CLAY: We are here because we’re starting to stack some dubs. I gotta be honest with you, Buck: When you think about CNN+ shutting down, losing $300 million, and you also then add in the fact that Elon Musk has bought Twitter, that the mask mandate has come plummeting down thanks to the judge in Florida, and that Joe Biden’s approval ratings continue to tank, all of those things are stacking up dubs for the good guys.
And the question you asked as we went to break, I think is one that is of paramount discussion and important. What should Twitter do with Donald Trump, what should Donald Trump do with Twitter, and how do we assess that impact? My theory, Buck — and I was sharing this yesterday — is I think that as part of his relationship with TRUTH Social that Trump has likely agreed that he — I don’t know this for certain so this is just my theory — that Trump has likely agreed that he will not rejoin Twitter.
And so I think that’s why he’s saying that he won’t rejoin Twitter, because he’s got a equity stake in TRUTH Social, and if you were investing in TRUTH Social, one of the clear land mines out there would be, “Well, what if Twitter invited you back? What are we buying as a part of your exclusivity?” I think they’ve got him exclusively. But I actually think Elon Musk should invite Donald Trump back on Twitter.
I think that would be the right call. I think Elon Musk taking over Twitter should make the opinion… Alex Berenson. Babylon Bee. I think he should wipe out all Twitter bannings and end the concept of, “We’re going to kick people off of Twitter for what they say,” in my opinion. And the question that is out there is, does Trump actually benefit from being off Twitter?
We’ve argued that the answer may well be yes because the people who are most likely to decide to embrace Donald Trump or not are — many of them are — suburban women, these swing voters. Maggie Haberman at the New York Times actually I think picked up on the argument that we’ve been making the past couple days ago. Here she is making it well.
HABERMAN: His people put out yesterday that he’s not gonna go back on Twitter even with Elon Musk buying it. Let’s see whether that holds true in a couple of months. I think it’s very hard for him… He has to say that because otherwise it craters that deal, from — the social media deal of his own from which he stands to make money. That thing’s not going well. I tend to assume what he wants is to be back on Twitter.
But look. I think that when you look at it politically, Republicans and Democrats will both tell you that Twitter did Donald Trump a favor and actually hurt Democrats by taking him off Twitter. He ceased to be a central player politically the same way, and you got less of a reminder daily of the things he’s willing to say. So let’s see where this goes.
BUCK: There is an indicator here, Clay, of — I think — truth in what she is saying, and that is the Daily News cycle the Democrats try to run are is, “January 6th, Trump, insurrection, Trump, white supremacy, Trump,” all the time. They keep trying to bring it back, and this is their game plan going into the midterms. To anyone who has even a little bit of objectivity, it feels pathetic and desperate, right? Donald Trump is not president, not even elected office.
The guy is playing golf, hanging out at Mar-a-Lago. You’ve seen him down there. I’ve seen him. He’s having a great time. He’s not in any way somebody who should be driving the left/the Democrat news cycle right now. But they created such a… I mean, CNN, for example, just became an anti-Trump network. It existed to oppose Donald Trump, which I think led very directly into the collapse of CNN+ ’cause —
CLAY: Yep.
BUCK: — what are they offering on their main channel right now, never mind with CNN+? So there is this possibility that it will reinvigorate, if you will, the left if Trump were on Twitter and saying things and they could say, “Oh, look at what he’s done here, look at what he’s done there.” That all said, if he runs again for president, there’s just no way he’s not gonna use it. I just don’t believe it. There’s no way he’s not gonna get back on Twitter. I just don’t believe that that would be possible.
CLAY: Here is what I would be doing if I advised Donald Trump associated with this. I would be putting the polling in front of him on a regular basis. This came out yesterday, Buck. Insider Advantage and the Harvard-Harris poll both polled Trump versus Biden head-to-head. Insider Advantage had Trump up four. General election Harvard-Harris had Trump up two.
By the way, all of this, if I’m sitting there and saying to Trump, “Look, you’re gonna win. Whoever the Republicans nominate in 2024, if Joe Biden truly runs, should win. The only way you don’t win is if the story shifts from ‘Biden is a disaster’ to, ‘Let’s talk about something other than Biden being a disaster.’” Elections should be a referendum when there is an incumbent or the incumbent in office or the incumbent party in office.
And I’m putting in front of Donald Trump, “Hey, things are going really well pow for you. You come on, you do an hour with Clay and Buck every now and then. You go do your Sean Hannity interviews. You hop on with friendly media. I look at the encouraging…” And when I say “friendly media,” I mean, people who don’t think that Donald Trump is the devil incarnate because a huge percentage of the media does.
I don’t think he gains by talking to those people. But I think those middle-of-the-road voters, they’re sitting around and they’re saying, “You know what? I may not have loved Trump,” these are the persuadable, middle of the road, “but he was nowhere near as bad as Biden is on every issue.” My concern is the Twitter makes the issue Trump again as opposed to Biden.
BUCK: Yeah. And you also have… There must be, I think, if Trump is gonna run for a second term, which it looks like he is – we, I don’t know yet; it’s a ways off, but — there’s gonna need to be people around him who say, “Okay. This time you already crushed the media. You brought CNN to its knees. It was highly interesting. It was amazing.”
CLAY: You broke them.
BUCK: “Now it’s time… Round two, assuming we get there, it’s not a circus anymore. It’s serious. Now is when the agenda gets implemented. Now is when the wall gets finished. Now is when the promises that are made are all promises kept,” ‘cause even Trump would say, “Look. It was supposed to have eight years,” right? No one thinks it all got done in four years.
But that shift from circus to seriousness — now, the media is, of course, gonna say insurrection. But I’m saying block that out for a second from what Trump and the people around him could do, a renewed sense of focus and a lack of distraction. Now, there are gonna be some people who will say they’re not confident, necessarily. That’s a shift that’s possible.
CLAY: Yep.
BUCK: We’ll have to see. But I do think that’s important and will be important going forward to bring back… Look, there were a lot of working-class voters that did not… Put aside the fraud and the cheating. Just if you look at the numbers, there were working-class voters in Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who didn’t turn out in 2020 the way they did in 2016. There were some problems here, and to address that properly the next time around us there needs to be a sense of focus, a sense of purpose, and pursuing the agenda and the mission and not just slapping around Joe Scarborough on Twitter for kicks.
CLAY: Yeah. And look, I think the question becomes, “Do you want to dominate, right? Or do you want to be sitting late at night worried about when those final ballots are gonna come in, right?” Because 2016, narrow victory; 2020, by the numbers, narrow loss. Basically, a hundred thousand, 150,000 vote swing. I really believe that Trump could dominate, especially in the Electoral College, in 2024, if he runs the campaign of, “Hey, I wasn’t perfect, but Biden is a disaster, and I will fix the mess that he created.”
That’s the message. That’s the message in a sentence. I’m big on, Buck, when I used to teach — I taught creative writing — back in the day at Vanderbilt in a different life. I’m big on if you can distill anything into a sentence, story in a sentence is huge. Trump’s story in a sentence is, to me, “I wasn’t perfect as president, but I was away better than Joe Biden, and I will fix everything that he’s gotten wrong.” That’s a landslide win.
BUCK: Yes.
CLAY: But if it’s Joe Biden saying, “I’m not perfect, but Donald Trump is gonna be tweeting like crazy and he’s not gonna let you sleep comfortably at night,” that’s a right on the periphery moment of in 2024 win or loss again.
BUCK: And obsessed with the 2020 election.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: This is the other thing. We’re really gonna talk about this. How do we move…? How do we become a Republican Party that can have a conversation about the leader of the party that is helpful going forward, that is not just always a cheering section? This is gonna be an issue. I worry about this. Yes, you have to address the concerns of 2020 for the next election, but there’s a difference between making sure that we work on election integrity and that people have full faith and a sense of accountability in the elections, and sounding like you’re complaining about it still.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: There’s a difference.
CLAY: It’s a great point.
BUCK: It might be subtle, but there is a difference in these things.
CLAY: And my hope is that 2022 is such a landslide that that puts 2020 in the background, and we start to focus on 2024. Because elections are about the future. They’re not typically about the past. All of these are gonna be big, monumentally important conversations to have.
BUCK: If Ron DeSantis can win in Florida, let’s say, by a few hundred thousand votes after winning by 40,000 votes?
CLAY: Thirty thousand. Yeah.
BUCK: It means that elections can have consequences and really good ones too. You want to run the table.
CLAY: Exactly right. ‘Cause I think there’s a good chance that Florida is the story coming out of 2022 and people are saying, “Holy cow. Florida went from a toss-up state for 20 years to one that’s firmly in the Republican camp now,” which would be potentially part of the monumental victory that Ron DeSantis could show in 2022.
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