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RFK vs BIDEN vs TRUMP w/ Andrew Yang, Dave Smith & Special Guests
Recorded: June 4, 2023 Duration: 0:24:57Space Recording
Short Summary
The conversation primarily revolves around political dynamics, particularly focusing on RFK Jr.'s potential impact in the Democratic primaries and his stance on vaccines. There is no mention of any crypto-related topics such as project launches, token launches, partnerships, fundraising, or technological innovations.
Full Transcription
Yo, Nick, how are you feeling?
I've been better.
I've been better.
You sound dead, man.
Let me go to Danes.
Zanish, how are you feeling, bro?
I'm feeling great.
So the, what happened?
Mario,
a little bit of feedback, by the way.
Yeah, but I think it's on your end, man.
Don't blame me for your shit.
Really? Yeah, man, of course.
Are you sure?
Yeah, bro.
By the way, what's all that fud around the debt ceiling?
You're going crazy about it for days, and now suddenly it's a nothing burger.
What do you have to say, I'm the one that broke it?
You want to say, yeah, exactly.
You want to say, but before you broke it, man, you want to say Robert Wolf was right again?
No, dude, Robert Wolf is never right.
I just try to like give him flowers.
I wanted to invite him to this pace, but he didn't accept because there's no competitor to Biden.
That's my guess.
All right, let me get the invite sound.
Andrew, it's good to see you again.
How are you?
Hey, Mario.
Great to be here.
Hey, everyone.
I have a question for you, Andrew.
Oh, yeah.
Fire away.
Why are you here on a Sunday?
Everything's okay?
Uh...
Well, because I'm chilling with the family.
They're out.
So it was me watching the Mets lose.
And I thought, why not opine as to who the heck the next president's going to be?
Yeah, I think it's a better way to spend your time.
We've got...
Aaron, how are you? Good to see you as well. I'm going to start sending out the invites. Give us a couple of minutes. And while I'm sending out the invites, Sully, do you want to give us a quick update on yesterday's space? I know crashed, glitching and all that, people getting kicked off. But what was yesterday's story and what's the conclusion from the very short space that we did?
Yeah, of course. So, yeah, hi, everyone. Yesterday space was about...
It was about censorship related to COVID.
And the focus was the United Kingdom because there were certain reports coming out from the United Kingdom in terms of government intervention and link to and the intervention through mediums such as Facebook.
meta and various other social media platforms.
And also how, for example, the way the basically the government in the United Kingdom
manipulated the public to ensure that basically there was fearmongering going on
to ensure that they basically people took the vaccine as well as engaged or accepted the lockdowns.
So that was yesterday's space, but unfortunately we did end early because there was issues with Twitter.
I believe the reason for it is is because...
Elon must did say that he's stress testing the Twitter spaces for tomorrow's space with RFK Jr.
Yeah.
And was there anyone making an argument that that level of censorship was okay?
Because I think everyone is going to be too chicken to make that argument.
I had to say they're trying to make it because no one else was.
Nobody was making that argument.
Everyone's a chicken, that's why.
Yeah.
Including you.
And how did you balance it out?
How did you balance it out if no one was making the argument?
I do not balance.
My job is to speak the truth, so I ensure that I'm sure.
Oh, bro.
It's fucking ridiculous, man.
You're turning on me now.
That was ridiculous.
He threw me under the bus.
Doesn't give a fuck.
All right, I've turned out all the invites.
Let's take it off.
So I've got a question for Andrew, and I'm sure that.
Let me get Sarah up.
I get Seb, it seems to go come.
All right.
I'm not to kick it off with the question.
Darnish and Sully will probably dominate the mic.
But Andrew, my first question is, it's a very broad one.
We had a speaker, I was inviting, a special guest, and I'm not talking about Mr. Wolf.
And he said, Mario, I'm not going to come on the space because there's really no Biden versus Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It's just Biden.
And he did not want to bring attention to this debate because there is no debate.
Would you agree with that statement?
Well, I would agree with it literally because there aren't going to be debates.
Paypoint.
So if...
So if that's the standard he's using, you know, it's hard to argue.
So here's the fundamental problem.
I think RFK Jr. is going to have a big audience for the Twitter space.
I hear he's going on Rogan, which is going to be an even bigger audience.
But there's a fundamental process problem in that the DNC has already essentially said no debates,
And the other thing is that 69% of Democratic primary voters take their cues from the corporate media.
And when you're talking about the corporate democratic-facing media, you're talking about the Holy Trinity of New York Times, MSNBC, CNN.
And so...
If you catalog the number of times that RFK has been favorably included or featured in those three outlets,
I'm going to guess it's, you know, like less than the number of fingers I have on one hand.
It's just a guess.
So if you have three dimensions to a campaign...
One is your polling, which RFK is doing quite well in, objectively speaking.
Two is fundraising.
I don't know RFK's numbers, but I imagine that they are fairly robust.
But then the third car is media, particularly in a Democratic primary,
compounded by the fact that the DNC will not have debates.
So you're going to see a lot of folks calling for debates.
They'll be pointing at the polling numbers, but I doubt the DNC is going to be moved.
Actually, it's probably the opposite.
It's like the better RFK does, the lower their likelihood to have a debate.
So Andrew, thanks for joining us.
And just going on the polling
because a lot of people, when we've had them on stage,
always minimise RFK's impact in the forthcoming primaries.
And when I reiterate the number of how he's polling,
people will be surprised.
So, for example, according to recent polling from Big Village,
he was polling at 19%.
According to other polling, he's polling at 20%.
So he's already polling...
decent numbers when he's not had the kind of lamlight in the public,
where do you see that going, going forth?
He's going to be doing his announcement tomorrow.
He's going to be, you know, engaging in a lot more media appearances.
So do you think that's going to increase or do you think that's just going to stagnate?
Well, I'd expect his numbers to stay at that level or go up, would be my expectation.
I think right now he has a lot of positive name idea among people.
older voters because his name is literally RFK Jr.
And you're going to have signs saying Kennedy Democrats.
And if you ask a primary voter, it's like, hey, who are you going to vote for?
And they see the name Robert Kennedy.
There's a strong dose of affection and history and even loyalty among some people.
And I think he's.
an effective messenger and that when people see his stuff, a lot of people will be very drawn to it.
Again, the problem for anyone who's challenging Biden in the Democratic lane this time is that his numbers could go up.
And the media would not change their treatment of him, in my opinion.
If anything, you would see more negative stories coming out if he seemed...
like a more serious contender.
The other complicating factor here is that if you look at the states that will vote first,
there's this total mess going on in New Hampshire,
where New Hampshire has a law saying that they have to go first.
By the way, RFK does very, very well in New Hampshire.
Biden and the DNC have said that South Carolina will go first and that if New Hampshire
goes first, that they'll be breaking DNC rules and will be penalized.
Now, it turns out that the Democrats of New Hampshire actually have no control over when
they hold their primary because Republicans control the state legislature.
So you could have a primary happen next year in New Hampshire that RFK does very well in,
that the Biden campaign will literally say we did not compete.
the president didn't campaign there
and we essentially were pretending
that primary doesn't happen.
I think the odds of that happening
are moderately high.
Andrew, another question I had is
And how is this going to play?
Because remember, he's not in the national elections.
And so the question I had is,
so it's not about specific policy
because we are going to go into specific policy issues later.
But we know he's basically, he's in the Democrat side.
He's gone on the Democrat ticket.
He's left leaning on a number of issues.
but then there's a couple of issues that maybe he isn't as much.
One of them is his statements against the deep state.
Now, one would say that's a classical liberal position.
And the other one is obviously his anti-COVID positions.
How is that going to play out specifically in the Democratic primary?
Because the reason I'm asking, sorry, go ahead.
Because the reason I'm going to get.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, go ahead.
No, the reason I'm asking the question is that that will work on the national stage because he might bring people from the right into vote for him.
But in there, specifically the Democratic primary, how would that work?
Yeah, so this is the problem.
There are a few different audiences.
And he's actually going to be shaped in part by the nature of the media that he gets.
So because of his...
stance on the vaccine in particular, the holy trinity of Democrat facing media, MSNBC, CNN, and New York Times, I believe will not ever feature him favorably. And I don't see that changing. And so he's going to then, like if you're Fox, will you have him on all day long? Yes, you will.
Fox has a very big audience.
Do Democratic primary voters watch Fox?
Yes, they do.
You know, like you actually read some Democrats that way.
So what's going to happen is he's going to go on everything but the Democratic-facing media.
He's going to get more and more support from people who aren't traditional Democratic primary voters.
Right.
His numbers are probably going to rise as a result.
But then when the rubber hits the road and the Democratic primary happens,
they're going to act like he's a non-factor.
He could do really well in New Hampshire and everyone will be like,
that's not a real primary.
He could put up great numbers in, let's say, South Carolina.
And if he loses by one point, they'll act like he lost by 60.
So the press will...
shape the Democratic primary in a particular way.
And if you look at the numbers in terms of different
partisans' reactions to media.
The Democratic primary voters are essentially the last of the institutionalists.
I said 69% of them trust corporate media.
You go to Republicans, that goes down to 15%.
You look at independence, it's about 38%.
So the Democratic primary voters need what's called a permission structure to vote for someone,
and the permission structure has to come from their media.
So, Andrew, I want to ask you about the Democrat primaries because we saw back in 2016,
there was a lot of attention going around with Hillary Clinton and then, you know, other candidates
that were calling the process rigged, right?
There was no way that anybody but Hillary Clinton was going to win that primary.
Does that sort of ring true with you?
Do you feel like, you know, because you're talking delegates and then you have superdelegates.
which essentially, you know, pick the nominee, you know?
Yeah.
So if you remember the Hillary Bernie dynamic, the DNC sandbag Bernie, but the narrative
the entire time was that Hillary is unbeatable and inevitable.
And this time, the narrative is there is no debate.
Joe Biden, our president, will be the Democratic nominee.
And anyone else who runs, we're going to pretend they don't exist.
And that's a much more extreme version than anything that happened in 2016 because, you know, they couldn't pretend that Bernie didn't exist.
And also, Hillary wasn't the incumbent.
They just kind of acted like she was.
So this is going to be a much, much, like, more egregious version of anything you saw in 2016.
But Andrew, this is Donash.
Just a follow-up to that.
To play devil's advocate, it's very rare for an incumbent to go through a primary. Isn't that correct?
I mean, we don't really see that in general politics, and we haven't seen that over the course of the last few elections.
So why should there be an expectation for there to be a primary for an incumbent?
Yeah, and this is a very important fundamental question.
So if you look at the last number of cycles, you're right.
When Trump was the incumbent last time, he actually did draw a number of challengers,
including former governor William Weld and Joe Walsh.
Now, you don't remember that because the Republican Party just pulled the plug on their primaries entirely.
They didn't even pretend.
They just said, hey, guess what?
No primaries are happening.
And so the cycle before...
There was no incumbent.
In 2012, Barack Obama was running as the incumbent,
and Bernie Sanders had faked that he was going to primary him.
And then a bunch of people reached out to Bernie and sat him down and said, hey, don't do it.
And what do we have to do for you not to do it?
And everyone cites the earlier example of Jimmy Carter getting primaried by Ted Kennedy.
But at that point, Jimmy Carter was the incumbent.
And Ted Kennedy said, hey, I'm going to run against you.
But it wasn't like the DNC said, no, can't do it.
Like, you know, there's no process.
And it could be that Ted Kennedy was a sitting senator, very important.
This was a long time ago.
This was in 1980.
But then since that...
that lost by Carter 2 Reagan in the general,
the conventional wisdom has been,
hey, if you draw a very strong challenge
from within your party, you lose in the general.
Now, the DNC has a couple of choices in this situation.
Choice number one is what they're doing,
which is like, hey, Joe's are incumbent,
there is no primary, tough luck everyone else.
By the way, the scuttle butt has been that.
There are a bunch of establishment folks
that were considering challenging him,
i.e. Gavin Newsom of California,
And the DNC reached out to them and said, hey, don't do it.
And if you don't do it, then, you know, maybe there's some things we can do for you, blah, blah, blah.
If one of those figures decided to challenge Joe, then I think you can't ignore it.
Like if Governor Whitmer in Michigan raised her hand tomorrow, had a press count and said, hey, I'm running against Joe.
Then you probably have to go through with it.
But they've gotten to everyone who's within the establishment and said, don't do it.
It's professionally career ending if you do do it.
And so that's path number one, the path they're taking.
Path number two would be to have a genuine process, say, look, let the β now, by the way, I'm here in part because I was on the record saying I think that Joe Biden should β
do a George Washington be a statesman, not a politician, and say, like, I did my job getting
Trump out. Like, now it's time for the next generation. Let's have a robust process. And then the
Democrats have everyone run. That, to me, would be a much better way to go. But Andrew, you just made
the argument against that. You made the argument that Jimmy Carter got weakened by his primary. And
And so we already have a president, presidential candidate, and I, you know, I'm showing my, my Democratic leanings,
but we already have a president that has had a ton of legislative wins that may not be great in an election.
And so wouldn't it make sense at this point to spare the primary so, you know, you don't get death by a thousand cuts before you enter what seems to be shaping up as a pretty challenging general?
Well, again, this is the other choice.
So the example, I just drew where I said Joe Biden should be a statesman and step aside.
I do not think Joe Biden is the right fit in 2024.
He'll be 82 years old at the end of 24.
The vast majority of Americans and even Democratic primary voters are concerned about his age.
He put up a number of wins and he could go out like a hero on top if he said, let's have a process and then you have Governor Whitmer, Governor Newsom, Governor Pritzker, Governor Murphy, Governor Cooper, etc. All run and then you coalesce around that person. I think that's a stronger path.
than trying to ride Joe again.
Now, this is just me speaking.
Like, you know, honestly, like, I just don't think Joe is the right approach.
If you decide that Joe is the right approach, then you have a very legitimate, you know, decision on your hands.
And like I said months ago, I was like, look, if Joe runs again, they're not going to have a series of debates.
Because the last thing they want to do is have their, you know, 80, 81-year-old incumbent debating β
Marianne Williamson in RFK like five times.
That's just not going to happen.
Andrew, before I ask you another question,
just want to give a shout out, Dave Smith.
I know you've interviewed RFK,
so I really appreciate you coming on,
and we're going to have a list of questions for you as well.
So good to have you.
I think it's the first time on this stage, Dave.
Is that correct?
Yes, it is my first time.
Happy to be here.
Pleasure to have you, man.
Thank you so much.
Andrew, I'm just going to ask you two other quick questions.
Sorry to interrupt, Donish.
before we go to Dave.
The first one is going back to the vaccine.
You've been critical.
You know, you said at one stage
you were disappointed in RFK's stance on vaccines
in 2022 to the New York Times.
You said that RFK statements are a, quote,
a threat to public health
and that quote, he cannot in good conscious.
Yeah, you're missing me for someone else.
I've never said any of those things.
Oh, shit.
I take it all back.
So then my question, though,
Man, silly, that's why you take a jab at me for using chat GPT.
Do you want to do it, Sully?
I mean, it's kind of, it's run all now, wasn't it?
Everyone knows of God, Mario, G.
But Andrew, my question, though, is still sad.
Do you, how much of an impact do you think Robert stance or RFK stance will have, on vaccines,
will have on his chances for becoming the Democratic nominee,
especially as we've seen the public opinion shift over the last couple of years.
um on on people's stances on vaccines and covid lockdowns etc so we'd love to get your thoughts on
this one and then the second question i'll put them both together a second question is who do you
think will fare better debating trump and i know it's an easy question but how do you think rfk will
perform in a debate with trump and and how do you think um bided would yeah so um i think we're all
assuming that trump is the frontrunner in the uh republican field which he is um
So I referred to it earlier.
I think that his stance on vaccines greatly enhances his populist popular appeal and his anti-establishment
appeal, which I think is driving a lot of the enthusiasm and energy, including among
Democrats, because there are a lot of Democrats who were ticked off at what you'd call something
of like a...
like a homogeneous uniform lockstep set of messaging on vaccines.
The big problem for RFK is that his stance on vaccines makes him anathema to
New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, and a certain body of media organizations that are going to control what two-thirds of Democratic primary voters see and don't see or think and don't think.
And when I say see and don't see, it's like they're just going to pretend he doesn't exist.
or if they do mention him, the entire headline is going to say, like, vaccine skeptic or anti-vax or whatever the heck the thing is.
And so it's a bit of a double-edged sword.
I think that he's speaking for a lot of Americans of every political stripe, and he's energizing a lot of them because of his stance.
But I think it's just like beyond the pale for most of the major media ords.
The only follow-up on vaccines really quick, Andrew, was, you know, while there is a contingent
of the Democratic Party that has significant concerns around the safety and efficacy and
rollout of the COVID vaccine, I think the large majority of...
of the Democratic Party believes that MMR vaccine does not lead to autism.
In fact, when you look at those specific stances around prior vaccines pre-COVID,
the large majority of them don't think that.
And a lot of them are not aware that that is RFK stance.
What are your thoughts as more information comes out about his stance on vaccines in general
that there might be some pushback that comes back?
No, I mean, I agree with you.
And when I said that there's some subset of democratic voters who are sympathetic to his messaging,
I don't think it's a majority.
And I think some are sympathetic to some aspects of what he's saying,
but might disagree with the specifics, including what you just stated.
Yeah.
You dropped out, Sully.
Sorry, dropped down.
Andrew.
Oh, sorry.
Are you there?
You good now?
Yeah, yeah, you can go.
Oh, cool, Mario.
Yeah, I've got a question for Dave, if you don't mind silly.
Andrew, I'm just going to ask a question for Dave,
because Dave, you've interviewed RFK.
So before we ask you a few specific questions,
general thoughts, how did the interview go?
And your thoughts on RFK's stances
and his chances of becoming the Democratic nominee?
Well, I'll say...
Yeah, I was impressed with the guy.
And one thing that's kind of nice about RFK, and this is almost kind of separate from where you fall on any of these issues, RFK, when you ask him a question about any given subject, you get the feeling that he's read a book about it before.
And that itself kind of separates him from like Donald Trump, you just kind of get the feeling that like he saw a Hannity episode about it and made up his mind.
And Joe Biden, you kind of get the impression that he is reading the words that are written down in front of him and is not aware that the words are connected to other words in that sentence.
And so like that alone is kind of refreshing.
I was impressed that he really...
seemed, like, even with the stuff with, you know, like, say the MMR vaccine leading to autism,
which I think I'm certainly not convinced that's the case, but the guy's like not only read
books about it, he's written multiple books about it, he's got like a well thought out opinion
to agree or disagree with him. So there's something impressive about the guy. And I think that
his campaign is just fascinating in a lot of ways. I really, the only parallel I could think of
is the Ron Paul campaigns in 2008 and 2012,
where you have a guy who's running against...
he is 180 degrees opposite to his party on their biggest issues.
You know, like where Ron Paul was compared
to where George W. Bush was on the wars.
And if you think about the COVID vaccine
and the war in Ukraine,
these have been the two biggest policies
that the Democratic establishment has been pushing,
and he has 180 degrees opposed to them.
And what's really interesting about campaigns like this
is it's kind of a measuring stick
