The Trump vs. Biden brain battle – plus, what the hell is a ‘cheap fake’? 01:01:49

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Hello and welcome to American Friction, the brand new US politics podcast out every Friday from the makers of Oh God What Now, The Bunker and Papercuts. I'm Jacob Jarvis. And I'm Chris Jones. Every week we'll be discussing everything you need to know in the run up to November's vote. We're raring to go and Doc Ronnie Johnson has tested our brains to make sure they're working just as well as Donald Trump says. We're joined as always by Rolling Stone's brain worm, shark fight and fried bread correspondent Nikki McCann-Ramirez.

Howdy, Miss Worm. What's your gentleman? Honestly, I don't know if that's British slang or not, but I respect the effort. What else would it be? Well, in terms of what we're going to talk about today, we're going to be discussing the Trump-Biden brain battle that's going on as each side looks to try and prove that the other is less mentally qualified than the other side to be commander-in-chief. Plus, media reporter Justin Barragona joins us to talk about all the weird and wonderful news

very much in heavily inverted commas there, that we can see on Fox News and Newsmax, as well as the spread of so-called cheap fakes or clean fakes if you're Donald Trump and you like getting stuff wrong. Welcome back. You're listening to American Friction.

Speaking at a rally in Detroit, Donald Trump suggested once again that Biden needs to have a cognitive test. And he bragged all about how he has aced one of his own. But then he immediately got the name wrong of the doctor who conducted the said test. I think you should take a cognitive test like I did. I took a cognitive test and I aced it. Dr. Roddy.

Dr. Ronny Johnson, does everyone know Ronny Johnson, Congressman from Texas? He was the White House doctor.

And he said I was the healthiest president he feels in history. So I liked him very much. Yeah, the problem with that is, Donald, if you're listening, that doctor who he likes very much is actually called Ronnie Jackson, not Ronnie Johnson. So, Nicky, is this finally going to turn the conversation a bit? I feel like we've been constantly talking about Biden and his age and all that. And we have to drag back to it and whether it's unfair or there are some concerns, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But it was just like a really clean cut example of Trump being

being really bad at getting facts, names, dates wrong. And this was just a perfect example of him going, hey, this guy, oh shit.

Me. No, it's not going to change anything. We get examples like this, like on a weekly basis, especially if you cover politics like I do. We see this stuff all the time. I think people know that Trump is a sloppy talker, but we're not seeing a major shift in public perception about the two candidates' cognitive abilities. I mean...

Trump has been talking about acing his cognitive exams since he was president. No, really. There was the whole joke about like the person computer or something, something. I forget the other two. I think the exact quote is, I have the bestest brain. Something like that. Yeah. And I mean, it's also kind of just wild. Ronny Jackson was...

Trump's personal doctor in the White House until 2019. He was one of the doctors who I think helped administer some of those cognitive exams.

It's also, as with everything about the Trump administration, kind of important to point out that Ronny Jackson was also a bit of a mess. He left his job in the West Wing in 2019 amid allegations of inappropriate workplace conduct and alcohol abuse while on the job. And it was revealed earlier this year that he'd actually been demoted by the military from admiral to captain after an investigation into his conduct at the White House. And like that doesn't even get into all the reports that

from his time in the White House that the White House's private pharmacy basically operated as a pill mill for staffers, just handing out uppers and downers willy-nilly. We've known for a really long time

That Trump is a messy guy who likes to just blabber on about things, goes on tangents, confuses names, confuses locations. It just doesn't break through in the same way that it does for Biden, I think, because as we talked about last week, Trump also is very charismatic, whereas Biden often comes off as more subdued. And I think that level of charisma that Trump often shows in his public statements kind of tends to drown out the mistakes because he's like, oh, he fucked up.

But it doesn't seem like an actual brain impairment. You know? You know what I'm getting at here? Well, I think you should spread the narrative there that Trump essentially, it seems like he kind of, so I don't know if you have MOTs in America, but for cars, we have to go get our car tested for an MOT to make sure it's safe to be on the road.

And it sounds like what you're saying is Trump essentially went to a dodgy mechanic which would just hand out an MOT for his brain. I mean, kind of, yeah. He basically did that. So that's the new narrative I would like us to start spreading. That's our first conspiracy theory, which feels quite good. I love it. We should start more of those. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Let's just spark them. Yeah, I mean, that would launch us into the stratosphere. I'm sure it seems to work for every other media outlet.

AF Anon. So I do feel the focus has shifted a little bit right now and been like, hey, let's look at Trump's brain. So part of it is because so this biographer who's been hanging out with Trump loads and you've got to feel sorry for him for that. But he's basically said as well that

From my experience, Trump isn't very good at remembering stuff. Case in point, I interviewed him for an hour and then he didn't remember who I was the next time we spoke to each other. Yeah. So Ramin Saddoudeh, who is a biographer and a writer, interviewed Trump a total of six times for his new book, Apprentice in Wonderland. It's kind of like a biography of Trump.

Satude told MSNBC this week that Trump, quote, goes from one story to the next. He struggles with the chronology of events. He seems very upset that he wasn't respected by certain celebrities in the White House. And then he'd go into a story about The Apprentice. And then he added, as you said, that at one point Trump like fully forgot who he was. If you've ever and I am so sorry for you if you have sat down and watched an entire Trump speech.

This is not surprising in the slightest. Trump, when he talks, it's a stream of consciousness.

He rarely ventures into new territory. He will repeatedly fall back on sort of like classic lines of rhetoric that he's developed over the years he was in office, over the campaign trail, the four years that he's now been out of office. And that's immigration, China, that the war in Ukraine would have never happened if I was in office and I could solve it in 24 hours if I was elected president.

He's really like the repetition equals retention kind of guy. He doesn't really deviate from these sort of puzzle pieces, rhetorical puzzle pieces that he sort of like picks and chooses and then kind of smashes together into a quote unquote speech because it's not really a speech. It's just him ranting about whatever's on his mind. If you want a really good example, watch the press conference he did after he got convicted at Trump Tower yesterday.

A solid 70 percent of the press conference wasn't about the conviction or the verdict. It was just about his pet issues. And like I said, I think the biggest thing here is that Trump has this charisma. He has this ability to sort of rile up crowds and really engage with his audience. And that makes up a lot in the public perception aspect.

For how you perceive his cognitive abilities, because if you're seeing a guy that's able to do crowd work, that's able to sort of still engage and get the cheers going and the applauses and see, like, even if he gets it wrong, he doesn't really stumble over his words. That, I think, can often look more effective than...

Biden, who seems, you know, he had a stutter when he was a child. He's very deliberate about his word choice. He's very sort of reserved and austere. It's very rare that he has like a big emotional moment like that makes the news when he does.

So I think the contrast there is also just like the stylistic trappings of both men. Yeah, but fucking Robbie Williams is amazing at crowd work. I don't want him to be president of the United States, you know, like that just seems like, yeah, ludicrous. Do you know who Robbie Williams is? I mean, there's Robin Williams. Isn't he dead? No, no. He is dead. Robbie Williams. Robbie Williams is alive. He's living angels instead, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I should have said that about Robin Williams. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, no, Robbie. Sorry, tangent here anyway. What I was going to ask, though, is Nikki, obviously you sat down to watch these Trump rallies and his speeches. How much of it, you know, this craziness and this randomness, how much of that do you think is actually just character? Like, it's just a persona that he's putting on perhaps to throw certain parts of the media that will pick up on that rather than some of the things he doesn't want them to pick up on, for example. Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. There's absolutely a character built into this. We have to remember that before Trump entered politics for like more than a decade, he was a reality TV star. Yeah. He was a television persona who knew how to work the cameras, knew how to talk to people, knew how to create dramatic moments. Of course, it's a character, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not translating to the public. Yeah. And an actor. Let's not forget Home Alone 2. Oh, my God. Yeah. Those like five seconds. Yeah.

Oscar worthy. He's good. He is good. Chris, so on the public perception side of all of this, it does seem like from polling that unfortunately people do seem to see that they think Trump is more robust mentally. But actually, it also looks like basically most people are quite worried about both candidates, aren't they? Yeah, it really falls into that notion that a lot of Americans are just concerned about both of these old men.

And it's just a bit of a sad reflection on the state of US politics at the moment. But there was polling, you're right. And I'm surprised you didn't call me a nerd. So thanks for that. But there was polling from CBS News and YouGov that took answers from 2000 voters. And 23% said that neither Trump or Biden have the cognitive ability to serve as president.

In the same polling, more people, as you say, think that Trump has better cognitive function compared to Biden. That's about 42% to 27%. There are lots of polls about this. And basically, it all shows that they think Biden is worse off than Trump. And this could all be honest opinion based on what they've seen. But as Nikki said a moment ago, who actually sits down to watch all of these speeches rather than just picking these clips

that are so rampant across the internet and you never actually know the full context behind them. So it'd be interesting to know how those opinions might change if...

the people who voted in this poll might have seen the full picture, really. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're going to talk to Justin Barragona about all of that side of things, the way that clips are manipulated in the next section. But so when it comes to this, though, as well, one thing you're saying is they are both old and it's kind of a bit of an indictment on US politics, but also...

It's kind of not a totally new thing for presidents to either have health issues or be slightly worried about very openly sharing their health issues. Historically speaking, there have been plenty of presidents who have had maybe issues surrounding their health, which hasn't directly correlated with their performance as president. And their honesty has been at varying degrees too, hasn't it?

Yeah, that's right, Jov. Well, there was some reporting that was from Stat, which is, I think, a medical online journal. And this is from Lawrence K. Altman, who is...

but he's also a physician as well, and he's spoken to lots of presidents about their mental health and their mental state. And there's a quote in here that you pointed out, actually, which is very good, very good research. Good man. It says, in 2006, a systemic review of historical accounts of 37 presidents from 1776 to 1974 found that 10 or 27% had MADDs.

had evidence of psychiatric disorder while in office. He also said that there is no correlation between age and performance whilst in office. That's what he found anyway. But, Nicky, it's just kind of a moot point, isn't it? Basically, they keep speaking as if this is a massive issue about Biden and it's a huge thing and maybe the Democrats should have been better prepared and whatever and there should be alternatives. If you are the president of the United States and you can run again and you want to run again,

You get to run again. And it's pretty hard to kind of stop that. I mean, yeah. The general consensus is that choosing not to run, if you're capable and willing, also would show a lack of confidence in the party. It could be considered a very heavy blow to your party and down-ballot races because typically...

The way it works in American election is sort of the popularity of a sitting president running for reelection will be reflected in down ballot races. And the expectation is that a popular president carries more candidates of that same party into the Congress, into the House, into the Senate, into like state level offices. So I think for Biden also to not run, right?

I don't think the Democrats really put in a lot of effort into building up a slate of potential replacements. There wasn't anything like what happened on the Republican side, where you had a lot of challengers come out and say Trump may not necessarily be the best pick we should run. And Trump, in effect, is running as an incumbent. He is a former president. So that was a huge departure from the norm there.

But on the Democratic side, I think you really saw the party as a whole put the boot on any efforts to challenge Biden going into this election cycle, which I think, and I've said it before, could likely hurt them in the long run because they're not really building up talent that could potentially succeed him. On a set piece where we will see both of these two under particular scrutiny,

They're going head to head next week, aren't they? The debates are happening. Brain to brain is going to be going on. Is it just going to be this sort of mudslinging? And do you think these debates are useful in any way? We've basically inherited here in the UK. It feels like we've taken on US style debates. And I think they're shit. I really don't think they help whatsoever. It just shows the bad parts of their characters and anything you think about them just kind of gets...

entrenched, but I don't think it changes your mind or makes you think anything new. What do you think? How are you feeling ahead of the debates? I mean, you're correct. Debates in this country are typically a bit of a shit show, but we have to remember that you, me and Chris, we're really in tuned to all of this shit. We're watching day to day, week to week. Most Americans aren't. And presidential debates for a lot of people are

are sort of the one thing they tune into in an election cycle to sort of gauge the candidates. And I think particularly given all the concerns about Biden's mental abilities, about Trump's proposed agenda, should he be reelected, his own cognitive struggles, having them go head to head

And seeing who comes out on top, who lands more punches, who seems more coherent is probably going to go a long way with a swath of undecided voters. So we're already seeing some pieces. I think there was one in like CNN of sort of like the behind the scenes debate prep that is now happening. Biden is headed toward Camp David. He's going to spend the next week really

really like digging down, preparing. I think they're really trying to go after Trump's both past policy record and the proposed plans he has for the next administration. And I think they really want to paint a picture of Biden as a strong, capable, incumbent president who is up against a guy who's a threat to democracy. And if they can sell that vision to viewers on Thursday, I

I think it'll be a huge win for Biden's campaign. Yeah, I think Biden is actually pretty good in these debates and he's normally pretty punchy, whereas Trump just kind of seems to get really tetchy and look like a sort of really annoyed, frustrated kid. Whereas Biden just gets to go, come on, man, over and over. And I think it just really works for him. I just love the come on, man line. Cut it out, Jack. LAUGHTER

And I will say, I mean, both of them are kind of out of practice. Trump entirely skipped all of the Republican debates this cycle. So he didn't really get a chance to like be on stage and sort of refresh his debate abilities ahead of this. So we'll see. It's going to be fun and awful. I'm so excited.

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so listeners know that they're backing a fellow fan's business. Why not give it a go? Drop us a line at advertising at podmasters.co.uk. That's advertising at podmasters.co.uk and see what podcast advertising can do for you. Right-wing TV channels in America are particularly unhinged, but they're also unusually powerful, especially Fox News.

The line they seem most obsessed with is, quote, Biden is old. But don't worry, there's plenty of other weird stuff going on. Here to discuss the Fox News and Newsmax narrative is Justin Baragona, a media reporter who has worked for The Daily Beast, Politics USA, Mediaite and founded Contemptor. Justin, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me. Justin, this is a big question first, but for let's get out of the way is Fox News and to a lesser extent Newsmax. Are they basically providing a kind of alternative reality to their viewers?

I mean, yeah, they are. Let's get it out of the way first. I mean, Biden's old, right? Joe Biden is an old man who does old man things. He stumbles over his words. He may just say something dumb. You know, he may forget something. But I mean, to be honest, that's actually been Joe Biden for like 30 years, too. And it's just getting a little bit worse because, you know, he's an 81 year old man.

But in recent weeks, there seems to be a concerted effort to ramp up this appearance of how feeble or senile or demented he appears to be, or that he is like suffering through like many strokes on stage.

What's happening here is that Fox News and the right-wing media ecosphere in general is using what you would call selectively edited clips, or you could say deceptively edited. But these aren't distorted clips through artificial intelligence or anything of that nature. These are just 10-second little tidbits that will show...

Without context, you know, Biden appearing to freeze up or looking for an imaginary terror or shitting himself, you know? And that isn't actually the case. If you actually pull the camera back or look at a different angle, you can see that that actually isn't what's happening here. But it doesn't matter because it's already been spread about in that Fox News and Newsmax and the New York Post have already gotten that narrative out there.

And now, you know, it's already more than halfway around the world and there's no way to put that genie back in the bottle. Is that spread more widely as well with their coverage? It's not necessarily that they say things that are totally factually incorrect or not real. It's just that they will completely remove any context from these things. Yeah, that's what's happening here. And right now, places have tried to fact check these or not even fact check, but it's

providing the context and the clarity to what's actually happened in these videos. Fox News has just gone like full bore. Hey, this is unfair. We have actually not shown any distorted clips on our airwaves, and we're just giving the facts here. And these are unedited clips. And how dare you think that we're actually trying to put something that is deceptive on the air? And, you know, there's also a feeling of like there's a Doth protest too much here.

here about their reaction to how people are accusing them of what the White House is calling cheap fakes. And they're like, no, this is an unedited clip. How dare you say that? Where we're at right now is they're just going to keep doing this and they're going to give their audience the reality of, you know, the White House is telling you don't believe your ears, don't believe your eyes.

You know, Biden is actually just like talking to imaginary people over there until the Italian prime minister has to pull him away. Yeah. I mean, as Justin, as you mentioned, the White House referred to these clips as cheap fakes. And I spoke to misinformation expert Joan Donovan. And just to give our listeners a little bit of context, cheap fakes isn't a new term. It's existed since around like 2019, I believe. And

The literal definition is, quote, altered media that has been changed through conventional and affordable technology. Social media examples of cheap fake techniques include Photoshopping, including face swapping, lookalikes, as well as speeding or slowing video. So, Justin, Trump has talked about, quote, unquote, clean fakes, mocking Biden after his team said he's a victim of these cheap fakes.

Does the Biden administration have a point here that these cheap fakes are like a form of misinformation, a way to mislead the public? Or do you think their reaction is a bit of a cop out? Or should they just simply not be reacting at all to this, I think is an important question here. Well, I would say there's a few different things here. One is.

by refuting it loudly, they are bringing more attention to these clips rather than just maybe taking more of a dismissive swipe at it and going, that's not even something that we should concern ourselves with.

So by their own reaction here, it does show that they're concerned about this age thing with Biden, right? I mean, let's face it, the majority of voters per poll thinks that Biden is probably too old to serve in office, and they are having concerns about his mental acuity and his physical and mental fitness in office. So they're rightly concerned about how that's being portrayed in the press.

And when right-wing media is pushing things that are misleading and fairly inaccurate in the way they're describing it, they feel the need to push back. But the way that they're doing it, it just feels that they're bringing way more attention to this. So in my opinion, it would have been just best to dismiss it and then allow for mainstream media outlets to

to go ahead and do their part and say, hey, this is a bit misleading on their part. Here's the actual facts or what this is what actually happened with these videos. Yeah. And I think that's probably why these attacks are so effective, because they are preying on or exploiting actual concerns that voters have going into this election. Yeah, that's exactly what's happening here. Something that makes this maybe interesting.

even more concerning than say deep fakes or AI stuff is that it's really hard for journalists and for anyone to push back and just say, you can't put a binary yes or no, real or true on a lot of these things, can you? Whereas like you see something that's made by AI, you can just go, well, that's made by AI. And perhaps I won't get the same cut for as the AI video, but you can robustly say that's

this is false, this is bullshit, it's just not real. And so on that, do you think, we talk a lot about deepfakes and the word cheap fake is

I don't think it's necessarily the most useful term, but in some ways, should we be more concerned by these than we are maybe, you know, the loud voices saying, hey, AI and deep fakes are really what's super scary? I mean, yeah. And the same, man, this is just something that's always been there. You know, I mean, there's always been the ability to just,

boil something down to like a 10 second clip and present that without context. You know, the most recent one, which is him on stage after that big star studded fundraiser, where it seems like he freezes up and then Obama has to go and grab him. If you see like for a full minute in context, they were, you know, soaking up the audience applause and all that.

after doing an interview with Jimmy Kimmel and then, you know, wave into the crowd and then eventually like Obama leaves first and then, Oh wait, man, I need to go get Joe. You know, it doesn't seem as bad then, but if you just see it where they start that clip and it's like, he's just like standing there and it's like, Oh, what, what happened there? You know? I want to just kind of switch real quick though, is like,

Fox News has been really objecting to how they've been portrayed in covering these. And then yesterday, they go and try to do it again, where they go, hey, here's another clip of Biden doing something that shows like he's struggling and it's that he forgot Mayorkas's name. And the thing is, the clip that they showed, they cut it off right before Joe Biden says Mayorkas's name.

I mean, it was like this. Oh, he forgets his own, like, you know, homeowner's secretary's name. And then you see the actual clip. It was one second later. He says, Mayorkas' name. That's the very definition of, I believe, what they're saying cheap fakes are. And Fox News doing all this objection. And then the very next day, they go and pull that. It's just like...

You lost all your ability to actually, like, you know, take the high ground here and say, no, we're being falsely accused here. On the taking the high ground side, I suppose this is you mentioned it not being a new thing. The Democrats themselves and Joe Biden themselves maybe could be questioned over how robust they are with Biden. But in terms of the wider kind of media sphere here.

I feel like this kind of stuff was done to Donald Trump similarly. And even though I dislike Donald Trump and he says a load of crazy stuff, the left wing did like to also just take clips of Trump and say, "Hey, laugh at this, look at Trump." Is this really any different to that? Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair. I don't know if it's symmetrical. It's always been a little bit asymmetrical here anyway.

you know, in terms of bad faith presentation of things. But yeah, you know, there's always been an easy way to portray Trump as saying something that is insane or acting weird because he does these things all the time. Whether you do a small snippet or you give like five minutes straight, there's a plethora of opportunities here of you being able to do that with Trump.

But yes, there have been times where Trump has gotten the raw end of the deal. But I don't think he's been as much of a victim as maybe Biden has been recently because now we're kind of grading Trump on a curve. Trump, I mean, he's a racist game show host that became a president.

And so he does these things that are always going to be along those lines. And you're just like, well, that's just Trump being Trump. So when he has moments now where it seems like he's forgetting people's names or goes off on incoherent rants that just go into a weird tangent, it's just sort of brushed off. And just for instance on that, I mean, in the last few days, Trump is actually trying to, I guess, own Biden.

especially among these sort of like instances where these clips have gone viral. And in doing so, he's actually ended up like stepping on his own foot. He's the one that was talking about clean fakes, you know, a couple of days ago when he's trying to talk about the white house, his complaints about cheap fakes. So he ended up like kind of making up a term while he's trying to mock Biden. So, you know,

These moments just aren't getting the same amount of attention anymore as what Biden's are, even though they're actually have the context there. So when we're talking about Democrats and liberals using these kind of tactics against Trump when he was president or when he was running for president,

Yeah. But again, like I said, it's not symmetrical. You know, there's definitely an asymmetry going on here. On that subject of just like contextualizing, recontextualizing clips of Trump's and sort of the difference between the two candidates. I think to kind of bring this back to Fox, one of the big advantages that Trump has is he has this like giant media apparatus that.

that is willing to like go to town on repackaging these comments, incidents for his base. I think one of the big examples that I think about is the Charlottesville good people on both sides quote, which the entire right is now convinced was a hoax because like 80%

eight minutes before in the original speech, he offhandedly said that Nazis were bad, but then we're like, oh, but then again was like, oh, there were good people on both sides. Or January 6th, where Fox News was granted access to all of the Capitol footage and used decontextualized clips of just people wandering around hallways in the Capitol to argue that

the riot had not been a riot. So, I mean, I watched a lot of Fox News in my old job. You watch a lot of Fox News. I'm curious about your view on how Fox helps Trump combat these allegations that he's also confused and also too old and also says completely out-of-pocket things. I mean, I think there's a real good example here of just how much they're able to present

the alternative reality to their viewers beyond just constantly going full on defense mode for Trump. They also are telling their viewers that what you see anywhere else is false. That's the fake news. We are the ones that are doing the real work. We're the ones that are making sure that what you see is true. And

And the one example I'm going to point out is Greg Gutfeld on The Five two days ago. This was after they'd spent the whole day leading off every hour by airing their montage of clips and then saying, you know, the White House is saying that our unedited clips are manipulated and distorted and cheap fakes. And so what Gutfeld does is

is he goes, oh, so they're worried about context now. Why were they worried about context with all these other hoaxes that they were trying to run? Like the fine people on both sides hoax at Charlottesville and things of that nature or the things that we've already said that they always take out of context, you know, and they kind of like take aim at like media matters with that. And they're like, oh, how dare they like pull our clips and then put them out there, you know, what we're saying. But then he goes and says, when we...

see something here, we vent. The media does not because they're the engine behind their hoaxes. The Dems and the media are lucky we don't match their dishonesty. We could. We don't. We don't have to because basically we don't have to make up crap.

And what's amazing about that quote is that this is the news organization that just a year ago paid $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit. So they didn't have to pay $1.6 billion when they lost that lawsuit for peddling election lies after the 2020 election. And it's just amazing that you could just

say that with a straight face to your audience at this point that, no, we don't do this here. The other places do when that's actually happened to you. In that vein, I'm really curious now that, you know, we're a couple of years out of 2020. We're months away from the next election. Do you think Fox is still all in on the election lie? Have they tamped down?

their sort of rhetoric regarding 2020, or are we looking at potentially a repeat? Oh, we're going to see a repeat. We're just going to see a repeat. I mean, they're already kind of, uh,

So you feel there, you know, and Gutfeld's a prime example of somebody that's doing that. He's basically saying that the only way that Biden can win is if they do shenanigans during this election. They're setting the stage for this. You know, the Jesse Waters, the Greg Gutfeld, the Sean Hannity's, the Laura Ingram's. They're getting their audience prepped for, you know, either Trump wins and it's going to be totally fair.

or Biden wins, and it's a complete fraud. And so it is concerning, as it could be that what we saw on January 6th is just going to be, maybe it's just going to be a blip compared to what we could potentially see

you know, January 6th, 2025, if Trump doesn't win. Just on a final question of how we can kind of interpret the way that Fox are covering this election. Is there a way if you kind of really zoom out of the whole thing and look at it that maybe Fox

they're slightly overcompensating because it seems like they're worried. They don't think Trump is going to win. And they're trying to say that's because of illegitimate means. But do you think actually there's maybe a sense that Fox, unfortunately, they've tied their entire brand to a loser? I mean, are they worried? Yeah. But I think that they're also worried

Oddly enough, they're overly confident that he's going to win. And why shouldn't they? The polls are tight. It's at least a coin flip if Trump is not even a slight favorite. And they're acting as his communications arm. But yeah, are they tied inextricably to Trump? Yeah, as always.

Trump is tied into this entire right-wing media apparatus. They all have this incestuous relationship with each other. They can't survive without each other. And Fox already knew this because they were trying to separate themselves from Trump after 2021. Rupert Murdoch made a concerted effort to try to put somebody else into that slot. And every single one that they tried crashed and burned, whether it was Ron DeSantis, Vivek,

Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott for a little bit. None of them, you know, they were hoping Glenn Youngkin could maybe jump into this race. None of them could work. And they are now tied in with them. They just have to stick with it. But I mean, the thing is, the rest of the media kind of feels like it needs Trump, too. You know, they're still trying to get that

little traffic juice from between, you know, 2016 to 2020. All these media outlets see their traffic down and there's myriad reasons, but they're like, oh, we need Trump back in the White House. We want to get that time back too. But yeah, Fox needs Trump. Trump needs Fox. If Trump doesn't get in in 2025, they'll just probably say that it was stolen and then try to pretend like he's the actual president. Who knows? Yeah.

Justin, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. Now we're going to round up a few other stories that you might have missed over the last week. So first up, a reasonably alarming recording of former Trump advisor Roger Stone. Yeah, remember that guy speaking at Mar-a-Lago during a Catholic's prayer for Trump event on March 19th.

has emerged, hasn't it, Nicky, through Rolling Stone magazine, so hat tip to you guys. He was recorded talking about the election outcome, which he clearly thinks will be incorrect if Biden wins, but I imagine he'll think will be completely correct if Trump wins. But he said, at least this time when they do it, you have a lawyer and a judge, his home phone number standing by so you can stop it. We made no preparations last time, none. There are technical legal steps that we have to take to try and have a more honest election. We're not there yet, but there's things that can be done.

We know Trump wouldn't take losing again well, but does this feel quite a stark bit of evidence that clearly he wants to build some sort of apparatus to ensure that he doesn't take it well in a, he does that in a sort of methodical way rather than just throw his toys out of the pram. He wants to be like, no, I'm prepared. And bringing someone like Roger Stone back into the fold as well feels like quite a stark moment.

Well, I don't think Roger Stone ever particularly left the fold. He was definitely much more involved in 2016 and 2020. I think following his conviction and pardoning, he's been a little bit on the fringe, but he's definitely still involved. I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. Roger sort of said the quiet part out loud, which is that in 2020...

The strategy the Trump campaign took was basically to like lob lawsuits wherever they could. I think it was upwards of 60 lawsuits that they filed in various different states, different challenges. Obviously, there was the fake electors plot that we've talked about before. And obviously, obviously, the January 6th riot in which kind of everything came to a head. It was incredibly disorganized. We see now in retrospect that.

That while there was sort of this like central coalition of Trump allies, people in his orbit who were sort of helping direct all the planning, it wasn't a truly like nationwide coordinated effort. There was a lot of splintering. It went different ways in different states. They were kind of scrambling last minute to find like attorneys generals or people who would support them.

I think all but like one of those 60 lawsuits got thrown out and then the one that didn't didn't amount to anything in the end. So this time around, Trump's allies have learned from their mistakes. They are coming into this aware of what didn't work and with four years to prepare other avenues from which to attack this issue. And.

It's so long, I couldn't cover everything in it. But my colleagues at Rolling Stone, Adam Ralsey, and Aswensup Singh just published a deep dive exclusive. It's actually in this month's magazine issue about how the Trump campaign and Trump's allies are using the state of Georgia, which was...

A battleground state last year, it's the state where Trump is under RICO indictment for a conspiracy to overturn the results of the election in that state. They are using that state as a sandbox to test out different avenues through which Trump

they could approach challenges to the 2024 election. And the reason they're doing it in Georgia is because Georgia currently has a Republican governor and both of the houses of the legislature are Republican controlled. So there are kind of no barriers for them right now in this state to test out different laws that they could pass, different legal strategies, changes to the states like, what's it called? Fuck, I'm forgetting the name. Um...

One second. Maybe you need a cognitive test. Legal mabobbies. I do. Legal mabobbies. Oh, that changes they could make to the office of like the secretary of state because the secretaries of states in the U.S. oversee the elections. Each state runs its own election. So what they're basically doing is instead of reacting to the election results, they're

After the fact, the way they did in 2020, they are preemptively laying the groundwork to a help them get a leg up in battleground states in terms of like, you know, filing lawsuits to restrict access to voting by mail, early voting, things like that, because.

Democrats tend to vote more if you have the option of like vote by mail, early voting, things like that, but also ensuring that they have avenues and people ready to challenge election results in states if they don't go their way. And I think that's why the comment from Stone about like having the like personal phone number of a judge ready to roll is

That's a terrifying notion that you have public officers who are, you know, sworn to view the law impartially, potentially collaborating with the Trump campaign or making like arrangements with the Trump campaign to act on their behalf or help them expedite lawsuits should they choose to in November. And that's...

It's all incredibly concerning. There just simply hasn't been enough done to mitigate the massive undertaking that Republicans are working on right now to mess with election results in November. And we're just kind of setting ourselves up for a repeat of 2020.

On other Trump allies, he is apparently pretty darn mad at some GOP lawmakers that aren't taking more action after his conviction, isn't he? So we've seen Roger Stone, for example, maybe feeling like he's more prominent. Is this going to make things even worse for Trump because he's just going to dive right down to the bottle of that barrel of...

of sycophants and crazies and weirdos who just say, this guy's the best and we're going to do everything for him. And could this actually see him become even more extreme? Because the people around him are just going to be the people who love him the very, very most. So one, there's no checks and balances on him. And two, those people are probably pretty extreme figures.

I think we're already there in the aftermath of 2020. Even in this election cycle, there's been like a pretty massive purge of anyone who at any point sort of like hesitated or, you know, was like, oh, we should pump the brakes on the Trump train. In terms of him reaching out to GOP lawmakers or being upset that GOP lawmakers aren't like directly intervening to overturn his conviction, I

Trump has made it abundantly clear that he wants to take revenge on his political opponents. He's made it a central point of his pitch to voters that if I become president, I will prosecute Alvin Bragg. I will prosecute all these other prosecutors who leveled charges against me. I will investigate the Bidens like, oh, they charged me with crimes. I will charge Biden with crimes. I will have my Justice Department do X, Y, Z.

Basically, after this conviction, he's saying he wants to move that timeline up. He doesn't want to wait until he's in office. He wants Republicans in Congress to start those investigations now, to start punishing people like Alvin Bragg. Now, again, I'm going to keep quoting my colleagues because they're doing fantastic work, but I believe it was...

Let me get that right. That's the second time you've forgotten a name now. No, because I know Andrew wrote the article. I know. Nikki needs a cognitive exam. It's the brain worms. Big time. Big time. Nikki Trump-era. I know. I'm in my Trump era. Don't cry. Here we go. No, because it was Andrew, and then I can't remember if it was Swinner. Aha! Here we go.

Yeah, it was Swin. Okay, so my colleague, Asa Winswim-Seng, who does fantastic reporting on Trump World and Andrew Perez, sources told them that Trump has personally pushed

allied MAGA lawmakers to hold up Biden's judicial nominees, to be more aggressive in launching investigations against prosecutors that have investigated him or charged him with crimes. He also wants them to do something similar to what they're doing with sort of like the Biden-Ukraine impeachment situation, where he wants them to

to launch investigations and establish conspiratorial connections between Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland and other non-federal prosecutors who've gone after Trump. So basically, he wants to weaponize Congress to act on his behalf, as we talked about a week or two ago. He's also pushed Mike Johnson and other Republicans to press the Supreme Court to intervene and overturn the conviction. So he's just kind of pushing on every lever of influence he has right now

And then, you know, he'll do what he does when he doesn't get his way. If someone resists or says like, oh, we can't do that. That's not constitutional. He can turn around and then be like, you don't support me. I'm going to back your election challenger next time you're up for office. Speaking of which, Bob Good, Bob Bad, his election right now is too close to call. We're waiting for results. Oh, Bob Bad. Mm hmm.

Chris, a very quick final one on this wrap-up section then. So, true crime podcasts do really well and we're not in that market, unfortunately. But you have, for me, a tale of revenge or slightly failed revenge from South Carolina. Oh, very much failed revenge. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's been going on? No, it's Kevin McCarthy. He's fucked it, isn't he? Well, he basically... He was backing...

Nancy Mace's enemy. What's the word? Rival. Political rival, I guess, in the primaries. Opponent? Opponent, that's the word, yeah. We're all forgetting things. Maybe you should take a cognitive exam, Chris. It's the Trump effect, isn't it? I'm going to say I haven't forgotten anything, guys. I am sharp. I'm top. I'm top level here. Yeah, you love vampires. Shut up. You don't compare because you don't compete. Anyway...

So, yeah, Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, she was the target for McCarthy because she had essentially ousted him or voted to oust him from his speakership in October last year. And McCarthy just can't get over that. He can't get over it. So, as I say, he backed Mace's rival, Catherine Templeton. And not only did he back Catherine,

Catherine Templeton. But he also, he and political action committees linked to him, chucked about $2 million into her campaign and she lost quite convincingly. So not good really for McCarthy. But it is good for Trump because he backed Mace.

So he's come out quite well there. And you mentioned a minute ago, Nicky, about Bob Good slash Bob Bad, which is what we're going to call him from now on. He's trailing right now. It's 312 votes exactly as we record at the moment. But this is a fairly big deal because...

I think you mentioned it before, Nikki, just because John Maguire has got the endorsement from Trump doesn't necessarily mean he's going to win this primary. Bob Good is still in with a chance, and we probably will know the result when this comes out. But no matter what, the fact that this is so close...

Doesn't really look great for Trump, really. Well, yeah, there's this expectation that a Trump endorsement equals a blowout win. And we've seen through like 2020, 2022 in the midterms, it's not necessarily true. It's a myth. Quick moment for Donald Trump, though. Yeah, bless him. Hope you're all right. No, I don't. I'm fine.

We're coming to the end of the show, so we're going to take a look inside. We've spoken a lot about brains today, but the brains of the American public with a few bits of polling with my good friend Chris here. So we're not friends, Chris. We're just colleagues.

What is new with Fox News's presidential polling? We spoke a lot about Fox News with Justin, didn't we? But maybe their propaganda blast isn't quite working as well as they might hope. No, not really. The latest figures from Fox News's presidential polling is that Biden is in the lead 50% to 48%. And that's the first time that he's actually taken the lead.

in this polling since October last year. That's quite a long time for Trump to be fully in the lead. He's also in the lead in the extended Fox News polling as well, where five presidential candidates are listed. So he's leading throughout the board, really. And in that same polling, it indicates that this election is

It's mostly being judged on issues rather than the characters running, which I thought was really interesting. That's by a margin of 59% to 29%. And Democrats are more likely to say that this is about character than Republican voters, which kind of makes sense when you consider that Trump is a bad man.

Come on, man. That was shocking. Leave Trump alone. The Pew Research Center also released a bit of data, didn't he? And this was all about how people are engaging with different types of media, social media, the TikToks and that sort of thing. What does it say? Well...

You're right, Jov. You've done your research, haven't you? It's not like you. My brain's sharp. Yep, is it? I'm not sure about that. Anyway, they surveyed over 10,000 adults in March and they found that 59% use Twitter most to keep up with politics. Can you guess what's second?

TikTok. Nikki? Instagram. It's TikTok. Yes. It's TikTok coming in second, and then it's Instagram and Facebook. Okay. Which is actually really interesting when you consider that the US is basically forcing ByteDance to sell... ByteDance obviously being the parent company of TikTok, forcing it to sell the app because it doesn't trust them, basically. But they're...

There's 150 million Americans that use TikTok, and that's a massive reach. So it just doesn't seem to make sense as to why they would ban it, especially when you look at this polling, that it's the second most used social media platform to keep up with politics. It's also really interesting considering how intense TikTok's content moderation policies are. Like,

I, at a certain point, and I might try again, but was covering, was like rounding up some of the stories I would write on TikTok. And for example, when I tried to make a TikTok about Kanye West, like going on like that string of like virulently anti-Semitic rants, TikTok kept taking down the videos because it violates hate speech policies. And a lot of my journalistic friends are on TikTok, right?

And their constant complaint is that when they are trying to cover misinformation or extremism or topics of that nature that are publicly relevant and important, TikTok strikes down the content. So I'm also very curious.

What exactly qualifies? Because I very intentionally keep my TikTok feed like pretty politics free because that's my escape. I get an hour before bed and all I want to see are silly cats. But it'd be very interesting to me to see more research about like how content moderation on the app itself is affecting the political content that's being delivered to viewers. Well, yeah.

You're curious and listeners, if you're curious as well, you should go and listen to my bunker episode with Will Guyot, where we talk about all of that with about US politics and TikTok and what's going on there. Cool. Well, we'll put a link to that in the show notes. And that brings us to the end of American Friction, now sponsored by TikTok. So go again.

Can we legally say that? Andrew! We're not sponsored by TikTok. We're not sponsored by anyone. Come give us some money if you like someone else that isn't TikTok. Anyway, that brings us to the end of this episode of American Friction. Nikki, thank you so much as always. Always a pleasure, boys. Christopher, thank you. You're welcome. And thanks to you, Jacob Jackson.

And an even bigger thanks to you listeners. If you want more from us, we're out with a new episode every Friday, early afternoon if you're in the UK, and in the morning if you're stateside. You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Our name on each platform is at American Frick. And...

If you've got something you'd like us to answer on the podcast, and we'll try our very best to do so if you email AmericanFriction at podmasters.co.uk. Yeah, we'll try our best to answer the question. Whether we do well or not depends on the quality of these guys' brains that week. So anyway, thank you very much. You've been listening to American Friction. See you next week. American Friction was written and presented by Chris Jones, Jacob Jarvis, and Nicky McCann-Ramirez.

Audio production was by me, Simon Williams. The group editor was Andrew Harrison and the executive producer was Martin Boitosch. Artwork was by James Parrott and music was by Orange Factory Music. American Friction is a Podmasters production.