The Race To 2028 Has Begun

It's Thursday, April 16th, I'm Jane Kostin, and this is what it is.

A show that already hated Santa Con.

You know that yearly tradition where the drunkest people you have ever met do a bar crawl

dressed like Santa purportedly for charity.

But it turns out the founder of Santa Con allegedly stole at least $1.5 million of what the

event raised over the last five years.

My hatred has been confirmed.

On today's show, the Trump administration wishes the Pope would keep his mouth shut when

it comes to issues of, um, humanity.

And Senate Majority Leader John Thune wants to put Department of Homeland Security legislation

on a diet.

But let's start with a 2028 presidential election.

Actually, I want to go back in time a little bit to 2006.

It was a simpler age.

Twitter had just launched.

I was about to start my sophomore year of college, and George W. Bush was a very unpopular

president.

The 2008 presidential election was still two years away, but just like now, reporters

and pundits were starting to talk about potential Democratic front runners.

According to a July 2006 Marist poll, the front runners were then New York Democratic

Senator Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, and disgraced former North Carolina

Senator John Edwards.

In fact, in 2007, Clinton was treated by pundits as the near certain Democratic nominee

for president.

Here's a compilation created by CNN.

If you looked at Hillary Clinton in the last debate, she was very strong there.

She's definitely distancing herself from the other two candidates.

And I would say that door is almost closed.

You almost almost inevitable now that Hillary Clinton will be the nominee.

She's getting momentum.

So I'd have to say at this point, Hillary's, you know, she's got it in the back.

Not on that list?

An Illinois Senator named Barack Obama.

Here he is on election night 2008, accepting a pretty exciting new job.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are

possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still

question the power of our democracy.

Tonight is your answer.

Ah, sweet memories.

My point is that anything can happen in two years, but presidential hopefuls have already

started jockeying for position.

Just look at the number of Democrats who published memoirs over the last year.

Though as we learned from former DHS secretary, Kristi Nome, sometimes a memoir doesn't

help.

Across the aisle on the Republican side, there's a big orange obstacle, Donald Trump, the

unpopular president who still somehow has a stranglehold on GOP primary voters.

To talk more about the race for the White House, I spoke to MSNOWs Chris Hayes.

He's the host of All In With Chris Hayes and Why Is This Happening?

The Chris Hayes podcast.

Chris, welcome to What A Day.

Great to be here.

Now I'm going to start this whole conversation with a giant caveat.

We are about two years away from any presidential primary, so we know nothing.

I was just saying that I did a deep dive into 2006 Democratic front runners and half of

them.

I don't know what happened to them.

The other half were Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Al Gore.

We don't know anything.

But given that, I have to ask, who do you think is angling for a presidential run in

2028 besides Round of Manual?

Oh, well, angling I think is pretty clear.

I mean, Newsom, Pritzker, Shapiro, at least.

Widmer weirdly in Michigan, I thought was going to, but has done none of the things that

would make you think that she is running.

Then I think probably in the house, I think Rokana is going to run.

Then I think in the Senate, I think you're looking at Warnoch, Gallego, Mark Kelly is a

possibility.

Assof, I've been joking that I'm beginning to suspect he might be the least on Al Gallib.

If he wins this race this year, he's up for reelection in Georgia.

He's raised his hon of money, his polling is very good.

He looks like he's well positioned for victory.

I think he's a really interesting, in some ways, a little bit of a sleeper candidate.

Then the obvious other person is Kamala Harris, who I think is definitely going to run for

president again.

That's the sort of, I think, folks that are doing the kinds of things right now that most

obviously signal the running for president.

Let's talk quickly about what that looks like, because there's this idea of the shadow

primary.

You write a memoir.

You start going on a bunch of podcasts and just talking about things.

You get a thing that you care a lot about that you talk about.

For instance, Rahm Emanuel is talking about banning children under 16 from being on social

media because Australia did it.

There are these things that we all in politics know mean you want to run for president, but

how do we think about what that looks like?

I think the biggest thing right now is just how media present people are.

I think it's something I've written about in my book quite a bit, which is that an awareness

that the kind of silent money primary is maybe not as important at this point as the attention

primary.

I think it's particularly true because if Kamala Harris runs, she's got a huge advantage.

She was the vice president of the United States.

Tens of millions of people have already gone to a poll and voted for her.

She has the highest name recognition of any Democrat right now.

The biggest things I think that you're seeing people do is just be out talking to people

all the time.

The biggest thing is the attention primary.

Right.

To that point, I saw that Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was on a Pat McAfee's show

on ESPN to announce that there will be a UFC fight in Pennsylvania, which I saw someone

saying that, wow, it's very impressive.

Shapiro is going into deep red spaces.

I'm like, ESPN is not a deep red space.

But it is a like, hey, have you been thinking about Josh Shapiro today?

He's there.

Yes, exactly.

He's just in your life.

I think it's important and I think it's probably well-advanced.

Newsom is obviously omnipresent.

Pritzker also has just been doing a ton of media.

I generally think, honestly, like one of the changes that's happened is politicians,

Democratic politicians have stopped being so risk-averse about media presence.

And I think that's good actually.

The older generation, I think, tended to worry about gaps or screwing something up or

the more that you talk to people, the more you might say something.

It becomes a, you know, a news story for a few cycles and what's really the benefit of

that when you're still two years out from a possible election.

But I think people now recognize that like the gap cycle is really not a thing so much

anymore.

I mean, maybe something could last a day or two, very little sticks.

And it's better to just be out talking to people.

And if you say a few things make people angry or get you in trouble, like the best way

to wash that down is to go talk to people the next day.

Right.

Let's talk about Trump who has never been less popular than he is right now.

And that is saying something.

But doesn't mean that a Democrat is guaranteed to win the White House or anything else.

What kind of candidate and what kinds of issues should Democrats be looking to push forward

if they are thinking towards 2028?

Yeah, I mean, I think an economy that works for working people, which is a kind of cliche,

but actually really matters is really important.

And that relates to affordability.

Like, I think, you know, the affordability discussion can get very, very impacted or

confused.

It can kind of mean a million different things.

The central way to think about it, I think, is like how affordable is what we would call

a comfortable middle class life?

Like how achievable and affordable and how widely shared is the ability to achieve a

comfortable middle class life.

And what does a comfortable middle class life means?

In America, it means generally you can own your own home at some point that you can take

some vacations that you can afford education and healthcare.

And you know, have a little disposable income to buy a few nice things.

The funny thing about the way that our economy works is that even before the big recent

hit of inflation on kind of consumer goods, right?

There was this problem of a cost disease that was bedeviling all these main pillars

of what comfortable middle class life are, right?

Healthcare, particularly college education and housing, particularly after COVID, although

it was bad before then.

And now you've got this sort of bad situation where you've got both higher inflation and

so higher nominal prices on consumer goods.

And also the generation long build up in cost disease of these main pillars of middle class

comfort.

Another big part of this now increasingly emerging or energy costs, which I think is

an enormous opportunity for Democrats.

And then on the international front, Democrats have been gifted an amazing political gift,

which is a wildly self sabotaging and unpopular war.

And I think it's rare that your political opponent does something as stupid and as obviously

stupid as this war has been.

And I think it's an enormous political opportunity to have a larger conversation about international

policy, which I think a lot of Democrats have been a little shy about for a lot of reasons.

It feels and looking at the polling, it is that the party is still very much falling in

line behind Trump, even though his approval rating is in the gutter with basically everybody

else.

Will he be a kingmaker, even when he's not running and even when he's not popular?

That's a really good question.

I don't know.

I really go back and forth on this.

I keep thinking there's some point at which gravity re-asserts itself.

I think it's possible that like no one will even admit that they supported the guy in

10 years.

Right.

It will be and it will be totally memory old.

He will become the Iraq war.

Yeah, he'll become the Iraq war slash George W Bush who again, people forget how formidable

George W Bush was.

There was a cult of personality.

There was like, oh, this guy is so tough and so strong and so smart and just with

the country needed and you know, and he couldn't even show up live at the 2008 Republican

convention in the Twin Cities because he was so toxic.

I think there's a possibility you will see that with Donald Trump.

But he has managed to retain a hold longer than I would have guessed in some ways.

Like, I will see what happens in the next few months.

It's not that there hasn't been some progress.

Like if you compare how much of a Republican has been breaking with Donald Trump in the

spring of 2026 to how much they broke with him in the spring of 2025, it's moved for

sure.

It's just not moved as much as you would think when you look at a guy who really is pretty

consistently now pulling in the 39% approval range.

Right.

Now, the thing I keep thinking about is that we know Trump has his base, mega base.

It's not even a transactional relationship.

They love him.

They will support whatever he wants.

We also know that Trump won over crucial independent voters in 2024.

But now, a lot of them are very unhappy with him.

I think his approval with independence is like negative a lot.

If Trump ends this term as unpopular as he is now, how closely do you think candidates

will tie themselves to him?

Do you think that they will try the DeSantis Trump without the baggage strategy?

That's a fascinating question.

So much depends, I think, on how much worse it gets or doesn't get.

I do think that you're already starting to see like lame duckness set in.

And I do think that once everyone understands there's a future without him, I think it will

be easier to kick him to the curb or to distance from him.

And I think you'll see that more and more.

If I had to guess, I don't think he's going to retain the kind of cult like hold even over

the sort of Republican primary voter a year from now.

Could be wrong.

But he's just doing a terrible job.

The other thing is not easy doing a terrible job.

He does not care.

I don't think he cares at all about like his polling, about his popularity.

He certainly doesn't care about the fate of the Republican party.

He cares about his own fate.

But one of the things I think is worth thinking about are the different dynamics for someone

who's trying to get the nomination and sort of take the party over from Trump and be

the next nominee and next president and a bunch of the calculations being made by Republican

politicians saying Congress.

Because I think if you're a member of Congress, there are a few different factors that keep

you in line that don't apply if you're really trying to get the brass ring of the nomination.

And the things that keep you in line are a personal fear for like threats and also just

like hassle.

Like you're going to go back to your R plus 25 district and go grocery shopping there.

And if you're like a big Trump enemy, it's going to be a pain.

Yeah, you go to your kids baseball game, whatever.

But the other thing is I think it's really important for people to understand.

They have built up an entire adjacent corrupt industry of essentially money sloshing all over

the place.

That means if you stay in the fold, you can go cash out.

You see all these retirements, right?

But only Tom Tillis is really being publicly critical.

There's a whole bunch of house members that are on their way out that could be critical.

They don't, it doesn't matter anymore.

But they want to go make seven figures in a DC swamp that's totally sort of Trump captured

and Trump aligned for now in Republican circles.

Those, I don't think those same dynamics are going to apply to whoever wants to get the

nomination.

And I think if a year from now his polling looks like this or worse, I do think you can

see people running a sort of distancing from Trump time to turn the page campaign in

that primer.

Chris, thank you so much for joining me.

Really enjoyed it.

That was my conversation with Chris Hayes, host of All In With Chris Hayes.

You can watch him at 8 p.m. Eastern Tuesday through Friday on MSNOW.

2028 feels light years away, but the news that's happening right now, we've got it covered

in just a few minutes.

So if you like the show, make sure to subscribe.

Leave a five star review on Spotify and Apple Podcast, watch us on YouTube and share

with your friends.

More to come after some ads.

What did I is brought to you by Bookshop.org?

Where you shop for books matters.

When you purchase from Bookshop.org, you're supporting more than 2,500 local independent

bookstores across the country.

Independent bookstores do more than sell books.

They take care of and pour back into their communities, creating safe spaces that foster

culture, curiosity and love of reading.

Right now I'm reading The Wager, a tale of shipwreck, mutiny and murder.

It's a fantastic read and I got it through Bookshop.org.

Use code WOD to get 10% off your next order at Bookshop.org.

This podcast was brought to you by WODZ, the app for international people using money

around the globe.

When it comes to sending money abroad, many providers claim to offer free fees and competitive

rates, but don't be fooled.

This can be code for inflated exchange rates.

With the WISE account, you can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies, without

ever having to worry about hidden fees.

Sending pounds across the pond?

Most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less.

Spending reals and real?

The WISE travel card gives you the mid market rate on every purchase.

No costly markups on your bill.

Getting paid in dollars for your side gig?

Avoid hidden fees and get the real exchange rate every time.

With 24-7 access to live support, your international transactions with WISE are quick, transparent

and safe.

Plus, WISE runs over 7 million daily checks to catch and prevent fraud.

15 million people already trust WISE to manage their money internationally.

Be smart, get WISE.

My husband and I love using WISE when we travel internationally.

We wouldn't leave home without it.

Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com, Terms and Editions apply.

With so many options, why choose Arizona State University?

For me, the only online option was ASU because of the quality.

Their faculty was really involved with their students and care about your personal journey.

The dedication to my personal development from my professors, that's extremely valuable

to me.

Earn your degree from the nation's most innovative university.

Online, that's a degree better.

Explore more than 350 plus undergraduate and certificate programs at ASUOnline.asu.edu.

At Arizona State University, we've made online education better, smarter and more personalized,

so you can go further in your aspiring field.

I decided to pursue medicine once I realized that ASU did have the online program for biological

sciences.

You're still required to learn the same curriculum.

You're still being tested on the same content that anyone would be tested on in-person.

The comprehensiveness of the program prepared me so well for medical school.

Explore over 350 plus programs at ASUOnline.asu.edu.

Here's what else we're following today.

Joining me is Cricket's news editor, Greg Walters, to talk about the big stories.

Hey, Greg.

Hey, Jane, how you doing?

Greg, there's more shit taught coming from the Trump administration aimed at the Pope.

Borders are Tom Homes joined in the pile on this week too.

I'm not going to speak for the president speaking for myself, like Long-Catholic.

I wish they stay out of immigration if they don't know what they're talking about.

Because if they bore my shoes for 40 years and talked to a nine-year-old girl that

are great multiple times or stood in the back of the trailer, they tracked the trailer

in 19 dead aliens that might be, including a five-year-old boy that baked to death, if

they understood the atrocities that happened on the open border, I think they're opinion

would change.

And I welcome and discuss with them.

Greg, who is they?

Does he mean the Pope or does he mean the Catholic Church?

I thought when these guys talked about they, they meant like the people who control the

weather or something, but in this case, it seems like they're just intent on picking

a fight with the Pope.

Which, it's funny that Tom prefaces this with a Miloie-Floen Catholic, but exactly what

is it that he thinks the Pope should be talking about?

Because I'm going to guess that Tom Homes doesn't think the Pope needs a primer and say

abortion policy.

All of this to me says that MAGA is mad that the Pope, the head of the global Catholic

Church, is for some reason not talking like a Republican politician.

Though Homes is probably just angry because he officially failed to accomplish the Trump

administration's deportation mission.

According to newly released data, Iced reported some 440,000 people throughout last year.

Yeah, which sounds like a lot and it is, but it's not what Trump promised.

The Trump actually deported only about 171,000 more people than the year before, under

Biden.

But his administration pledged to deport about a million people every year.

So they're not even living up to the goals that they themselves set, despite causing all

this collateral damage.

Like the chaos we saw in the streets of Minneapolis, the deaths of Alex Prattie and Renée Good,

even after all that carnage, they're not hitting their goals.

I mean, that checks out and honestly, I'm happy they have not met their deport a million

people per year goal.

Granted, I'm still waiting on some other goals I've been promised by Donald Trump.

Like that health care plan, he promised to roll out in two weeks in 2020, since it's been

nearly six years at this point.

My guess is I'm going to be waiting a while longer.

And Greg, do you know what else we're waiting on?

I can't wait for you to tell me.

Republicans in Congress to get moving and reopen the Department of Homeland Security.

The partial government shutdown has stretched past the 60-day mark.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is calling for a quote, anorexic bill focused on immigration

and customs enforcement, as well as border patrol to reopen the Department.

See, that's a sense where I know what he meant, but like just say, narrow.

Be normal.

Yeah, I mean, they can't even pass unspeakably boring legislation without giving people

the ICC.

In any case, Thune's process is easier for him to awkwardly talk about than it is to actually

do.

I'm trying to pass this bill using a procedural trick called reconciliation to avoid relying

on any Democrats.

But now, Republicans are trying to stuff it full of other fun stuff they want, like more

military funding.

And that could complicate the process and keep this shutdown dragging on.

It's already the longest in history, and we might not be done yet.

You know what else is complicated, Greg?

Oh, God.

You're going to tell me, aren't you?

I regret that I am.

Taxes.

Trump's team spent one day, which was tax day, in case you didn't know.

And if you're listening to this now, I hope you knew that.

They spent one day touting the administration's attempt to stuff Americans pockets with more

money this year via bigger tax returns.

Treasury Secretary Scott Besson took questions from reporters to mark tax day and said that

even though the war in Iran is pushing gas prices higher, everything's going to be

OK.

President Trump said this morning that he thinks we're nearing the end.

The US kept their side on the ceasefire.

We've stopped firing.

The straits of our move have not been completely reopened.

Hang on.

This is not the point.

But did he just say the straightover move?

He did.

And that was a Freudian slip because presumably the straight removed is his order at the

bar this evening.

It's been a long month.

Look, the thing about the tax refunds is that this was all part of a big plan by the

Trump people to try to goose the midterms by making sure everybody got bigger refunds

this year.

It was part of the one big, beautiful bill plan that they passed.

But the punchline is that these stats on Trump's tax refunds are just not all they're

chalked up to be.

And if your tax refund is a little lighter this year than you expected, you're not alone.

Trump told us that the average refunds would increase by at least $1,000.

And in reality, the average refund has totaled about $350 more than last year according

to federal data.

And there was a survey recently by the bipartisan policy center that showed a majority of Americans

believe that these tax changes either didn't affect them or wait for it actually made

their lives worse.

Big win for tax reform.

And the funny thing is, okay, actually there was actually a lot funny about this.

One, the idea that you would be in November thinking, wow, I'm so glad I got more money

in April because that's not how voters tend to work.

But also, tons of Americans, roughly 40%, don't pay federal income taxes because their

incomes are too low, though they definitely pay payroll tax and sales tax.

A ton of those people voted for Trump.

But as always, the GOP can only think about making life easier for Americans in one way and

one way only.

Lowering taxes.

That is their only idea.

Yeah, that's their one thing and they couldn't even do it right.

Look, the bottom line is these massive refunds that the White House promised simply never

happened.

To be clear, they did cut taxes for a lot of the rich folks, but for a lot of the folks

at the bottom, no luck for you.

These tax pay probably won't help Republicans when the midterms as Trump warns that gas prices

could still be high come in November.

So even people who did get a bigger refund, they're going to have some of that refunds

swallowed up by their gas bill.

In other news, we learned this week that Grock, a tech billionaire Elon Musk's AI chatbot

was almost banned from the Apple store according to NBC News.

Remember when Grock started allowing users to digitally undress people?

I did not like that.

It was a bad time.

That was a bad time.

And Grock doesn't let users do that anymore in places where that type of photo manipulation

is actually illegal.

But in January, Apple informed senators in a letter that the company, quote, contacted

the teams behind both X and Grock after it received complaints and saw news coverage

of the scandal.

Gross!

Also, I like that proviso in places where that type of photo manipulation is illegal.

So anywhere else, go nets.

This is all happening as other AI companies, including OpenAI, all contemplate making

their products, well, horny.

For OpenAI, that's permitting sexualized or erotic conversations with chat GPT.

For Grock, that's sexualized deepfakes and more adult content.

And according to Wired, that adult content has gotten really extreme.

And by extreme, I mean, again, gross.

But unlike this conversation, you have never made me feel bad.

And unlike AI, I don't feel deeply immoral when I talk to you.

So thanks, Greg.

I'm gonna need one of those straight promutes.

And that's the news.

Before we go, if you've been trying to keep up with Trump picking fights with the Pope,

and also managing to annoy his own evangelical base at the same time, this week's runaway

country is for you.

Alex sits down with Jennifer Palmieri to talk strategy, power, and what actually matters

heading into another chaotic stretch of American politics.

Then Alex drives into the growing tension between Trump and his religious supporters, from

his escalating war of words with Pope Leo to truly bizarre AI images that have evangelical

Christians asking, what is going on here?

Listen to your runaway country now, wherever you get your podcasts.

That's all for today.

If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review.

Please make health and human services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stay away from animals,

and tell your friends to listen.

And if you're into reading, and not just about how according to a new book from a New

York Post reporter, the man currently in charge of America's vaccine policy once reportedly

cut off the genitals of a dead raccoon so that he could quote, study them later.

Like me, what today is also a nightly newsletter.

Check it out and subscribe at Kricket.com slash subscribe.

I'm Jane Kostin, and why?

Why?

Why?

What today is a production of Kricket Media.

It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor, our associate producer is Emily Four, our

producer is Caitlin Plummer.

Our video editor is Joseph Dutra, our video producer is Joe Hannah Case, we have production

help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, and Ethan Overman.

Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of News and Politics

is Adrian Hill.

Our theme music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor, we have helped today from the associated

press.

Our production staff is proudly unionized with the writer's guild of America East.