Clip: Biden touts economic policies on campaign trail as Trump and DeSantis feud again

Laura Barron-Lopez: On Thursday, President Biden visited South Carolina, an early Democratic primary state, touting his economic policies and infrastructure investments. Elsewhere on the 2024 campaign trail, the feud between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump flared up again, this time after DeSantis' campaign attacked Trump for his previous support of some LGBTQ rights.

Donald Trump, Former U.S. President:  I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Well, there you have it. But, first, before we get to that video, Margaret, the GOP field, as we saw, is focused on LGBTQ saying no to gender identity being taught in schools, abortion restrictions. But President Biden this week, when he was in South Carolina, was talking all about Bidenomics. What's behind this strategy where he's focused entirely on the economy?

Margaret Talev: You know the expression, it's the economy, stupid? So, I mean, he's running for reelection, and they think that how Americans feel about the economy is going to matter. And they're probably right, because guess what, it's mattered in every single election since forever. But I think there's a couple of things at play here. One is that it's confounding to the Biden team and to a lot of economists that people's perceptions of the economy is really different than some of the indicators of the economy, that the economy is better than people feel like it is, or, I mean, I guess the economy is as good as you feel like it is, but that's the reality. So they need to address it. And they're taking a page from the Obama playbook where, the Affordable Care Act when Republicans tried to hang the name Obamacare around it and Democrats got hit really bad in the first midterms. And then after that, health care started working for them and Obama started embracing the name Obamacare. And so Biden is going to embrace Bidenomics. It's also a bit of a hat tip to Reaganomics, except for a repudiation of it. It's to say, I reject trickledown economics. And it's, thirdly, the Biden team team's belief that some of these longer term plays through the big spending, the bipartisan deals that were enacted, right, the green energy stuff, the efforts to reduce prescription drugs, that those are going to take a while to play out and that the economy is actually going to feel better for people by election time, by this time next year, than it does right now. So, they are placing their bets on it, and they've decided, the same way they kind of have with age, how he's making jokes about how old he is. They've just decided that he should own the economy. I don't know if it's going to work, but that's what they're trying to do.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Sabrina, as Margaret said, voters still perceive the economy as not necessarily working for them. So, the Biden administration appears to be highlighting the fast work on the I-95 Bridge that collapsed and how quickly they were able to help in Philadelphia turn that around. Do you think that those types of projects that the president is highlighting will ultimately help them break that perception that Margaret's talking about?

Sabrina Siddiqui: Well, that's the key challenge that the administration and the Biden campaign is grappling with, that although there have been gains in the economy under this president's watch and there's a lot for them to tout in terms of even legislative accomplishments with the infrastructure bill, with the Inflation Reduction Act, Chips and Science Act, the problem they're encountering is at least so far a lot of the public says that they're not yet feeling the impact of those bills, right? And so touting the impact that that legislation will have on people's day to day lives is a message that I think they believe will help them break through. It's very much the are you better off than you were four years ago argument that we've seen previous incumbents really put at the center of their re-election campaigns. Look, I think the other thing that they're contending with is an enthusiasm gap. And so Margaret mentioned even the jokes that Biden is making about his age. And so the message is very much focused on the economy. But I think as we get more into potentially a rematch between President Biden and former President Trump, we're also going to go back and see similar themes to what we saw in 2020, which is that there may not be a lot of enthusiasm behind the president right now. But when faced with a choice between Biden and Trump, a lot of voters will choose Biden as the better alternative. So, I think that's a lot of the message that we're also going to see take shape in the coming months.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Moving over to the GOP side, that clip that we played of the DeSantis video, Susan, you told me specifically that that one stood out to you where Trump said in it, former President Trump says that he'll do everything he can to protect LGBTQ citizens. And why did that specific part of the video stand out to you?

Susan Page: Because he was making comments in the wake of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Florida where DeSantis is governor that left 49 people dead. And to then make it the kind of theme of a video with those images that DeSantis chose to show, I thought, was striking. You might use a stronger word. It's one of the things that DeSantis has done, like signing a six-week ban on abortion. That may help him in Republican primaries, although so far, it's not helping him much. It will haunt him if he gets into the general election as the Republican nominee, because that attitude toward LGBTQ rights is quite at odds with where American public opinion is today.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Margaret -- yes, go ahead.

Sabrina Siddiqui: I was just going to say, even in a primary, there are real questions about this strategy because it overlooks what we've long known about support for former President Trump within the Republican primary electorate, and that it's not about policy. It's not about his record as a conservative. I mean, we saw Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in 2016 try and hold up then-Candidate Trump's prior positions on LGBTQ rights, on abortion, the fact that he used to donate to Democrats, none of that matters, because none of that is why anyone had supported Trump in the first place or continues to support him. And so I think what Governor DeSantis is going to learn is that it's a really delicate balance when you're trying to figure out how to out-trump Trump, and that running to the right of Trump really has not proven successful when, again, it's more about the cult of personality than is about any real policy debate within the Republican Party.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Margaret, you've said, though, about that specific video, that it's not really about Trump, that there's something --

Margaret Talev: It's starts all about Trump.

Laura Barron-Lopez: What's DeSantis' goal here, though?

Margaret Talev: Right. I mean, in fairness, it's not his video, but he certainly has embraced it, right? But if this if the purpose of the video was just to show that Donald Trump has moved further to the right, has moved away from or -- sorry, if the purpose of this was to show that Donald Trump is to the left and that he has embraced gay rights, that's where the ad would have stopped. The purpose of the ad is to begin there and then to define Ron DeSantis as the sort of champion of anti-gay, anti-trans positions. And so it begins as being about Donald Trump, but in the end, it's not really about Donald Trump. It's much more about positioning Ron DeSantis. And I think that's, to Susan's point, it is a play for the primary, but it's a danger if you were to --

Laura Barron-Lopez: Very quickly, Susan.

Susan Page: But Trump has a huge advantage, which is he's been indicted twice. And unsurprising to all of us, that has turned out to be a fundraising bonanza and something that has strengthened his position within the party.

Laura Barron-Lopez: We don't really have much time left, so I think we're going to have to leave it there. That video is definitely, as you said, Margaret, very anti-LGBTQ, anti-transgender, and not necessarily something that will help Ron DeSantis or former President Trump on the campaign trail in the general electorate, if they make to the general electorate. We're going to have to leave it there for now. Thank you to my panel for joining us and for sharing your reporting.