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Brian Stelter, Narrating: This is In Conversation, from Apple News.
Today… the most pressing 2024 election questions, answered.
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Hi there. I'm Brian Stelter.
For the next month, I'm going to be sitting in
for Shumita while she's out on maternity leave.
For years, I was a media reporter at "The New York Times," and then,
the anchor of CNN's "Reliable Sources."
Now I'm a special correspondent at "Vanity Fair."
And my beat has always touched on media, politics, and elections,
so that's going to be my focus for the next few weeks.
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For this episode,
we are getting answers to some unavoidable questions
about the upcoming presidential election.
This election year feels really unusual for so many reasons.
The two likely nominees are the same two candidates
who faced off in the last election.
One of those candidates, former President Donald Trump,
is facing 91 criminal charges in four separate cases.
And both men are the oldest presumptive nominees
this country has ever had, though President Joe Biden,
who is a few years older than Trump,
seems to be facing a lot more scrutiny on that front.
All of these variables are leading to some bizarre questions
that we don't typically confront in an election year.
For example, can a convicted felon
become President of the United States?
Is there a Trump or a Biden backup plan in place?
And what about the usual trappings of campaigns, like debates?
Will we even have those?
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I posed these questions to Susan Glasser, Evan Osnos, and Jane Mayer.
All three are staff writers at "The New Yorker"
and co-hosts of "The Political Scene" podcast.
The three of you have all the answers though, right?
[ALL LAUGHING]
Jane Mayer: Of course.
Evan Osnos: We have them here under the table, and we'll take one out at a time.
That's the way it's gonna work. Like props.
Stelter: Someone has to have the answers.
Stelter, Narrating: While they might not have all of the answers,
these veteran reporters have a lot of them.
Susan co-authored a book about Trump's first term.
Evan has covered Biden extensively, including a book on him in 2020.
And Jane is the New Yorker's chief Washington correspondent
and the author of multiple books on politics and history.
So I started by asking Jane what are the rules around electing
someone convicted of a crime?
If Trump is convicted by at least one jury
before Election Day, then what?
Mayer: He can still be president, even if he's a convicted felon.
Stelter: So he can still campaign. And he can still take office.
Mayer: I remember looking this up and thinking, this can't really be true
when I was writing about Trump and then finding, oh my God,
you can be a convicted felon and be president.
Stelter: Why?
Mayer: Well, I think that probably the Founding Fathers thought
that the voters would have the wisdom not to elect such a person.
And so it was kind of outside of their imagination
that this would be a problem.
But it is potentially a problem that we're all looking at.
Actually, a real problem. And a lot of what pundits are spending
a lot of time thinking about is how much would it hurt Trump
in the eyes of the voters if he were convicted?
Stelter: Or can I suggest how it might help him with his fans?
Osnos: I mean, the polls so far actually suggest that it would not help him.
Now, there's a huge amount that could be changing,
but there is a big difference between what the polls tell us
about an indicted president, which of course we all now know
has actually helped him, and a convicted president.
I mean, if you look at a composite of polls today, what it tells you is that
it, a conviction of a felony would throw the election to Joe Biden,
according to one analysis, by about 45 to 43%,
meaning it's essentially a dead heat.
Stelter: Susan, what do you make of that?
Susan Glasser: Well, I think there's a couple of observations there.
One is that a lagging indicator, a leading indicator.
Eight years of experience with Donald Trump suggests to us
that while Republicans may say one thing in polls,
when confronted with the actual outrage or, you know, shock
or blown through norm by Trump, they find a way to justify it.
And so, what they may tell a pollster right now
at the beginning of the election year is absolutely unacceptable.
There's no way I would vote for a convicted felon for president.
By the time they're faced with a choice between the convicted felon
who is of their party and the terrible, awful, horrible opponent,
they find ways to justify Trump.
So it's important for people to take some of those survey results
with the caveat of, you know, we'll tell you when we get there.
The other challenge, of course, with Trump and the question of conviction
is this motivation of his base. He's been running this campaign of
I'm persecuted, grievance. This is terrible. Look at me.
I'm a victim of a system that's being weaponized against me.
And, if that helps to motivate his voters,
which has been one of the dynamics in the Republican primaries, in many ways,
American politics has abandoned persuasion, right?
It's no longer about trying to get the people in the middle.
It's no longer about persuading people the rightness of your issues.
It's more about motivating your own fervent supporters
to get to the polls.
So, it could be a motivator for some of Trump's base.
I do think that's a real factor.
Stelter: I think a lot of Trump critics have watched him, quote unquote,
get away with everything for years, actally for decades.
And they wonder, is there actually a world where he could really be behind bars?
Jane let me put this to you. Even if he is convicted, won't he appeal?
Mayer: Yes, I think you can say with great certainty,
if he is convicted, he will definitely appeal.
And I think if you look at other countries where leaders have been convicted,
for the most part, they get things like house arrest.
If you look at Berlusconi or they have to do sort of public service
or things like that. I mean, I think it's unimaginable
that he will be behind bars.
But really, what Trump's doing right now is putting the legitimacy
of the court system on trial.
So that is why it is that you really can't predict,
as Susan says, you know, whether his voters will see a conviction
as striking him out. Because what he's doing is saying
the judges are not fair, the juries are not fair.
Stelter: So this is a test of the rule of law. That's what this year is about.
Mayer: As big as we have seen. Don't you think? You guys?
Osnos: I do. I also think it's easy to forget,
when we sometimes ask ourselves, my gosh,
really, we're a democracy and we're going to be putting
a former head of our government on trial. I mean, this guy might go to jail.
What kind of banana republic are we becoming? But actually,
the truth is, when you look at the history of other democracies,
this is something democracies do.
Stelter: This is common, actually.
Osnos: This is common. Israel's done it multiple times.
Stelter: Some might even say healthy.
Osnos: Yes. Well, in a way, health is exactly the word, Brian,
because it's part of the process of how you clean out
a part of your system that is toxic.
And this is why France has put a former head of government on trial.
This is why Italy has done it. Israel has done it several times.
And in some ways, the United States, we're a bit of an anomaly.
And if we don't do it, the argument is that
we are subjecting ourselves to the risk of losing that democracy.
Glasser: Remember that the reason Trump can,
going back to Brian's first question,
why can a convicted ex-president have the chance to return to office?
It's because Congress failed in what the founders of the United States
envisioned as the way to hold a rogue president accountable.
And that was impeachment.
Had the United States Senate convicted Donald Trump
in his second impeachment trial, after the events of January 6th
and his challenge to overturn the 2020 election, had they convicted him,
it would have come along with a provision that would have required
him not to be allowed to run for office again.
So it was actually the failure of our constitutional system
to work as envisioned by the founders that led us to this crisis
in the first place.
Stelter: So, he could be under Mar a Lago house arrest.
And be inaugurated next January, he may be on the hook
for hundreds of millions of dollars in the E. Jean Carroll case
in the civil fraud case, he may be having to hawk buildings
in order to pay up.
All of this might be happening and he might be inaugurated.
Let's talk about the backup plan though.
If not Trump, who could the Republican nominee be?
Is there any world where there's going to be a contested convention
or some other X factor happens on the Republican side?
Mayer: No.
Stelter: Really?
[JANE LAUGHS]
Mayer: You know-
Stelter: Really?
Osnos: Well, we've all learned never say never, but no.
I mean, we're-
Mayer: The thing about Trump at this point that you have that is kind of astounding
is he's completely taken over the Republican Party.
And so, what does that mean?
I mean, the people who are on the Republican National Committee
are his people. The people who bring the money into the race. And back him.
They are his people. He's got the whole machine
that is what it takes to get elected. And nobody else has that machine.
There are even some of the richest people on the Republican Party
are backing Nikki Haley, and she can't get anywhere
because Trump's really, he's taken up all of the oxygen in the room.
Stelter: Right. It's his party. But you're saying people are here
about Nikki Haley and Super Tuesday and going all the way to the convention,
all that. You're saying that's just hogwash.
Glasser: Look, I think that Nikki Haley exists as a sort of in case of emergency
break glass scenario. But in many ways, what her campaign,
especially in its later stages, as she has become the lone remaining,
uh, opponent to Donald Trump at the Republican primaries,
and she's become a sharper edged critic of him. What that has clarified, I think,
for people is what is the real state of the anti-Trump opposition
within the Republican party?
And it's not that big. It's, you know,
I don't know, maybe 20 to 30 percent in most national polls,
a little bit more in some states like New Hampshire, where she got 43%,
a little bit less in many other states, but not a viable amount
to challenge him electorally, essentially anywhere.
So then the question is, if she has the resources,
she could kind of run on
as a kind of zombie candidate and hold out until the convention.
In fact, that's definitely a plausible scenario from my perspective,
in order to be available if there were a kind of a unexpected Trump event.
Osnos: One thing we have learned is that campaigns do matter.
And remember, at the beginning of this process,
Ron DeSantis was the guy everybody was all excited about.
He turned out to be a pretty miserable candidate.
Nikki Haley is, by any measure, the strongest alternative to Donald Trump
on the Republican side. So if there is a, you know,
break glass in case of emergency moment because Donald Trump is 77
or he is out of it for some legal reason.
She is quite obviously the attractive candidate.
And I will point out, I've been talking to voters out in places like Pennsylvania,
and I run into Democrats who say, I sure do like that Nikki Haley.
So, she is a much more powerful entity if there was a scenario-
Glasser: I do want to point out just one final twist on this,
which is that she has set herself up at this point as a kind of,
I'm here in case of emergency alternative, however, because she has run against Trump
because she has articulated positions that challenge his America first platform,
uh, were Trump not be able to run in the convention,
there would be a stampede, in my view, at the convention from the Trumpist forces
to pick a more Trump-friendly candidate.
And so that's another factor to recognize,
which is that she only captures a certain one third of the party.
And so she actually would be vulnerable even in an open convention.
Mayer: Who would you see waiting in the wings on the Trump-y side?
Glasser: I mean, you know, I guess Don senior would say, well, you know,
keep it in the family. Don Jr. is ready to go, you know,
look at him. He's ready to go.
Osnos: Well we know it wouldn't be Ivanka.
She barely answers his phone calls at this point.
Glasser: Yeah, no, that is a fascinating dynamic we can get into. But the Trump family, uh,
rifts in the last few years are something to behold.
Stelter: Let's move to Biden.
I was amazed by this recent Monmouth University poll
that found nearly half of the electorate thinks it's either likely
or somewhat likely that Biden will be replaced as a Democratic nominee.
You know, we know he's running, he's running a re-election campaign.
He is absolutely running for re-election, and yet many Americans
are in denial about this. What's going on here, Evan?
Osnos: That's a hugely important fact. In fact, if you talk to people
inside the Biden campaign, their own polling is telling them
that about, only about 20 percent of Americans believe at this point
that it's going to be a contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
And here's the, here's the most amazing fact-
Stelter: Even though that is the most likely outcome.
Glasser: 20%. 20%.
Osnos: 20%. And so, the reason why that's important is that until you have a moment
when the choice is in front of you until you're standing at the buffet,
and that's it. It's either the salad or the hamburger.
You don't have any real capacity to make an abstract decision.
Glasser: What if I don't want a salad or a hamburger?
Osnos: Well, then you can stay home, and that's a politically meaningful fact.
Mayer: And then you vote for Cornell West.
Glasser: No, I definitely don't want a salad.
Osnos: Third party. We got to talk about third parties on a separate basis.
Stelter: But on Biden,
the idea that there's this, and partly there's a conspiracy theory
out there on the right, that he's going to be replaced by Michelle Obama.
That's not going to happen. She does not want to be president.
There's also disinformation. There's also just straight up denialism,
especially among Democrats who don't want Biden to be the nominee.
So you put all that together and you get to the 20%,
the idea that this is not actually going to happen.
Isn't it also just depression about these options
that a lot of people don't want to live in a gerontocracy,
a lot of people want a do-over, they don't want to redo?
Glasser: I think that's a really important point, Brian.
Right now, if you look at Biden's polls.
They are consistently more or less the lowest polls
that an incumbent president has had at this point going into an election year
since the history of modern polling began even lower by some indicators
than where Trump was at this point in 2020. And remember,
that's not because Republicans don't like Joe Biden,
they already didn't like Joe Biden.
It's because Democrats and independents are unhappy with him as the choice
or wary. Many of them are very positive on what the Biden administration has done.
They're bullish on Democrats who have outperformed expectations
in recent elections. So it does seem to be about Biden himself.
And I think the qualms, you know, can be summed up in that scathing phrase
from the recent special counsel report. You know, most Americans,
Democrats and Republicans, I think, even, view Joe Biden as a well-meaning
elderly gentleman with perhaps a poor memory.
They don't really want that to be the choice,
but that's also why you hear, and Evan's been doing great reporting
on this, so much frustration from the White House,
from Democratic strategists right now.
They are like, wake up people,
this is, the choice is the choice, stop living in the fantasy world
where Michelle Obama is gonna come and, you know, she's not gonna be president.
Stelter: Or where Donald Trump is somehow going to be taken off the ballot.
Osnos: That's right. And that is the sort of comforting delusion on the other side
that that's almost certainly not going to happen.
Stelter: But I think it's important to know that on a recent episode
of your all's podcast. You talked about Jane's reporting
in the Reagan era about Reagan aides, knowing that he was declining,
uh, talking behind his back, talking about invoking the 25th amendment.
And Evan, you say there's no indication that's happening today
in the Biden White House.
Osnos: No, that's not the reality within the White House.
Look, I will tell you, and you'll see this from a range of different people
who have spent time with him, is that this is a town right now
in which every reporter, let's be blunt, is looking for a story,
an anecdote of Joe Biden not being able to fulfill the job of the presidency.
That is the most coveted piece of information in journalism.
If it existed, chances are it would already be out there.
What we know is what we see. People see it on television.
They see that his communication skills are diminished.
They see, as Susan described, that, you know, he is a person
who has a harder time getting through his speeches than he did before,
partly because his stutter is coming back as he gets older. But what we haven't seen
and nobody has shown it in any credible way,
that this man is not performing the presidency.
And that's an important distinction.
Mayer: And honestly, the people around Reagan, having covered him,
did see that he was unable to perform the job.
He was going off in the afternoons and watching television in the residence.
They worried that he was losing his place, couldn't really read documents.
So they actually kind of had staged a little test to see
whether he was compus mentis. And he passed that test,
as far as his aides could tell. But their worries were real.
I do think though, to be clear,
that while people are saying that Biden is able to perform well
in the presidency, inside the White House,
they are very concerned about his performance on the campaign.
How can he sell himself?
How can he get reelected? They're very worried about that.
Glasser: Jane, I'm so glad you brought that up. I do think that's an important point.
A couple thoughts. First of all, Jane's amazing scoop in this great book
"Landslide" which was about the kind of later years and the Reagan re-election,
this was in the second term of Ronald Reagan,
and I think a lot of the concerns animating many people in Washington,
putting aside the voters or the polls is not where Joe Biden is today,
but where he would be at the end of a second term.
Remember, he's asking us to elect him to office so that he would be 86 years old
at the end of his second term, and, to be blunt, I don't know many Democrats,
who don't think that that is a fear and a concern, and it's not so much,
you know, the White House has made a kind of a furious pushback
and a spin about his age right now.
And I, I actually don't think that's the heart of the problem
and fundamentally you're talking about a political situation
where they have a liability that they can't do much to address.
In fact, his age is not only known, he's already the oldest president,
but it is a factor that is likely to get worse
and not better over time.
Osnos: I wanna say one thing which I think is important too though
is that the standing of a candidate is a combination of what they have done
and how they are perceived, and as an industry, the press,
we are a little uncomfortable acknowledging our own role
in this process. The reality is that we make decisions every day
about the proportion of attention that we put on different issues.
How many stories do we devote to the subject of his age
versus how many stories do we devote to the subject of legislation
that was passed? And you can be a very aggressive news organization,
and you should when it comes to testing this question of,
is he performing the job? Is he capable of it?
How much concern is there?
Are Democrats who are actually in a position of influence bailing on him?
That's a separate question from then also saying, are we playing a role?
That's a real issue. Look, the former public editor
of the "New York Times" the other day, Margaret Sullivan, said she's concerned,
that the level of attention on this question of his age is,
as she put it, replaying the Hillary's e- mails experience of 2016.
Mayer: I mean, and it is, it is really remarkable that there's so little attention
to Trump's age. He's only a couple years younger than Biden.
His father, his father, we know there's a family history
of Alzheimer's, and there's no evidence that Trump has Alzheimer's,
but this is, it's every bit as much an issue about Trump
as it should be about Biden, yet the press doesn't play it that way.
Why is that?
Stelter: Because Jane as you've written about,
there's this pro Trump propaganda machine in the media.
There's nothing like that on the left. There's no version of that
for the Democrats to rally around Biden and deny reality about his conditions.
Mayer: Brian, we defer to you on this issue.
I mean, nobody knows more about the Fox effect than you do.
I mean, and you've really studied this, and it's creating two different ecosystems
for news in this country. There's one, one ecosystem on the right
and the other for the mainstream media.
And one is sort of full time pushing Trump all the time,
and the other is sort of saying, on the one hand, on the other hand.
So there's asymmetry between these two, right? Isn't it?
Stelter: There a hundred percent is, and it, it affects everything
about this election season. Because every single moment
that Biden misspeaks or takes a misstep, it's gonna be all over TikTok.
It's gonna be all over CNN and MSNBC, as well as Fox.
Every day of bad news for Trump is covered up by Fox, period.
It's just that simple.
Osnos: The other day, Tucker Carlson, for instance,
was having some long monologue with his guest, uh, Alex Jones,
about the fact that, as they put it, Joe Biden is wandering around the house
without his clothes on, which is, of course, a canard. It's lunacy.
Mayer: Made up.
Osnos: It's completely made up.
And there is some portion of Americans that they are so,
to go back to this burnout question, some of them are so sick of politics
that they don't want to sit down and read a story about the CHIPS Act,
which is actually reviving manufacturing.
What they want to read is a story about something like that
or just hear a clip on it and that's the real risk.
Glasser: Well, the other challenge of political journalism, though,
is almost the exact opposite problem, which is that,
in Washington, in my, sadly, long experience, we tend to overstate
the role of ideology and legislation and, you know, the fights that make up
the day to day life of Washington, in the end, especially when it comes
to our presidential campaigns in the modern era,
as a result of television, as a result of how we communicate,
as a result of, you know, the increasing powers vested
in the imperial presidency.
Americans are not going to make their vote up
based on the CHIPS Act, no matter how good and worthy that is.
We tend to vote on personality. We tend to think contradictory things.
Mayer: Well, I don't know, as we move into this year,
I think there are some issues that probably will matter to people
that are not just about people's personalities.
For one thing, I think the backlash on the subject of abortion
Osnos: I agree.
Mayer: against the Supreme Court and the Dobbs decision is something
that's very much, we've seen it playing out
across the country in kind of amazing ways.
In red states, people have come out and said, we do not want to lose
access to legal abortions.
Glasser: And where it's on the ballot. Not with candidates-
Mayer: Where it's on the ballot-
Glasser: They didn't elect Democrats in Kansas,
but what they did do is pass a referendum.
Mayer: But you've got one candidate in the,
for the presidency who believes in legal access to abortion
and you have another who appointed the Supreme Court justices
who took that right away from people.
So, I think that is an actual issue that matters to people.
I think the economy actually matters to people.
I think that the Biden White House was surprised and kind of in a bubble
and didn't see how much the cost of groceries was really bothering
people across this country. I think inflation really hurt Biden.
And then I'm hearing from people that, at least for Democrats,
this issue of what's happening in Israel is becoming
a complicated issue for young voters and dividing those who were, you know,
worried about Palestinian suffering.
I mean, I do think these things do matter to people.
But they have to be sold and pushed by candidates who articulate them
in ways that make people care.
Stelter: Here's my next big blunt question. I think this is for you, Evan.
Is there any chance Biden would change his mind and drop out?
Osnos: There is always a chance. However, I will tell you
that my reporting… really almost astonished me
with how this man has no doubts.
Stelter: He believes he's the only one that can beat Donald Trump again.
Osnos: He believes he is the only one. And now look, you can have,
and we can have a real conversation about whether he is wrong about that.
But, what I think is important to point out is, he is not sitting there
listening to all of the discussion and saying to himself, you know what?
I think they might be right. He is not. I can say that with total clarity.
And I think that's interesting to me. That the level of conviction is going
to go down in history as either having been an extraordinary case
of resisting all of what he would call the chattering class and the talk
and everything else, or it will go down in history
as having been a terrible miscalculation.
Stelter: So it sounds like there's a lot of worries
about the second half of the football game, the second half,
what's going to happen, is he going to be declining,
is he going to be mentally fit for office.
But he just wants to make sure he wins at halftime.
He just wants to make sure he has more points on the board
to beat Trump at halftime and to have a second term.
I bring that up to ask, what is the likelihood
of Kamala Harris being president in the next four years?
Again, an unknowable, but it's a higher percentage
than it usually is for a vice president.
Osnos: It is. And I think part of the challenge for her is that
when you talk to people who spend all day long in focus groups
with voters, they will tell you that one of the most consistent answers is
who is Kamala Harris? She's invisible to us.
And that's a whole question about, you know, the degree to which the public
and the press has paid attention to the substance of her work,
not the personality, not the sort of mistakes
that she's made in speeches.
But is she doing the work of the job? That's a whole question.
Look, I actually think, though, that what this comes down to is that
the Democrats are going to be saying to people in November that, yes,
you may be worried about Joe Biden at the age of 86, which is way later
than anybody should ever have been president,
according to the founders.
And yet, we know what Donald Trump is right now.
We know what he is right now. He is a man who is possessed
by his own self- pitying, self-narrative, who is possessed by the fantasy,
the hallucination, that he won the 2020 election.
And that is your choice, my dear voter.
That's basically what Democrats are going to say.
And they're going to say…
Stelter: Yeah, they're going to use the word dictator a lot.
Osnos: He uses it himself. I mean, the other thing is,
they're also going to say, and this is really important,
take a look at your life, American. Today, right now,
violent crime is at a near 50 year low.
The stock market has broken records over and over in the last few weeks.
Unemployment is below 3%. All of these are the kinds of indicators
that history tells us really do end up helping an incumbent president
in the moment of the key decision, but the thing that is most important
of all is whether or not those people, those very few people,
by some estimates about 5.5 million people in the swing states,
that those are the people, whether they come out to vote or not.
Because this thing, I mean, you could boil this whole conversation
down to one line, which is this thing right now is a dead heat. It is a tie.
And if Democrats stay home, it's probably going to go to Donald Trump.
Mayer: You know, we should mention one other dynamic in this race,
which is that, that Trump has to win.
If he can get himself out of legal jeopardy.
He has a more of a motive to run than almost anybody who's ever run
for president before, because if he can take over the Justice Department,
which he would be able to do in a second term, he can then get out
from under these prosecutions, maybe not the state ones,
but he can certainly get out of the federal ones. So this is really,
truly, it's not just an election.
This is also his get out of jail free card.
And that's one of the things that people have to decide.
Do you want to help him escape accountability legally
because that's what this election is also about.
Stelter: Next blunt question, then. If it's Biden versus Trump,
why do we not have a third party contender who's coming in
and running away with the race and running away with the presidency?
Glasser: Unfortunately, we do have third party contenders,
but they are not viable candidates for the presidency.
They are spoilers or potential spoilers. And-
Stelter: Why? Why is RFK not being taken more seriously, for example?
Glasser: Well, first of all, he espouses views that I think are,
you know, dangerous, ignorant, uninformed and untrue, but more important,
but other than that, I, look, we have a history of recent history
of third party spoilers as opposed to third party viable candidates.
If it weren't for Ralph Nader's third party campaign in Florida
in 2000, which came down to literally about 500 votes in Florida,
and Ralph Nader essentially was the decisive factor in that.
In 2016, Jill Stein's candidacy arguably was the decisive factor
in Donald Trump's victory.
So I take very seriously the possibility of these various-
and there's not just RFK Jr.- but various third party candidates
and potential candidates who actually could decide the outcome of this race.
Osnos: You know what's fascinating? If you go back all the way
to the history of the Civil War, basically third party candidates tend
to hurt the incumbent because their whole basis
for being in the race is to say, I know you don't like these options,
so consider me. And if you look at it, the number of people that vote
for third party candidates changes wildly from election to election,
depending on how much people are aware of how much the history tells us
that they can be spoilers. Take, for example, in 1992,
Ross Perot running against the incumbent George H. W. Bush
got 19 percent of the vote by saying that Bush hadn't done enough to get jobs.
Remember, he talked about the giant sucking sound and so on.
In 2016, Susan just mentioned, absolutely right.
The third party candidates got a total of about 5 percent
of the vote in the battleground states.
But in 2020, when people understood
that this was an absolute dead heat and that it would come down
to every single vote, third party candidates only got
about 1.5% of the vote. So it matters tremendously
how much people understand what the stakes are and how close it is.
Stelter: So we've described so many X factors here, age,
health of the candidates, all these issues, third party candidates.
Let's say it is Biden and Trump in the fall.
Here's another X factor. Will they debate? Because I'm thinking, no,
there's not going to be general election debates.
Mayer: It's going to be a campaign like none we've seen. No debate.
I would bet on that.
Stelter: Is that mostly because Trump doesn't want to do it
or Biden doesn't want to do it?
Mayer: You know, the truth is, I think neither of them wants to do it.
Stelter: So they'll blame the other guy.
[ALL LAUGHS]
Glasser: I would be shocked if there's a debate between Donald Trump
and Joe Biden this fall.
Stelter: I think that's so sad. So disappointing.
Glasser: Remember that Donald Trump has already blown up that norm
in the Republican primaries this year, so it's not even a theoretical discussion
in the sense that it's the first time you had a situation
where the Republican frontrunner essentially flouted even the need
to appear in front of Republican voters in order to lock up the nomination.
So he's already established that precedent and you know, if you're Joe Biden,
the president of the United States, and imagine that there already has been
one of these trials taking place, you have an easy out too, because you say,
well, I'm not gonna debate a felon. You know, he's not worthy
to sit in the office of president of the United States-
Mayer: I think it's an, I'm with you, Brian.
I think it's an incredible loss for voters. I mean, this is,
a debate is how you get to see the clash of ideas. And we've had,
in this country, a history of phenomenal debates.
You know, Lincoln and Douglas and going back to, you know,
Nixon and JFK, I mean, these things really are important for elections
and it's kind of a travesty that it's not likely to happen this year.
Also it puts so much pressure on the press then. We have to be the ones
who really draw out their differences and get beneath the surface
and really hold them to account for their views
because they're not going to do it to each other this way.
Stelter: If Biden is re-elected, won't he come under instant pressure
to pardon Donald Trump?
Osnos: I don't think he's going to pardon-
Glasser: I think he's already said, in fact, that he wouldn't do that.
He's already said that publicly.
Osnos: Yeah, you know, Biden believes that the process
of accountability of punishing people for crimes committed is essential
to a functioning democracy. And I don't think there's any reason
to believe that he would actually want to pardon Donald Trump.
Stelter: Isn't there then reason to believe we're going to see street protests
and possible violence a la January 6th?
Osnos: I think that's very possible. I can tell you
that Joe Biden is absolutely sure, that no matter what happens,
Donald Trump is not going to accept a loss in 2024.
He believes that the man is incapable of doing it. That it is such an injury
to his own self mythology that he wouldn't do it.
And so Biden is preparing, frankly, for the prospect
that Donald Trump will never concede a loss and that he will do
whatever he can, whatever he can to try to prevent that.
Stelter: This has suddenly turned quite dark, Evan.
Osnos: I don't think that you could look at the last few years
without having an analysis like that. And Biden has spent a lot of time.
I think this is something that's easy to miss from the outside.
Biden has spent a lot of time thinking about Donald Trump.
Imagine yourself in Joe Biden's shoes.
This is a man who you beat once, who tried to steal the election,
not just from America, but from you. And now he's going to try to do it again.
Imagine what that does to you.
Mayer: I, I think people also who are close to the criminal justice system
really worry that there may be violence surrounding these courthouse trials
of Trump as well if he is convicted. And there's already a lot of worry.
There've been threats to the judges.
Witnesses are in a threatened position.
There's a lot of a sort of a sense
that people are on edge about violence surrounding this election.
Stelter: I've asked a lot of questions. But I'd like to know
if there's any I'm missing. What are the most pressing questions
that each of you have about this election season?
Mayer: I remember I did an interview with John Meacham in which
the question came up, if Trump were convicted and then elected,
can he pardon himself? And the answer is apparently yes.
And according to the historian John Meacham, he looked at it
and he sort of thought, "Hey, this is the sort of the ultimate
kind of thing that Trump would do." You know, um, just pardon himself.
Stelter: Right, that is a very big question.
And we're gonna get into Trump's trials
in more detail next week on the show.
For now, Jane, Evan, Susan, thank you so much
for bringing "The New Yorkers" political scene to us.
Mayer: Thanks, Brian. So good to be with you.
Glasser: Thank you, Brian.
Osnos: That was terrific. Thanks, Brian.
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Stelter, Narrating: You can listen to "The Political Scene" on Apple Podcasts.
We'll include a link for you on our show notes page.
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