Trump Cabinet meetings are ‘like North Korea’ — Will the DNC get it’s s*** together for midterms?

[0:00] Cabinet meetings in the United States are now, I think you described it earlier to me today, they're like North Korea. [0:08] Yes, yes, yes. [0:11] It's not like what, you remember Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote a book about Lincoln's cabinet. [0:15] It was called Team of Rivals. [0:18] Like Lincoln actually put together people who were his rivals and rivals with each other, and they would fight and disagree about things like war. [0:25] That's not quite where we are today. [0:26] This is team of sycophants, and it is just magnificent. [0:33] I guess Donald Trump thinks, again, one of the things that Trump did really well was he got people interested in politics. [0:42] He got these low-frequency voters who watched Joe Rogan and may have never voted in a presidential election ever and probably never will. [0:51] Those people came out for him. [0:52] They saw him dressed up in a McDonald's uniform handing out in the drive-thru, and they thought that somehow this was going to translate into some kind of legislative win. [1:05] All right, sort of baffling. [1:06] And so what Donald Trump does is he has these cabinet meetings, and they are opportunities for people like Marco Rubio to describe how great your leader is. [1:17] And it's funny. [1:19] I actually, when they started, I thought they were smart. [1:22] Like, I thought he's getting people invested in the process, and his people like this, and maybe this works. [1:28] But as they've gone on, I actually think with his approval ratings and what we're seeing with gas prices and food prices and just consumer confidence writ large, that these kind of North Korea stuff, like, actually hurts him. [1:44] And the statements from the White House where they say things like, the best president ever, laser-focused on affordability, and then you have a split screen of him, you know, spending 15 minutes talking about the reflecting pool. [1:58] I think this is ultimately going to play badly. [2:01] He used to, you know, he used to be on TV and radio a lot, right, before he was president. [2:09] And it was not uninteresting, I will say. [2:13] I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't like Donald Trump and can't imagine listening back to one of his Howard Stern conversations. [2:18] I remember once I was on CNN, and I was talking to a reporter about him, and he just called in and just talked for half an hour. [2:25] He could talk, and he was interesting, and it wasn't this weird weave, nonsensical stuff. [2:31] Some of his opinions were outlandish, but they weren't actually mostly outlandish. [2:35] And at least he could finish, start a conversation, and follow a thread. [2:40] Then he started telling us a couple of years ago that it was the weave, right, that he would start, and he'd change topics, and how neat and fascinating that was. [2:49] It doesn't, something else seems to be happening now, Molly. [2:52] It doesn't feel like the weave. [2:54] It doesn't feel like, wow, that's tricky and neat what he's doing. [2:58] It sounds like there's something wrong with the guy. [3:01] Yeah. [3:01] I mean, look, this is something that I think about a lot, which is, like, charismatic candidates win, and Donald Trump had a kind of charisma. [3:10] It wasn't what we like, particularly, and it wasn't anti— [3:13] But it is a thing. [3:14] It's real. [3:15] Right? [3:15] But it was vaguely intellectual, but he could talk to people, and he could make them like him. [3:20] Vaguely intellectual. [3:22] Interesting. [3:22] Yes, but, you know, he could talk to people, and he could make them like him, and you even see it sometimes during these cabinet meetings. [3:29] Yes. [3:29] You know, he'll—but what has happened now, and I think this is really important to talk about because he is about to turn 80, and he will celebrate his 80th birthday with a UFC fight on the East Lawn, of which they are building a huge—there we go—whatever that is, an amphitheater for this fight, [3:51] which will, again, I think, getting into the culture of trying to run in the midterms the way he ran in 2024. [4:00] You know, you've got Dana White there. [4:02] You've got Ari Emanuel. [4:04] You've got people who he thinks of as cultural people. [4:08] Right. [4:08] And so that he's hoping he'll get some off-the-politics-page coverage, I think. [4:13] He'll get into those—you know, the TMZ of it, and that that'll help him in the midterms. [4:18] I have to wonder, though, and I'd love you to talk about this because I'm, like, very—I haven't seen any reporting on this, but I'm very curious your take on this. [4:27] What do you think of, like, TMZ and the Daily Mail? [4:31] Because they have sort of, like, come into the breach a little bit. [4:35] Yep. [4:36] And they run—you know, they pay for stories in a way that most news outlets do not. [4:41] Right. [4:42] And they do a lot of stuff that most places would not be okay with. [4:46] And I'm curious your take on, like, is it useful or bad? [4:50] You know, they're both organizations where often a piece of news that did turn out to be important or real would come from them first because of both really good sourcing and, you're right, payment. [5:04] I mean, it's legendary that TMZ pays, you know, doormen and parking attendants and people like that in Hollywood to tell them when things happen. [5:16] Some of the biggest stories in our time, organizations like that have gotten first. [5:21] But you know what? [5:21] You know what you don't do when you get news from them? [5:23] Historically, as a journalist, report it. [5:25] You take it as a clue that something serious has happened, and then you go and confirm it yourself. [5:33] We have elevated something that is not journalism. [5:37] It's a source, right? [5:39] If somebody on the street yells, that guy just stole my car, that's a source of information. [5:45] You then need to figure out, was that his car? [5:48] Did somebody steal it? [5:48] Are the police involved? [5:49] What's happening? [5:50] Who's this guy? [5:50] Who's the thief? [5:51] Is there a camera? [5:52] Like, there's a million things that journalism involves that TMZ and Daily Mail do not trouble themselves with. [5:58] And by the way, this has manifested into this whole thing with the Department of Defense where you can't be there reporting unless you sign an agreement that you are reporting on what the government says you can report. [6:14] You know, Molly, some of the biggest stories in this country's history have been broken because someone leaked information or someone told a journalist something. [6:21] So the whole thing is breaking. [6:24] It's not just that distasteful organizations or places that don't devote themselves to journalism but pretend that they're journalists are in the mix. [6:32] It's that we're breaking a system that is there to bear witness and hold power to account and occupying ourselves with the nonsense that we have to. [6:44] And I don't know what you do about it, Molly. [6:46] Yeah. [6:47] Do you not talk about it? [6:48] I mean, you know what, I couldn't be less interested in talking about a ballroom or this UFC thing. [6:54] But you do have to tell Americans, this is your money. [6:58] This is your taxpayer money. [6:59] This is your president. [7:00] This is your cabinet. [7:01] These are the people who are supposed to be running your country that happens to be in a war and happens to be facing inflation and an affordability crisis. [7:07] And this is what they are talking and thinking about. [7:10] It's a real question, and I don't know what the answer is. [7:13] And I think, I mean, I also think part of what's happening with TMZ and Daily Mail is that they are seeing a vacuum, right, that there are not as many outlets. [7:23] And so the New York Times is not going to pay for stories, and they're not going to run things until, you know, many iterations later. [7:31] Yes. [7:31] So there's a real opportunity for these outlets. [7:34] I agree. [7:35] Donald Trump also, so he didn't do quite a weave in the cabinet meeting, but he did do this one, he does this one thing now about the Iran war. [7:46] And he combined, somebody asked him a question about the midterm. [7:48] So let's talk, let's listen to what Donald Trump explained about the midterm elections. [7:53] Their whole economic system is broken down. [7:57] They thought they were going to outweigh me, you know. [7:59] We'll outweigh him. [8:00] He's got the midterms. [8:01] I don't care about the midterms. [8:02] Look what happened last night. [8:03] That was the prelude to the midterms. [8:06] People understand it. [8:07] They know that, very simple, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. [8:11] I'm doing that for the world. [8:12] I'm not doing it just for us. [8:14] And we've had great support from other nations, by the way. [8:16] We don't need it at all, but we've had great support from other nations. [8:21] The problem is you always get the support when you don't need it. [8:23] When you need it, you don't get the support. [8:25] So that's the so-called weave, right? [8:28] We were talking about, they thought they were going to outwit me. [8:33] I don't know who they is in this particular instance. [8:37] I outwitted them. [8:41] He's got the midterms. [8:42] Like, I don't know what he was talking about, but he keeps coming back to the, I stopped Iran [8:46] from attacking America with a nuclear weapon. [8:50] I just want to be clear. [8:51] Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon. [8:53] And if you were concerned about Iran having a nuclear weapon, imagine if you had a deal [8:56] with Iran to monitor their nuclear enrichment in which you could control that, like we had [9:03] in 2015 under Barack Obama. [9:06] You could call the Iran nuclear deal. [9:07] How about that, right? [9:08] That he pulled us out of. [9:10] Iran also doesn't have a ballistic missile that could get to the United States. [9:13] So there's two parts of a lie. [9:14] To attack America with a nuclear bomb, you have to have a missile that gets to America, [9:18] and you have to have a nuclear payload. [9:20] And by the way, it's really hard to do. [9:22] North Korea has been trying to do this for a very, very, very long time. [9:25] They keep running these tests, and sometimes the missiles work, and sometimes they don't [9:29] work. [9:29] It's really hard to do. [9:31] But I don't know who this continues to fool, because we're paying more for gas. [9:35] We're paying more for all sorts of things in a war that does not have the support of [9:39] the American people. [9:40] Most wars lose support over time because they're bad, and people die, and things like that. [9:45] This one didn't even start with support. [9:47] They've not really ever given us a really good explanation for it. [9:50] But Donald Trump's going to squeeze this one for as long as he can. [9:55] Yeah. [9:55] And I would add that Donald Trump really ran on two things. [10:00] No more foreign adventuring and making things cheaper. [10:04] And this war- [10:05] That's it. [10:05] Literally. [10:05] Literally. [10:06] And the immigration thing. [10:07] Right. [10:08] But- and this war has actually made gas like a dollar and a half more expensive, a gallon, [10:13] which is humongous, and also is one of the many foreign adventures that Donald Trump has [10:19] gotten himself into and all of us. [10:21] And again, like, we talked about this, this distraction idea that this was a distraction [10:28] from Venezuela, which was a distraction from the Epstein files, which was a distraction. [10:32] And, and I'm not sure how long you can go with this sort of hot potato school of governance. [10:41] Well, I mean, I'm touching wood where I can find it, but there's Cuba, right? [10:47] They've just indicted Raul Castro, who's 96 years old, which I assume is either a prelude [10:52] to pulling a Venezuelan, dropping in and either capturing a 96-year-old man, or, or as a way [10:59] to get Cuba to say, give him up, so Donald Trump can say he's had a diplomatic win. [11:03] We had a question from Steve via email. [11:05] The email, by the way, is belshirule at ms.now. [11:09] Faced with an incredible opportunity in the upcoming midterms, will the DNC finally get [11:14] its SHIT together this year and stop screwing things up? [11:20] I'm going to take a real hard guess and say, I, I, I might grow hair before the DNC gets [11:26] its stuff together. [11:28] People, I mean, a lot of Democrats may win. [11:30] They may win the midterm elections. [11:32] There are a lot of really great Democrats out there running for office. [11:35] I'm not sure any of it is thanks to the DNC or, or, or democratic leadership right now. [11:40] They, they are not high on the list of popularity. [11:42] I think car dealers and people who give you, um, colonoscopies rate higher at the moment. [11:47] And, and I think Ben Wickler probably would have been a much better chair for the DNC. [11:52] And that's pretty clear from any interview with Ken Martin that you've ever seen. [11:57] It's pretty clear that this guy should. [11:59] Weird, right? [11:59] Like you're, you're, why be in politics, but to be a fighter for something, but to believe [12:04] that you can change something, but to believe that, that average is not okay. [12:09] And yet we are, we're in such a moment, Molly, we're in such a moment. [12:13] And it doesn't feel like the institutions are meeting people where they are. [12:18] And the DNC, uh, the large problem with this autopsy, which, so there were weeks and weeks [12:26] and weeks of this autopsy news cycle. [12:28] And the idea was that, uh, there was going to be an autopsy that was going to explain [12:32] why Harris lost and give Democrats an opportunity to learn from their mistakes. [12:37] Something that you and I both as, as people who are interested in the world and I think, [12:44] uh, you know, interested in life want to learn from our mistakes. [12:47] At least I certainly do. [12:49] And so it seemed as if there would be some opportunity to learn from them. [12:54] Instead, what happens is that there's months and months of speculation. [12:58] Why is this not released? [13:00] Then finally, Ken Martin comes forward after it's really dominated the news cycle in a very [13:05] unhelpful way and says, you know, I had this friend do it, which again, you are, you're [13:12] trying to go, you're trying to run against the, uh, cronyism of Trumpism. [13:17] So why have a friend do it? [13:19] Why not have a professor professional who you don't know do it? [13:22] And then the guy doesn't finish it. [13:24] And so we get to see sort of half of an autopsy, which is not, does not really answer any questions, [13:31] but because there's been so much reporting on it and the lack of it, it has dominated the [13:37] news cycle in a negative way. [13:39] Yeah. [13:39] It's, it is weird because as unpopular as Donald Trump is, and as much of an opportunity [13:45] as that presents, um, you know, the opposite isn't true. [13:50] I was talking to Kabir earlier. [13:53] People are not thinking to themselves, boy, I think Democrats in Congress are going to [13:58] save this situation. [13:59] I think they think that they would do better than Republicans in Congress would. [14:03] There's no question about that. [14:04] But what an opportunity. [14:06] Ben Rhodes and I have this conversation a lot that a lot of the things that Donald Trump [14:09] broke and doge broke and, and, you know, Donald Trump pulled us out of, including the World [14:14] Trade Organization or the, the World Health Organization and the criticism of the UN. [14:18] A lot of these things actually could have used overhauls, improvements, redos, all that [14:25] kind of stuff. [14:26] And that's a real, real opportunity. [14:28] I wonder how you, how you deal with this in an election. [14:31] Do Democrats sit there and say, we're going to fix all these things? [14:34] Or do they say, we're going to deal with the economy? [14:39] Um, because you could do what the Republicans did, where you run on one or two or three issues [14:44] as Donald Trump did, but they wrote 922 pages worth of policy that Donald Trump denied having [14:51] anything to do with for a long time. [14:53] And now they've implemented 60 plus percent of that policy. [14:58] Right. [14:58] I wonder if that's the idea because people seem to care about their home prices and their, [15:02] their gas prices. [15:03] I don't know. [15:04] Well, maybe that's what the autopsy is. [15:06] Talk about things that people need to talk about, win the election, then fix it. [15:09] But I also think there's an opportunity here. [15:13] And I think we are whistling past something that may be actually happening, which is a [15:18] Democratic Tea Party, which is Democrats who are not waiting for leadership, who are just [15:24] doing their own thing. [15:25] And so that's what we're seeing in some of these Senate races. [15:28] Like Graham Plattner was not the pick of Chuck Schumer. [15:32] Correct. [15:32] Nor is, you know, like Chuck Schumer picked people in many different Senate primaries. [15:40] And some of them are really good, like Sherrod Brown in Ohio. [15:44] Like there's no one else. [15:45] Roy Cooper in North Carolina. [15:47] Those two are the only people who would probably win a Senate seat in those seats. [15:51] Yes. [15:51] But then if you look at Michigan. [15:53] Yes. [15:54] Haley Stevens is not a particularly great candidate. [15:56] And there are two other much more talented. [15:57] Two other super dynamic candidates. [16:00] Right. [16:00] Yeah. [16:00] And Minnesota, you know, he picked a member of Congress over the deputy, sorry, the deputy [16:07] governor or the whatever. [16:09] Yeah. [16:10] Lieutenant governor who seems like a better candidate. [16:12] And so I do wonder and you see there's a statistic that like about 30 percent of Democrats are [16:18] being primaried. [16:19] So there is a question here. [16:21] I mean, I don't think a lot of these primaries are they're necessarily winning. [16:24] In fact, yesterday was the first time an incumbent Democrat lost his seat, which was Al Green. [16:29] But I do think there's a question here. [16:32] There's certainly some leadership is getting some headwinds. [16:35] And by the way, even the Al Green situation is interesting because you could argue that [16:40] you got redistricted out. [16:42] So it was sort of two two incumbents running against each other may have had more. [16:47] They were both progressive. [16:48] They weren't even different ideologically. [16:51] It may have been a ideal. [16:52] It may have been an age thing, right? [16:54] One of the things that we're seeing with Democrats is a lot of enthusiasm comes from very young [16:58] people. [16:59] You and I have talked about this many times on the night of Mamdani's election. [17:04] As the data guy, I was very sad because we called that election, I think, at 901 or something. [17:09] Polls close at nine and we close at 901. [17:12] And then the whole thing became about is he even going to get more than 50 percent of the [17:16] vote? [17:16] What we could have been talking about instead was the exit polls. [17:19] If he hadn't been declared a winner, we would have looked at the exit polls. [17:23] And what most people would have taken away is that an overwhelming number of these young, [17:28] enthusiastic people who voted for Zoran Mamdani are not socialists. [17:32] They don't consider themselves democratic socialists. [17:35] They couldn't care less that he thinks he's a democratic socialist. [17:39] They thought he was talking about the issues that they cared about. [17:43] Because if you're 25 years old in New York City, your existential crisis is not as curtisly [17:49] what would say subway crime, which is the lowest it's been in recorded history in New York. [17:53] It is whether or not you can afford to pay your rent. [17:56] You pay 60 percent of your salary on rent, which is double what financial people think [18:01] you should. [18:02] Zoran Mamdani said, I'm going to fix your rent problem. [18:04] I'm going to fix your bus problem. [18:06] Yeah. [18:06] He's got a lot of ideas. [18:07] He wants to fix the world. [18:08] But he said he's going to fix two problems. [18:10] He was really focused, but he was also just a really charismatic speaker. [18:15] And he did the thing. [18:16] And again, we've seen other democratic politicians get stuck in trying to answer questions, [18:23] in like twisting themselves in pretzels to answer questions. [18:27] And you and I could probably name four democratic politicians who get involved in like shaggy dog [18:33] answering questions where they're like, you know, they get into, they go down a rabbit hole. [18:38] And one of the things that Zoran is really good at is like, you know, they ask him, who [18:44] do you like for 2028? [18:46] And instead of spending 20 minutes either talking like America or, you know, just getting into [18:52] a whole thing about, you know, instead, what he did was he said, you know, I'm laser focused [18:57] on affordability and free books. [18:59] He's the worst guy to have on a podcast. [19:01] That's right. [19:01] Because he gives short, I mean, look, I have interviewed him and he's a very interesting [19:05] guy and he's got a very good sense of humor and he's got a lot to say. [19:08] But you're right. [19:09] He does not, he does not get himself tied up in stuff. [19:13] And that is an issue that Democrats do tend to struggle with.