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Hey everybody welcome to the buck sexton show on this episode our friend Tim Merta is here.

He was the Trump 2020 comms communications director these days he's an executive vice president of comms for national public affairs which is a political consulting firm and he's got his own

podcast what is the podcast him podcast is called the line drive podcast and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts and it's a look at the dissection of the 2024 race from some people who are inside the rooms when big decisions were happening on presidential campaigns and we take a look at it and dissected and tell you why candidates are doing what they're doing I appreciate the chance to be able to plug that fuck thanks the line drive podcast of course now tell me how's this election.

Going so far what do you know you worked on 2020 for Trump what do you see in right now and take it anywhere you want buy in big picture you know what are you seeing we're in the if the summer of 23 what's happening.

Well I don't think it would surprise anybody that my take is what everyone can see in the polls that this is Donald Trump's nomination to lose certainly any doesn't show any signs of loosening his grip on the nomination.

And I think what is less talked about because that that points kind of obvious I think but what's less talked about is the fact that if you look at the publicly available evidence the public polls that are out there Donald Trump has been shown to be ahead in a match up with Joe Biden in the general election in a couple of polls just in the in the last month he's been ahead in several different national national polls beating Joe Biden.

And that's important because in 2016 and especially in 2020 where I was I was not on the 2016 campaign but let's talk about 2020 in 2020 Donald Trump was shown to be beating Joe Biden nationally in a public poll exactly zero times.

And in just the last month Donald Trump has been shown to be ahead of Joe Biden in several different national polls and that is significant and to me that tells me that Donald Trump not only is the in great shape which is obvious in the Republican primaries but he's in a better position today against his likely Democrat opponent in a general election than he ever was in 2020 or 2016 why is that.

Well I think it's a lot of things the economy is really hurting Joe Biden and you know the White House will tell you oh everything is fantastic the economy is coming back and we added all these jobs and of course that's slight of hand because those are jobs that are returning because of the opening up the economy again after the pandemic has passed us but then you have the I mean scandal after scandal after scandal and and I think that the media try as they might has tried to protect Joe Biden from this.

But Joe Biden I think to the average voter in his approval numbers bear this out he looks like a weak ineffective old president who just isn't up to the job and I think now this Hunter Biden stuff the Devon Archer testimony of the other day is going to really really hurt Joe Biden because now they've got the media in position where you just can't ignore this anymore they they ignored the laptop and everything that was contained in it for a long long time and they just can't do it anymore these allegations.

And the facts that Devon Archer brought to the table the other day in his testimony they're just they're so explosive that not even the New York Times are CNN can ignore it.

So this is now where I have to ask you what happened in 2020 man you were on the campaign.

But now that we have all the fullness of time or whatever has passed and we have plenty of ability to look back and and understand because I think that one of the challenges some people might have on on the conservative side on the Republican side of things is if they could cheat in 2020 why would it be different now that's always the question that I wonder you know or if they could regate if they could pull that off you know what I mean like why should we believe it's any different now what do you say you were part of 2020 why is 2024 going to be different.

Yeah look if you look back at what was happening the lead up to 2020 and it started in 2019 you know the Democrats led by Mark Elias their lawyer they were in court in states all across the country trying to loosen protections for safe campaigns and safe elections all over the place and and I do think that the Democrats had a far better operation to take advantage of laws in certain states where you're allowed to ballot harvest and they certainly did a better job of turning out mail in ballots because they were much much more powerful.

That's because they were much more widely used and you know it was frustrating to me I honestly I never saw enough evidence of actual fraud that would have made a difference however if you look at Pennsylvania for the first time two and a half million people voted by mail in Pennsylvania and it's it's really hard for me to believe that every single one of those two and a half million votes there were cast by mail were actually cast by the people whose name was on the envelope you know I do do all two and a half million people know that they voted in that election I don't know and it's not something that I don't know.

It's not something that we're ever going to be able to prove so I think that Republicans have a better idea now of how to you have to actually operate under the laws that and then do the voting as they're allowed by law a lot of our folks a lot of our voters want to fight on principle and that's fine I understand that and they don't like mail in voting they don't like ballot harvesting because they are avenues for fraud that's true.

Where it is permissible by law it is silly to fight with one hand time behind your back because you know the Democrats are going to do what's allowed by law and they're going to exploit those laws and so the Republicans have to play those same games now aside from those sorts of things you know I think that really was an unprecedented race with a global pandemic I think absent the pandemic before things actually had to get shut down

I feel like the president Trump was headed towards not an easy reelection but I think a reelection that was that was going to come in I think exactly as we had a plan he was going to ride the economy the economy was really unprecedented it was so strong it was going gangbusters and there really weren't going to be a lot of things the Democrats could do to shoot down all of the accomplishments of the Trump administration.

Covid presented a couple of things it gave the media something that they could use to beat Donald Trump over the head with every single day and somehow say that a global pandemic that affected every single country on earth was somehow the fault of one American leader which is preposterous but that's what they did and it gave Joe Biden the easy excuse to never ever go out and campaign and keep probably the worst candidate in our lifetimes off the campaign trail

and have a legitimate reason for that to be the case so I think there were a lot of things that went on in 2020 and you know despite all of it media loves to talk about how close 2016 was 2016 was a race that was decided by about 88,000 votes in three states 88,000 votes spread across three states 2020.

Was even closer than that less than 44,000 votes spread across three other states so it was about half again as twice as close as it was in 2016 but somehow the fact that the closeness of the 2020 race is not something that anybody discusses so but it was razor thin it's going to be it's going to be razor thin again I think you're going to see another tight race that is decided by very small margins in a handful of different states across the country it's going to be tight again.

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