YouGov poll we're talking about, that showed back in May.
2021, you had like 70% or so of Republicans saying that it was a bad thing that Trump supporters had taken over the Capitol building. And then about half said the same at the start of 2023 among Republicans. So like to me, that just sort of
indicates a less critical view of the events of January 6th. Whereas it is true, though, that a lot of the attitudes about Trump across polling seem to have been at least somewhat flat, but it also depends on which poll you're looking at as sort of the start of a trend.
Yeah, I mean, Republicans, it's not even clear how much Republicans blame Trump for what happened on January 6th. It seems like there's been this growing sense that, yes, there were these people who broke into the Capitol and that was bad, but does Trump have responsibility? There was a Politico morning council poll that was conducted in December 2022, and 40% of Republican voters said that Trump had no responsibility at all
for the events that led to a group of people attacking police and breaking into the Capitol. And another 16% said he wasn't too responsible. So that's a majority of Republicans who are not viewing him as very responsible for what happened. And I think that matters too when you're talking about charges for Trump, particularly if these are going to be serious charges that draw on
Trump, the idea of Trump really having been a major force in catalyzing and inciting the violence that happened. Yeah, there's kind of different layers of questions here. And from what I can tell, perceptions of January 6th are still quite negative. You know, when you ask Americans in general, how do you feel about January 6th?
Two thirds of Americans or more say that they strongly disapprove. Also, a recent YouGov poll, you can see the numbers of Republicans that say they don't see it negatively or even approve of what happened growing. But when we talk about Americans on the whole, there's like a large majority of Americans who are not OK with what happened on January 6th.
Then when you ask Trump's role, which is maybe a little more specific and directly related to Trump, you still see a clear majority of Americans saying that Trump played at least some role. Republicans, as you mentioned, Amelia, a lot more skeptical than independents or Democrats. But there's a clear majority saying he played either a lot of a role or at least some role. It's 59% in that poll I was talking about. 59%. Yeah, 59% of Americans versus 31% of Republican voters. So that's a really big difference.
And then when you get to like the real question here, which is, did Trump commit a crime on January 6th? That's where you get everyone retreats to their partisan corners and it's
pretty much split 50-50. You look at some polls, there's a slight majority for yes, he did commit a crime. But it goes like, yeah, it was a bad thing. Yeah, we kind of all agree that Trump played a role in it. Did he commit a crime? Okay, we can't agree on whether or not that's the case. So it seems like based on those numbers, I wouldn't expect there to be a huge change in perceptions of
We're also just talking about the indictment right now. And I think in a lot of ways, what happens if the, you know, let's say Trump gets the Republican nomination, the major party nominee for president and a former president is disqualified.
undergoing multiple trials in an election year. Like, in some ways, you know, sort of like the indictment is like, this is the charges, this is kind of outlining the roadmap for the arguments that prosecutors are going to make. But...
That's what I really want to see. Like, does that affect the way people think about Trump? Because it's just such a historically unprecedented event and it will be incredibly dramatic and it will reshape 2024 in ways that no election year ever has been. So I think that's important to bear in mind that while it's definitely interesting to see what happens with public opinion in the wake of the indictments,
It's really the trials that I think will matter if anything does. Yeah. And that probably, I guess, matters more for the general election if he is, in fact, the nominee.
Well, we just got word, right, that the trial in the classified documents case is going to be in May 2024, which is basically almost certainly after the Republican primaries will be wrapped up and obviously right kind of before the conventions and general election gets underway. So.
Yeah, I think it's not great timing for the Republican Party in the sense that, like, you know, Trump is still the favorite for the nomination and he wins the nomination and then immediately we'll get all these terrible headlines. But let's imagine for a moment that public opinion does change as a result of these accumulating indictments, and particularly it changes amongst Republican voters.
voters. And as a result, the Republican primary gets a bit more competitive. And I think to do that, we are going to host a 2024 Republican primary draft.
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As we mentioned, we have no evidence that this will be the case. But let's imagine for a moment that as these indictments start to pile on top of each other and the candidates, you know, Trump's rivals in the Republican primary have more of an opportunity to introduce themselves in the debates and throughout sort of, you know, the increased political attention span of Americans post Labor Day, that they're going to be able to say, you know,
the Republican primary has an opportunity to become more competitive and maybe even let's put Trump aside for the purposes of this primary draft. If something happens and Trump is not in the race, not considered or just falls off a pulling cliff,
who has the best opportunity to take advantage of the situation? And to answer that question, we're going to have a draft, and we're going to have a snake draft, because we believe in fairness. And the order of that snake draft has already been determined by random.org, and it is as follows. Nathaniel Rakich, Amelia Thompson-DeVoe, Galen, and Jeffrey. Nathaniel, are you prepared? And just to be clear,
You cannot choose Trump as an option in this draft. Take it away. I think Ron DeSantis remains the obvious candidate.
you know, alternative. You know, there have been a lot of bad stories about DeSantis, about how, you know, donors might be switching to Tim Scott and like, you know, he's not ready for primetime because he's too weird and awkward with voters and stuff like that. But like the reality is that like candidates like go through rough patches. He remains like a very well-funded candidate, a very well-known candidate. He remains popular among voters.
Republican primary voters are still polling three or four times higher than any other candidate. Yeah. So in our average
he's at 19%, which is not great for him considering that he, you know, had been above 30 like earlier this spring. But it's, he's still significantly ahead of Vivek Ramaswamy. He also has like intangibles that Ramaswamy doesn't like, you know, he has like political experience and like, you know, a network and stuff like that. So yeah, so I think that if Trump were to disappear, DeSantis would become the front runner, although it would certainly be a much more interesting and competitive race in that case. All right.
All right. Anyone disagree with Nathaniel? I want to ask Nathaniel a clarifying question. I was going to say, I agree with Nathaniel. You know, I was looking at
sort of net favorability and overall favorability among Republicans since the start of June. And Ron DeSantis is, by net favorability, based on the polling, we have the most popular Republican candidate just ahead of Donald Trump in terms of a net rating of plus 49 among Republicans, whereas Trump's at plus 45. So I just think DeSantis still has the most going for him in the non-Trump category.
And he's explicitly more voters' second choice. I mean, Morning Consult asks this question, who would you choose as a second option if your first option is Trump? 40% said DeSantis, and that was by far the biggest chunk going to another candidate. So this is how voters are thinking as well.
How do we account for his failure to launch? Is it because Trump himself is an immovable object and, you know, it's really just a Trump issue and that if Trump were not in the race, DeSantis has the opportunity to take off in a real way? Or is it something specific about DeSantis that makes him a poor national candidate?
I actually don't think it's about Trump. I think it is about DeSantis. I think the question is whether he is actually a poor candidate and like, you know, this slide is going to continue and like, you know, say Trump drops out of the race, which again, I don't think is going to happen, but you know, would it continue at the, you know, even if given that new source of voters, um, because he is so bad, or is it just because he has gotten the scrutiny of a co front runner or like a, you know, second runner? Um,
And, you know, that tends to be a bad place to be because you got a target on your back and like Trump is going to attack you and the other candidates are going to attack you and the media is going to do a bunch of like stories on you and scrutinize you and stuff like that. But yeah, I think...
What Amelia and Jeffrey had said, like Trump leaving would create a new opportunity for DeSantis, who is seen favorably by a lot of Trump voters, to immediately add, you know, a significant number of support. All right, Amelia, this is where it gets interesting. Take it away. I'm going to pick Ramaswamy.
And that's not just because, as you mentioned, Galen, he's been gaining in our polling average and is now very, very slightly above Mike Pence. I just think, you know, in a situation of true chaos where there was no Trump, Republicans like a dark horse candidate. I mean, we saw that with Trump himself.
He's someone who has spent a lot of time trying to establish himself to conservative audiences. He's on the campaign trail a lot. I mean, he's, according to our tracker, he spent the most days campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, really by far. Nikki Haley has also been spending a lot of time in those early states, but he's been doing a lot to introduce himself to Republican voters.
And I think the fact that Ramaswamy promised to pardon Trump is not irrelevant. In a situation where Trump has dropped out because of his legal problems, Ramaswamy was there, out the gate, saying he would pardon Trump. And
He has sort of this kind of Trumpy brand. I think if Trump were going to throw his weight behind someone in a Trump-less primary, I
I think it could very well be Ramaswamy, and that could make the difference for him. And for what it's worth, Ramaswamy, while he's not as rich as Doug Burgum, does have a fair amount of personal wealth that he can also throw into his campaign. And presumably in this scenario, he would also be positioned to gain more money.
In terms of donors. So I just think he's somebody who could capitalize and he's got a very positive rating when it comes to net favorability. Only about half of Republicans have an opinion of him, but he's like a plus 28 based on the average I ran. So like not well-known, but the people who know him like him. So –
I mean, and you know, he hasn't really come under any scrutiny in a serious way because no one's been taking him seriously. So take that with a grain of salt. But also the fact that he doesn't have a political career, I think in some ways is good for him in this situation because it is...
you know, any baggage that would be dug up about him would be personal. And again, as we saw with Trump, even personal baggage that might seem to be extremely damning and disqualifying to voters turned out not to be. So I think in that sense, he might have an advantage too. Maybe, but I think that
Ramaswamy still isn't Trump, right? And so there would be he would have a vulnerability to the types of scandals that would have tanked Trump. Not saying that those exist, but I always get wary with people who haven't run for office before, like, you know,
there could be skeletons in the closet they just haven't had the scrutiny and he still hasn't had scrutiny even though he's been running in the race for a while as you mentioned amelia um so i think that makes me i i agree that ramaswamy is you know as an intriguing candidate i think he is giving republican voters the message they want to hear i think it's basically him desantis and trump who are doing kind of the the really like hardcore culture war stuff and i think that is is clearly he has an appeal in the republican primary so if we're talking about lanes
right he would also be well positioned to to kind of be inherit support from trump but i would personally i think put him below one other candidate who remains still on the board um in terms of ability to um to capitalize in a trump-less scenario
Let me take a wild guess that I'm picking the candidate that you are mentioning, Nathaniel, and pick Tim Scott. Indeed. So, Senator from South Carolina, Tim Scott has...
Something that has probably become underrated within the Republican Party since Trump, but still matters, which is broad appeal and connection to power structures within the Republican Party, as well as the base. You know, like Trump didn't manage to fully rewrite every law of politics and certain things that Tim Scott has as an advantage, but
will remain. He has a lot of money. The amount of money that he has raised and has on hand rivals that of Joe Biden and Donald Trump himself. He's got over $20 million on hand at the moment. And he has managed against all odds, like truly, I don't know that there's anyone else who has done this, to maintain a positive relationship with both
Donald Trump himself, Trump's base, like Trump's most enthusiastic voters, Mitch McConnell, other leaders within the Senate, other members of the Republican Party sort of across the board, the donors themselves. It's really interesting how he has managed to do that and therefore is...
in a super contentious, chaotic environment, the one person that everyone could feel comfortable throwing their weight behind in a way. Think about Ron DeSantis getting out of the race because things have gone sideways for him. He's not endorsing Trump. We've seen a lot of people go head to head with Trump and then end up endorsing him. So actually, maybe I take that back. I could see Ron DeSantis happily endorsing Tim Scott. I could see Nikki Haley happily endorsing Tim Scott.
I could probably see Vivek Ramaswamy endorsing Tim Scott. I don't know that that matters, but, you know, he's got that kind of bring the whole party together vibe. He also, since we've been mentioning these numbers, is...
The third or fourth most favored candidate of the Republican primary electors. He has very low unfavorable numbers. He has very high favorable numbers. People who know him, like him. And also, I've mentioned this before when we've done drafts, but...
One thing that maybe we don't talk about enough in political analysis is the value of being able to apply cross pressures to people's preconceived notions of what the two parties are. And so, you know, for example, maybe there's some ad that Joe Biden is like,
middle-class Joe from Scranton. He's an old white guy, which, you know, the message that people get about the Democratic Party and young progressives and whatever is that they're antagonistic towards that demographic group. The message that people get about the Republican Party is that, you know, they're antagonistic towards people of color. And Tim Scott himself is a black man who's the descendant of American slaves who talks about race and racism and says America isn't racist and can deliver a credible message on some of the culture war
questions and issues that probably other candidates might not be able to. And so I think applying that cross pressure gives him an advantage as well and a story to tell. And obviously he's a charismatic guy. We talked about his launch when he actually launched back a few months ago. So that's my argument for Tim Scott. I was impassioned. Man, Scott campaign. Hire Galen Druk. Yeah.
Anyone disagree? No, I think that's right. Scott would have been my second pick, you know? He would have been my second pick. I'll disagree. I'll disagree. So I agree that Scott is on paper very well positioned to step into this role if something were to happen with Trump or DeSantis for that matter.
But he's still, like, I still need to see something happen with him. Because we see this phenomenon. I have something. Well, you can finish, but things are happening with him. Well, we see this phenomenon. So, like, maybe his numbers are moving in early states. Is that what you're talking about, Nathaniel? So I think I would need to see evidence of that happening.
like really taking off and him really kind of like having an impact on voters in early states. Because I think there is a desire on the part of journalists and people who follow politics to find candidates like this who seem like they should be perfect and to continue to believe that they should land with voters
even when they ultimately don't. And I think Tim Scott's message of optimism in particular, while something that genuinely makes him stand out from the other-- many of the other candidates in the race,
is just not something I see a lot of appetite for among primary voters. And he can't, he has no room to move away from that because he is a black man running in a Republican primary. And it's very possible that that would appeal to some Republican primary voters because of the way he talks about race, because he can talk credibly about anti-woke stuff in a way that
Other candidates couldn't. But also, because of the way that Black men are stereotyped and discriminated against, he can't occupy...
a lane where he's perceived as aggressive because that would be probably disqualifying for him. And so I think he has a very narrow path of how he can be to be acceptable to Republican voters. And I just haven't seen evidence yet. It's possible we will see some of this evidence going forward, but I just haven't seen evidence yet that that is what Republican voters want this year.
Yeah. Um, I think that's a fair point, Amelia, but I do think we're starting to see that evidence as I mentioned. So, um, they were, we got two polls of Iowa over the last couple of days and they showed basically the same thing. Um, one was a coefficient poll that was conducted on behalf of the Trump campaign and one was a Fox business poll and they both showed Trump way ahead in Iowa with 46% and they also both showed DeSantis at in second place at 16%, but then they had Tim Scott basically nipping at DeSantis as heels. Um,
He had 11% in one of the polls and 10% in the other poll. So I do think he's been campaigning a lot in Iowa and he has been airing TV ads a lot in Iowa. I think that is evidence that he is growing there. Obviously, 10% isn't enough to win the state, but in a situation where Trump were to drop out of the race, there would be a lot of votes on the table. I think that he has shown the ability to make inroads. So I think he'd be interesting to
You know, for sure. And yeah, I mean, to sort of Nathaniel's earlier point, I think the other reason to think about Scott is that he is...
Someone who's been in office for a while. He's been scrutinized a bit more. Now, granted, he might get more scrutiny than he's ever gotten before, so perhaps that could change. But he's got great favorability numbers. He's at plus 35 based on polls since the beginning of June in terms of net faves, but only about 60% of Republicans have an opinion of him. So he has a lot of ceiling left to get to in terms of potential support and favorability. So, I mean, I think he's...
sort of second behind DeSantis in this conversation. I take the point about
the optimistic message not necessarily being what people are looking for. But I think in some ways, it's a politician's job to help voters understand what they're looking for. That kind of ephemeral stuff, it just catches sometimes and you're not really sure why. They do want a fighter. They want somebody who can fight and win and enact the policies that they want. But if he makes the pitch that I can use my sense of optimism and charisma to achieve those things...
And also, you know, people don't want the same thing forever. We have had eight years now of Trump-style message delivery. And people might all of a sudden say, hey, oh, you know what? Like,
Because oftentimes you'll hear Republican voters who like Trump say he was a really good president. He did the things I wanted. I like his policies and whatever, but it's all a little too much. It's all a little too much. So maybe in some ways people like Trump despite his sort of personality and that if you can get all of Trump's policies and add like a more positive, optimistic spin, that could be a net gain.
I just don't think that's how a lot of Republican primary voters see the country right now. They see things as not going as well as they want in their lives, not going as well as they want in the country, the country being taken over by these social forces that they don't agree with.
I just think that's not their vibe right now. And even if, you know, Scott is doing better in early primary polls, like, I don't think 10 or 11% in an Iowa poll is a sign that Iowa voters are really jonesing for an optimistic message when you consider that the people who are presumably getting the vast majority of support are Trump and DeSantis, who are very much not promoting that kind of message. Yeah.
I guess I wouldn't underestimate Scott's ability to talk about some of the things I think you're getting at, Amelia. His campaign sends out lots of emails about Christians being under attack. So I've just seen that as a theme in a lot of his campaign emails. I guess the question is, can Scott sort of balance his more optimistic sort of public stance and how he goes about appealing to crowds and doing speeches and whatnot with
with some of the feelings on the right that DeSantis and obviously especially Trump, I think, are trying to sort of hone in on and grab hold of. So it's an open question. All right, Jeff, take it away. You got two picks here. Yeah, you guys really put me in a tough spot because my top three picks are gone. So I guess I have to take Nikki Haley. She's not pulling that great in terms of...
voters are saying about their preferences. She is showing up in South Carolina, but it is her own state, so I'm not sure how much you can take from that. But I will say that she does remain reasonably popular among Republicans. So her favorability numbers are actually decent. They're not as good as some of the other candidates we've talked about by any means. But about two-thirds of Republicans are familiar with her, and about two-thirds of that group have a favorable opinion of her. So I feel like
That's the basis for something. And she obviously has the credentials as a former governor, former UN ambassador. I think a lot of Republican, like big Republican donors that if you had a vacuum in the field would view her as maybe a safe port, safe harbor as a candidate. So she would be my, the next person on the list. And maybe someone who's got a little more solid footing, maybe not quite the ceiling, but
Maybe a higher floor than someone like Ramaswamy, who is more of a wild card. My only question here is actually, Jeff, why you chose Nikki Haley over someone out of left field almost, like a dark horse candidate? Like a media personality. We're describing a situation where...
I see. I'm a little skeptical about the media personality. If, if Donald Trump is dropping out of the race and like, or, or getting pushed out of the race in some way in like December or January, like,
No one's coming in at the last minute. That's like not how this works. This isn't 1968. You can't be Hubert Humphrey organizing, you know, taking all of Johnson's delegates or something like this is just not how this stuff works anymore. So for me, it's like you can't even file for the races in a lot of the early states. But at that point, so like. But what if he gets pushed out in August after getting indicted for the fourth time? Well, that's not going to happen.
Let's be real. If this is all happening, it's going to take – I love that Jeff's like, I'm going to have some reality. Look, if I'm going to accept the premise here, I'm going to accept the premise under even somewhat remotely realistic terms, which is that this will take months to sort out if Trump is actually getting pushed out of the race. So in my view, that's why Haley – I said she's like a safe harbor of a sort for some –
Republican leaders and potentially voters. So I think that makes her a much more credible choice than others. And so like that, that's why I went with her. And I just don't think that you I mean, maybe Glenn Youngkin jumping in in October, you know, bring him up or something. But I'm just saying that, you know, Tucker Carlson is about to run for president and get get the nomination in this in this. I don't think.
All right. So was that your next pick, Glenn Youngkin? No. Or is it someone else? No. I feel like you stole Galen's next pick.
No, no, I didn't actually. Look, I am a Virginia native, so it was tempting to go with Youngkin. But I guess because of my attitude about the timing of all this, I don't think Youngkin gets in. I just don't think that the timing works out for him. So maybe he'll run for Senate in 2026 or something. Anyway.
I think if I'm looking at the rest of the field, most of the candidates are not going to have any chance. So I'll pick the last person I think you could squint and potentially see any path. And that's Doug Burgum. Dougie B. Dougie B. Money, money, money, money, money.
Yeah, you know, give it $20 away for $1, you know? I mean, we love a high variability pick. Yeah, well, I took what I would view as a lower variability pick in Haley, so now I'm going to take Burgum. Burgum, you know, he's a conservative governor.
has like a track record that people aren't going to find unappealing, I should say. So like, you know, he's going to have the money. He's got personal wealth to throw at the race. It's a bit like, he's a little bit like a Rama Swami, except not an outsider in the same way. Uh, in, in that sense that he has a lot of personal means that his, at his disposal, he's running a lot of ads, uh,
Already, I think, Nathaniel, I think, pointed this to me, but something like just more money on campaign ads than anybody else since he jumped in. So clearly he has the resources. He might have the pitch. So I'll take him as a sort of a wild card bet. Okay. All right. I mean, I support that. I think that's a good pick. So I'm not going to play contrarian here for the sake of playing contrarian. But if anyone else wants to, please feel free.
Just waiting for Burgum to catch on fire over here. He's going to make every debate because he could just give 20 bucks to people for $1 donations, right? I mean, there you go. He makes the debate stage every time. Okay, so moving on. I'm really stuck here. I genuinely, like, I actually don't think that Glenn Youngkin would be a good even six-
round pick for the draft just because there are people in the race who I think can deliver what he believes he can deliver, who would be in a better position to capitalize on an open field than he is right now. And I think he just doesn't want to make a fool of himself. Like you already saw somebody with a lot of potential, seeming potential, Ron DeSantis get in and then kind of get walloped by,
you know, voters and the press. And even if, even if, as you mentioned, he still has potential remaining, it's just not, he doesn't look super strong anymore. And I think Glenn Youngkin wants to keep his powder dry, even in a race that goes sideways for Trump. So I'm thinking like high variability candidates. I'm thinking like Chris Christie, because of a debate performance or something like goes totally gangbusters and sort of
obliterates somebody and all of a sudden people really start paying attention to him. But his unfavorable numbers are so high that how do you change that many minds within the Republican primary electorate? Then I'm thinking like, oh,
Kristi Noem because, you know, she kind of does offer something that no one else offers in the race, which is like she can go full tilt. Okay, fine. I'll pick Kristi Noem and then I'll just make this argument. She can go full tilt on the culture war issues in a way that Nikki Haley won't. And she applies, you know, cross pressure in the sense that she is...
the executive of a state and she is a mother and all these different things and Republicans have been struggling to get more women voters but even still half of the Republican primary electorate approximately is made up of women and
And so... Although women do not automatically vote for women. Vote necessarily for women. Especially Republican women. So I would not, if I were Kristi Noem, I mean, look at Nikki Haley. She's also a mom. She's got a lot of that going for her. And she's...
not blowing it out of the water with women. All right, let's spin it around. Maybe she's winning men. So Kristi Noem is winning men. She is conventionally stereotypically feminine, but also, you know, takes a lot of videos shooting guns and like the kind of thing that you would think might jibe with a Republican primary base. And we don't have other than Ron DeSantis, right?
clearly viable governors who can make the pitch about having that executive experience, going toe-to-toe with the Biden presidency in a way that senators can't really, like, you can just spout off, but, like, you are not suing them. You're not enacting policies that go directly counter to them. I think it's tricky. There's some, you know, if you dig a little deeper, there's some scandals, there are some reasons that she decided not to run this time around. But I think...
in a really shake-everything-up kind of race, she seems like she can really give a good stump speech and rile people up. So I guess that's the first person we're picking who's not in the race already. She's also from next door to Iowa. She is. She is. She's got that geographic. We need more Dakota action here. We got North Dakota, let's bring in South Dakota.
All right, Amelia. Okay, so I am going to spin out a story here of Trump falling out of the race because suddenly Republican voters say, you know what? We actually...
Really, this guy was just a mistake. He's too much. He's on trial for all these different things. He's bad news. We want someone who is an anti-Trump candidate. And that is the scenario in which Mr. Mike Pence catches fire. And I think of the anti-Trumpers...
Although he has a very similar problem to Chris Christie in that he is widely disliked. He is a former vice president and he has very, very traditional Republican credentials that someone like Chris Christie does not have. He is a Christian conservative. He has been around. He is known. He is an extremely successful.
Safe bet if you are looking for a rock-ribbed Republican who is anti-Trump. And in this scenario where the Republican primary electorate has woken up one day, seen Trump fall out of the race, and decided they want something entirely different,
I think that's Mike's moment to shine. Hey, you know, looking at the favorability numbers, they're not good, but they're not Chris Christie bad. You know, like Chris Christie is super underwater, like negative 25-ish net favorability among Republicans and is well known.
And Mike Pence is even better known, but he's running about even between favorable and unfavorable. So there are a lot of Republicans that have a positive opinion of him. I think it's like the anti-Trump thing. It's the anti-Trump thing that is making him unpopular. And if you take that away, then, you know, he's got a lot of what you need.
Yeah, actually, in a way, it's kind of impressive that half of Republicans still have a favorable opinion of him considering. So, yeah, actually, that's a fair point that maybe he does retain some goodwill. Yeah. Also, if in Trump's sort of decline or departure from the race, there's a sort of tacit acknowledgement that maybe January 6th wasn't so good or like maybe that is what got him into trouble. Then all of a sudden, Mike Pence's role. And I mean, really, we're talking super, super, super hypothetical here. But that's why he's the last pick. Galen, we're telling a story. Yeah.
We're telling a story and we're sticking to it. We're just thinking about all the scenarios. All the angles.
All right, Nathaniel, you are going to make the last pick of this snake draft. So make it a good one. I am. I am going to make a good one. I'm going to do another high variance pick because I am also going to spin the story. It's going to be the opposite story. It's Trump is pissed. He's getting pushed out of the race. He's like, F you, all the rest of the Republican Party. And, you know, I am going to endorse my son,
Trump Jr. to be my successor. Vote for him. All the Republicans who are loyal to Trump will flock over to Trump Jr. And the Trump dynasty lives on. What? Hey, he's one of the leading surrogates. He's out there on the campaign trail. You think it would be Don Jr. and not Ivanka? I don't think Ivanka would want it in the same way that Don Jr. would. Wait, hold on.
Why not Tucker? I just want to know more why you didn't pick like high profile media or even entertainment figure. I think ultimately in the end, something you said on past podcasts is right, which is that like, you know, if you're just like a rich media personality, it's nice to just be a rich media personality and not run for president and go through all that crap.
In addition, like, I think that, like, basically Trump would be pissed. And I do think that it would be tremendous value in whoever he, like, pointed to and endorsed. And I don't think he would endorse Tucker Carlson because they don't like each other. Right. Or at least Tucker Carlson does not actually like Trump in reality, according to those text messages. And but like, obviously, like Don Jr. is his son and would be the most likely to carry on Trump's.
policies and also like to pardon him. I know that Ramaswamy said that, you know, that he would do that. But, you know, I think that Trump would probably trust his own family member and feel like he could control things a little better. The other thing about Tucker is that I don't think he's going to be getting a lot of coverage from Fox News to help him in the primary. Just just a thought. Interesting. Who's the you know, at the last moment, everyone's always like, well, what if the rock ran for president as a Democrat? Who's that on the Republican side?
I did consider Jim Caviezel to take the conversation full back to movies. Sound of Freedom is a movie that's good for people who don't know. It's a big hit in Republican evangelical circles. So I did consider that, but no, that would be truly random because I have not seen anything about Jim Caviezel running for president. What about...
like a pastor of a mega church? Is there anyone that high profile? They don't want to. It's not good for their brand to be super political. I mean, you could imagine maybe someone like Robert Jeffress, but again, it's, I don't see what the upside is for them. You know, they have a lot of influence staying just outside, you know, sort of like, like being part of the influence and not actually being the person. And I just...
I don't know. I don't see it. I'm Googling right now, most famous Republican celebrity. Okay, so I'm seeing Melissa Joan Hart, Caitlyn Jenner, Elizabeth Hasselbeck. I don't know about any of those. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not a Republican. Notoriously beloved by Republicans. Yeah, I think that's changed a little bit. Yeah. Clint Eastwood, James Woods, Kelsey Grammer.
Oh, well, Kelsey Grammer. Why didn't anyone suggest Kelsey Grammer? Great idea. All right, all told, we had Nathaniel with Ron DeSantis and Don Jr. We had Amelia with Ramaswamy and Pence. We had me with Tim Scott and Kristi Noem. And we had Jeff with Nikki Haley and...
And I'm already forgetting, Doug Burgum. So listeners, tell us who you think won. Obviously we're playing an extremely hypothetical game. So maybe you think we all lost. But for now, we're going to leave it there. Thank you, Jeff, Amelia, and Nathaniel.
Thanks, Galen. Thanks, Galen. Thank you, Galen. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room and also on video editing. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet us with questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple podcast store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.
