Is AOC entering her presidential era?

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0:45And I think when Democrats looked at Francesca Hong's statements, they found a candidate who would have a very hard time when the general election came along appealing to moderate voters in Wisconsin.

0:59Jon Sopel:So what should we make of AOC and the way that she is, I don't know, positioning herself? Are you going to run for president? I mean, I'm focused on winning the midterms. I'm running for Congress right now. You know, if there was a speech bubble underneath that of what it really meant, yes, yes, of course, of course I'm thinking about it. What do you think I'm doing? She is seen with some of the progressive candidates in the races this year. Can she get ordinary voters and independent voters to start to like her? For voters who fear that democratic socialism could turn into communism, what would you want them to know?

1:44No. This is a state where we still have a 233 tip minimum wage and 725 minimum wage. I think it's going to be pretty hard to turn that into socialism soon. But what we can do with this campaign is make sure that we're fighting for the policies that working class people first. And we're fighting for a$20 minimum wage.

2:05Jon Sopel:That is Francesca Hong, widely tipped to be the next candidate of a socialist bent to take over the Democratic Party. She was fighting to be the nominee for governor in Wisconsin, but she failed. Has the advance of socialism in America been much exaggerated? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. it's john and we fed 340 million names into the newsagents usa data center to come up with a suitable guest and you'll never believe what happened we've got the same guy that happened we've had on last week and the week before and the week before that i mean what are the actual odds of that happening miles taylor how are you i really appreciate that data center that is a smart machine we've got there, a very smart machine, floored to be picked.

3:06Jon Sopel:Yeah, well, look, it's good to have you with us. And overnight, we've had various kind of indications of the state of the Democratic Party, and maybe a tiny bit about where the Republican Party is, given that there were these primaries about who would be the candidates to fight various Senate seats for the seat of the governor's mansions and the like. And we've spoken a lot over the past couple of weeks about the inexorable march of the progressive forces of the Democratic Party and how the Democratic Socialists of America were going to take the party over. And yet it all seemed to come to a halt last night in Wisconsin, where Francesca Hong, who was the supposed kind of, you know, standard bearer of the left, fell short.

3:52Yeah, you know what, John, it absolutely did. I mean, this was, for progressives kind of an upset because they had been on a tear with these other races. And I think a number of them were hoping, a number of these democratic socialists or justice democrats were hoping to see that Hong would pull it off in Wisconsin's gubernatorial primary. This was another race that establishment democrats were very worried about. They saw Hong as radical. They saw her past controversial statements as being a turnoff in a state that Donald Trump just just won by a slim margin of 30 ,000 votes. This was going to be a place where, in their view, the establishment Democrats, if Hong won, it would be over for them in another state.

4:43They were worried they would lose. And last night, those establishment Democrats were relieved to see that Hong did not emerge the victor.

4:52Jon Sopel:Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because what also happened there is that not all the progressive forces in the Democratic Party got behind her candidacy. And so AOC didn't endorse. Bernie Sanders didn't endorse. And I think we can just have a listen to them now saying why they were being a bit hands off. So you have Wisconsin coming up next, Francesca Hong, who is the Democratic Socialists of America, supporting candidate for governor. You haven't endorsed her. Are you going to? No, I haven't endorsed in that race. My focus has been in winning back the Congress, winning back the House, and positioning ourselves to have the best chance possible to win the Senate.

5:41So I've been focused on those legislative races. Some of this does seem to align with your platform. So I'm wondering, you know, why don't you support her? Is some of what she supports too extreme for you?

5:57Jon Sopel:No, but raising taxes on the rich, making sure that everybody in Wisconsin or America has health care as a right sounds quite reasonable to me. I just look, we have a limited number of races that we can be involved in. So you see them both swerving when asked to say, why are you not supporting Francesca Hong? And I mean, I think it's really interesting what it says about AOC, frankly, as much as what it says about Francesca Hong, because Francesca Hong had all the potential, in my mind, to be the same sort of candidate as Graham Plattner was in Maine for the Senate fighting the Republican Susan Collins, where his candidacy fell apart because of past things that he'd done and said.

6:41Jon Sopel:And everyone took flight and thought, no, we can't go near this guy. And I think that with Francesca Hong, she was just the wrong candidate to be standing there, even though she was representing this kind of democratic socialist strand. It really comes down to this, John. It's who is able to walk the line and both appeal to far left voters in a primary and who can tack back towards the middle in a general election. And I think when Democrats looked at Francesca Hong's statements, they found a candidate who would have a very hard time when the general election came along appealing to moderate voters in Wisconsin.

7:23It's a Midwest state. I grew up near Wisconsin. It's not a place that really considers itself on whole terribly radical. It's a pretty moderate place in the United States. Makes sense. flyover state in the middle of the country considers itself middle of the road. And you take Hong's comments from the past, the Thanksgiving dust up that they mentioned, her comments about state run grocery stores, and you've got the average Wisconsin voter who's going to feel pretty uneasy. It's interesting to me to see AOC and Bernie Sanders also recognizing that declining to endorse in that race because they too want progressive candidates to win, But they want them to win the actual election.

8:04They don't just want them to win primary races. They want them elected to public office. And I think this race shows you there are even limits to what some of those progressive leaders are going to be willing to tolerate in those races. And ultimately, Hong didn't pull it off.

8:19Jon Sopel:Yeah, I was just looking at some numbers for the Democratic Socialists of America, and I think it's got about 120 ,000 members across the whole of the United States. And where are the members? They're in New York, they're in L.A. and they're in metropolitan D.C., Washington, D.C. In other words, the coastal elites and probably don't speak for that much of, you know, midtown America like you're talking about the small towns in Wisconsin or, you know, wherever. And I wonder whether this is a sort of a real kind of gamble for Democrats to be nominating people because they have nominated some who are DSA aligned when maybe that's not where the centre of political gravity is in America.

9:07Well, two races to look at from last year, John, that were very telling were the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia in the United States. These were races where there were far left progressive candidates in the primaries. But Democrats put forward two moderates in New Jersey, a woman named Mikey Sherrill, a former service member. And in Virginia, a woman named Abby Spanberger, a former CIA officer, both of which were very middle of the road and they won their general election races. And establishment Democrats saw in that a message that if we put forward moderates, we're going to go win these races.

9:50And Cheryl's race and Spanberger's race have been on the minds of the Democratic Party as they go into these other campaigns and decide who they want to stand behind. They've been nervous about some of those fringier candidates because they don't think that they can go defeat the MAGA aligned candidates in the general election. And I think last night is validation, at least for some of those establishment Democrats of that thesis.

10:14Jon Sopel:So what should we make of AOC and the way that she is, I don't know, positioning herself? Because what's striking about AOC at the moment is she's being rather selective about who she's endorsing. And it's obviously led to speculation that she may be thinking of Iran herself in 2028, a kind of question that she didn't really engage in when asked about it. So I want to, we're almost out of time, but get to your future. I'm sure you saw the poll in New Hampshire that had you as the leading candidate, leading choice for Democrats. First, are you going to run for president? I mean, I'm focused on winning the midterms.

10:59I'm running for Congress right now. But, I mean, do you see this as something, I know you said you're open to it. Is it a realistic possibility for you? I haven't. Well, I haven't ruled out the possibility and I'm very humbled to the tremendous amount of support out there. I think that we have a responsibility to remain focused on the midterms and not on our individual aspirations or plans.

11:26Jon Sopel:You know, if there was a speech bubble underneath that of what it really meant. Yes. Yes, of course. Of course, I'm thinking about it. What do you think I'm doing? John, clearly AOC has not been practicing the answer to that question. The awkward laughter, the stuttering. Her team had to have been thinking, we should have talked about this beforehand. There's a non-denial denial out there that doesn't involve tripping over your shoelaces five times in the same answer. But in any event, it's clear that AOC wants to run for president of the United States. A lot of people around her, a lot of her allies have been trying to draft her into that race.

12:09She's going to wait until after the midterms are over before she is signaling any of that. She also wants to be able to show, John, that a lot of the candidates that she endorsed won their races. That's going to help her make the case to middle America that she, AOC, is not too far left because she helped get people elected in swing states. Maybe she helped get people elected in middle America. And you can also see that in the way that she's starting to answer questions about whether she is, as Donald Trump alleges, all of his opponents are a communist and whether she is a democratic socialist.

12:45And you can sense the littlest bit of hedging in her answers on that question. What, in your mind, is the difference between socialism and communism? I think to me, the fundamental differences, I mean, there's there's many. One prevailing one is democracy. And I believe that democratic socialists are fundamentally pro-democracy. And we believe in the ballot box. We believe in respecting the outcomes of elections and governing democratically and ensuring that the ideas and policies that are implemented are won through popular vote and popular opinion. And so I think that's why so much of what we focus on is also making sure that we are providing for the majority of Americans, guaranteeing health care, raising wages, strengthening the right to a union.

13:41And and I think that that's at its core what we're about. Are you still a member of Democratic Socialists of America? Of the New York City chapter, the New York City chapter, not the national. No. You know, what was interesting to me about that answer, John, is she entirely avoided the thing that defines a socialist ideology, which is centralized command of the economy and control of economic decisions, redistribution of wealth. She dodged all of that in her answer. She talks about democracy. She talks about the popular vote. But AOC recognizes that for a lot of the people she's going to need to support her in a national election, talking about bringing more controls into the economy isn't going to be a great selling point.

14:28So I thought that was very interesting that she described socialism really just as democracy.

14:33Jon Sopel:Look, we all know that in U.S. politics, you need a machine. And to have a machine, you need money and large amounts of it. I mean, is AOC building that machine? Jean, do you sense? Has she got the people around her, the infrastructure in place where she could build this thing out? Look, it remains to be seen. I think a lot of what happens in the midterms is going to signal that. I mean, some of these progressive networks that are fielding Senate candidates like, you know, El-Sayed in Michigan are the apparatus that she will use for a presidential campaign. Again, she's been very involved with the Justice Democrats, you know, one of the sort of forerunners of that movement.

15:15Al-Sayed aligns as a Justice Democrat. That apparatus and other associated structures will likely come in behind the AOCs of the world if they enter the race. But again, that big question will be, can she overcome the same hurdles she has seen with some of the progressive candidates in the races this year? Can she get ordinary voters and independent voters to start to like her? And I think it's interesting that she's AOC herself is starting to curtail her answers to questions to account for the possibility that she might need to win over some independent voters to actually win a national election.

15:52Jon Sopel:I'm guessing that mainstream Democrats listening to this podcast will be throwing things at the radio or the television set or their AirPods or whatever, however they're listening and saying, hang on, don't think that our party has already been taken over. look at the kind of the center of gravity is still centrist mainstream um are we overdoing the impact of dsa members or the progressive alliance or whatever you want to call it because in reality a lot of the levers of power are still held by the sort of people that have held the levers of power in the democratic party for you know half a century yeah but i've seen this story before.

16:35I lived it inside the upper echelons of the GOP in 2015 and 2016. And back then you could have said the same thing of the Republican Party. Donald Trump was in a field of 16 presidential candidates in 2016, far and away the most radical of them. And he was considered far outside of the mainstream of the Republican Party. He was considered a clown. There was no chance he was going to win the nomination and absolutely no chance he would win the presidency. And that's what we thought within the GOP. And then one by one, he took down his rivals. We all know what's happened since. Donald Trump has consolidated control in the Republican Party, and he has remade it in his own image.

17:17Now, how did that happen? Well, I go back to that number. being in a race with more than a dozen people allowed Donald Trump, even though he was the most radical, to stand out because he had the most fervent support base. And he continued, not with a majority of the vote, but a plurality of support to take on one rival after the next. That would be my warning to Democrats who are worried about the party being overtaken by DSA rhetoric and ideology that, look, if you want to keep the Democratic Party centrist, Look back to 2015 and 2016. Look how this happened with the GOP and learn the lessons.

17:54Jon Sopel:We also ought to talk about the Republican Party. And I'm going to introduce our listeners, our viewers to someone you might not know, particularly if you don't live in America. And it is a gentleman called Mike Lindell. This is what his day job sounds like. He's back. The MyPillow guy. And you're looking good. Still feeling good. Well, just when you thought it couldn't get any better, we've got the best pillow ever. MyPillow 2.0. Wow, it's so soft and smooth. Now, honestly, when you live in America, you cannot move for Mike Lindell and adverts for his company, MyPillow. But he's also a fervent Donald Trump supporter, has made his case, his cause, Donald Trump's cause.

18:46Jon Sopel:And he was also going for a nomination last night for a Republican nomination. It didn't go so well. No, it did not go so well. In fact, this was one of Donald Trump's biggest losses so far of the cycle. Mike Lindell was trying to run for governor in Minnesota. He lost in the primary race. And I've got to imagine, John, it's for similar reasons why Hong lost in Wisconsin. We are talking about a Midwestern state and a guy who, despite being on TV all the time selling his pillows, is also very closely associated with Donald Trump's effort to prevent the transfer of power in 2020. Believe it or not, Mike Lindell, the pillow guy, was a major advocate for the movement that led to the insurrection at the United States Capitol, the storming of the Capitol, the attempt to prevent the certification of the election results.

19:40And that is still in the mind of independent voters. And Donald Trump hoped that maybe, you know, six years later, five years later, folks in the Midwest would have forgotten and that his close ally, Mike Lindell, might ascend in this crucial swing state that he hopes that his candidates will win in, that he hopes in 2028, whoever is on the ballot, including potentially Donald Trump in some way, shape or form, we'll put that aside for the moment, can continue to bring Minnesota voters over to their side. But that didn't work out for Lindell. And all the TV commercials in the world were not sufficient to help him get over the hump.

20:19Jon Sopel:I bet he didn't sleep that easily last night, even with his 2.0 pillow. We'll be back in just a moment. And on Air Force One, or not on Air Force One, or in a catering truck. I don't know, one of those.

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21:16The News Agents USA. Why was it too dangerous for you to fly on Air Force One, but not too dangerous for the threat? I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk. Why do you say that? Because that would be the plane I think that they would be more likely to go for. John, I've got to say, when I heard this story break, I had a sort of special insight into it. And the story, of course, is that Donald Trump, to avoid a potential credible threat to his life from the Iranians, was smuggled from Air Force One into a catering cart to fly on another jet so he couldn't be in danger. But that perspective is I used to oversee the U.S.

21:59Secret Service when I was at the Department of Homeland Security. Years before that, I oversaw their budget on Capitol Hill. I know a lot about the Secret Service. And my initial reaction was actually, look, this is kind of mission impossible. This is sort of cool that the Secret Service found this clever way to remove the president of the United States from a mortal threat. But the cool factor sort of burns off really quickly when you listen to comments like Donald Trump made, when you listen to comments where he got onto that plane and told reporters that they were on a very dangerous flight.

22:33And then he himself gets whisked away onto another flight and sends reporters and staff into the air where presumably our adversaries also thought the president was and may have been targeting him. And this is now starting to blow back on Donald Trump in the United States and around the world. This mission impossible effort to spirit him off of this airplane so he isn't threatened is now starting to look to a lot of people like a cowardly, evasive move that put other people in danger. And it's bringing attention back to the corruption that led to this in the first place, namely that he had bought or accepted rather a Qatari gifted jet that many critics, myself included, said was not sufficient from a security standpoint to fly the president of the United States.

23:21Those vulnerabilities, it turns out, are the reason the Secret Service spirited Trump away into a backup jet. I don't know. What's your take, John?

23:28Jon Sopel:Well, I thought it was I mean, look, I thought it was a very clever move, except for the fact that, you know, Miles, you've flown on Air Force One. I've flown on Air Force One. The idea that it's too dangerous for the president, but we don't really give a shit if Miles Taylor gets blown up or John Sopel gets blown up. It's a little bit of a difficult one to take. I think where it gets ludicrous and where Trump gets ludicrous is when he comes on in that clip and says, well, it's possible that my plane was going to be targeted first and therefore I was in more danger. Really? So what you're saying is the Secret Service put you on a plane that was more at risk?

24:05Jon Sopel:Sorry, just explain the logic of that for me slowly so that I can understand it because, Mr. Trump, you're making no sense at present. Well, and let me take listeners back in time a beat. OK, so we're in early July. President of the United States goes to Turkey to meet with Western allies. But he flies there on this Qatari gifted jet. Right. This 400 million dollar jet that allegedly the Pentagon then spent a billion dollars of Americans taxpayer money to retrofit for the president so he could ride in style. He flies there on this jet and then it's reported by the New York Times that the jet has security vulnerabilities.