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Today on the Playbook podcast, after another round of surprising Democratic primaries, is the silent normie majority gaining steam? That is the story driving the day. Then on Talk of the Town, we dig into other big stories circulating in Washington, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt's surprising departure, and Marco Rubio's candid conversation with Katie Miller. Would anybody like a Pop-Tart? Good morning, Playbookers. I'm Dasha Burns. And I'm Adam Wren, and it's Thursday, August 13th. Okay, I am a fan of Pop-Tarts. I don't know about you, Adam.
Yes, I am. Although I think, you know, his bit about Pop-Tarts was a little bit derivative from Jerry Seinfeld, who has a whole bit about Pop-Tarts in his stand-up comedian routine. He's actually written and directed a movie, The Pop-Tart Movie. give Jerry credit where it's deserved. We'll explain why Pop-Tarts are a hot topic a little later in the podcast. Let's start with what we're covering in the top of Playbook today, which is this ideological battle within the Democratic Party that we've been covering for weeks now. And after Tuesday's primary results in Wisconsin, there are, I think, some more clear indications of where this reckoning is heading. Adam, you report on the rise of the quote revenge of the normie majority
in today's Playbook newsletter. We worked on this together. Let's talk about what this actually means. Yeah, Dasha. So, across the map, in Michigan and Wisconsin and other primaries, we're seeing normie voters, older voters, whiter voters, voters who have fewer college degrees turn out in mass. If you just look at Wisconsin last night, it's pretty remarkable. What you saw in 2018 was 538,000 Dem primary voters turn out during the first Trump term. In 2026, that's 8 years later, 790,000 Dem primary voters, Dasha, came out for this weird, you know, head-to-head race with a lot of late switcheroo. And so, it's just a massive turnout. Normie voters, voters who are not online, not on X, are coming out and they're massively rejecting sort of the
progressive wing of the party. And black voters, too, right? I mean, that's one point that Rahm Emanuel has been making pretty consistently over the last few weeks. Of course, Rahm Emanuel is a potential 2028er, but he's also the former DCCC chair. And I talked to him on the phone for this, Adam, and he said, "If you're trying to be a party that recruits people, working-class people that go paycheck to paycheck, socialists have been repulsing them." He said, "We're the only country where you have to be rich enough to be a socialist." And he's been noting that there's this emerging pattern saying that black voter turnout has been surging in the wake of the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act and has
cleared the way for this Trump-backed redistricting wave. But he sees a lot of those very reliable Democratic voters now, you know, standing up and turning out because of it. Yeah, you know, that's right. And we noticed this on the podcast last week in Michigan. We're seeing a growing distance between these wider, more educated voters and the traditional black working-class voters who have powered the Democratic Party for decades. There's a gap there when you look at these primaries. And in some ways, these two factions of the Democratic coalition are running away from each other. And it's it's a real problem for the party. And now that's
why we're talking about all of these unity breakfasts that are happening places like Wisconsin and Michigan because they really do the party itself at large really does need to restore some of these rifts. And for all the talk that we've seen about the surge of energy on the far left, someone like Rahm Emanuel, he's really skeptical of that. Like he believes that the majority of people that those folks are winning over, he says are quote, those that are living in the brownstones of Park Slope in Brooklyn or the struggling PhD student at Columbia. Um so there is this maybe disconnect and I actually talked to Elsayed about this in our sit-down on the conversation. There's this disconnect uh between the types of people that the
sort of economic populist progressive left candidates want to represent and the people that they're actually attracting into the movement. Now I think Elsayed might argue that but like some of the numbers coming out of these primaries do bear that out. No, that's that's that's exactly right. Uh he really has to uh get black voters and one of the first people that his campaign reached out to in the hours after his victory, Dasha, was Maryland Governor Wes Moore and I'm told that uh that Moore is looking at a potential campaign trip to Michigan to sort of validate him among the black voters that he needs. And when you see someone like AOC, you know, lean into this idea of woke one was crazy, right? Rahm Emanuel praised
her for that and said kudos to her for recognizing it but he believes that not everyone in the party has learned that lesson and you know, I think in the wake of Tuesday night or I guess early Wednesday morning, um Rahm feels pretty vindicated in his view of what the sort of political class has been misreading about what's going on in the Democratic Party. I think there are a lot more tests and of course the biggest test of all uh still to come in November that will really cement the narrative one way or another. All right now, it's time for Talk of the Town where we dig into the other stories animating Washington. And for this, let us bring in our White House senior reporter and Playbook contributor, Megan
Messerly. Hey, Megan. Hey, Dasha. Good morning. Okay, this one strikes a chord for both of us because she has been a staple in our lives for the last uh year and a half plus. So, we just learned yesterday that Karoline Leavitt is leaving her position as White House press secretary. President Trump said that she will serve as one of his outside advisers. Leavitt, who was hired for her role at 27 years old, is the youngest person ever to fill this role, the first woman to be pregnant on the job. She broke the mold in a lot of different ways, of course, breaking precedent and opening doors to non-traditional news media. On X, she explained that she's exiting to focus uh her energy on being a mom and her two
young children. Uh she just got back from maternity leave from her second kid. Megan, I wasn't expecting this before the midterms or Really so soon at all. Yeah. No, no. I don't think any of us were expecting this uh quite so soon. I mean, I think we expected that there might be sort of a changing of the guard around the midterms, after the midterms. I mean, we have seen some moves within the press shop. We also just saw Dave Warrington announce that he's leaving at the end of this month, White House counsel. So, I mean, this is a time of some shake-ups, but I don't think I don't think anyone was expecting
Karoline to be leaving now, exactly. I mean, she's been such a fixture, not just behind the podium, but really in the press office at large. I mean, I think this is going to be a huge change for everyone, both those of us that report on the White House and uh the White House team itself. But, of course, she has been I mean, the part of the reason this is such a sort of shock to the system is because this is so different than the first Trump administration, when you had this rotating cast of characters that SNL could barely keep up with behind that podium. She's outlasted almost everyone except uh Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Exactly. Yeah, so Sarah Huckabee Sanders was there the longest, but you know, the president had four press secretaries
during his first term, and Caroline has outlasted the other three. You know, so I she really has had a remarkably stable tenure, and you know, I talked to folks on the right, of course, but also the left who say like she's been a really good press secretary like objectively. And like these are Democrats saying like don't agree with what she says at all, but she does her job of like being the spokesperson for the president. I had a Democrat tell me, "Man, I wish we had her on our side." Like that is the level of respect she commands here. She commands so much respect, and she was able to, you know, be in that White House um press briefing room and do the
kind of friend-foe, you know, joking-biting thing very well, which was like very well on TV, right? And that's what the president loves and looks for. Adam, you know, with all the reporting we've been doing in Playbook about the challenges ahead for this administration, the challenges for Republicans in the midterms, I mean, this does feel like kind of a dicey time to be losing a key player in the comms shop. Yeah, you know, I spent a good portion of last year uh profiling Caroline through the prism uh for Politico magazine through the prism of her congressional run uh back in New Hampshire. That's actually the first time that I
met her. I was covering uh some of the New Hampshire races and caught up with her on the campaign trail. She was like 25 years old, yeah. Yeah, that was her political education, and you know, she worked at her college newspaper, uh interned at her local TV station, and you could really see kind of the roots of how she would approach the job as press secretary uh in those experiences. But you know, you're right, uh this is a fraught time for the administration. Uh you know, if they have some more changes in the cabinet, they're going to have a problem uh you know, getting Senate confirmation for
some of those before the midterms. You know, we if you recall back not too long ago, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said as much uh to Republican senators and to the cabinet that look, if you're planning on leaving, we need you to you know, we need you to do it now, otherwise stick around through the midterms because it's going to be a problem. Uh and so, I do think we're going to see some more changes like this in the coming months. Yeah, I think that this is not the last departure before the midterms. And then after the midterms, of course, who knows what things will look like uh on the other side. Megan, you know, I hesitate to do the guessing game of
who will replace Caroline, but we're all going to be wondering and all going to be trying to report out what the White House is thinking here. I mean, she's got deputies. Um I think the question is, you know, do they elevate someone from the existing press shop, or do they bring in a new figure from outside? Exactly. I mean, that's the million-dollar question, and we don't have any sort of early inklings yet of which way the president himself wants to go. But yeah, I mean, there's folks in the press shop like, you know, Anna Kelly who've been around for a long time. But then there's a lot of other folks who, you know, Republicans think have done like a really good job being spokespeople for the president. Um I was
texting with sources yesterday, and some of the names they were mentioning were Tricia McLaughlin, of course, the former DHS spokesperson. She's very well-liked in the West Wing. Yep. Very well-liked, does very well on TV, like in that kind of Caroline-esque mold. Scott Jennings, of course, his name always comes up, right? The CNN political commentator. Um you know, his name was getting bandied about uh before Caroline was announced for the job. Of course, his name is always in the mix. Katie Zekaria was also floated to me, you know, she also was at DHS now a senior comms advisor for Trump media.
I mean, you know, we don't know ultimately which way the president is going to go, but he does have a lot of choices here. Although we do know one person that, you know, is probably top of the list and that of course is Marco Rubio. Always. It could only be Marco Rubio. He really doesn't have enough on his plate right now. I will never get sick of this meme. Of course, the meme that's been floating around is Marco Rubio on the couch in the style of Caroline Leavitt. Let's just say that. I'm sure you guys have all seen it. Yes. Uh you know, the blonde hair, the red dress, the whole nine yards. Um I thought I would start getting tired of the meme, but it's really it's just still funny. I want every time I see it.
Speaking of Marco Rubio, let's talk about his appearance on the Kasey Miller podcast in a joint interview with his wife Jeanette. I mean, this conversation was cute. It was like Rubio being charming. He talks about Pop-Tarts over the um over the RFK Jr. diet of sauerkraut and steak. Says that Pete Hegseth is a cat guy. There's really something about that avenue for him that, you know, I do think brought out um quite a new side of Rubio. I'm in favor of Maha. Like I think people should be healthy. But I think ultimately at the end completely not. I What's he eat?
Pop-Tarts. No, I don't eat Pop-Tarts every day. Okay, you eat sweets. The Pop-Tart is one of the great American innovations in history of the world. If you think about it, comes in a beautiful foil package. things you should not be eating. Every single thing. Adam, what did you make of this? Yeah, it's interesting, Dasha. When I heard this uh and it came across my algorithm on X yesterday, I immediately thought of Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian, his uh his 2024 film Unfrosted, which is about the genesis of the Pop-Tart. Uh he has a line in his stand-up uh routine where he would say, you know, when I was a kid and they invented the Pop-Tart, the back of my head blew right off.
I think Tom Brokaw times going to be talking about the baby boom and I am of that era and when I was about eight, they invented the Pop-Tart, the back of my head blew right off. And so, you know, if we know nothing else about Marco Rubio, he's an avowed Gen-Xer and, you know, this is a very Gen-Xer thing to sort of echo Seinfeld's love and appreciation for the Pop-Tart. The other thing that this got me thinking, Megan, is the foil, the juxtaposition, the contrast, right, between Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance. And want to get your take on how this interview and the other media moments that like both of these guys have had compare and contrast. I mean, it feels like Rubio gets to do a lot of slam
dunks and Vance has to do a lot of the harder jobs right now. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things I was hearing from sources after this interview came out is just like how relatable Rubio is, right? Like he portrays himself very much as like the quintessential wife guy. He's talking about like carrying his wife Jeanette's things. He at one point calls her eyeliner crayon. Like a very guy move, very relatable, you know. And so, there was a lot of just very like, "Oh, gee shucks." Rubio going around yesterday. I think that poses such a contrast to sort of the way that we see, you know, J.D.
Vance portrayed in the media. And the thing that I just keep hearing, you know, about time and time again from, you know, allies of the vice presidents is like he's getting so much incoming right now, you know, folks who, you know, don't want to attack the president, can't attack the president, are attacking him. Like he is positioned as heir apparent right now and so like he becomes the one who, you know, has all this fire trained on him where Rubio gets to kind of be waiting in the wings and gets to be funny and charming and really is less of a threat because he's, you know, because it's it's Vance's shot first. Um and then the other thing that I just thought of too is comparing, you know, the way that the people are talking about the
relationship between Rubio and his wife with the relationship between J.D. and Usha. I mean, their relationship has really come under such a microscope and folks have been so critical of it. You know, but I was thinking like when I was reading J.D.'s book Communion, like he's very much a wife guy, too. He's obsessed with Usha. Like he really does love her and so there's so much I think to be made of like the way that the public and the way that the right is reacting to these two men just is like really telling about where we are in the 2028 cycle.
I mean, if you talk to people that are in Vance's world or very, you know, supportive of Vance, they will often point to what they feel like is a double standard in the way that the two men are treated. I mean, I do think that having frontrunner status for 2028 and um having some hard jobs handed to him as vice president, the reality is that the microscope and the scrutiny is tougher. I mean, it's the same thing with folks like Gavin Newsom that um Adam, you and I uh talked about yesterday where when you're in that sort of top tier, people are expecting you to be um potentially the guy, you have to deal with the limelight and um the scrutiny in a much bigger way.
Yeah, that's immediately where my mind went uh when you raised the disparity in how Rubio and Vance are treated. It's it's not great to be a frontrunner and so a lot of folks are going to kind of come in behind both Rubio on the Republican side and Newsom and potentially Harris on the Democratic side and they're going to coast uh behind them and you know, the opposition research isn't really going to churn uh that direction until there's a change uh in the polls or a more definite frontrunner. Marco Rubio gets to say, "I'm not thinking about being president. I'm not running." Whereas for J.D. Vance, it's it's much more obvious that this is very likely the path. And so, that plays a factor, too. All right.
Megan, thank you so much for joining us. We will see you very soon. Yep, see you soon. And to close us out, Adam, I want to pull up a tweet that was all over my feed yesterday. Let's call this tweet of the day. Here it is. For those of you who are listening and can't actually see the image on the screen, this is a picture of a Dems unity breakfast in Wisconsin after Tuesday's nail-biter primary. We've got Democratic nominee David Crowley sitting at the head of the table. There's also folks like Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski, who's running for Lieutenant Governor, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, and of course, Francesca Hong, fork in mouth, chomping on a pretty delicious-looking
spread. And Crowley announced that he will be campaigning along with Hong trying to sort of do a unity tour to unite these various coalitions. Adam, your take? Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about these unity breakfasts uh since we saw one last uh last Thursday in Michigan uh with the divided uh primary that they had there. They seem like almost a sort of lost remnants of like a functioning civic society that we don't currently have now. They seem just like a really healthy thing. And I'm thinking in my own personal life, like who do I need to have a unity breakfast with? Uh like is there someone that I need to go through this ritual?
We could all use more unity breakfasts. I think that's that's a good lesson. All right, that is all for today's show. As always, we have much more news and analysis in today's Playbook newsletter, which you can find at politico.com/playbook. If you are watching us on YouTube, subscribe so that you never miss a day of Playbook. And for our audio listeners, go ahead and leave us a review. We read all your feedback, plus it helps other people find the show. And we cannot end without saying a belated happy birthday to Kyle Blaine. You all know Kyle Blaine is the executive producer of Playbook. Kyle, we could not do this without you. Happy birthday. We'll be back tomorrow. Have a great day. And if you've been hearing some background noise,
this young man here is the culprit. Do you have a dog? Wait, hold on. I can't see. Oh, puppy. Wait, Moby's here. Moby's here with me, too. Moby. Moby. Here's Moby. Moby, say hi to Helly. Helly, there's Moby. Moby, say hi to Helly. You Moby wouldn't like Helly. We don't like other dogs.
