Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined again for the

third time this year, actually, by Whit Ayers, those first two conversations on the state of

the Republican Party and presidential, the presidential race in general, were so informative,

honestly, and I think stand up so well that it seemed important to do another one here on

what is it August 24th, which is the president of North Star opinion research, I think it's

called, right? Very well-regarded polling and strategy firm and himself been involved in

elections at every level, including presidential elections, debate crap, which is relevant,

last night's debate, and is widely considered one of our most thoughtful and far-seeing

analysts of current politics. Thanks for joining me again. Bill, great to be with you again.

So we're talking on, as I said, on August 24th, we spoke in November and you,

correctly, said, you know, you thought there was a chance that Trump would pay some price for

having been identified with elections in Iowa, which didn't do too well in November 22,

and that someone probably dissentist could make a bit of a run at him, which he did.

But then that faded. When we spoke last in mid July,

dissentist was fading. It was unclear how far he was going to fade. And Trump was at around 50%

in the polling, and I'd looked just now, and he's now around 52%. So not much has changed on

the Trump side. Dissentist has faded some. Ramaswami has shown up. But a lot has happened,

because we've had what the, the January, the DC indictment of, for January 6th, by Jack Smith,

the Georgia indictment, and then the debate last night. So I don't know. Maybe these things will

have some effect, or other things in the future will have some effect, but sort of striking

that for now. The race seems not that unlike when we spoke, but maybe that's itself a story. So let's

so explain what's what's what's let's begin with Trump. I guess the guy wasn't on stage last night,

...