Voters owe him. republican voters often say they like that mr. trump is a fighter but for whom is he fighting? them or himself? your thoughts on that, david. yeah, i couldn t agree more. this is a real problem for donald trump. he really made a name for himself in the debates in 2016. now he is falling on complacency. he is afraid he will be challenged. he is stepping down from the debate. i think that s when you see politicians at their weakest point. when they think they are so popular they don t have to go to the rubber chicken dinners or shake everyone s hands or court the voters like they did and where you see a politician peak and they start to come down. i think it s a real miscalculation for donald trump not to show up. of course the rose garden strategy every politician wants to do. it is easy. you have to do the hard work particularly for an incumbent
There. entree portion. i think you re right. i think there are entree portions now being served. rubber chicken dinners. president speaks tonight, i think peter alexander there. president biden speaks tonight at a really interesting time. there is a war in ukraine. there is a pandemic the united states is coming out. it a delicate moment. presidents have come to this dinner and told jokes in delicate moments before secretary of state antony blinken there. i want to play a moment from 2004. this is george w. bush after the invasion and occupation of iraq, listen. those weapons of mass destruction got to be somewhere. nope, no weapons over there. [ laughter ] maybe under here. so there is laughter in the room but later that was severely
Look who has got the fund-raising and the enthusiasm, who will go out to those early states and do those rubber chicken dinners and bun shoe ledger. that matters. look at those factors and who will actually win against donald trump and kind take your feelings out of it and look at the strongest to take on the gop. maria, when you look at that list, biden 32%. o rourke at 11%. your thoughts. well, i think, first of all is biden your guy, essentially, at this point? look at those numbers. sure. but, you know, let s be realistic. a poll about 2020 in december of 2018 is all about name recognition. so, of course, biden is going to be at the top of the list. plus he is very well liked. and he is not in he is not in yet. so i think what all of this means is not really anything at this point. but i agree with everything that
Going to be an enormous amount of controversy as he starts down this what about the speech himself? he tweeted out a picture of himself writing his speech. a lot of people said there s nothing on that paper. i talked to him early in december down at mar-a-lago and he made it very clear he wanted to write it and keep the draft of it. he didn t like the ytd that people were going to be ghost writing it for him. i think maybe because he s being beat up so much as being a nonintellectual, jokes of him writing wit a crayon and the like. i think he said i can do this and i ll do the first draft. he also said he wants to keep it pretty short. he said people don t need to stand out and listen to long, boring, winded speeches. he said my long career of going to rubber chicken dinners and things, i never heard anybody say, god, i wish that speech was longer. he s right about that. anybody disagree? go ten, it should be five.
Outsiders at this stage or here to stay? i think there s an overriding sentiment from most people and the republican party who aren t rich and don t call bundlers, don t raise a lot of money for candidates. we have people trying to get bay by. most of them have seems that government works for a few and has hailed in a whole host of areas and whole host of ways. and they are so frustrated at this point that after republican administrations, democrat administrations, they re lives haven t gotten any easier, any better, and seems like america is losing ground in the world. they re throwing their hands up and saying, i ll take anyone who is not tainted by either all the big money in politics, special interests, lobbyists, or a career of having to bootlick lobbyists or run back and forth the rubber chicken dinners. so there s a sense of utter failure, establishment