Well, today, Donald Trump will celebrate his 78th birthday with
thousands of supporters in Florida.
That's according to Club 47's president
where the event is being held.
All 5000 tickets have been sold.
And the former president's opponent,
President Biden, is attending the G7 summit in Italy.
He met with Italy's Prime Minister earlier today,
and he is scheduled to meet with Pope Francis later
today.
So let's get into this with our political panel now.
Terry Sullivan is the CBS News political contributor and former
campaign manager for Marco Rubio's 2016 campaign.
CBS News political contributor Joel Payne is also with us.
He's the chief communications officer for Move On,
a progressive political action committee.
OK. So Donald Trump attended private meetings with House and
Senate Republicans yesterday at the Capitol.
He's celebrating his 70th birthday with his supporters in Florida.
And of course, you've been talking about his campaign events
to court black voters.
Terry, couple of things. One,
we were trying to figure this out.
If somebody had attacked you,
your wife,
your, the, the way you look,
the way your wife looks.
I mean, all things that Donald Trump has done
to his opponents and, and his critics.
I even if you saw him as a standard bearer
for the party,
would you sit there and clap and present him with
a birthday cake and sing happy birthday to him like
he's a five year?
I'm trying to understand like the supplicants of,
of, you know, it's one thing to say,
yes, he's the presumptive Republican nominee and it's quite another
to sit around the table with him and present him
with a cake like he's a like he's a child.
I'm trying to understand that.
Well, well, re Vlad reason
#372 on why I would not be a good candidate
for public office.
No, I wouldn't. But look,
we're, this is a A-Team sport.
Modern politics in America is a team sport.
And once your team decides who the captain of that
team is,
everybody gets behind them and you and you fight like
heck.
And so that's what the the party's doing.
Both parties have done it.
I think neither party is
is unilaterally excited about their nominee from every,
We see that very much on the Democrat side when
you've got leaders in the party saying they wish he
that Joe Biden hadn't run.
James Carville just the other day said he wish he
hadn't run,
but he since he is,
he's 100% behind him because it's a binary choice.
And so that's where we're at.
We're in a it's a binary choice.
And these elected officials have decided which one they're for,
wearing their same jersey and they're they're going to fight.
Can I just follow up,
Terry, because you make an excellent point about it being
a team sport.
And he's the leader of that team.
And so you're going to publicly get behind him and
cheer him on,
right? But you know, in team sports,
when you're in the locker rooms with your other players,
sometimes you talk some smack about the guy who's the
captain of the team.
Have you heard without naming names because you're well connected
in these circles,
that there are some who are you?
You sort of alluded to it that both Republicans and
Democrats are not necessarily happy with their choices.
But have you heard in in locker room chatter that
people are sort of sick of pretending that they actually
like the person who is the presumptive nominee?
You know, I've got friends on both sides of the
aisle and and I've heard it from both sides.
But but that's not anything surprising because that's how Americans
feel.
I mean, we see the poll after poll
where Americans are not necessarily excited about their choices as
a whole.
And so, but this is where we're at.
This is the process that that that got us here.
And so now we're we're going to dance to that
music.
And that's, that's all you can do,
whether you're excited about it or not.
So Joel, I got to sort of pivot over to
you and ask you the same same question.
You know, you've seen some of the polls and on
both supporters from both parties are a little sort of
lackluster about their choices.
And so I got to ask you if,
if, if, if Democratic voters are making kind of the
same compromise that we're seeing Republican supporters do.
Well, I do think there is a difference in the
enthusiasm gap that you talk about on both sides.
I mean, you know, there are Republicans who loathe Donald
Trump.
I don't know how many Democrats loathe Joe Biden there.
Democrats were concerned about Joe Biden,
but the loathing is a little bit different.
You know, one thing about that meeting that Donald Trump
did on Capitol Hill yesterday that I think is starting
to get some attention to some of his comments about
the city that Republicans are going to be holding their
convention in,
in Milwaukee. He trashed Milwaukee,
which is not exactly a good way to get the
red carpet rolled out for you going into a major
Midwestern city
of the largest city in the state.
That is key to your Midwestern battleground strategy,
going after black men calling their city a horrible city.
So I do think that
of some of the news that we saw come out
of that meeting yesterday,
I think that's going to have a long tail on
it.
And I think that you're starting to see Democrats and
the Biden campaign be really opportunistic there.
And I think you're going to hear a lot more
about it.
But look, the enthusiasm gap on both sides is going
to
continue to linger. I will say what you're noticing with
Biden is he is starting to consolidate that base because
as I've been saying for a long time,
his biggest challenge has been with core Democratic constituencies.
So leading up to the debate,
leading up to the kind of crystallizing of the fight,
I think you're starting to see Democrats come home.
Yeah. But, Joe, I got to say like,
you would think that with all the challenges that Donald
Trump has,
that Joe Biden would be leading by a bigger margin.
And he's not leading in any of the polls that
we're we're seeing now.
There's some, but really it's still kind of neck and
neck.
And in any other situation,
it wouldn't be. So that does tell you a little
bit about where voters are today and how they feel
about President Biden.
So as a Democrat, is that concerning?
I guess it just kind of depends on what your
default setting is.
My default setting is this is a very divided country,
red team, blue team. And I think people pick sides.
And even when people answer public opinion polling,
you can tell it's a ballot test,
like some of the questions that people will answer.
I don't even know if people always believe the things
that they're saying.
They just believe that they should be saying it.
So if you know that you're a Republican and Donald
Trump is your nominee,
you are going to do a lot to rationalize supporting
him.
And by the way, similar for Democrats,
right? If you believe that Joe Biden is going to
fight for the things that you care about,
you're going to rationalize supporting him,
even if there are some misgivings you might have.
And but but, but to answer your question at a
base level,
I just think we're in a 5050 country and the,
the fact that we have close elections,
that's just the reality that's been a reality for most
of my adult lifetime.
And I don't know if that's going to change anytime
soon.
I want to ask you a little bit,
Joel, about, you know, the Supreme Court
issued their first sort of abortion related ruling since overturning
Roe V Wade.
In this case, they voted or well,
they vote. They they determined that the group that was
bringing the case did not have standing.
The end result is that for Preston,
the abortion drug remains available.
But the Democratic Party has really been kind of leaning
into a lot of these issues,
whether it's abortion or, I don't know,
a mandatory minimum wage, these kind of
issues in order to bring people to the ballot box.
But sometimes I wonder if the voters are making the
connection between the issues that serve their best interests
and President Biden delivering.
Yeah, that's a good question.
I mean, look, Democrats historically have not voted on the
court.
That is a thing that Republicans have done
with a lot more clarity
in recent elections. I'm sure Terry has been a part
of making sure that some of his Republican candidates have
been able to take advantage of that in in recent
elections. But I do think that that is starting to
change.
I think Dobbs was a game changer because I think
it kind of brought the court to
people's real lives and not just Dobbs,
by the way, the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action,
you start to see Supreme Court justices Saber rattling about
challenges that could impact things like
interracial marriage and abortion medication.
And, and I'll say notable about the court's ruling.
And look, I'm not a legal scholar,
but they ruled against ruling on it because they said
that the plaintiffs had no standing.
They did not rule against like the idea
of limiting abortion pill access.
And I do think that's an important thing for Democrats
to highlight as they are trying to keep their base
engaged.
Because this court has made it very clear that precedent
does not really matter to them and that they will
go after precedent when they feel like it's politically opportunistic
because this is a very extreme right wing court.
That's just the reality. Donald Trump nominated three of these
justices.
This is a six, three Republican court.
And I think that is going to have to be
motivating for Democrats.
All right, Terry, Joel, great to talk to you guys.
Thank you.