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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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I think this is an awful move on Trump's part.

Long form is Trump's kryptonite, Rogan doesn't like him. Unless Kamala does it too and does worse it's a net loss.

Rogan's viewers are largely Trump fans but - say what you will about them - they listen to these whole interviews and will downgrade their opinion on someone who exposes themselves and doesn't perform well.

Ride the McDonald's fries to the White House bro, this is not difficult.

All the podcasts I've seen him on have been great. Bryce DeChambeau probably the best, though that's not so much a podcast, but is unscripted. Theo aughn was also great.

I think his big weakness is speaking solo. He'll start with a script and then just ad-libs and sometimes it's gold and sometimes it's foot-in-mouth, but it's mostly just red meat riffs and people aren't going to stick around to see if there's any good stuff unless they already like him.

Long form is Trump's kryptonite,

I don't think this is true actually. He was the best I've ever heard him (not a high bar admittedly) when he was on the All In podcast.

He'll do great on Rogan, IMO, and likely charm the pants of Rogan as well which will create the feeling of an endorsement, even if we don't get an actual endorsement.

There is risk but…I think Trump generally comes across really well in long form interviews that aren’t overly adversarial because while he doesn’t go deep into topics his charisma shines through

Trump has been riding the podcast circuit recently (Theo Vaugh, Logan Paul, Andrew Schultz, Lex Friedman). They're all very, very soft, but he comes out looking decent from what I have seen. Rogan is usually a bit longer, but he is likewise in business of making his guests look good and to show them a good time. They'll probably have a lighthearted chat about things Rogan is interested in: corona, wokeness, men in womens sports, aliens, pot, veterans, the UFC. Rogan won't offer any pushback when Trump makes asides into how everything he did was the best ever; everything his critics do is the worst ever.

Trump's internal polling/perception of the state of the race might range from "We're fucked, throw a hail Mary" to "We've already won."

I also doubt Rogan is going on the attack. I've never seen him take a hard line with a guest outside of Covid stuff. They're going to bro out for five hours, maybe get in some cheap shots about trans kids, and call it a day.

Why would Trump have internal polling that is superior to Nate Silver or Polymarket?

Trump has the same data as the rest of us, but given it's Trump he probably has a delusional faith in his own chances. He's going on Joe Rogan not because of 4d chess, but because he likes to be maximally present to the public and Rogan has the biggest podcast.

It doesn't have to be superior to be what he believes.

In sports we've been seeing thirty years of coaches, even very objectively successful ones, believing totally irrational and disproven things that a Nate Silver running PECOTA could tell you.

They also have access to door to door canvasing data, which public polling rarely has.

The general mood in Republican spaces seems to be "our opponents' position is weak, time to press the attack" combined with concern over the possibility of some sort of last minute manuever by the Democrats/media to "fortify" the election. Sentiments like "Beat the cheat" being reasonably common.

This is an improvement over "Let's hope they keep a literal corpse in the race and cross our fingers" which seemed to be the approach a few months ago, so I get it.

In fairness, that strategy probably was working...right up until it wasn't.

You guys are still doing the "he wasn't ready for Kamala" thing?

I wouldn't quite call it "believable" even at the peak of the media offensive, but at least it's with all the media being on-message they managed to generate enough hype that I could see where that statement could come from. Now? Trying to frame Trump's strategy as hoping the decrepit Biden stays in the race is bizarre (not in the least because everybody sneering at the supposed strategy was swearing up and down that Biden is perfectly fine). Are you personally hyped up for Kamala? If not, what on Earth are you talking about?

I was personally just stating a hindsight assessment on what is now the old strategy, as the parent comment implied. Again, "let Biden self-destruct the Dem campaign" was actually kind of working, and Trump seemed to be somewhat dismayed at the switch.