Newt talks with Jonathan Martin, politics bureau chief and senior political columnist at POLITICO and co-author of "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and The Battle for America's Future.” They discuss the political landscape in the United States leading into the 2024 election. They talk about the impact of the debate on Biden's political standing, with Martin noting that within 20 minutes of the debate, he was receiving messages from Democratic officials discussing Biden's inability to be the nominee. They also discuss the potential for Kamala Harris to be the alternative if Biden were to drop out. The conversation also touches on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity and the new Republican party platform.
On this episode of News World. There is so much going on with the presidential race right now. I'm laughing as with that. I mean, there is so much going on. I wanted to talk with somebody who follows the ups and downs of the race and reports on them for Politico. So I'm really pleased to welcome my guests, Jonathan Martin. He is the Politics bureau chief and senior political columnist to Politico, where he writes a column on the inside conversation and big picture trends shaping politics. Prior to starting his column in twenty twenty two, he was the national political correspondent for The New York Times, serving as the publication's top political report of for early a decade. And I can tell you personally everything I see his stuff, I read it. He is one of the three or four smartest people analyzing American politics. He does so with a sense of really trying to get at the facts and not just being sort of a propagandist. He's also the co author of the New York Times bestseller This Will Not Pass Trump Biden in the Battle from America's Future. Jonathan, Welcome and thank you for joining me on News World.
Thanks for having me backspeaker. You were kind enough to have us on when the book came out in twenty two and sold us a few copies, so I'm grateful for having us down and have me now well.
So I'm always delighted to help budding authors get as many sales as they can get, you know, something.
From selling box. Absolutely.
Yeah, but I have to start Challista and I, as you know, and we were talking, We're in Rome during the debate, so we literally got up at three in the morning because we just had this instinct that this debate would be important. Now, I will tell you in advance. I thought if Trump got by with no more than one or two minor mistakes and Biden had three or four of the kind of gafs we've seen did, that would be a good night for us. It would never have occurred to me to have Biden as collapsing as he was, and to watch it for ninety minutes. I was really glad that we get up and watched it, because I think you had to see it live to really appreciate it. But what was your reaction watching it that night?
It was the same in real time. You're kind of looking around the room to see or other people seeing what you're seeing, and is this going as poorly for the president as it seemed, And obviously it was. It was almost surreal in the sense that he was unable to drive a message or in some answered even complete a thought. So it was obviously a disaster for him politically. I can tell you that within the first twenty minutes I was getting text messages on emails from elected Democratic officials already talking about inability to be the nominee, saying in blunt terms, we have to get him out of the race. So this movement to drop Biden speaker was underway within minutes of that debate taking place.
From your perspective, as you've watched sort of this roller coaster, my sense was that people on the left were so shaken and it was so sort of unimaginable that you don't get in the opening round the kind of response it takes four or five days to really be in to build. And I think one of the differences between the Trump operation, which has been engaged in sort of permanent warfare since June of twenty fifteen, the Trump people would have the following morning already been on offense and trying to figure out what to do and reaching out, and the Biden people were sort of lackadaisical and I think couldn't quite imagine if it had happened. Does that fit we well?
I think the Biden folks thought it was a bad one day store that they could fix the next day if Biden was energetic at his rally in North Carolina. And I think that's where the breakdown occurred, that it wasn't just a one day store, and you couldn't do triage by having a good event the following day. That wasn't sufficient. The damage was more profound, and I think that is the issue for the Biden folks. They didn't take it seriously enough, fast enough, and that's why they're still digging out of this whole.
Ten days later, there's a brief period when there's a serious talk about whether or not to get Biden off the ticket. I don't see unless he goes voluntarily, I don't see any way to do it.
I agree, I agree. I think the only way at this point, Speaker, is if he has some kind of an undiagnosed health issue that we don't know about that emerges, and I think that would give the Congressional Democrats cover to try to force out I think absent that I think he's sticking, and I think he's sticking for one straightforward reason. I wrote about it my column earlier this week. Biden has convinced himself that the rank and file of his party is just fine with him remaining as their nominee, and that the effort to dump him is from the so called elites of the party who never liked him in the first place. He's trying to rerun the twenty twenty Democratic primary effectively at warp speed here in the summer of twenty four by saying, the wise guys, the establishment, the insiders don't like me, never have, don't take me seriously. The people are with me. Now, you and I know. It's more complicated than that. The polling shows that plenty of record file Democrats want to dump him, but that's been his frame to survive. That's been his sort of battle plan, and it's working so far, in part because members of Congress don't have the courage of their convictions to speak out what they actually believe about him, because they don't want to at crosswise with some of their voters.
Their current plan is to actually have a virtual vote because of the Ohio Law, which is sort of a blessing to Biden. The Io Law requires naming the candidates before the Democratic Convention.
And this is actually an important point that you'll appreciate being an historian and a practitioner of politics. The Democrats historically were the insurgent party. They were the disorderly party. They're the top down party now. They are so hierarchical, they are commanded control. They don't like messes, they don't like disorder. They want to be surgical about this. So to your point, there's not going to be a sort of floor fight or some kind of a stampede at the convention. Democrats want to beat Donald Trump first, second, and third. They don't want disorder on their side. And I think that helps Biden, that compulsion toward order to fend off Trump. That's been the order of the day for Democrats for almost a decade now, stave off dissent, don't talk about our private business in public, focus on Trump. And I think that is really aiding Biden at this stage of the game, because he knows the alternative to him is chaos, and his party doesn't want chaos.
If you were a serious Democrat, you were desperate to win, you concluded that Biden couldn't win. I don't see how you get past Kamala.
Well, that's the other issue that a lot of Democrats in twenty twenty three in elected office were uneasy about Biden running as their nominee, but they didn't want to engage the next question, which always was okay, well, if you're not for Biden, are you for the vice president? And of course they didn't want to litigate that issue. And that's why I think there was no real effort to speak out against Biden in twenty twenty three. Right, I'm with you. If it's not Biden, I'm skeptical that Biden will drop out. But for some reason it's not Biden, I'm almost certain it would be Kamala Harris as the alternative. That raises the question of would she be better than a wounded Biden?
This fault she's actually more vulnerable than Biden. She has a that much narrower base of acceptability.
There are Democrats who are working on campaigns who believe the same thing that in some ways Democratic Senate, gubernatorial and House candidates would be better off with a wounded Biden, because the Democratic Party and their keyndidates below the top of the ticket could go straight to the messaging of Tammy Baldwin or whoever else. Bob Casey will be a check on Donald Trump. Right, You've been in enough campaign speaker, including nineteen ninety six, to know when you're losing the top of the ticket. A lot of candidates down ballot changed their message in the fault to say I'll be a check on so and so, and I think that's what you would see with a wounded Biden. It's more complicated with Kamala Harris.
I wrote a book called March the Majority in described the sixteen year project to trying to a majority for the first time in forty years. We found that as long as we had a Republican president, it was really hard. For that reason because people said, wait a second, this could be a big issue this fall. If it becomes clear that Biden both is the nominee and can't win, then creating a sense of balance in the Congress I think becomes a surprisingly real threat to Republicans.
Absolutely. And by the way, you don't have to go back to ninety six. There was a more recent example of this, it wasn't as explicit in terms of being a check on Biden. But twenty twenty was a pretty darn good year for the Republican Party. I mean, obviously Trump lost on the top of the ticket because in three states he had a seventy thousand vote deficit, But you look at people like Susan Collins in twenty twenty, you know she won, she was successful. So there's certainly a scenario where you can see Democratic senators hanging on in twenty four even while by the lose us.
Let me ask one question, which is I think unusually troubling and sensitive, and that is the whole speculation that Biden has Parkinson's disease. It's been reported that a doctor who specializes in Parkinson's visited the White House eight times in eight months. Do you have any sense of this from the people you talk to?
You know, what they have said the White House is that he got looked at by a neurologist as part of his annual physical checkup, and that there's nothing beyond that. But as you know, there's a long history of presidents who had undisclosed health issues for centuries. That's been going on in American politics, right, so we don't know what we don't know there. I will say this from a straight political standpoint, I think that is the only way that Biden could be removed from the ticket. I'm with you. I think Biden is going to be the nominee. But if there is some undisclosed or revealed health issue, I think that would be the way that he has taken off the ticket.
As you talk to people and look at all this stuff, and you've got a remarkable sense of the whole nation, which is why you're one of the best reporters in the business. How much do you think the debate actually hurt Biden and how much it was just a glancing blow rather than a definitive problem.
Well, if you put it in terms of Vegas the odds, he was probably going into the debate, he probably had a forty sixty chance to win the election, and I think that the debate lowered that. Right. He was already the underdog, and I think the debate just made them more of an underdog speaker. I think he still is in the game. I think that American politics in this year is about Donald Trump, Donald Trump and Donald Trump and Donald Trump. It's his to lose, as the saying goes, and he may do just that. I mean, I do think that Trump has been more disciplined this time around, but obviously he's got a track record of saying things that are out landition provocative, and he certainly could give away the election. But I think right now that is the only thing Democrats have going for them is their entire bet is that Trump will blow himself up sometime this fall and the country will default to Biden. That's not great odds if you're a Democrat, but I think that's where this election is now. Democrats depending entirely on Trump creating some kind of a massiveness staff for mistake.
Have you been surprised how disciplined Trump has been for the last ten days.
I have, I have. Besides that one moment where he was, you know, I'm a golf cart and was caught by a phone camera, He's been remarkably disciplined. But if you talk to emmy Republican they will tell you privately, the best chance Trump has to win is the less he says, the less he does. Look if he stayed at more a log playing eighteen holes every day and didn't speak between now an election day, I think he'd win foreigner electoral votes.
Yeah. I mean, it is funny that even with the debate, there seems to be almost a ceiling that Trump has not penetrated.
Yeah, we agree on that. Look, Trump is such a defined political product in America. There's so few voters that are uncertain where they stand on Trump. A friend of my liking did almost to the Civil War and have the Civil War defined American politics afterward, everything was shaped by which side where you are the North of the South. And I think that that's Trump in this era. People know where they are on Trump, and I think that helps him because his floor is so damn solid, But it hurts him because he does have a ceiling, and you know, he's never going to be a majoritarian figure of this country. He can win, but he's never going to be a fifty three percent candidate. Never.
It'll be a sin to watch because I think there's a very different question than the one people currently focusing on. I mean, currently people are really saying can Biden win? I think the deeper question is do you really believe he could be president for the next four years?
And I think that gets to the heart of the most profound problem Democrats have on their hands for the next four months is how do they look in the camera governor or senator, congressman and say that Joe Biden can serve for four more years. I think it's a really difficult case to make to the voter that this person can serve in this capacity for four more years. I think it's one thing to say that he's the better candidate than Trump, or that Trump is unfit for office. I think it's harder for them to say, yes, America, this man can serve PAS eighty six well.
And at the same time, that means that the role of Kamala becomes much bigger, because in a sense, you can make the argument, if you vote for Biden, you're actually voting in all probability for Kamala to become president.
And that was always the subtext of this election. I think what happens now is that it's the actual text. I mean, I think you're going to see that Republicans make that case directly in a much more over way. And it's Trump, so he doesn't really do subtle in the first place, so Trump will to say it out loud.
I don't think I've ever seen him be particularly subtle.
No, No, he reads those stage directions out loud, doesn't it.
That's because he's New York Post, He's not New York Times.
You got it, you got it.
I think he learned that style he was a businessman.
You don't have to wait until the seventeenth paragraph with Donald Trump.
You get it in the lead, yeah, or on page one.
Exactly and the exactly the screaming headline exactly.
Really, were you surprised by the Supreme Court ruling on immunity?
I was, yeah. I thought they would dismiss it and avoid the hot potato altogether. How about you?
I thought they walked through pretty carefully. I listened to the oral arguments about half of them, and you could tell that they, in a funny kind of way, the New York trial moved them because it suddenly was an indication that, even though that was a state level trial, that Bragg represented the potential for political prosecutors to go after presidents after they left office in a way that would take apart the whole system and would mean that any president would be permanently at risk. And you could hear that in their questions, including from some of the more moderate of the conservatives. So in that sense, I was surprised. Andy McCarthy other is now making the argument that, in fact, it clearly eliminates the case in New York because it was based on his official acts.
That's the question, right, And you saw that judge pushback sentencing in New York for the same reason. So I mean this could have a second order effect on that case too.
Part of the response on the left is sort of the way we used to respond to the war in court, people's vowing to file articles of impeachment, et cetera. Doesn't that only just become noise?
Yeah, I don't think it matters as much politically. People's minds are not going to be changed about Donald Trump because of this case. Look, I think part of the reason, Speaker, why the Biden White House called for a June debate is because the trial was not breaking through in American culture. This trial was a non factor for much of the time that was going on, and the Biden folks knew they had to change the trajectory of the race. And because the trial wasn't cutting in the eyes, and so they called for this debate, and they put all their chips on the table in this debate, and obviously it backfired. But I think you can trace this debate happening in June. Unprecedented to have a June debate, in part because the Biden folks realized this trial is not moving the needle politically.
Well, of course, it's also to some extent unprecedented to have to Canada so early lock up their nomination and have both of them having been president.
I'm trying to think of when there was such little primary competition with a non incumbent president.
Oh, George W.
Bush ninety nine, two thousand, but Bush lost, knew, I'm sure he lost Michigan, right, yep.
In that sense, Trump's dominance and Biden's, although Biden is an incumbent, was in relatively better shape giving everything that happened to Trump. The fact that he could come back, build the machine he has built and so decisively win the nomination is pretty astonishing.
He's a pop culture figure. It's bigger than politics. He's a cultural phenomenon whose grip on the voter or his base is bigger than American politics. I mean, I realized this when it occurred to me that the Trump lawn sign or the Trump four x eight sign was not going to be taken down after the election. You know, historically in this country, as you know, we put the long signs out in the fall and they're on the median or somebody's front yard, and then you know, we have Halloween, and it's election Day, and then it's Thanksgiving him the signs come in, right, Trump's signs never came back in, And that, to me told me everything.
I was astonished, Cliston. I went back to her Homa Mater Luther College in.
De Cor, Iowa. Yes, sir, there you go.
This is proof to our audience. You do know America.
Mayme's Pizza, which I know you've been to before.
Yeah, Christ used to rent the apartment above Mabes. I mean said August to be.
A small world exactly.
She was being honored for lifetime achievements. And we're walking down Main Street and there's a store. Now this is eight nine months ago. There's a store that is Trump. It's not the campaign, it's not organized as local people who have been running this store filled up with Trump material. I try to tell reporters, you cannot think of him as a candidate. He is the champion of a national movement which is why when he gets attacked by the left, he gets bigger because the left is attacking our champion, he's not attacking some candidate. It's a really giantic and I think very much underappreciated reality.
Yeah, I as big as Reagan was on the right, and even as big as Obama was with a lot of Democrats, there was not this sort of perpetual, sustained movement with him, right with either of them. I was Red Lodge, Montana over July fourth, same thing on Main Street. There's a Trump store of Trump paraphernalia. You just wouldn't see that, right with previous presidents. He's a bigger figure than that, which I think helps him and it helped ensure his nomination. But the double edge to that sword is that he's a cultural figure in a way that alienates a lot of the country too.
I think you almost have to go back to Andrew Jackson to get the level of passion that is inspired in the level of divisiveness.
I think FDR almost gets you there. Right, people hate a FDR in ways that folks Sti'll understand nowadays because in the history of the COT FDR was this incredible leader and the wheelshair with foul the dog. FDR was detested by what a third of the country.
That's a fair commentary. I think people really loved and rally TIFTR. I mean. The other person, of course, who was deeply divisive was Lincoln.
It was a wartime figure too, which helped RIGHT and the FDR became less divisive after the war.
Right I was gonna say, I mean, Lincoln is the other person when you realized that, I think there were ten states that would not put him on the ballot. It was a genuine knockdown, drag out fight.
These figures in the present have been transformed into almost Disney like characters, but you know, in real time, flesh and blood American politics, they were deeply polarizing and divisive.
I'm cuous. So you had a chance to look at the new Republican Party platform.
I have, and it reminded me a lot of Donald Trump's tweets, and because you could tell it came from you know, it's interesting. Trump is one of those politicians where you know when the words on the screen came from him versus somebody else, and you can really tell a lot of it's from him.
I was very close to the people who were putting it together, and it really was Donald Trump's platform, and he made no bones about it.
I'm almost to the point where they may as well have had it like in a black sharpie that he wrote with his own hand. I mean, it was so vividly Trump, you know, the language, the presentation of it. It was pure Trump New York as you would say, yeah.
Yeah, And of course that was as you know, that was by design, and very early on, Susie Wills and Chris Olasovita, the two top people, sent out a memo that's quite detailed that says it will be shorter, it will be clear for the average American. They sort of outlined and then I think the last platform in twenty sixteen was thirty seven thousand words and I think this one's forty six hundred.
That tells you everything you need to know. And also just from a content standpoint, it reflects what Trump's politic. Now, Trump doesn't have a lot of deep seated ideological views, but you know, he does have some instincts, and obviously this reflects that he's not a sort of cultural traditionalist or cultural warrior by any means, but does feel strongly about issues relating to trade and immigration. I think this reflects that.
Yeah, we run a project called the America's New Majority Project. Can go see at America's New Majority Project dot com. Since twenty eighteen, we've done well over thirty seven thousand interviews. And if you were to track where the American people are and lay it over this platform, it is remarkably close. I think Trump uses his rallies as focus.
Groups, absolutely, and you live this in twenty twelve, and you watched it closely. In two thousand and eight, there was a marketplace for what I would call kind of fiscal traditionalism, almost liberalism, and a harder line on the border, don't touch in titlements. Let's crack down on countries that are cheating on us with their goods. Hawkabe did a little bit of that in eight. Santorum did some of that in twelve. And this is where Trump has really taken the party, and to your point, with the general electorate, there is an appetite for what you could call economic moderation or even in liberalism, with a hard line on immigration, a hard line on trade. You can and did some of this in ninety two. There's always been a market for this and it's a market with working class voters, white, Hispanic, Black, and Asian.
Are you surprised by how much the two party coalitions are swapping.
Yes. I think it's the great story of our time. I think it's the most important political trend of this era, which is the great realignment of scale. Voters are obviously much more incline to support Democrats now mostly on culture and identity, and the same thing for working class voters. Here's where I'm fascinated, though, At what point do we see the changing coalitions reflected in the policies? Okay, because let's take, for example, in the Senate, which is still kind of more reflective of the older GOP. You know, after the train derailment in Ohio, you had this coalition of Shared Brown and JD. Vans and Josh Holly who wanted to crack down on the railroads and really regulate them. And the challenge is that there's an appetite for that among Democrats, but they couldn't gather Republicans. At what point do Republicans reflect their coalition when it comes to labor and economics, And at what point do Democrats reflect their coalition when it comes to economics. I think that's the big question.
The underlying movement of the voters is preceding the movement of the.
Politicians absolutely, especially in the Senate, which as we know, move slowly generally.
But that's sort of what the Founding Fathers wanted. I say this with some bias, since I was Speaker of the House. The Founding Fathers intended for the Senate to be sort of a sea anchor, slowing down patterns and trends, and they expected the House to always overreact.
It'll be fascinating to see if the House does ever move any legislation, if you had a Republican majority in the House, Senate and a Republican president, would these or move anything that's more congenial to labor. We're still always off from that, but I think that'll be the great test.
Let me ask you one of those sandwiches about your profession. To what extent does it bother you that the coverage of Biden had been shaded in such a way that the debate was a great shock.
Well, I can speak for myself until you that. In twenty twenty three, I wrote multiple columns about the challenge of Biden's age, and I was the first person to write the news that Dean Phillips was thinking about running for a president because nobody else was doing it, and that Biden wouldn't address his age. And I can tell you when I did that, I had a lot of conversations with Democratic lawmakers who said, yeah, you're right, this is a problem, but it was a collective action issue. No Democratic governor, senator, or House member wanted to be the person to raise their hand first and say, mister President, for your service, we honor you. I hope you and Jill will take this gold watch and have fun in Rehoboth and enjoy the grandkids. None of them wanted to be the first, and they all wanted the other guy to do it. And we're seeing the same problem now. Frankly, nobody wants to say it out loud like that, And I think that was the issue. The sentiment was there, but nobody would put their name on it, and so nobody ever spoke out. And I think we're seeing the same challenge now. But I have a question for you, though, because you live through nineteen ninety six and you know what it's like when your candidates are running and the top of the ticket is destined to lose or at least struggle to win. Do you think in this polarized era that we're in a much more polarized, calcified moment than ninety six. Do you think that ticket splitting could make any kind of a resurgence if Biden is on top of the ticket. Could Democratic senators survive and get folks to ticket split because it's so obvious that Trump's going to win.
I think this could be like nonineteen seventy two when Nixon crushed McGovern because mcgovernor just totally collapsed, but the Democrats actually did pretty well in the congressional races. And I think it goes back to your point, which is if the Democrats say, you know, Trump's probably going to win, and therefore you need me to be a balance against Trump, that means that they have sort of abandoned their candidate. And we faced that problem in ninety six because we had a welfare reform bill that was very, very popular, and we had kept medicaid reform on it, and so Clinton had used that as excuse to veto it, and we were faced with the question of whether to pass just a clean welfare reform bill and the Dole people were desperate for us not to do it because they thought it was their most effective weapon to potentially beat Clinton. We had a conference for a couple of hours and our members said, look, we have not been re elected since nineteen twenty eight, you know, the first majority in forty years, the first to be re elected in sixty eight years. And they said, if we don't pass this, we will not be re elected as a majority. I had the duty of calling Dole's campaign manager and saying, we're going to move the bill, how about go. He was very sad he was not having an argum when he was having a report. You may see a point this August September, particularly if Biden gets worse, where the Democratic battle cry becomes help us balance off the Trump presidency.
And the only question is who's the first one to do it? Is it John Tester and Montana share at Brown in Ohio? Who will be the first one to run that ad?
Saying well, Tester probably needs it more than anybody else because Trump's margin of Montana is going to be horrifying.
And you can see it now. I'll stand up to President Trump when he deserves it, and I'll work with him when he's good for Montana. You can see the script now right. It writes itself. It writes itself, what a year for politics and what a year for historians.
I'm going to thank you for joining me. I knew, given everything I've read that you'd work on that you'd be fascinating. You are. Our listeners can actually read your reporting at politico dot com. Your book This Will Not Pass Trump Biden in the Battle for America's Future about the twenty twenty election, is a fascinating read and useful in looking at what's happening now. And it's available at Amazon and in bookstors. Every word. Jonathan anytime, if you want to join me and have a chat like this, I'd be honored. You were one of the great students of American politics and it's great that you would share with us.
Thanks for having me, speaker, and thanks again for the book. Plug and the title is This Will Not Pass, which three years later holds up pretty darn well. I'll say.
It's great.
Thanks Speaker, CM Milwaukee.
Thank you to my guest Jonathan Martin. You can get a link to read his column and Politico on our show page at Newtsworld dot com Newsworld is produced by Ginglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guardnsei Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Ginglishtree sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my three free weekly columns at gingershtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.