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Jane Coaston: It’s Thursday, April 16th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that already hated SantaCon. 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 SantaCon allegedly stole at least $1.5 million of what the event raised over the last five years. My hatred has been confirmed. [music break] 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 the 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 frontrunners. According to a July 2006 Marist poll, the frontrunners 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. 

[clip of 2007 clip compilation on Hillary Clinton] If you look 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’s almost closed. You almost it’s almost inevitable now that Hillary Clinton will be the nominee. She’s gaining momentum. So I’d have to say at this point, Hillary’s, you know, she’s got it in the bag. 

Jane Coaston: Not on that list, an Illinois senator named Barack Obama. Here he is on election night 2008, accepting a pretty exciting new job. 

[clip of Barack Obama] 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 questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. 

Jane Coaston: 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 Noem, sometimes a memoir doesn’t, um, 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. So to talk more about the race for the White House, I spoke to MSNOW’s 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. 

Chris Hayes: Great to be here. 

Jane Coaston: 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. And the other half were like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Al Gore. So 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 Rahm Emanuel? 

Chris Hayes: Oh, well, angling, I think, is pretty clear. I mean, Newsom, Pritzker, Shapiro, at least. Whitmer, weirdly, in Michigan, I thought was going to, but hasn’t done none of the things that would make you think that she is running. And then I think um probably in the House, I think Ro Khanna is going to run. And then, I, think in the Senate, I think you’re looking at Warnock, Gallego, Mark Kelly is a possibility. Um Ossoff, I’ve been joking that I’m beginning to suspect he might be the Lisan al-Gaib. If he [laughter] I think if he if he wins this race this year, he’s up for re-election in Georgia, he has raised a ton 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, and 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 they’re running for president. 

Jane Coaston: Let’s talk quickly about what that looks like, because there’s this idea of like 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. Like–

Chris Hayes: Right. 

Jane Coaston: 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? 

Chris Hayes: I think the biggest thing right now is just how media-present people are, um and I think it’s something I’ve written about in my book quite a bit, uh which is that an awareness that the kind of like silent money primary is maybe not as important at this point as the attention primary. And I think it’s particularly true because if Kamala Harris runs, you know, she’s got a huge advantage. She was the vice president of the United States, um tens of millions of people have already gone to a poll and and voted for her, uh, she has the highest name recognition of any Democrat right now. And so 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. 

Jane Coaston: 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 like, wow, you know, it’s very impressive Shapiro’s going into deep red spaces. And I’m like, ESPN is not a deep red space. 

Chris Hayes: Yeah yeah. 

Jane Coaston: But it is a like, hey, have you been thinking about Josh Shapiro today? He’s there. 

Chris Hayes: Yes, exactly. Yes exactly.

Jane Coaston: He’s just in your life. 

Chris Hayes: And I think that, you know, I think it’s important and I think, it’s probably well-advised. You know, Newsom is obviously kind of omnipresent. Um. 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 thinks, tended to worry about gaffs or screwing something up or the more that you talk to people, the more you might say something that 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 gaff cycle is really not a thing so much anymore I mean, maybe something can 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 that make people angry or or get you in trouble like the best way to wash that down is to go talk to people the next day. 

Jane Coaston: Right uh let’s talk about Trump, who has never been less popular than he is right now. And that, that is saying something but that 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? 

Chris Hayes: 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 essential way to think about it, I thing, is like how affordable is what we would a 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 mean? In America, it means generally you can own your own home at some point, that you can take some vacations, that 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 both higher inflation and so higher nominal prices on consumer goods and also the generation long buildup in cost disease of these main pillars of middle-class comfort. The other big part of this now, increasingly emerging are 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 um for a lot reasons. 

Jane Coaston: 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? 

Chris Hayes: It’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 reasserts itself. I think it’s possible that like no one will even admit that they supported the guy in 10 years. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Chris Hayes: But it will be, and it will totally memory holed. Um.

Jane Coaston: He will become the Iraq War. 

Chris Hayes: Yeah, he’ll become the Iraq war/George W. Bush, who again. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Chris Hayes: 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 what 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, we’ll see what happens in the next few months. It’s not that there hasn’t been some progress. Like, if you compare how much have Republican’s 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. 

Jane Coaston: Right. 

Chris Hayes: It’s just not moved as much as you would think when you look at a guy who really is pretty consistently now polling in the 39% approval range.

Jane Coaston: Right. The thing I keep thinking about is that we know Trump has his base, MAGA 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 independents 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? 

Chris Hayes: That’s a fascinating question. So much depends, I think, on how how much worse it gets or doesn’t get. I do think that you’re already starting to see like lame-duck-ness set in. And I do you 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 gonna 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 only is he 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. 

Jane Coaston: Nope. 

Chris Hayes: 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, say, in 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 are 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 gonna go back to your R +25 district and go grocery shopping there. And if you’re like a big Trump enemy, it’s gonna be a pain. Yeah, you go to your kid’s 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 Thom 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 lined 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 primary. 

Jane Coaston: Chris, thank you so much for joining me. 

Chris Hayes: Really enjoyed it. 

Jane Coaston: 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 Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

Jane Coaston: Joining me is Crooked’s news editor, Greg Walters, to talk about the big stories. Hey Greg. 

Greg Walters: Hey Jane, how you doing? 

Jane Coaston: Greg, there’s more shit talk coming from the Trump administration aimed at the Pope. Border Czar Tom Homan joined in the pile on this week too. 

[clip of Tom Homan] I’m not going to speak for the president, I’m speaking for myself, a lifelong Catholic. I wish they stay out of immigration, they don’t know what they’re talking about. Because if they wore my shoes for 40 years and talked to a 9-year-old girl that got raped multiple times, or stood in the back of a trailer and tracked the trailer, 19 dead aliens at my feet, including a 5-year old boy that baked to death, if they understood the atrocities that happened on the open border, I think their opinion would change. And I welcome discussion with any of them. 

Jane Coaston: Greg, who is they? Does does he mean the Pope or does he mean the Catholic Church? 

Greg Walters: You know, I thought when these guys talked about they, they meant like the people who control the weather or something, but in this case, uh you know, it it seems like they’re just intent on picking a fight with the Pope. 

Jane Coaston: Which, like, it’s funny that Tom prefaces this with I’m a life-long Catholic, but like, exactly what is it that he thinks the Pope should be talking about? Because I’m gonna guess that Tom Homan doesn’t think the Pope needs a primer in 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, Homan is probably just angry because he officially failed to accomplish the Trump administration’s deportation mission. According to newly released data, ICE deported some 440,000 people throughout last year. 

Greg Walters: Yeah, which sounds like a lot, and it is, but it’s not what Trump promised. I mean, 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 on the streets of Minneapolis, the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Even after all that carnage, they’re not hitting their goals. 

Jane Coaston: 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 healthcare 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? 

Greg Walters: I can’t wait for you to tell me. 

Jane Coaston: 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 sentence where I know what he meant, but like, just say narrow. Be normal! 

Greg Walters: Yeah, I mean, they can’t even pass unspeakably boring legislation without giving people the ick. Um. In any case, Thune’s process is easier for him to awkwardly talk about than it is to actually do. They’re hoping 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. 

Jane Coaston: You know what else is complicated, Greg? 

Greg Walters: Oh God, you’re gonna tell me, aren’t you? 

Jane Coaston: I regret that I am. Taxes! Trump’s team spent Wednesday, 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 Wednesday touting the administration’s attempt to stuff Americans’ pockets with more money this year via bigger tax returns. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took questions from reporters to mark Tax Day and said that even though the war in Iran is pushing gas prices higher, everything’s gonna be a-ok. 

[clip of Scott Bessent] President Trump said this morning that he thinks we’re nearing the end. The U.S. kept their side on the ceasefire. We’ve stopped firing. The Straits of Hormuz have not been completely reopened. 

Jane Coaston: Hang on, um this is not the point, but did he just say the Strait of Vermouth? 

Greg Walters: He did, and that was a Freudian slip, because presumably the straight vermouth is his order at the bar this evening. It’s been a long month. Um. 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 averagere fund 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. 

Jane Coaston: And the funny thing is, okay, actually, there’s 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 percent, 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. 

Greg Walters: Yeah, that’s their one thing, and they couldn’t even do it right. Uh, look, the bottom line is these massive refunds that the White House promised simply never happened. I mean, to be clear, they did cut taxes for a lot of the rich folks, but, uh, you know, for a lot of the folks at the bottom, no luck for you. These tax breaks probably won’t help Republicans win the midterms, as Trump warns that gas prices could still be high come November, so even people who did get a bigger refund, you know they’re gonna have some of that refund swallowed up by their gas bill. In other news, we learned this week that Grok, tech-billionaire Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, was almost banned from the Apple Store, according to NBC News. Remember when Grok started allowing users to digitally undress people? 

Jane Coaston: I did not like that. It was a bad time. 

Greg Walters: That was a bad time. Uh. And Grok 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 Grok, after it received complaints and saw news coverage of the scandal.” 

Jane Coaston: Gross. Also, I like that proviso, in places where that type of photo manipulation is illegal. So anywhere else, go nuts. Uh. 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 chatGPT. For Grok, 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. 

Greg Walters: I’m gonna need one of those straight vermouths. 

Jane Coaston: And that’s the news. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you liked 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 a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and why? Why? Why? [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Emily Fohr. Our producer is Caitlin Plummer. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, and Ethan Oberman. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of news and politics is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Kyle Murdock and Jordan Cantor. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]