Organizing the Clown Car with Mollie Hemingway
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Welcome back to Beyond the Polls. This week, I'm joined by Molly Hemingway, editor of The Federalist, for an incisive conversation about the state of the race, what MAGA world is thinking, and whether or not conservatism as we know it has a future. Let's dive in.

Well, a lot's happened in the world since the last time I spoke with a guest. And here to tell us everything about what that means is Molly Hemingway. She is editor-in-chief at The Federalist, a contributor at Fox News, and a journalism fellow at Hillsdale College. Molly, welcome to Beyond the Polls. It is great to be here with you today.

Well, Molly, that thing of which I speak, which unlike Voldemort, we can mention its name, is Trump's conviction in the New York case. There's been a lot of discussion about what it might mean, what it does mean. Setting aside the legalities for a moment, what do you think the political impact of the conviction is and will be?

It's probably not a great way to respond that I don't know, but I really don't know what the result will be. We knew that there would be a conviction, or I think most people who understood what was going on realized there would almost certainly be a conviction.

And yet even knowing that now living in this realm where there is a conviction is somewhat surprising, very disarming, like very unsettling, just not something we're accustomed to in American politics, efforts to imprison political opponents. And so what should happen when someone is convicted on 34 felony counts is that it should mean that it's the end of their campaign.

And it's a real testament to how little trust Americans have in their institutions right now that I don't think it's actually going to make much of an impact at all.

There probably will be a lot of efforts to, you know, you saw top Democrats saying we need to do this drumbeat of saying he's a convicted felon, just say it nonstop. And so everyone kind of has gone along with that. But I think maybe the same number of people who would be moved by that against voting for Trump might also be so horrified about coordinated efforts to imprison political opponents that it kind of washes out. But I truly don't know.

The interesting thing from a polling standpoint is the short-term effect has been a wash, which is to say there are some polls that have Biden up a little bit.

There are some polls that have Biden down a little bit as far as the margin, but the short-term impact of the news has been even less than Access Hollywood, where in Access Hollywood, Trump's numbers took a significant five to eight point dive and stayed down for a couple of weeks. People were genuinely on the ropes. The marginal Trump supporter was genuinely on the ropes at that point. And what happened was

He found his way out of it and that gradually came back. The fact that Hillary never gained during that period showed what was going on. People really didn't want Hillary.

then you've got the long-term impact. And if I'm with you, we don't know. I mean, I can hypothesize one way, I can hypothesize another way, but I am flying without data here. And while I'm a fan of Star Trek, the original series, and the crew flew without data for 79 episodes, it wasn't until TNG when data joined. Okay, that was a really bad joke. But

The only data I can use are data from other countries. And the closest analogy I can think of is Bibi Netanyahu in Israel, where he was brought up on corruption charges and his trial, which still has not concluded. I think he's not able to be convicted while he's PM, but before the last election, did

did not dent support or opposition to him at all. People who hated him beforehand still hated him. People who supported him beforehand still supported him. And that's why he's the PM right now. So I think the likeliest outcome is that in a heavily polarized us versus them environment, which is what Israel has and what we have now, that no effective change might be the outcome. But then again,

We don't know how Donald Trump is going to respond, and he probably won't respond in as thoughtful as a way as Netanyahu did. And that could very well be more important than the verdict itself.

There's one additional thing that I thought was interesting immediately after the verdict was announced, which was that you saw these massive fundraising numbers. And a lot of those were small donor coming from new, you know, maybe, you know, not like base Republican support, but some new group of people. You also saw some high profile businessmen say that they were

Publicly announcing very large support for Trump. What I find interesting about those things is it shows something about the enthusiasm among people who are supporting Trump.

And, you know, it's not policy based there. If if you were Silicon Valley executive and you cared about tax policy, you might have already been supporting Trump. So something else happening that indicates that this won't be as straightforward as maybe Democrats had hoped.

If that's the case, then what that means is that this isn't the silver bullet that Democrats hope. Of course, we both are in the we don't know. We'll delay our final judgment. This isn't one of these game shows where you have to buzz in and give your answer on the first thing. It's we get time to judge and then say to Regis, this is my final answer. But

If it isn't a silver bullet, then we have Biden's border gambit from yesterday, where after three and a half years of a accelerated and now flatlining but still massive crisis as far as people streaming across the border is concerned, he announces an order that purports to be something that will address this crisis. What's your best guess as to whether he's going to

accomplish his political aim, which is to start to reassure people who maybe voted for him four years ago, maybe lean Democratic, but are concerned about the border that he's finally doing the right thing.

Yeah, this one I think will not work out as well for him as he hoped. The situation that Joe Biden is dealing with is that he ran his 2020 campaign on a pledge to get rid of every single border protection that the previous administration had like carefully enacted and hobbled together and using whatever tools they had. And then he upheld that pledge.

on day one. It was one of the first, you know, he was made a big deal about how he was tearing down every protection at the border. And then we went through not just a few months, but several years, nearly an entire presidency of just a completely unregulated border that's mostly controlled by cartels in Mexico rather than any policy that we're doing. And

Trying to do this kind of, you know, big action right now, I don't think it really takes away the effects of these many millions of people who are here, who are in various communities where people have been dealing with it. So I know that he got some pretty favorable media coverage over it, but I don't know if that's going to really seep down with the voters who are so concerned about their day-to-day lives.

the day-to-day effects of living with his policy that he was so proud of and that he campaigned on and that he upheld. Hey, everyone. It is Ryan Seacrest here. Ready to heat up your summer vacation? Get ready. Things are about to get sizzling at Chumba Casino. Your summer getting a whole lot hotter with a special daily login bonus waiting just for you. So,

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One of the things that strikes me is that this is a problem of his own creation, and it's one that is not at all hard to show. All you need to do is take out some of his clips and take out, do a timeline. I could create an entire ad campaign around Joe Biden is the arsonist. Now he says he's going to put out the fire. Do you believe him? But then you've got the thing is that

This is a typical Biden policy, which is, I've so long said, and forgive me if I've said this to you before, my listeners are already groaning because they know what I'm going to say, which is that, but Joe Biden has a political superpower. He has an ability to figure out exactly where the center of Democratic Party political opinion is and occupy it.

And so this is Joe Biden's version of that, which is I need to keep friends on the left. I need to put people in the middle. So I'm going to land in the middle. I'm going to say the border can be open until 2,500 people a day cross. And that doesn't count the 1,500 people a day who are going through the ports of entry. And it doesn't count the people who are landing. So you've got a position where you can say, oh, but if you have that awful mean Trump, it would be even lower. So supposedly the left is going to like it.

And you can go to the people in the center and say, look, I'm getting it under control. And he thinks he can have it both ways. You're not buying that, are you?

Not in this case. I actually, you know, I was thinking it's funny, this superpower is just a good power for any politician to have, you know, see where people are, pick something in the middle and, you know, kind of keep your coalition together. More politicians should try that. In this case, though, it has been so, the situation is so dire and it has ranked so high on so many people's lists that people are actually pretty informed on what's gone on. They've been

keen to see the difference between what people say they'll do and what they actually do. And I just...

I think people who maybe haven't liked his border policy, but generally like him, yeah, that might be enough to keep them motivated enough to turn out the vote. But I think this is going to continue to be a major issue and one where not just Republicans, because they're kind of shaky in it, but Trump in particular really has the track record to say, I said I would do stuff. I did it. We all saw the results of that. And to be able to compare that side by side, it's going to be really difficult to

overcome those numbers in reality. Yeah. And then you've got the other parade of questions like what happens if a judge

and joins it, which, of course, the ACLU has already filed suit. And if Biden's own prediction of a couple of years ago, I can't do this because I don't have the legal authority to do it, actually comes true. You've kind of got, you can point to this, but it never came into being. And one has to ask, well, why didn't you actually try and reach agreement with Republicans as opposed to trying to force them to eat dog food that they didn't want to eat?

And all of these are easy points for Trump to make. And he has credibility on the issue. One of the things that I've noted over the last few years is that if you looked at polls during his administration, it was clear a majority of Americans didn't want the wall.

A majority, you know, super majorities of Democrats, majorities of independents did not want to finish the wall on Mexico. It's flipped. The Democrats still hate it. But the middle of America, the independents now want it. Why? Facts on the grounds have changed. And so you look and you say, this is a guy who can legitimately say, I had solved or really ameliorated the problem. I wanted to do something that would make it away forever. Guess who stood in my way? It's the man standing over there.

the man who and Trump will be Trump about it. But it's very rare when you have somebody who unmistakably has a clear record on the issue that is important and public opinion has moved in his direction. And I think that's a harder position for Biden to fight than on some of the other places where he's gone halfway. You know, like on Israel and Gaza, he's kind of trying to do the same thing. I'm for Israel before I was against it. And I'm for Palestinian state before I was in favor of Israel.

And that two step is not helping a lot, but it's not killing him either, because most of the people who support Israel unequivocally are already his opponents. But this is very different. Yeah. And if I can just say, though, on the Israel thing, I do think that's a challenge for Democrats and for Biden in particular, because their coalition involves people who are so at odds with each other on it.

If Israel is allowed to finish that war ahead of the election, however, I think that some of the problems that they're dealing with politically will go away with that. Could be wrong. I know you're hearing a lot of people saying they're not going to vote Democrat or support Biden because of this. But if that is resolved to a much higher level than it is right now, I could see it just not being a major issue for the election.

I think you're absolutely right. And then, you know, one has to ask the question, why hasn't Bibi taken the opportunity to finish the war when he did? And that is the question that we don't know. I mean, you've got people in his war cabinet, you know, who are briefing that, you know, they had wanted to move faster. It's Bibi who's standing in the way of actually doing this more quickly. Then you've got all of their domestic political calculations. You think America is...

beset by infighting and factions and so forth, try and hop a plane to Israel and find out what's going on over there. But I tend to agree with you. Also, the people who tend to really care about that, I think, will also really, really hate Donald Trump. And that's one of the questions. The next question, actually, is if you go back to eight years ago,

At this point, you had Hillary Clinton was unpopular. Donald Trump was unpopular. Trump trailed. But somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of Americans, depending on the polls, said they're either voting for third party candidates, which at that time really meant Jill Stein and Gary Johnson, or undecided. And what we saw 48 years ago was those numbers dropped throughout the summertime.

that Gary Johnson, when I was talking to libertarians at this point eight years ago, they were giddy. He was in double digits. Maybe we can get him over 15% and get him in the debate. Instead, it went the other way. So he was down to a little over 5% on the eve of the election. Jill Stein went from like two or three down to where she was barely over a point. As disaffected partisans came home to their party and said, well,

I may not like this person, but I know I dislike the other person more. Are we going to see that again this time, that right now you're seeing the same sort of thing? 15 or 20 percent of the people, depending on the poll, sometimes more, will say they're for one of the three candidates running against or undecided. No one's yet added Chase Oliver, the libertarian, so I think we're going to get a six-way poll soon. Are we going to see the same sort of thing, or is this...

more of a case where this time people really don't like both candidates and that maybe we're not going to see that sort of slippage. You have never really seen, you have not seen this level of dislike for the candidates offered by parties since the 2016 election. And it's worse now. You know, I don't know if people realize that the, that Joe Biden has

lower favorability ratings than Trump does. It's just, you know, people always think, oh, nobody likes Trump. It's like, well, people like Biden even less. And so you've got a lot of people who would love a different choice. And that's been true for a year.

If I can just hit a few different things here, though, with third parties in 2016, it wasn't that third parties had a huge role in the election, but they did play a role in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. You know, there are states that have cultures of accepting and encouraging third party voting. And I know the Clinton campaign very much thought that that's why they lost. And so Democrats worked really hard in 2020 to keep any third party entrance off the ballot. And

I think it'll be somewhat harder for them to do that this round, in part because the third parties are kind of wise to what Democrats were willing to do to keep them off the ballot. And I think that this is where you have this issue where there's like a realization on the right that people have a lot of practice of voting for someone that they don't entirely love. And I don't just mean by that with Trump. I mean that with pretty much everyone that has been put forth by Republicans for many years now.

Democrats don't have haven't exercised those muscles so much. And I think that the dissatisfaction and general embarrassment surrounding this failed Biden presidency does make them vulnerable to third parties. And again, in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, I do think that's something that they should be thinking about and figuring out how to handle. But, you know, who knows? So that brings me to the speculation du jour, which is

We are three weeks out, roughly, from the first debate. We have a Time magazine transcript of an interview with Joe Biden, which I have not read yet, but the first paragraph suggested that. Now, I have read Donald Trump transcripts before, and they are not necessarily a clarity and linear thinking. But Joe Biden certainly is, at least what I've read and what people who have read it further have said, was that he was not necessarily...

on the ball for this interview with some of America's top journalists. And one can imagine that maybe he won't be as on the ball

On June 27th, the fact is, whenever he's had one of these televised debates, he's managed to stick his marks, at least in the point of he visibly tires at the 60-minute mark, but he doesn't go off and offer word salads. He doesn't forget where he is. You know, he doesn't say that, you know, Beau was eaten by cannibals to mix two of his things that he often mixes up. So maybe it won't happen. But the speculation is we can't trust

this candidate to beat a man that we loathe. Do you think that if you were to ask me, I would say there's a 5% chance that Joe Biden decides I'm not going to do this, and he'll put it up as I've got to be there for Hunter, or I think I can do it, but I can't be so sure, the last few months have changed, or I definitely can do it, I think I could do it, but

you are not convinced and country above party, blah, blah, blah. Figure out which smoke screen he would blow out. But I think that's a 5% chance that he does it between now and when he has formally accepted the nomination in this pre-convention televised roll call that the Democrats are floating. What do you think? Do you think that that's just kind of like

The fever dream of frustrated political journalist who wants something to write about, but there's really nothing yet to write about other than the trench warfare of politics that we seem to be observing.

My own theory was that, and I say this as someone who shouldn't be listened to because I didn't really realize he was going to be able to secure that nomination so easily in 2020. But my own theory was that the idea was sort of that Biden would come in, he would serve enough time to be able to hand things over to his vice president, you know, after more than two years so that she could run for another two elections. And it would really like

solidified Democrat control of the White House for an era. And I don't think anyone anticipated that that would become not a possibility just because of Kamala Harris's limitations, intellectual or otherwise. And I also think that the inability to see a way out of this mess secures his position for him. And further, I'll just say, yeah, obviously he's not doing well and he's not

particularly sentient and all sorts of problems. But for not being that way, he sure seems to be getting a lot of what he wants. So there are a lot of Democrats who are just fine with this in terms of pushing the agenda the way it's going, as embarrassing as it is and as much of like a possible national security threat it is to have someone in his situation at the helm. So

I think in a saner world, you would have seen something to deal with this problem, but there really are limitations. Like, how do you get rid of him and get rid of his, like, business?

very embarrassing vice president. It's very difficult. So I don't see the way through it. I do think it's funny, though, that the Democrat party is much better at controlling outcomes than Republicans. Like you would sort of think that Republicans are this top down, you know, like more orderly kind of thing. They have no ability to control it when their grassroots rebels. Like they can try, but it just doesn't work. Democrats actually could make a change here pretty late in the game and fix things if like some miracle happens.

came to them for who to replace. Yeah, that's that is one thing is that because of the rules of the Democratic Party, virtually every delegate will have been either hand selected or cleared by the Biden campaign because nobody had the guts to stand up and take him on. Nobody has an appreciable number of delegates.

And so they don't have to worry about grassroots revolts in an uncontrollable election. They would just have to manage a grassroots reaction. And that's much different than Republicans who can try and manage it. But they have this annoying little thing called elections and people come out and vote. And we just start. We're recording this.

After the Tuesday Iowa primaries were two Republican incumbents who are not particularly problematic.

They're conservative enough. They don't have personal problems. 1-1 renomination 60-40 over somebody who raised less than $100,000, Randy Feenstra. And 1-1 renomination 56-44 over somebody who raised even less and was basically saying that Marion Miller Meeks is a rhino. Well, if Marion Miller Meeks is a rhino, maybe you are a rhino. There might be one thing where you have disagreed with somebody, Molly.

And if you are a rhino, then nobody is rhino, to paraphrase Syndrome from The Untouchables. But it's so you look at that and you say, yeah, you know, if this were the sort of thing where you'd have to go to an election, there could be a revolt on the left, probably would be a revolt on the left. But here.

It's a different thing. Can you manage the expectation, particularly when you can say the alternative is chaos and orange man coming back into the White House? But, yeah, managing Kamala's ambition is quite different than persuading Joe to step aside. And she would clearly want to go for the top slot herself. And that would be a messy battle.

And yet, if she wanted that, you would think that she would have done a much better job with the limited tasks that were given to her. Like, even from a PR standpoint or otherwise, she just has really squandered a great opportunity for her, I think. And I can't wait till we figure out what the real story is there about what caused this failure. She might have gone too far too fast, that this is a person who

had only one contested election in her life. It was when she ran for attorney general and

She was the DA of San Francisco, and she's run against the Republican DA of Los Angeles, and she barely won. But that's an attorney general's race where, frankly, the attention isn't all that great. And other than that, she's been in one party, San Francisco, or one party, California. She ran. She didn't even have a Republican run against her. The Republicans were so divided, she ran against another Democrat, Loretta Sanchez. She had a D on D battle. And she was only in the Senate for a couple of years before she launched her hat. She may simply be out of her depth.

at this point. But the problem is she put herself in a position. And it is strange that she doesn't seem to have the political news to get herself out of the position that she was in, kind of like Dan Quayle, who had a great career, a few years in the House, eight years in the Senate, looked good on television. And then you get him onto the vice presidential campaign and he

It seems like a giddy teenager. And then he gets in the White House and makes unscripted errors and then never figures out how to recover from that, which is, again, an indication that being a lifetime senator was probably a better choice for you than being a disgrace, you know, politically disgraced, not personally disgraced vice president. Maybe I will be that that's the lesson Kamala is learning as well.

Or maybe he learned the best lesson of all, which was just to get out of politics completely. Yeah, well, it's kind of like John Boehner. He's just enjoying kibitzing on the side and smoking and drinking and splitting time between Ohio and his, you know, Marco Island or whatever resort he lives on off of Florida Beach House. You know, or Paul Ryan's not living that type of life. But I think Paul's probably enjoying life out of politics a lot more than he enjoyed the last four or five years of him being in politics. Exactly.

So, Molly, let's jump forward a little bit. Trump's vice president. I'm not asking for the political impact because historically political impacts are pretty small of a vice presidential nominee. But you know a lot of the actors in this. You follow these sort of people. Turn off your dials and use the force. Who do you think he's going to pick and why? So,

I first off just want to say I, oddly enough, like don't really care. I thought the pick of Mike Pence was extremely good in 2016.

And I say that as someone who didn't like how Mike Pence handled the RFRA battles, the religious freedom battles of Indiana. So I'm not saying like personally I liked him, but I thought the problem that Trump had at that moment was shoring up the evangelical base. And Pence did a great job. His performance in that debate was wonderful, as it was in 2020, by the way. So

I think you just pick who you need to win. And I don't quite know what that means right now. And so I, you know, I kind of go back and forth with all sorts of people. I know people really want to lean into identity politics, but I don't actually think that's a great way to go for Republicans. It never, I actually just don't think it's as politically savvy as people, as people think you want to have a ticket that appeals to,

yes, to some of the constituencies that you're having trouble with. But that doesn't mean that it's like a one for one, you pick a suburban woman to get the suburban women vote. In fact, I would argue against that. But I just keep thinking of like the same few people. So I like Doug Burgum. He's one of the few people who ran for president who didn't look worse than

in the process and has been a really good and effective advocate. I think he could be better, but a good and effective advocate on media. He's got a lot of resources to bear. I think energy is going to be a big issue in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and he can speak to that. And he's establishment friendly in a way that helps unify the party, which is always

could be very good. I think there's a lot, you know, I keep hearing a lot about J.D. Vance. He's an incredibly bright individual who's very quick on his feet and is like in some ways a better advocate of America first principles than the president is. I like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, very good governor. And I like that she doesn't get distracted by media games and has a good track record. And it's just also someone I think people like.

I also like Kim Reynolds, the governor of Iowa. It would be a way of also unifying the party. She was a big supporter of Ron DeSantis. She's been a tremendous governor. She really cares about things that some Republicans like wonder if people care about anymore, like fiscal responsibility. And so I don't really care, but I kind of like those people, but I would be open to others as well.

Yeah, Kim Reynolds would be an interesting choice. I had thought that she would have been Ron DeSantis's pick. And before she endorsed DeSantis, when she gave the State of the Union address, I wrote a column for The Washington Post saying, watch this person. This person is clearly putting together the sort of resume that makes her a national figure. And I think that would be an interesting out of the box. I tend to...

People have asked me and I say, well, the names that are being bandied about are the names, you know, that it is not a giant misdirection. Then I've said, I think it'll be Tim Scott. Now, do I place more than 50 percent likelihood on that? Absolutely not. It's kind of like, you know, everybody below 50 percent. Who do I think has the highest percentage? But I've often thought, you know, if I were Trump, I would want to make news.

And there's two ways to make news. One is to pick somebody like a Tim Scott, the first black to be nominated, uh, first, uh, black Republican Senator since reconstruction in the South, first black to be nominated by Republican. I'm thinking, so that's news in some way. Um,

But of course, he didn't distinguish himself. You know, the reason Nikki Haley emerged was because she eviscerated him on the debate stage. Not once, not twice, but three times. And that's got to be something I worry about. But then I think, you know, if I were Trump, the way to make news is take somebody no one thinks. Because then you've got Trump's perverse delight in fooling and tricking the powers that be. And if he pulled Kim Reynolds out of his hat and said, see?

No grudges. She's just a great governor. Yeah, she should have endorsed me, but she's seen the error of her way. You can imagine Trump doing that. That makes news on a whole lot of levels. And she is not going to be Sarah Palin. She knows how to handle herself.

So my last question for you then, and this has to do with the future of conservatism, something that I'm sure you have thought about being in the Federalist as an entity, being in Fox as an entity in your long journalistic career. One of the things that struck me about a decade ago is that

As conservatism was celebrating its official 60th anniversary, intellectual conservatives tend to say the movement started when National Review was founded. There's hype to that, but there's enough truthiness there that we can adopt that that

I could not think of a single non-political party movement that had maintained a self-identified brand over six decades. That every other brand, Young America during the Lincoln-Douglas era, the first progressive movement of the 1910s, the liberals of the 1940s had stopped being identified as liberals by the 1990s. They had changed.

or the institutions that were important in 1940 were unimportant by 1990. And conservatism had done something no one else had done. And now we're coming up to the 70th anniversary of the founding of National Review. And, you know, what's been going on in one sense makes a sound car look organized. And what do you think? Is there going to be an identifiable movement conservatism that

in a second term of either Biden or Trump? Or are we finally seeing the dissolution of something that might have passed its political sell-by date to be replaced as liberalism was replaced by something else and progressivism has arisen, to be replaced by something else that may retain the name conservative for branding purposes but has little in common other than that?

I think one of the problems is, for branding purposes, I'm not sure how good of a term conservative is. And then you've got this fatal issue, which is, what are you conserving? So for a long time, people came together understanding that you were conserving America, conserving founding principles of America.

And the longer that progressivism takes root inside those institutions, you're less a conserving movement and more a counter-revolutionary movement. And so I think that's where you're seeing the tension with or the frustration with some of the stagnation that conservatism came to represent. We are talking right now on the 20th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's death.

And he was very formative for me as a kid growing up in California when he was president. And I still love that three-legged stool that he talked about. I know some people don't. But if you think of it as a coalition of people who care about strong foreign policy,

support for traditional values and limited government and free markets, those three sectors, I think there's still a lot left to do with that coalition.

It just seems it's more just become like the American, like people who like America and what America has stood for. It's something of a loss that we're reverting to that big picture thing, but there's also a strength there too. People who do still believe in freedom and God and borders and security. There's still got to be a movement to bring these

to help accomplish what these people want. And so as long as you're not doing that, like check mark thing,

conservatism, I think there are important days ahead. And looked at another way, all of the drama of the last 10 years has actually been very healthy for making people think through, what is it that I believe? What is it that I want to conserve? What do we need to reclaim? But the reclaiming is going to be a big part of any successful movement going forward, unless the just sort of boring, impotent, you know, conservatism that has been passed off as what people have to accept.

Well, and on that note, you see, I left it so that it's almost like a sequel, you know, to be continued. Same bad time, same bad channel. Molly, where can my listeners follow your work? Thank you. So The Federalist is the place where I spend almost all my time at TheFederalist.com, where we cover politics and policy and culture. And I write there as well. And on social media, I'm at MZHemingway.com.

And I'd love to have fun there. And that's Hemingway as in the author, just so that people can spell it correctly. The sun also rises on your social media. Molly, thank you for a delightful conversation. And I look forward to having you back. Thank you. With Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.

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The VA to me is the best employer as a federal agency or as an agency as a whole. It's the only place where I can practice clinical pharmacy to the top of my license. We help heroes every day. That's the best part. I like being here. This is the best place away from home where I like to be. My name is Melinda Matostoro and I am a clinical pharmacy practitioner here at the Mayaguez VA outpatient clinic in Puerto Rico.

Learn more at vacareers.va.gov. Sometimes the ads of the week are difficult to understand, and that's one of the reasons I put them up there, is to walk through the complexities that a particular ad maker uses or employs in order to make a complex message simple.

That's not really the case this time. You should be able to figure it out pretty quickly what this ad is trying to accomplish and why it might be effective. We're talking about an ad by North Carolina Democrats attacking the Republican nominee for governor, Mark Robinson. Let's listen. ♪

Let's say I was the governor and had a will and legislature, we could pass a bill that says you can't have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason. For me there is no compromise on abortion. It makes no difference to me why or how that child ended up in that womb. Abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers. It's about killing a child because you weren't responsible enough to keep your skirt down. It's not your body anymore.

Well, there you have it. It is straightforward. It features Mark Robinson's own words, his own voice, no narrator, no characterization. You get to listen and, since all of these are videos as well, see Mark Robinson saying things

that are clearly out of the mainstream. Now, I'm not talking about out of the mainstream in a narrow way. I mean way out of the mainstream. Polls generally show nationwide that people are pro-abortion rights if you're talking about the first trimester. Clearly, when Mark Robinson's talking about

No exceptions. He rules that out. But then you've got the question about the exceptions, the traditional three that even polls show a majority of pro-lifers agree with. And that is that abortion should be allowed in case of rape, incest, or saving the mother's life.

Mark Robinson seems to say no to all three of those. So what we're talking about is if you are somebody who's pro-life, but you support these exceptions, Mark Robinson is on the wrong side of your issue.

And then you've got the question of how he characterizes the reason for abortion. And this is the ending thing where he's looking presumably at his computer, maybe at his phone, and he says the reason you're in an abortion. And at first, I said you couldn't keep your skirt down. And that's just insulting. And there's going to be a lot of women, and I suggest a fair amount of men, who are going to say that's just bridges too far. And so the question is,

Not is this an effective ad, but who are we talking to?

It's clear, given the polarization in this country, that abortion is a mobilizing issue for Democrats. But Democrats are much stronger in North Carolina than they are in many other states. This is a state that Donald Trump only won by a point and a half. This is a state that Ted Budd won for Senate in '22 by only a couple points. And this is a state that has a Democratic governor right now. It is a state that, under the right circumstances, can elect.

a moderate to center-left Democrat to statewide office. And this is who the ad is aimed at. Not only is it going to serve to rally the Democratic voters who are 45 to 48 percent in a good election of the North Carolina electorate, but the moderate Trump voters, the sort of people who may not love Donald Trump, may even say they are pro-life, but are not

on the hard right. They are people who are on the soft right or in the center. And this ad is going to say, this guy's too much. This guy, Mark Robinson, is a step too far. He's not a step too far. He's three steps too far. And essentially what it is is a play to put together the Cooper Coalition, which is that 51, 52 percent that Democrats can win in good years or against weak candidates. I don't know if Mark Robinson is going to lose.

But the polls right now have him either slightly behind or tied. And he's going to face a drumbeat of these ads on television, on digital media, throughout the election. You can expect this to be one of many lines of attack that says you can be a Republican.

But he's just too far. Don't be surprised if by the fall we're seeing people who claim they are Republican voters, maybe even some local Republican officials, you know, like former county chairs of a rural county or something saying, you know, I've always voted for the party, but Mark Robinson's a step too far. The fact is, when you say things with enthusiasm and as frequently as Mark Robinson did in his pre-political or at least pre-nominee life,

that are out of the mainstream with super majorities of opinion, you're going to have a political problem. Mark Robinson may be able to dig himself out of this. It may very well be that in this environment, after four years of Joe Biden, that a majority of North Carolinians simply want somebody with the R behind their name. But the Democratic campaign against Robinson is going to do everything they can to make that not happen. This ad is an excellent example of that thrust, and that's why it's the ad of the week.

Well, that's it for this week. Next week, I'll be joined by J. Miles Coleman, who will give us an insight into the important Virginia congressional primaries. Until then, let's reach for the stars together as we journey to the polls. Hey, everyone. It is Ryan Seacrest here. Ready to heat up your summer vacation? Get ready. Things are about to get sizzling at Chumba Casino. Your summer getting a whole lot hotter with a special daily login bonus waiting just for you. So,

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