Trump’s Clown Convention with Zach Dembo

Al Hunt (0:10)

Hello and welcome to Politics War Room with James Carville and I'm Al Hunt. This week our guest is Congressional candidate for the 6th district in Kentucky, the Democrat Zach Dembo. Now remember, we love taking your questions, so write to politicswarroomgmail.com for next week's show. Now we're going to get to as many as we can, but don't forget to tell us where you're from. You can also get text updates about what's next for Politicon and Politics War Room by signing up at politicon.com. Tell your friends about us and remind them to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Please check out the links to our sponsors, Quince, Three Day Blinds, Trust and Will, and Miracle Made in our episode show notes. We thank you for supporting these sponsors. It really helps make this podcast happen.

James, I'm going to ask you a tough question to start with.

We don't have the final data, but I want you to guess whether more people, Wednesday night, chose to watch or stream Donald Trump at his mini convention in Dallas or the rematch of last year's Super Bowl, the Seahawks versus the Patriots. That's a tough one.

James Carville (1:29)

Well, I can tell you what I hope people watch. I can tell you what I bet. Obviously, more people are, I think, going to watch football games. I hope they watch what's going down in Dallas. I don't think they will, but it is so insane.

I think you owe it to yourself as a citizen to watch this. I really do.

You know, what Trump is doing and just saying, all right, there's no one that thinks this is a good idea. You can read all the accounts. They call these Republican consultants, and some have to act like they think it's a good idea because they go on. So Trump says people shouldn't worry about AI, just go full speed ahead. He says that the troops that were killed in Iran can get certain benefits because we hadn't declared war.

It looks at... The only answer that I can come up that explains the current behavior of Donald Trump is simply this. He wants the Republicans to lose. He hates them. He wants to torture them. He thinks that he saved them, he taught them how to win. It turned his back on him, and he's going to teach them a lesson. And he is going to try to... It sounds insane that you have a president who wants his political party to lose big. But I can't think of another explanation that really answers as many questions as this one does.

Al Hunt (3:03)

It doesn't sound as insane as it would any other time. I tell you what confuses me. I don't know if they'll actually show up, but both Mike Rogers, the Senate candidate from Michigan, and Mike Lawler, the candidate, the congressional, the congressman from Westchester County, New York, both said they're going.

There are two people who are really delighted with that decision if they do go. One would be Abdel El-Sayed, who is running against Rogers for the Michigan Senate race. And the other would be Kate Connolly, who is that incredible candidate running to defeat Mike Lawler. Why in the world would a candidate from a competitive industry want to show up at this clown show?

James Carville (3:44)

Because under any circumstance in Maine and Michigan, the only possible path to victory in this climate is the Trump voters have to be simulated.

And so they're sitting around the scheduling meeting and says, look, we got this thing in the poll, we said, look, Trump's approval in Michigan is 30, 35 Doesn't make any sense.

Understandable. But somebody says, if you don't go, he will attack you, and you're only going to get 60% of the people that voted for Trump to vote in this election, and you can't win without that. So it's literally a damned if you do, damned if you don't. And his and his own way, I think he understands that. And he wanted to put pressure, he wanted to make them squirm, and squirm they're going to. And I guarantee you, American Bridge gonna have them on camera for the whole time. And everybody knows they're going to, everybody's gonna have the photographs and the video. They're just gonna do that.

Al Hunt (4:48)

Well, he does get crazier. I mean, the other day, he suggested changing the name of New Mexico. That's the state, James. He did, to New America. I mean, I mean, I'm sorry.

You know, I mean, that's not, look, Lake Ontario to Lake America is weird, crazy. The Gulf of America versus the Gulf of Mexico is insane. Changing the name of a state, which you can't do to begin with, it really is, he's losing stuff up there.