RFK vs BIDEN vs TRUMP w/ Andrew Yang, Dave Smith & Special Guests

Recorded: June 4, 2023 Duration: 0:24:57

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Yo. Nick, how you feeling? I've been better. I'm sorry, Dad.
Let me go down his how you feeling bro I'm feeling great So the little bit of feedback by the way, but I think it's on your end man. Don't blame me for your game and of course sure yeah, bro and but
No, I do robber wolf is never a boy. I'd start a look at him. I would have to invite him to this space, but he didn't accept. Because there's no no competitor to Biden. That's my guess. All right, let me get the invite sound. Andrew is 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? Well, because I'm chilling with the family, they're out. So it was me watching the meds lose. And I thought, why not?
Oh Pine, who the heck the next president is going to be? 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?
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. Yes, this space was about it was about censorship related to COVID and the focus was the uniting
because there were certain reports coming out from the United Kingdom in terms of government intervention and the intervention through mediums such as Facebook, Meta and various other social media platforms and also how, for example, the way the government in the United Kingdom manipulates
the public to ensure that there was a mongering going on to ensure that they basically people took the vaccine as well as engaged or accepted the lockdowns. So that was yesterday's best, but unfortunately we did end early because there were issues with Twitter. I believe the reason for it is because Elon Musk
did say that he stressed testing the Twitter Spirits for tomorrow's and space with RFK Jr. Yeah, and was 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 was a chicken, that's why. Yeah. Including you. And how did you balance it out? How do you balance it out for no one's making the argument? I do not balance my job is to speak the truth so I ensure that I'm not broke. You can't fucking ridiculous.
You're turning on me now. That was ridiculous. Through me under the bus. Doesn't give a fuck. 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. Yeah, Seb. Good seems to go come. All right. I'm not gonna get over the question. Danish and Sully will probably do
dominate the mic. But Andrea, 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, "Mari, I'm not going to come on the space because there's really no Biden versus Robert, Afghani, Jr. It's just Biden and he did not want to
give 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 are going to be debates. So if that's the standard he's using, you know, it's hard to argue. So here's the fundamental
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
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 Democrat facing media, you're talking about the holy trinity of New York Times, MSNBC, CNN. And so if you catalog the number of times
RFK has been favorably included or featured in those three outlets. I'm going to guess it's 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 and thanks for joining us and just going on the polling because a lot of people when we
had them on stage always minimize RFK's impact in the fourth comment primaries and when we when I reiterate the number of the how he's polling people be surprised. So for example, a counter recent polling from Big Village he was polling at 19% a counter with the polling he's polling at 20% so
So he's already polling decent numbers when he's not had the kind of lamb light in the public. Where do you see that going forth? He's going to be doing his announcement tomorrow. He's going to be 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 ID among older voters because his name is literally our of K Jr.
You're going to have signs saying Kennedy Democrats and if you ask a Primary voter it's like hey who you're going to vote for and they see the name Robert Kennedy there's like 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 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.
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
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. Andro, 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, 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 Democrats side.
He's left leaning on a number of issues. There's a couple of issues that maybe he isn't as much on one of them is his statements against the deep state. One would say that's a classical liberal position and the other one is obviously his undecorbed positions. How is that going to
play out specifically in the democratic primary because I'm what I'll do. I'm sorry. Go ahead. You go ahead. No, the reason I ask the question is for that one work on the national stage because he might bring people from the right interval for him, but in the 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 Democrats
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 your 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. 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 and let's say South Carolina and if he loses by
one point, the lack 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 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 super delegates, which essentially, you know, pick the nominino.
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 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 they couldn't pretend that Bernie didn't exist and also Hillary wasn't the incumbent. They just acted like she was. So this is going to be a much more egregious version of anything
you saw in 2016. But Andrew, this is Donna. It's 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.
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
come in and Bernie Sanders headfaked 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 primaryed by 10 Kennedy. But at that point Jimmy Carter was the incumbent and 10 Kennedy said, "Hey, I'm going to run against you." But it wasn't like the DNC said, "Don't can't do it. There's no process." And it could be that 10 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 to 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 Scuttlebutt 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 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 and Michigan raised her hand tomorrow, I had a press count and said, "Hamm 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 correct."
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 now, by the way, I'm here in part because I was on the record saying I think that Joe Biden should do a George Washington, be a statesman, not a politician and say like I
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 may be argument that Jimmy Carter got weakened by his primary.
And so we already have a presidential candidate and I'm showing 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 what makes sense at this point to spare the primary so 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 2020.
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 News
some 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. Honestly, 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 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 80, 81 year old incumbent debating Marian Williams in an arcade like
times. That's just not going to happen. Andrew, before I ask you another question, I just want to give a shout out Dave Smith. I know you've interviewed RFG, so I really appreciate you coming on and we're going to have this question for you as well. So good to have you. I think it's the first time on the stage, Dave. Is that correct? Yes, it is my first time. Happy to be here. Pleasure#
And I'm just gonna ask you two other questions. Sorry, don't drop down it before we go to today. The first one is going back to the to the vaccine. You've been critical. You know, you said at one stage, you were disappointed in RFKs, stands on vaccines in 2022 to New York times. You said that
RFK statements are a quote a threat to public health and that quote he cannot in good conscious. I yeah, you've missing me for someone else. I've never said any of those things. We're gonna take it all back. So then my question though, man, silly, that's why he take a jab at me for using chat GPT. Do you want to do it, silly?
I mean, it's kind of it's run all now. I mean, everyone knows my question though is still still stands. How much of an impact do you think Robert Stan's or RFK Stan's
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 on people's chances 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. The second question is who do you think will fit better debating Trump? I know it's an easy question, but how do you think RFK will perform in a debate with Trump and how do you think Biden would?
Yeah, so I think we're all assuming that Trump is the front runner in the Republican field, which he is. 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 homogeneous uniform lockstep set of messages
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 gonna 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 awards. 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 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 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? No, I mean I agree with you.
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.
I've got a question for Dave. If you don't mind, I'm just going to ask questions for Dave because Dave you've interviewed RFK. 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, I was impressed with the guy and one thing that's kind of nice about RFK and this
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
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 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 I'm certainly not convinced that's the case but the guy's like not only read books about it. He's really
multiple books about it. He's got like a well thought out opinion, a agree or disagree with him. So there's something impressive about the guy and I think that his campaign is just incase fascinating in a lot of ways. The only parallel I could think of is the Ron Paul campaign
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 with George W. Bush was on on the war
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.