NICK: Hi. My name is Nick, calling from West Hartford, Conn. I'm currently gearing up for my last day of work before heading out on vacation with my wife to celebrate our 10th anniversary...
SUSAN DAVIS, HOST:
Oh.
NICK: ...And go to Wilco's Solid Sound Festival in the Berkshires. This podcast was recorded at...
DAVIS: 1:07 P.M. on Friday, June 21.
NICK: Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'm always in love. Yes, that is a Wilco reference.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIG TOP ORCHESTRA'S "TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)")
DAVIS: The Berkshires sound like a lovely place to spend an anniversary.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: And Wilco is the most millennial-coded thing I've heard in a while. Good job, man (laughter).
DAVIS: Hey, there. It's the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.
ASMA KHALID, BYLINE: I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.
KURTZLEBEN: And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the presidential campaign.
DAVIS: And today, we look ahead to the first presidential debate between President Biden and former President Trump. It's next Thursday in Atlanta, and it's being hosted by CNN. Asma, let's start with talking about the debate itself. It's going to look and feel a lot different than most Americans are used to seeing on the debate stage.
KHALID: That's right. This is an unusual format, in part because this isn't being conducted by the Commission on Presidential Debates. Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden agreed to two debates. This is the first one being hosted by CNN. CNN has said that they will mute the mics when a candidate is not speaking. And the reason this is noteworthy, Sue, is if anybody remembers watching the first debate between Trump and Biden in the fall of 2020, there was so much crosstalk.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I'm not going to answer the question because...
DONALD TRUMP: Why wouldn't you answer that question?
BIDEN: Because the question is...
TRUMP: You want to put a lot of new Supreme Court justices...
BIDEN: The question is...
TRUMP: Radical left.
BIDEN: The question - will you shut up, man?
TRUMP: Who is your - listen...
KHALID: So this time around, the mics, we are told, will be muted. The other interesting nugget here is that there will be no live audience. And, you know, for most of recent history, there have been live audiences at presidential debates. So I think this changes the format for both candidates. As we know, Trump loves an audience and loves a crowd.
DAVIS: It certainly is a more somber environment. And also, there will be commercials.
KHALID: Totally. There will be commercials, which - you know, much has been said about this being the two oldest candidates. They'll both get a bit of a break. We're told that there will be two commercials during this 90-minute debate.
DAVIS: And Asma, we're going to talk about a lot of the dynamics around this debate, but it's also important to remember that these are two presidential candidates who have already met on the debate stage. It's sort of like two boxers getting back in the ring together. They know how the other one fights.
KHALID: You know, that's right. They did meet before. But, Sue, I will say, I think the dynamics are a bit different this time around, in major part because it is Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, who's the sitting president in the Oval Office.
And I spoke to a number of people for a story I reported, and they all said that incumbent presidents are at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to their first debate for a variety of reasons, but one just being the fact of time. They don't have as much time to prepare. But also 'cause they haven't been as battle-tested as their opponent usually is.
I talked to Jim Messina about this. He ran Barack Obama's 2012 reelection bid, and some of y'all might remember that Obama had a really rocky first debate against Mitt Romney, and, you know, here was his advice to Biden.
JIM MESSINA: You don't want to spend all of your time defending your own record. You know, that's really what happened to President Obama and his first debate.
KURTZLEBEN: If you're the challenger in one of these debates, you can - you have the very easy weapon of simply pointing to the incumbent and saying, hey, is anything wrong in your life? Well, this guy's president, and so maybe it's his problem. Maybe I can do better. I mean, you're really just presenting this counterfactual. Now, the really odd thing that's happening in this debate, though, that's super complicating is that Trump was president, way back when.
DAVIS: Yeah.
KURTZLEBEN: So then they both have records to attempt to defend. It's just that Biden's is current and in more recent memory therefore.
DAVIS: Donald Trump specifically and the Republican Party more broadly has spent the past four years attacking Joe Biden's mental capacity and suggesting that he doesn't have what it takes to be president. And in some ways, they have set a very low bar for Joe Biden to just be able to come out, and if he looks and sounds presidential, it will kind of refute that criticism that they have been lobbying at him this whole campaign.
KHALID: Alan Schroeder told me that there's some risk to that strategy. He's this professor who's kind of an expert on presidential debates. He's written about the history of many, many presidential debates. And, you know, he says that the idea of setting such a low bar for Biden - it creates this contrast where, like, if he clears it, then maybe he comes off looking better.
ALAN SCHROEDER: On the other hand, any sort of gaff, any mental lapse, any misstatement, I think, will be seized on both by the Trump campaign but also by the political media.
KHALID: I will bet you that there will be clips of this debate cut apart and going on social media platforms, you know, that show one narrative or the other. So I don't think Trump has loads of room for error either here.
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah. The Trump camp has really been very aggressive in portraying Trump as just raring to go, as not scared, not cowed, he - that he wants to come out and do this. One interesting thing that's been happening at several rallies that I've been to is the press comes, the - we all sit at these tables behind the crowd.
And before the speech starts, one of his press aides will come around and hand out printouts to each of us of this one post that Trump put on Truth Social. And it's a post that says, I'll debate Biden anytime, anywhere, anyplace. And, like, they just - they really have been trying to emphasize that, that Trump wanted to debate so badly. Well, now he's getting it.
And the funny thing is that now he also, on a podcast called the "All-In Podcast" just yesterday, seemed to maybe not backpedal but at least soften his rhetoric toward Joe Biden by acknowledging that he has been a good debater in the past. Here he is talking about how Biden performed in 2012 against then-VP nominee Paul Ryan.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: Well, all I can say is this - I watched him with Paul Ryan, and he destroyed Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan with the water - he was chugging water out of left and right. I didn't think a human being would be able to drink so much water at one time. And he beat Paul Ryan, so I'm not underestimating him.
KURTZLEBEN: And he went on a bit later to say that he thinks that Biden is a worthy opponent. Now, this is, of course, a classic Trump because he also has to get in a dig at an establishment Republican in the process. But flat-out saying he's not underestimating Biden, despite the fact that he constantly says that Biden is too old and is washed up.
DAVIS: Do you have a sense of how the president is preparing for the debate, Asma?
KHALID: He's out in Camp David, and the reason they're trying to do that is it's just secluded, and it gives him a chance to really focus on this. You know, he took a couple of international trips recently. He's also had to deal with the trial and conviction of his son, so he hasn't had as much time to prep for this debate as he did four years ago.
DAVIS: Danielle, I also think this debate is going to be interesting because Donald Trump didn't really participate in the Republican primary, right? He...
KURTZLEBEN: Right.
DAVIS: ...Ran as the front-runner. He didn't participate in any of those debates. He's been continuing to have rallies. He's running a really base focus campaign effort. But the debates tend to really be focused towards November, towards a broader general electorate. And Donald Trump hasn't seemed all that interested in trying to appeal to the middle so far. So I'm really curious to see how he performs. This is almost, like, the first chance to pivot towards the center so far in the 2024 presidential campaign.
KURTZLEBEN: Right. Yeah. And to your point about him not having participated in the primary debates, yeah, that's right. And usually at this point, if you've been through a primary, you kind of have your debate skills honed at this point, but he didn't do that. So we'll see if that matters. Now, as far as his prep, we haven't heard a lot from the Trump campaign, but here's a statement that campaign aide Jason Miller sent to our colleague Franco Ordoñez. He said, President Trump takes on numerous tough interviews every single week and delivers lengthy rally speeches while standing, demonstrating elite stamina. So, again, classic Trump in terms of...
DAVIS: He don't need no stinking prep.
KURTZLEBEN: Well, yes, absolutely. Just, like, I'm that good, and I am that much better than Biden that I don't need to practice. I mean, who knows what exactly Trump really is doing behind the scenes? But this is at least the...
DAVIS: What he's projecting.
KURTZLEBEN: This is at least the story that they're telling, right? And, no, I'm going to be very interested in what kind of a general election message Trump attempts to tell in this debate, especially on top - on the topic of abortion because you know that that is the topic that Biden will hit him on very hard or at least a topic he will hit him on very hard and a topic that Democrats, as we said in yesterday's pod, are putting all of their muscle behind. And that could really shake loose quite a few moderate-ish voters.
DAVIS: All right, let's take a break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about men in politics.
We're back. And, Danielle, I know when we're talking gender politics, you have a lot to say. More often than not, when we are talking about these gender stories, we're talking about women. But you've been spending some time reporting about male politics in this selection. What you got?
KURTZLEBEN: So let me start with some numbers here. I did a search in this database we have at NPR of all of our coverage over the past 50-plus years. And I searched for two different things. First, I searched for stories that contain the phrases men voters or male voters, and I got 135 stories. And then I searched for women voters or female voters, and I got 1,435 stories.
DAVIS: Wow.
KHALID: Oh, wow.
KURTZLEBEN: Somewhere around 10-to-1. And, look, there is a good reason for this. I'm certainly not trying to make any normative arguments here on that kind of imbalance - right? - because women have been, for a long time, vastly underrepresented at near every level of American government. But what tends to happen in doing that is treating men as the default, as if men aren't appealed to on the basis of their gender or on the basis...
DAVIS: Sure.
KURTZLEBEN: ...Of particular issues. And so that's kind of what I'm trying to get at.
DAVIS: Well, it also makes so much sense in the era of Trump because he is someone who has made sort of masculinity and strong men central to both his brand and his political appeals.
KURTZLEBEN: Right.
DAVIS: And it does seem to have had some measure of success with men in this country.
KURTZLEBEN: To some degree, yes. I mean, there's a caveat here that I know that both of you know from years of covering politics. You never know exactly what it is that wins voters over. But first of all, we have seen from the start of his presidential campaigning career, there has been a very gendered aspect, very male-gendered aspect to Trump's campaign. You'll recall he had his testosterone count read on air on a "Dr. Oz Show." He bragged about the size of his - wink, wink - hands during a debate. I mean, it's...
DAVIS: I remember that.
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah. Who can forget, you know? And there was also that gendered aspect to at least the - to a certain sliver of his base. You had, you know, a lot of online guys, sort of the Pepe the Frog crowd who called his opponents betas, as in beta males, that sort of thing. So that's been around for a while. But lately, we do see that young men now in this election, in particular, are coming over to Trump's side. For example, a recent Harvard poll of young voters showed a pretty wide gap between young men and young women, and a big amount of that is young men moving away from Biden towards Trump. One thing I would just add here is that I think the way to think about this is that manhood is one section of Trump culture, and all of these things intersect. Like, the culture of supporting Trump - it's an intersection of class, education, religion, racial attitudes. And gender, specifically manhood, attitudes about manhood are just a huge part of that and a pretty underestimated part of that.
KHALID: Danielle, do you have a sense of what the appeal is around manhood for some of these voters?
KURTZLEBEN: This isn't just Trump and Republicans saying, hey, you know what? We really like men on our side, and we really just like men better, so let's go do it. I mean, but there is something that is being addressed. There is a call being answered, and that call, so to speak, is around certain problems that many men do see in America right now - for example, lack of educational attainmen, the fact that goods producing jobs in things like manufacturing, mining, that sort of thing have gone away. They feel a lack of opportunity, alienation. Suicide rates are quite high for American men, especially compared to women. Point being that there's a lot of alienation out there among men and that this is to some degree a response to it.
Now, I was talking to Kristin Kobes Du Mez. She is the author of the book "Jesus And John Wayne," which is about masculine identity in the white evangelical Church. And I asked her about, why is there this intersection between masculinity and the conservative identity right now?
KRISTIN KOBES DU MEZ: The kind of reigning masculinity these days among conservatives, and that really dominates the political and cultural landscape, is one rooted in whiteness, working-class identity and a particular kind of, quote-unquote, "traditional" vision of what it is to be a man.
DAVIS: It's also interesting to me because it seems pretty clear that part of this, at least, is driven as a rejection of the left and the left's attitudes towards, you know, gender roles and that are much more about parity and equality and more modern, frankly. And I think - I mean, we've used the word woke a lot or all of that, but there is this sort of counter-movement to that that almost wants to go back to more traditional values and more traditional understandings of things like gender.
KURTZLEBEN: Very much. And this is what I find so fascinating about this is that when we're talking about manhood, we are also, again, talking about class and religion and so on, but we are also, to some degree, talking about polarization...
DAVIS: Yeah.
KURTZLEBEN: ...Of that push that you're describing of the right trying to push itself away from liberals and progressives and saying, no, we're not like that. In fact, we're like this. So this fixation on masculinity pops up from a lot of people in the MAGA movement on the Republican side of the aisle. There's Josh Hawley, who's written a whole book called "Manhood." There's Sebastian Gorka, who has a podcast where they regularly have a Manhood Hour. There's former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, who made a whole documentary about manhood. Beyond that, you have people like South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who has criticized her opponents for not having balls. A lot of different politicians and political figures who talk about manhood.
I asked Kellyanne Conway, a former Trump adviser, about why she thinks manhood has become so central. And she said that she sees this as a response to the idea of manhood being bad or devalued and also the idea that gender is fluid or changeable, really, that there are perceived excesses on the left, and the right is saying, absolutely not. I mean, If you spend enough time in the space, you'll see a lot of people on the Republican side responding to the phrase toxic masculinity, which you hear a lot among liberals and progressives.
DAVIS: Sure.
KURTZLEBEN: And many on the right take that as, oh, so you're saying that all men are toxic. Well, that's not what most people do mean when they use that phrase. But it has been taken that way, and they have taken it as, why do you hate men? We are going to show you that manhood is, in fact, pretty great. Now we're going to talk about it a whole bunch.
KHALID: Danielle, I imagine that there's some appeal of this that's broader than just white men. And I'm saying this explicitly because it feels like, you know, sometimes when we've talked about demographics, we talk a lot about how Trump appeals to white voters. But this appeal to manhood is not necessarily unique to white voters. I mean, I'll say candidly here, I mean, I'm South Asian. I could see an appeal to manhood in some subcultures of Asian culture, of Muslim culture, of all sorts of different cultures.
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah, totally. Here's how Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida put it when he was talking to Newsmax. He's talking about trying to appeal to men of color.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MATT GAETZ: This is the blue-collar realignment of the Republican Party. And what I could tell you is, like, for every Karen we lose, there's a Julio and a Jamal ready to sign up for the MAGA movement, and that bodes well.
KURTZLEBEN: That is put pretty indelicately. But I know, Asma, that, for example, you have reported on how many Black and Latino Democrats, for example, are more conservative than white Democrats. You can imagine that, for example, the Trump camp, the Republican side, sees some of those maybe more conservative Democrats as pick-off-able. And furthermore, we have seen gender gaps, especially among Black voters, in the last couple of elections. Yes, they overwhelmingly vote Democratic. The Black men have been more likely than Black women in the data we have to vote for Trump.
And there's one more cut of tape I want to play for us here. This is from Tim Miller, who is a political strategist who worked on the campaigns of Republicans Jon Huntsman and Jeb Bush when they ran for president. And he sees this as, yeah, just basic demographics on the Republican's part.
TIM MILLER: I think it's potentially where the growth is for the party, at least in their perspective, right? You know, they look at Latino and Black men, particularly working class, and are seeing softness in their support for Democrats and potentially openness to their message, to Republican message.
DAVIS: Isn't there a bit of this - I mean, it makes sense in so many ways, but also in this specific election, in this election climate with the issues that voters say they care about. There's also an element of the story where it's like, well, but women voters are a huge chunk of the electorate. They're a significant portion of swing voters. And I'm thinking specifically women in urban and suburban regions are some of the most skeptical Trump voters right now. So I get the focus on masculinity, but it also seems to come with an inherent risk because it seems like it could also turn off some of those swing women voters.
KURTZLEBEN: You heard it in that Matt Gaetz clip that he's being quite explicit and probably a bit flip about it, but saying, you know, for every Karen...
DAVIS: Yeah. Get out of here, Karen.
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah. For every white lady we lose, we're going to gain one of these men of color, right? Like, so he seems to be saying, this is a bet that we're willing to make and that I think that might be successful. Now, maybe that's true. The thing that I would add is that this is, of course, more complicated than simply Trump putting on a hard hat, and the men come flock to him - right? - and the women run away. Like, this is also about particular attitudes about gender that Trump does have plenty of women who support him.
KHALID: Yeah, and I'd imagine this would appeal to some women.
KURTZLEBEN: That is exactly it. Yes, there are plenty of women who like his more traditional ideas about what men are and also the Josh Hawley portrayal of good Christian men that he portrays. I mean, there are different flavors of manhood at work here. But you can take your pick, and there are plenty of women who might support any one of them. It's just a question of really worldview, not just what your chromosomes or gender identity are.
DAVIS: I like your different flavors of manhood. It's like a ironic Ben and Jerry's flavor for this election. (Laughter).
KURTZLEBEN: Sounds kind of gross, actually. But sure.
DAVIS: All right. Let's take another break. When we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go.
And we're back. And it's time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Asma, what can't you let go of this week?
KHALID: So what I cannot let go of for real is how hot I have been and how hot I will be this weekend. So D.C., for you all who don't live in D.C., has been experiencing a heat wave. Apparently, it's going to get worse this weekend. And apparently, this is just the beginning of the heat wave. I think this is, like, two weeks of really, really hot weather. So I was going to say it's just been really hard for me to let go of because I stepped outside yesterday, and I literally felt like we had entered the point of summer where, like, your makeup melts off your face. And I was really wanting to try this new ice cream shop. And apparently, they had a one-hour line out the door.
DAVIS: What?
KHALID: Yeah. So I was really let down about that situation.
DAVIS: I love that your Can't Let It Go is just that you're hot.
(LAUGHTER)
KHALID: It is.
KURTZLEBEN: That is an honest Can't Let It Go...
DAVIS: No, it's true.
KURTZLEBEN: ...Man.
KHALID: I'm literally irritated by being - and I normally love, like, hot summer nights. But it's the day. The day makes it really, really hot.
DAVIS: Well, you're going to have to go in the wintertime, I think, to be able to get a scoop. Danielle, what about you? What can't you let go of?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, there is a new monolith that appeared outside of Las Vegas. I don't know if you guys have followed this, but back in 2020, there was this smattering of these - I think they're eight to 10-foot-tall metal triangular prisms, these just kind of columns that would pop up in remote parts of the desert, on top of a mountain. There was a handful of them. Well, one has now shown up again outside of Las Vegas. And I have a lot of conflicted feelings about this. The cranky part of me is like, God, will someone just come forward? Like, can we just find out where these come from already? 'Cause, I mean, at least all...
KHALID: Is it, like, an artist doing this?
KURTZLEBEN: That is the leading theory, yeah. And there have been various artists or art collectives who have claimed credit for different ones. And one of the other parts of this is that it is possible/likely that these all come from different people, just kind of copycats having fun. But also - I don't know - it obsesses me every time it happens because, like, I'm glad there's at least some capacity for mystery or wonder that has nothing - really, what I'm saying is that I am starved for other news that is not political, and this just delights me. Like, cool. It's art.
KHALID: I have to Google this. I haven't seen these.
KURTZLEBEN: Oh, yeah.
DAVIS: They're really cool looking.
KHALID: Are they really big? Also, how can you construct something so big without people noticing?
KURTZLEBEN: I don't know. That's what I love about it 'cause honestly, there was one back in 2020 that was somewhere in the desert - I think it was in Utah - a place that can only be reached by helicopter. Like, these are showing up in places where people don't usually hang out. So it's very curious how they show up. So one of the other theories - probably joking, but one of the other theories is aliens. And honestly, I'm rooting for the aliens.
DAVIS: I'm kind of in the pro-alien camp on this one. It's either an alien or a billionaire because who else has access to, like, aerial? It's like Elon Musk pulling a prank, or it's aliens.
KHALID: Or a UFO.
KURTZLEBEN: Listen, aliens or billionaire, take me with you. I'm fine with that.
DAVIS: (Laughter).
KURTZLEBEN: All right, Sue, what can't you let go of?
DAVIS: The thing I can't let go of from the week is pop star Justin Timberlake's arrest in The Hamptons for driving under the influence. But that is not what I can't let go. What I can't let go about it is the detail that was reported out of the arrest that the arresting officer allegedly did not know who Justin Timberlake was, which is the kind of thing that starts to make you feel old when the pop stars of your youth are no longer recognizable to the people that might be arresting them.
But there was a funny line reported in page six, where the cop pulls him over, and Justin Timberlake says to him, this is going to ruin the tour. And the cop just says, what tour? And he goes, the world tour. And that has become - like, the internet has embraced that this is going to ruin the tour is, like, the new thing you say when something bad happens to you, so...
KURTZLEBEN: And going along with that, my minor can't let it go here is that the mugshot appears to have been taken with a ring light.
DAVIS: I noticed that, too, which is so Hamptons, right?
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah.
DAVIS: Like, of course, they're going to have the best lighting for their DUI arrest photos. They couldn't have it any other way. But yeah.
KURTZLEBEN: Incredible. But no, I don't think any of us elders can let that go.
DAVIS: I'm still not going to see him on tour, but I will...
KURTZLEBEN: No.
DAVIS: ...Think of it if I ever.
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah.
DAVIS: All right, that is it for us today. A brief note before we go. The Supreme Court is issuing opinions this month, and while we wait to get big ones on presidential immunity, abortion rights and other cases, we did want to note that there was a decision today. In an 8-1 vote, the court upheld a federal ban on gun possession for anyone covered by a domestic violence court order. We'll have more on the other rulings as they come in.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. And special thanks to Ben Swasey. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.
KHALID: I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.
KURTZLEBEN: And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the presidential campaign.
DAVIS: And thanks for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIG TOP ORCHESTRA'S "TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)")
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