2:00

the attack on the Capitol, it was 27%. Now

2:03

that's down to 14%. If

2:06

you ask the average Republican, January

2:08

6 was a peaceful protest. It's

2:11

time to move on. The prosecutions

2:13

of rioters have

2:16

been too harsh. Trump was

2:18

not responsible. And

2:20

the prosecutions of Trump himself

2:23

are a political witch hunt. From

2:28

the newsroom of the Washington Post, this

2:30

is Post Reports. I'm

2:32

Elahe Izzadi. It's Tuesday,

2:35

January 9th. Today,

2:37

how Republicans' feelings about Trump have

2:39

shifted and the Trump

2:41

campaign's strategy to secure a victory

2:43

in the primaries. Why

2:51

should we be paying attention to how

2:53

Americans views about the January 6th attack

2:55

have shifted or not shifted?

2:57

How is this relevant to 2024 and

2:59

the upcoming election? Because

3:03

when it happened, it could have been the end

3:06

for Trump and a lot of Republicans

3:08

thought it was and wanted it to

3:10

be, and that's obviously not

3:13

the case now because he is by

3:16

far leading in the polls

3:18

to be the nominee again.

3:20

So how could the president who

3:23

to a large extent left

3:25

office isolated and disgraced

3:29

come back to be

3:32

the nominee again? That's

3:34

interesting to me. So first,

3:36

before we continue, I do want to

3:38

understand how Trump is leading in the

3:40

GOP polls and whether that

3:43

has shifted. Was that always the case? Because

3:45

it felt like for a while there, especially

3:47

I'm thinking about the 2022 midterms,

3:50

that he wasn't doing as well among

3:52

Republican voters. So where does he stand

3:54

now and how has that evolved? Yeah,

3:56

so there were sort of two near-death

3:59

experiences. for Trump's

4:01

political career. Right after

4:03

January 6th, kind of disappears

4:05

for a while. Goes to

4:07

Mar-a-Lago, skips the inauguration, basically

4:10

no staff, basically no public

4:12

appearances, really isolated,

4:14

really angry. And

4:17

there's a rehabilitation, the

4:19

political rehabilitation there that

4:21

brings him back to have a dominant

4:24

role in the midterms. And

4:26

then, again, when the midterms

4:28

don't go well for Republicans,

4:30

and a lot of people blame

4:32

Trump for that, that's another moment

4:34

of political weakness where Republicans were

4:36

saying, enough of this guy. Like,

4:39

he's toxic, there's no way that if he's

4:41

our nominee, that he's gonna succeed. Right,

4:44

and pinning their hopes on Ron DeSantis

4:46

instead. But that again

4:48

didn't last, and he managed to

4:50

recover from that and

4:52

become the favorite as we were

4:55

heading into the first nominating contest

4:57

this month. So,

5:05

views about January 6th, it also is

5:07

prompting me to wonder how

5:09

Republicans feel about the legitimacy of the

5:11

2020 election, because those two

5:14

issues are hand in hand in some

5:16

ways. So, what did this Washington Post

5:18

poll find about

5:20

how Republican voters feel

5:22

about the legitimacy of the 2020 election? Has

5:25

that changed? Do they now have more doubt

5:27

about it than they did previously?

5:31

Yes, those views have

5:33

hardened, those doubts have

5:36

spread, and that goes hand in

5:38

hand with Trump's comeback,

5:40

because you couldn't have

5:43

Trump where he is in

5:45

the polls if you didn't have Republicans

5:47

buying what he's saying in every speech

5:49

about how the election was rigged.

5:52

Yeah, and we should say there is no evidence

5:55

at all that shows the 2020 election was

5:57

rigged. How do voters, when they

5:59

hear that, hear these pieces

6:02

of evidence when they hear this, how do

6:04

they respond? What is their thinking? How

6:07

do they contend with this? Probably

6:09

the answer I most often hear is

6:11

there's no way that Biden really got

6:13

78 million votes. I

6:16

don't know anyone who voted for Joe Biden.

6:19

The details don't really matter. They're

6:21

always changing. It's

6:24

kind of non-falsifiable in that sense.

6:27

You can debunk as many of

6:29

the specific allegations as you want

6:31

and there'll be more specific allegations

6:34

that come up because it's not

6:37

about the details. It's about

6:39

the feeling that this

6:41

wasn't what was supposed to happen. Isaac,

6:44

I want to understand how Trump managed to pull

6:46

that off. How did he go from seeming weak

6:48

to now

6:53

being the favorite, essentially, and being

6:55

in this very strong position, heading

6:57

into these early primary states? So

7:00

a few factors. One

7:03

is that his campaign found

7:05

a sweet spot. They called it the

7:07

right amount of Trump, which

7:09

was reminding Republican voters

7:12

what they liked about him, seeing

7:15

him projecting leadership

7:18

and being charismatic and

7:20

not seeing too much

7:22

of him overexposed. It's like such

7:25

a thing about being in media, right? Well, and

7:27

it's a funny thing because he still

7:29

did totally crowd out the other Republicans

7:31

in terms of how much media coverage

7:34

he got. So

7:36

first it was in that initial

7:38

period trying to calibrate his exposure,

7:41

kind of giving Republicans a chance

7:43

to forget why they were mad about him and

7:46

remember why they liked him. And

7:49

the final thing that we have to

7:51

mention is the indictments. A Georgia case

7:53

marking the fourth indictment of the ex-president

7:56

since the end of March, two federal

7:58

cases and two state prosecutions

8:00

Mr. Trump denying the

8:02

latest accusations and blasting

8:04

which had the

8:06

effect of totally

8:09

taking all the oxygen away from all

8:11

the other candidates pressuring

8:13

other Republicans including his rivals for

8:15

the nomination to come to his

8:17

defense and so I think it's

8:20

an example of

8:22

this criminalization of politics

8:25

I don't think that this is something that

8:27

that's good for the country if Donald Trump's

8:29

the nominee yes I will support him and

8:31

if I'm the president yes I will pardon

8:33

him because that will help reunite the country

8:35

and also causing a

8:37

lot of Republican primary voters to

8:41

want to support him because

8:43

they viewed the indictments as

8:46

wrong that's

8:53

pretty fascinating to me that these indictments

8:55

which it sounds like what you're saying is this

8:58

is helping him politically by galvanizing this

9:00

that you know he's the first former

9:02

president to be facing criminal charges he's

9:05

been indicted in four different cases how

9:08

did these indictments actually help him among

9:10

his base well in the primary so

9:13

we have to be clear you know it

9:15

could be totally different in the general we

9:17

really don't know if the trials are gonna

9:19

happen we don't know if he's gonna be

9:21

convicted so you know not speaking about how

9:23

this plays in the general with swing voters

9:25

and independents but just focusing on Republicans it's

9:28

clear that his

9:30

campaign successfully positioned

9:32

the prosecutions

9:36

as a continuation of the investigations and

9:38

the impeachments from his presidency and

9:40

I don't like that and you don't

9:42

like that either Biden

9:44

and his protectors know he cannot

9:46

win this race any other way

9:48

so now they're trying something that

9:51

hasn't been tried in this country

9:53

election interference they rigged the presidential election

9:56

of 2020 we're not going

9:59

to allow them to rig the

10:01

presidential election of 2024. And

10:06

voters bought in when Trump

10:09

says, they're not coming after

10:11

me, they're coming after you, I'm being indicted

10:13

for you, they really accept that.

10:16

I think hearing you describe this, it almost

10:19

feels like a throwback to a prior moment

10:21

in time. But it's remarkable

10:23

because there was a year or two where it felt

10:25

like perhaps Republican voters moved

10:27

on. And I wonder how much of that

10:29

had to do with this question of electability

10:32

in a general election, that

10:34

maybe they feel like the

10:36

2020 election wasn't legitimate and

10:40

Trump is being targeted with these

10:43

indictments, but we have to be

10:45

real and who's gonna fare best

10:47

in a general election? How

10:50

is the question of electability figuring into

10:52

people's minds right now? Well,

10:55

I don't think you saw Republican voters moving on.

10:57

I mean, I think one of the clear messages

10:59

from the midterms was that the

11:01

general electorate didn't like that

11:03

stuff. Independence didn't like

11:05

that stuff, swing voters didn't like that stuff.

11:08

But if you look at who Republicans nominated,

11:11

election deniers, electability was

11:13

not the main concern for them. Now,

11:16

a lot of Republican strategists

11:18

and some Republican politicians looked

11:21

at that coming out of the midterms and said,

11:23

okay, so we've got a Trump problem, we've got

11:25

an election denial problem. We

11:28

need to cut that out. But is the base

11:30

taking that lesson away? Well, I

11:33

mean, that's kind of the only

11:35

thing that Ron DeSantis and Nikki

11:37

Haley and some of these outside groups

11:39

that are opposing Trump, that electability

11:41

question is kind of the only thing

11:44

that they try. Republicans have lost

11:46

the last seven out of eight popular

11:48

votes for president. That is nothing to

11:50

be pulled up. We should wanna win

11:52

the majority of Americans. But

11:54

the only way we're gonna do that is

11:57

if we leave the negativity and the baggage

11:59

behind. And we go

12:01

towards a new generational leader.

12:05

Because when they do the research about

12:07

like, well, can you attack Trump for

12:09

being soft on crime? Can you attack

12:11

Trump for supporting the vaccines? Can you

12:13

attack Trump for not falling through, building

12:15

the wall? None of that stuff worked.

12:17

And it actually backfired. Even

12:19

if you just like said, you know,

12:21

Trump has this position and candidate X

12:24

holds this position, it was

12:26

worse for candidate X because the voters in

12:28

the focus group thought that that was an

12:30

implicit attack on Trump. Oh, wow. So

12:32

like the only message that kind of

12:35

worked was, you know,

12:37

too much drama. Can he win?

12:39

Do we need to move on?

12:42

And so that's what you've seen them all

12:44

trying. And I mean, Doesn't

12:48

seem to be working. Well, not with the people who

12:50

like the drama, not with the people

12:52

who still really like what he did

12:54

as president and still really like him

12:57

personally. Including personality,

13:01

but, you know, Republican

13:03

primary voters have not shown themselves

13:05

to prioritize electability the way the

13:07

Democrats have. After

13:14

the break, Isaac explains how the

13:16

tactics and theme of Trump's campaign come

13:18

down to one word, revenge.

13:22

We'll be right back. So,

13:40

Isaac, we've talked about how Trump has reignited

13:42

his base, but what I want to understand

13:44

more about is how the Trump campaign sort

13:46

of behind the scenes, the mechanics of how

13:48

all of this works, how they've

13:51

been able to take more

13:53

control of the Republican primary nomination process

13:55

on a broader scale. So can you

13:57

walk me through some of the features?

14:00

of what they're doing. Yeah,

14:02

this is not your 2016 Trump campaign where

14:06

it was a lot of people who couldn't

14:09

get a job with other candidates and

14:11

didn't have a lot of experience and

14:13

were constantly fighting among themselves and stabbing

14:16

each other in the back and leaking.

14:18

This is a much more disciplined and

14:20

professional operation than he's had in the

14:22

past. They have been able

14:25

to accomplish a lot of kind of

14:27

inside baseball. Like the boring stuff, the

14:29

rules, and how all this stuff works, but

14:31

actually very consequential. Yeah, exactly. The

14:35

way that you become the nominee is you

14:37

get a majority of the delegates at

14:39

the Republican National Convention. So

14:42

they went around to the different

14:44

states as they were

14:46

setting their rules for how the delegates

14:48

are chosen. And they did stuff like

14:51

in Louisiana, Trump had a problem where

14:53

he actually won the primary. But the

14:55

literal people who were the delegates in

14:57

Louisiana were not Trump people. And so

14:59

he didn't win a majority of the

15:01

delegates. And so this time they went in

15:03

and they made sure that the

15:05

people who get chosen as delegates are gonna

15:08

be Trump loyal people. And then

15:10

there were other states like Massachusetts or

15:12

California where they made the rule so

15:14

that if any candidate gets more

15:17

than 60% in the primary, they're gonna

15:19

get all the delegates, which

15:21

particularly in California, that's 14% of

15:24

the delegates you need. So

15:26

that's a huge prize and Trump realistically is the

15:28

only candidate who can do that. You

15:30

know, you talked about how this Trump campaign

15:32

operation is very different than ones in the

15:35

past because of its level of discipline. What

15:38

about the themes and messages that

15:40

his campaign and Trump himself is,

15:43

that they're pushing now, how does that compare to

15:45

previous campaigns? Revenge.

15:50

I mean- Revenge 2024. I

15:52

mean, he's quite explicit about that. In

15:54

2016, I declared, I am

15:57

your voice. Today I add,

16:00

I am your warrior, I am your

16:02

justice, and for those who

16:04

have been wronged and betrayed, I

16:07

am your retribution, I am your retribution.

16:11

And this is how so much

16:13

of the campaign is actually

16:15

about defending himself from these

16:17

prosecutions and this idea that

16:19

the Biden presidency was illegitimate and that the

16:21

White House was wrongly taken from them and

16:24

they're going to get it back. They're

16:27

going to change everything back to the way it

16:29

was when Trump was president and

16:31

they're going to punish all the people

16:33

who took it away. I will fire

16:35

the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who

16:38

have weaponized our justice system like

16:40

it has never been weaponized before.

16:42

Sick, these are sick people. I

16:46

mean, beyond rhetoric, do you have any sense

16:48

or has your reporting shown any sense of

16:50

how that could all become a reality?

16:53

It's absolutely not rhetoric. I mean, there are

16:55

people not so much in the campaign itself

16:57

because the campaign is very small, but people

16:59

who are in touch with the campaign, people

17:02

who would be very likely would

17:04

become officials in

17:06

a second Trump White House who are

17:08

in the process of putting pen to

17:10

paper. They would use

17:13

the Justice Department to go after

17:15

Trump's critics and political

17:17

opponents. They could

17:20

invoke the Insurrection Act on his first

17:22

day on Inauguration Day, which

17:25

would empower him to deploy the

17:27

military against protests. He's

17:30

talking about deploying the military

17:32

as well to assist in

17:35

a deportation operation that he

17:37

describes as would be the

17:39

largest in history on

17:41

a scale that we've never seen of detaining

17:44

and removing immigrants. Isaac,

17:56

I mean, just stepping back and thinking about

17:58

all of this. you know, this sort

18:02

of messaging, rhetoric and

18:04

approach, it's helping

18:06

Trump right now. Lead in the polls,

18:08

it could lead to him being the

18:10

nominee. How will

18:12

this all play, if in fact he is

18:14

the nominee, in a general election? Could this

18:17

all kind of come back and make it

18:19

even harder for him to win against, let's

18:21

say, President Biden? That's the bet

18:23

that the Biden campaign is making. And

18:25

we got a real sense of that

18:27

on Friday in the speech that Biden

18:29

gave in Pennsylvania. His first rally for

18:31

the 2024 campaign opened

18:34

with a choir of

18:36

January 6th insurrectionists singing

18:39

from prison on a cell phone,

18:42

while images of the January 6th riot

18:45

played on a big screen behind him

18:47

at his rally. Can

18:49

you believe that? This is

18:52

like something out of a fairy tale, a

18:54

bad fairy tale. Where he

18:57

tried to frame this race as

19:00

a choice between democracy and

19:02

authoritarianism. And he was

19:04

calling Trump out very clearly as

19:07

what he views as a threat to

19:09

democracy, a threat to freedom, even

19:12

pointing out the ways that Trump has been

19:14

using language that is very close

19:18

to what we've heard from authoritarians

19:20

in the past. This

19:29

year is just gonna be so

19:31

unpredictable. The overlap between

19:33

the campaign calendar and

19:36

the court proceedings.

19:38

Currently, the federal trial over

19:40

Trump's efforts to overturn the election is

19:43

scheduled to start the day before Super

19:45

Tuesday. But it's

19:47

on hold currently because first

19:50

the DC circuit and then almost certainly the

19:52

Supreme Court will have to review Trump's claim

19:54

that he's immune from prosecution for actions as

19:56

president. So like, we

19:59

don't know if that's gonna. to happen, when that's going

20:01

to happen, what that's going to look like. He's

20:04

going to be flying back and forth

20:06

between the courthouse and a campaign trail

20:08

or just coming out to the microphones

20:10

at the court to make it a

20:12

campaign stop. Like it's just, we've

20:14

never seen anything like this. Isaac,

20:18

thank you so much for joining us today. Isaac

20:32

Arnzdorf is a national political reporter for The

20:34

Post. His new book is

20:36

called Finish What We Started, the MAGA

20:38

Movement's Ground War to End Democracy. It

20:41

comes out in April. That's it

20:43

for Post Reports. Thanks for listening.

20:46

Today's show was produced by Arjun Singh.

20:49

It was mixed by Rennie Sfarnowski and

20:51

edited by Lucy Perkins, thanks

20:53

to Emma Talcoth. If

20:56

you love our show, help other people discover

20:58

it by leaving a rating on Spotify or

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a rating and review on Apple

21:03

Podcasts. We really appreciate it. I'm

21:06

L.I.A. Z