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Speaker 1: Deeve Schmidt.

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Speaker 2: Now he is the founder of Warning Substack newsletter. Steve,

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Speaker 2: I'll let you take it from there. That's a lot

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Speaker 2: to fact check in a short period of time.

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Speaker 1: Well, it sure is.

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Speaker 3: It is a fire pose of deceptive, nonsense and incoherence.

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Speaker 3: That ended before you cut away with smears about Nicky Haley,

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Speaker 3: suggesting that she will be investigated over who knows what.

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Speaker 1: But this is the flavor and the character of.

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Speaker 3: Donald Trump's campaign, and tonight Donald Trump is the facto

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Speaker 3: nominee of the party.

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Speaker 1: The simple fact of the matter.

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Speaker 3: Is that Nicky Haley was beaten decisively tonight, unfortunately for her.

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Speaker 3: On the schedule, South Carolina is next her home state

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Speaker 3: where she served as governor for eight years. Standing behind

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Speaker 3: Trump is the editor from South Carolina defeated presidential candidate

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Speaker 3: Tim Scott, who is running against his home state governor.

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Speaker 1: And so.

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Speaker 3: You have a situation where she's going to go into

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Speaker 3: the wall with no place to.

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Speaker 1: Go after South Carolina. So the race is over.

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Speaker 3: And on the Democratic side, Joe Biden is a de

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Speaker 3: facto nominee tonight as well, And so the race is

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Speaker 3: set and the dynamic is clear. You have a presidential

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Speaker 3: contest that eighty percent of the country doesn't want yet

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Speaker 3: here it is.

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Speaker 4: See, we were talking earlier with our political correspondent Joe

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Speaker 4: Saint George, who was saying, you know, if Trump wins

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Speaker 4: tonight as he's expected to, which he did, then he's

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Speaker 4: going to have to change his tone and create some

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Speaker 4: unity and bring back some of those Republicans in that

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Speaker 4: he has lost. We just heard him repeat the big

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Speaker 4: lie multiple times, and we heard his tone very much

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Speaker 4: changed from what we heard in iowatation when you were

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Speaker 4: talking about how he has moments where he's sound you know,

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Speaker 4: he has a magnanimous tone. So what are we looking

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Speaker 4: at going forward? Do you think that we'll see him

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Speaker 4: change again and try to bring in some of those

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Speaker 4: Republicans or is this is this what we're going to

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Speaker 4: hear from here on out.

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Speaker 3: I'll think it's a mistake to talk about speculate about

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Speaker 3: Donald Trump changing his tone, or to analyze any given

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Speaker 3: speech and say, well, there's three magnanimous sentences and there's

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Speaker 3: meaning there.

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Speaker 1: The meaning that.

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Speaker 5: That that matters, that that animates the campaign is what

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Speaker 5: he's put at the center of it, and what's at

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Speaker 5: the center of his campaign, and it and it is

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Speaker 5: historically unique is that it's driven by malice.

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Speaker 3: It's driven against enemies of America. You hear a person

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Speaker 3: who is a former president who wishes to be president

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Speaker 3: again to do with Grover Cleveland is the only person

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Speaker 3: who's accomplished non successive terms land basing anybody that stands

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Speaker 3: in his way in a term that would have been

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Speaker 3: found to be an American by every single one of

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Speaker 3: his predecessors, regardless of party. So malice, nastiness promises of

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Speaker 3: retribution and punishment.

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Speaker 1: And this is the.

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Speaker 3: Message that Republican voters, which is right now a small

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Speaker 3: faction of the country clearly or demonstrating that they want

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Speaker 3: this is the candidate that they want to be the

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Speaker 3: nominee to go up against what they have decided is

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Speaker 3: the great threat, which is the deep State and one

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Speaker 3: hundred other conspiracies which have been driven and have accumulated

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Speaker 3: in the national consciousness over the last eight years.

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Speaker 2: Hey, Steve, I'm looking at the number on the right

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Speaker 2: hand side of the screen, the forty four percent of

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Speaker 2: the vote that Nikki Haley did get. And we're talking

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Speaker 2: realistically about an incumbent president and the comparison that I

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Speaker 2: think about is Barack Obama very popular among Democrats. Had

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Speaker 2: he been running on the ballot, for instance, for re

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Speaker 2: election in New Hampshire, we would have expected his numbers

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Speaker 2: to be somewhere in the eighties, upper eighties and ninety percent.

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Speaker 2: So should the former president Donald Trump in this case

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Speaker 2: actually running as an incumbent, feel that he could celebrate

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Speaker 2: those numbers or should he be worried about the fact

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Speaker 2: that forty four percent of his own party didn't vote

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Speaker 2: for him.

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Speaker 3: Well, they understand that those people mostly like Nikki Haley,

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Speaker 3: like Ron DeSantis, like Tim Scott, like everybody really except

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Speaker 3: Chris Christy, is going to get in line strategically in

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Speaker 3: this race. There's a simple thing to look at. Whomever

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Speaker 3: this race is about is the person who's going to lose.

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Speaker 1: And Donald Trump has thus far.

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Speaker 3: Made the race about Joe Biden, and he's prosecuted a

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Speaker 3: case against Joe Biden that has rallied the party. And

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Speaker 3: so the race, if Donald Trump can help it, is

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Speaker 3: going to be about Joe Biden. What the Biden campaign

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Speaker 3: has to do is to make it against Trump.

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Speaker 1: And so we're at a moment where there's a.

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Speaker 3: Real fracturing in the political coalition you see vast underperformances

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Speaker 3: and polling numbers with African American voters, with Hispanic voters,

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Speaker 3: with white working class voters for the Democratic Party, which

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Speaker 3: are all part of a constituency that they need to win.

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Speaker 1: At the same time, there's.

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Speaker 3: A real loss inside the Republican Party of voters that

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Speaker 3: just simply cannot stomach Trump.

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Speaker 1: But we should not.

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Speaker 3: Be mistaken to believe that when the choice is framed

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Speaker 3: in November as it's coming that they won't vote for

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Speaker 3: the Republican candidate. There's going to be a lot of

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Speaker 3: unhappy people who don't like the choice participating in the election.

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Speaker 3: I mean, the thing that really the majority political opinion

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Speaker 3: right now in the country is you got eighty percent

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Speaker 3: of people who disagree on all sorts of stuff agree

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Speaker 3: they don't like the choice they're going to get, So

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Speaker 3: they're going to be unhappy voters.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I know you talked about that in your podcast

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Speaker 4: the other night, The Conversation YEW with Adam Pinsinger Steve

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Speaker 4: Schmidt for us tonight. We're of course going to check

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Speaker 4: back in with you a little bit later. We'll be

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Speaker 4: right back too in New Hampshire. All right, Thanks, Rafa

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Speaker 4: we're joined once again by Steve Schmidt, who is the

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Speaker 4: writer and host of the Warning Subsect newsletter podcasts. And

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Speaker 4: so Steve, we should mention that initially the very beginning

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Speaker 4: you did work with the Dean Phillips campaign. I'm wondering

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Speaker 4: what your takeaway is tonight on his performance and his

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Speaker 4: performance and the Nikki Haley performance mean for the two

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Speaker 4: presumptive nominees going forward.

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Speaker 3: Well, I was thinking when I was listening to the

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Speaker 3: speeches that I'm old enough to remember that you had

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Speaker 3: to win the New Hampshire.

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Speaker 1: Primary to give a victory speech.

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Speaker 3: I think both candidates didn't need to test in New Hampshire.

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Speaker 3: Dean Phillips didn't come anywhere close to the forty two

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Speaker 3: percent line that Jean McCarthy hit in nineteen sixty eight

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Speaker 3: that effectively forced Lyndon Johnson from the race, didn't hit

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Speaker 3: the numbers that Pap you can and Dad just didn't

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Speaker 3: really register, didn't do the things that are necessary to

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Speaker 3: win a race in New Hampshire. And Nikki Haley has

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Speaker 3: not taken the gloves off at all with Donald Trump,

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Speaker 3: and that showed and she was decisively beaten there as well.

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Speaker 3: And effectively the race is now set by any normal standard,

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Speaker 3: both men President Biden, former President Trump, or now the

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Speaker 3: de facto nominees of their party.

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Speaker 2: Steve, I'm curious, as you know, politics boils down to

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Speaker 2: sometimes who would you like to have a beer with?

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Speaker 2: And after you listen to the speech of the former

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Speaker 2: president and you think about the current president, which one

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Speaker 2: would do you think the voters would want to sit

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Speaker 2: down and have a beer with or coke if they're

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Speaker 2: a non alcoholic.

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Speaker 3: Well, it depends who you ask that question. There's an

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Speaker 3: awful lot of people that would like to sit down

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Speaker 3: with Donald Trump. He has built a community of staggering

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Speaker 3: size and dimensions. You have this phenomenon that's playing out.

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Speaker 3: You saw it with Marjorie Taylor Green's comments, which are

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Speaker 3: fundamentally un American because dissent is fundamentally American, and she's

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Speaker 3: using a word eradicate from the party.

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Speaker 1: What does that mean and where does that stop?

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Speaker 3: There's a reality that when political movements become extreme like this,

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Speaker 3: they get smaller, and as they do, they get hotter

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Speaker 3: and denser and more extreme.

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Speaker 1: And smaller as they purify.

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Speaker 3: But the proposition that Donald Trump is running on isn't

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Speaker 3: that we're going to build a majority coalition. It's that

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Speaker 3: we have a hardened minority faction plus apathy is an

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Speaker 3: enough to win a small victory on a choice that

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Speaker 3: eighty percent of the country says they don't want. So

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Speaker 3: this dynamic in this election is going to be very,

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Speaker 3: very interesting because the number one unifying issue in the race,

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Speaker 3: the American people don't want the choice that tonight they got.

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Speaker 4: So stee We're hearing a few narratives here. We're hearing

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Speaker 4: Nikki Hayley say that she's the only one who can

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Speaker 4: beat Joe Biden, that Donald Trump can't do what he's

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Speaker 4: lost the Senate, at the House and the White House.

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Speaker 4: We're hearing Dean Phillips go out and say he's the

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Speaker 4: only one who can beat Donald Trump, and he challenges

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Speaker 4: anybody to show him the data that shows otherwise. And

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Speaker 4: we have you seeing that the person who's going to

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Speaker 4: lose is the person who the attention is on. So

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Speaker 4: with all of that, I know a lot of Democrats

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Speaker 4: are very leary after twenty sixteen to say the phrase

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Speaker 4: is bed wedding, To say, oh no, no, Joe Biden's

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Speaker 4: got this locked down, so help us kind of unpack

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Speaker 4: all of that and untangle all of that moving forward.

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Speaker 4: Is there a path here for Donald Trump if the

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Speaker 4: attention stays on him.

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Speaker 3: Well, look in twenty sixteen, Donald Trump was losing that

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Speaker 3: election all the way through to the very end when

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Speaker 3: James Comy made the election about Hillary Clinton in the

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Speaker 3: closing hours of the election. Thus far, this election cycle

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Speaker 3: has fundamentally been commanded by Donald Trump. He fills this

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Speaker 3: tremendous communications vacuum, or he generates a tremendous tsunami of

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Speaker 3: coverage that has.

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Speaker 1: Washed over the Biden White House.

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Speaker 3: It has it has put the president into a position

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Speaker 3: where he's losing the electoral college state. It's where the

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Speaker 3: presidency will be decided. And if you had said on

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Speaker 3: January seventh of twenty twenty one that the extremist movement

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Speaker 3: would be hotter, more extreme than it has ever been

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Speaker 3: and Donald Trump would have the nomination wrapped up by

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Speaker 3: the New Hampshire primary, no one would have bought it.

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Speaker 3: But that's where we are today, and the message the

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Speaker 3: hostility is quite real, and you have a big population

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Speaker 3: in the country that wants it, and you're hearing from

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Speaker 3: them in a process that gets broader as it moves

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Speaker 3: on as more people participate, right, the question of what

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Speaker 3: we want becomes more manifestly clear, and the choice is

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Speaker 3: going to be very plea.

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Speaker 4: The nickname Teflon Trump continues to stick.

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Speaker 2: But we have heard from the surrogates for the White

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Speaker 2: House EIE that we have not heard from Barack Obama,

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Speaker 2: for instance, Michelle Obama. We have not heard from Gavin

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Speaker 2: Newsom or the others, you know, Gressia Whitmer in Michigan.

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Speaker 1: So we shall see, as they say.

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Speaker 2: Steve Schmidt is the founder of the Warning substack newsletter.

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Speaker 1: Steve's always thanks for being with us tonight.

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Speaker 2: We'll see you soon.

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Speaker 1: My pleasure,