Speaker 1: This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is
Speaker 1: going to be No Fifth by the people, and they
Speaker 1: know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here.
Speaker 1: And I think it's just a disgrace. And we'll keep fighting.
Speaker 1: We'll fight till the end and we'll win because our
Speaker 1: country's gone to hell.
Speaker 2: And we will fight for our constitution. This is Lord
Speaker 2: from overt.
Speaker 1: This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is
Speaker 1: going to be November fifth by the people, and they
Speaker 1: know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's right about that. The real verdict is on election day.
Speaker 1: And we've talked to a judge, we've talked to a lawyer.
Speaker 1: We haven't talked to somebody whose speciality is politics. So
Speaker 1: that's what we need to get into.
Speaker 2: Who better than David Drucker, senior writer for the Dispatch.
Speaker 2: You know him from his years as a senior correspondent
Speaker 2: for the Washington Examiner as well. David, welcome, how.
Speaker 3: Are you well? Good? Thank you.
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about this for hours and just anecdotally,
Speaker 1: it seems to us text emails going through Twitter, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. I see a lot more energized people
Speaker 1: who are on the fence about Trump, who want to
Speaker 1: vote for Trump, than moving any votes for Biden. How
Speaker 1: do you read the political fallout of what happened yesterday?
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's far too early to read the
Speaker 3: political fallout. I mean, clearly, you know, anger is always
Speaker 3: more energizing in politics, especially when you're the out party
Speaker 3: trying to win something back. But I wouldn't I wouldn't
Speaker 3: make any snap decisions about how this is going to
Speaker 3: impact things. First of all, I don't want to see
Speaker 3: immediate polling. I want to see polling that's in the
Speaker 3: field after the first ten days after the verdict. That's
Speaker 3: number one, Because pulling in the next few days or
Speaker 3: even the next week, I don't think it gives you
Speaker 3: necessarily an accurate read on where people are. Second of all,
Speaker 3: we you know, we've seen over the past ten years
Speaker 3: in politics, particularly the Trump era, where you know, it's
Speaker 3: like today, there's a crisis. Today, there's the biggest thing
Speaker 3: to ever happen in American politics, and that's going to
Speaker 3: change everything forever. And then it doesn't, and things just
Speaker 3: kind of revert to whatever the normal is. We saw
Speaker 3: that with the Access Hollywood tape in the twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: campaign where Trump Trump's numbers take a dive and you know,
Speaker 3: ten days to two weeks later, he's back to parody.
Speaker 3: He ends up winning the election. There are going to
Speaker 3: be a lot of intervening events. There are going to
Speaker 3: be a lot of different ways Americans can process this,
Speaker 3: voters can process this, And so I think that that
Speaker 3: partisans may have their predictions and may feel strongly about them,
Speaker 3: and somebody's going to turn out to be right potentially,
Speaker 3: but we don't actually know with any educated certainty or
Speaker 3: even educated sort of guessing, how this thing is going
Speaker 3: to play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I coined a term earlier in the show, David,
Speaker 2: and you, of your vast experience and savvy you can
Speaker 2: be the judge of whether it's a legit invention. I said,
Speaker 2: will this be an event of enduring significance or is
Speaker 2: it a vacation tennis racket. It seemed like a great
Speaker 2: idea to buy a tennis racket because you played a
Speaker 2: little on vacation, but then you put it back in
Speaker 2: the closet and you forget about it. It's no big deal, really,
Speaker 2: is there an analogous term in political analysis.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I might just steal that and say
Speaker 3: I can't. I kind of liked it. You know, one
Speaker 3: of my colleagues that we were discussing this at a
Speaker 3: Dispatch editorial meeting and we have every Friday, and one
Speaker 3: of my colleagues suggested that this can have all sorts
Speaker 3: of indirect impacts on the campaign. You know. One indirect impact,
Speaker 3: for instance, could be that Donald Trump becomes so consumed
Speaker 3: by being you know, mistreated in this way if he
Speaker 3: sees it that it's all he talks about, right, and
Speaker 3: he forgets to talk about inflation and gas prices and
Speaker 3: in crime and in foreign policy and all the things
Speaker 3: he has going for in the border. And so that's
Speaker 3: that's one impact. The other, you know, on a you know,
Speaker 3: indirect impact could be that the Biden campaign decides they
Speaker 3: need to talk about this at nauseum. I don't think
Speaker 3: that would necessarily be a good look, especially since you know,
Speaker 3: the Republicans are painting this as a sort of party
Speaker 3: wide engineered dragnet to get Trump, and you know, the
Speaker 3: parties these days are so weak that you know, if
Speaker 3: if Joe Biden could control Alvin Bragg. I don't know
Speaker 3: that Alvin Bragg would have ever brought this case. So
Speaker 3: who knows how this is going to play out? I mean,
Speaker 3: I think we do know. In the immediate it's certainly
Speaker 3: helping Donald Trump's fundraising. It's certainly giving voters who say
Speaker 3: they've been on the fence or unenthusiastic about supporting Trump
Speaker 3: a reason to do so. And they're telling us this
Speaker 3: is now why they're doing so. I still wonder if
Speaker 3: these are the same voters that would have found a
Speaker 3: way to come home to the Republican Party by November
Speaker 3: one way or the other. But look, in politics, you
Speaker 3: prefer not to have any guineas, right, So if you're
Speaker 3: the Biden campaign, why have any reason for Donald Trump
Speaker 3: to raise thirty five million dollars overnight or any reason
Speaker 3: for voters claiming to be skeptical of him to decide
Speaker 3: they're no longer skeptical of him by the same token.
Speaker 3: You know, this could impact swing voters or independence in
Speaker 3: a negative way. It could remind suburban women of all
Speaker 3: the reasons why they didn't, you know, like Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: or were glad to be rid of him four years ago,
Speaker 3: even though you know, they've been unhappy with let's say,
Speaker 3: President Biden's leadership on the economy and things like that.
Speaker 1: So do you steal cars while you're talking to us?
Speaker 1: Is that what's going on there?
Speaker 3: Listen? I live in Washington, DC, and I pulled over
Speaker 3: just to talk to you, which means you're gonna get
Speaker 3: all sorts of around here.
Speaker 1: Hey, he's risking a carjacking. We appreciate it. Hey, So,
Speaker 1: speaking of things being a good look or not, what
Speaker 1: did you think of ancient rambling Robert de Niro in
Speaker 1: from of the courthouse the other day? Was that a
Speaker 1: good move by the Biden people?
Speaker 3: You know? So look, the easy answer is, know, why
Speaker 3: would they do that? Joe Biden supposed to be the
Speaker 3: candidate of norms and value, you know, norms and and
Speaker 3: and in doing things the normal way and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: But you know, I sometimes I think we overthink this.
Speaker 3: And I like to remind people that the Democratic Party
Speaker 3: also has a base and they also like candidates who
Speaker 3: are fighters. And they think Donald Trump has been getting
Speaker 3: away with, you know, everything for years, and when is
Speaker 3: somebody going to stand up to him and finally put
Speaker 3: him in his place? So it's paulib it's sending the
Speaker 3: nero there to to yip yapp made a lot of
Speaker 3: Democrats feel like, yeah, good, somebody's sticking it to Trump.
Speaker 3: How come it's only Republicans to get to go before
Speaker 3: the cameras and hogg the spotlight and look again, it's
Speaker 3: one of those things. Are people really going to go
Speaker 3: into the voting booth or voter early and you know,
Speaker 3: beginning in September October and said, well, you know, I
Speaker 3: was going to vote for Biden. He was a normal guy.
Speaker 3: But man, that Robert de Niro, that just that just
Speaker 3: rounded for me. I just I just don't think it matters.
Speaker 2: Well, good to see one of Joe Biden's contemporaries getting
Speaker 2: some attention anyway, Speaking of which David, various wags and
Speaker 2: sources and and thinkers have said the whispers have become
Speaker 2: murmurs or even louder than that about President Biden's mental
Speaker 2: acuity at this point, and is decline, what are you hearing?
Speaker 3: I don't hear that from Democrats. What I hear from
Speaker 3: Democrats is that he obviously presents physically impaired. Right. He
Speaker 3: presents like an old man, the way he walks, the
Speaker 3: way he shuffles around sometimes the way he turns this
Speaker 3: way or that way, and that's why voters think that
Speaker 3: he is too old for this job. And it's a problem.
Speaker 3: I have not talked to any Democrats who have told me,
Speaker 3: oh my god, the guy's lost it. And in fact,
Speaker 3: if you look at how the White House is functioning,
Speaker 3: it occurred. It would not occur to me that he's
Speaker 3: lost it, because this is functioning exactly the way you
Speaker 3: would expect that Joe Biden white House, you know, foreign,
Speaker 3: domestic policy, in politics to function. Joe Biden's always trying
Speaker 3: to please everybody. It's always trying to find the center
Speaker 3: of the Democratic Party, not the center of American politics,
Speaker 3: the center of the Democratic Party. He's always been a
Speaker 3: left of center liberal Democrat, and the further than the
Speaker 3: left the Democratic Party has moved in recent years. For
Speaker 3: a guy that wants to be in the center of
Speaker 3: that would also have moved left. I don't think that's
Speaker 3: an issue.
Speaker 2: I think I just I couldn't. I couldn't disagree more strongly.
Speaker 2: We play a lot of audio on this show. You
Speaker 2: listen to Joe Biden two years ago. He is a
Speaker 2: different human being than Joe Biden twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think he's that different. I think he's older,
Speaker 3: but I don't think he's incoherent. It sounds much different
Speaker 3: than Joe Biden of twenty or forty years ago in
Speaker 3: terms of the substance coming out of his mouth. He
Speaker 3: talks a little bit more like he's an old man.
Speaker 3: But you're asking me like, is he mentally diminished? Has
Speaker 3: he lost his marble?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I think if you look at the breath of his career,
Speaker 3: this is the Joe Biden that I would have In fact,
Speaker 3: I would have expected Joe Biden to be further to
Speaker 3: the left on certain issues than he is. And I
Speaker 3: just he presents like somebody who is a lot older
Speaker 3: than he used to be but still functioning. So, by
Speaker 3: the way, I'm not saying this to say there's no problem,
Speaker 3: this is a huge problem for him. I think it
Speaker 3: gets in the way the way he presents and what
Speaker 3: people think of their ability to believe he can do anything,
Speaker 3: even things they disagree with. And I think that impacts
Speaker 3: the polling. In other words, when Joe Biden says, look
Speaker 3: at my economic plan compared to Trump's, I think a
Speaker 3: lot of voters say, what's the point of looking at
Speaker 3: your economic plan. You can't do anything. You're too old.
Speaker 3: And that's a huge problem for him because if he's
Speaker 3: going to convince people that are persuadable, hey, listen, you
Speaker 3: might like to be better than Trump when you really
Speaker 3: take a look at things. If their whole thing is
Speaker 3: we just don't think you're up to this one way
Speaker 3: or the other, that means he can't even have a
Speaker 3: debate on issues, or a debate on Trump's ethical foibles
Speaker 3: or things like that. It's like he's got to just
Speaker 3: convince people that he can get up in the morning.
Speaker 3: And that's a problem. But when you ask me, like,
Speaker 3: what are the whispers about his mental acuity, I can
Speaker 3: tell you what Democrats tell me is they recognize how
Speaker 3: it looks, but they tell me that they don't see
Speaker 3: anything in his decision making or ability to process information.
Speaker 3: His ability to communicate is a whole different story. But
Speaker 3: processing and deciding, they say, is still there.
Speaker 1: Well, we've got to uh, we got to let you go.
Speaker 1: We're big fans of the Dispatch, man. I take in
Speaker 1: all the podcasts and read it every morning and all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. So glad you're there.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Hey. I remember I don't know if it was the
Speaker 1: day after Trump announced nine years ago, it was certainly,
Speaker 1: And like in the first couple of days we had
Speaker 1: you on and I remember you coming on and the
Speaker 1: first thing you said, we introduced you and you said,
Speaker 1: trump trump trumpety trump trump trumpety trump trump trump. It's
Speaker 1: the only word I've heard in the last couple of days.
Speaker 1: And it's been that way for nine years now. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: Listen. I'm in my early fifties and I'm just hoping
Speaker 3: that before I'm dead, which I hope is not for
Speaker 3: a long time, just to make things interesting, we get
Speaker 3: to a day when that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me soon would that it were.
Speaker 2: David Drucker, senior writer for The Dispatch, Absolutely worth a
Speaker 2: reading to click David. Always a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thanks he got guys, take care yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's uh. He's just nuts to think that Joe
Speaker 1: Biden isn't significantly different than he was a few years ago.
Speaker 2: I involve our institutions, Yeah, I don't. I don't doubt
Speaker 2: anything he said about his processing ability at times, uh,
Speaker 2: and his decision making and where he stands on issues
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. But uh, what I call that?
Speaker 1: Drucker said, Democrats tell him they don't see a difference.
Speaker 1: I don't doubt that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do his best friends say off the record?
Speaker 2: But you know that's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I don't
Speaker 2: The evidence of your eyes slash ears, amigos, amigas,