Dispatch From Trump World: The Spirit of '24

"It's harder to be snotty or snarky when I'm looking you in the eye.”

Two weeks after Donald Trump won the 2024 election in anything but a nail-biter, some of the people packed into a VIP room at New York City's Comedy Cellar this Tuesday night might have had reason to feel a little bit smug.

It was the first on-stage performance of Mark Halperin's The Morning Meeting (though this one was subtitled "After Dark"), a weekday news show that airs live on YouTube and on Halperin's new 2Way platform, where he and his cohosts—former White House Communications Director Sean Spicer and Democratic strategist Dan Turrentine—provide an interactive experience "devoted to unique conversations, unbiased discourse, and open debate." Halperin opens each time with the watchwords, "Peace, love and understanding."

Where a cynic might see this as airy-fairy, others find respite. One VIP looked nearly beatific as he told me Halperin was the only host he knew that "shoots straight."

"It's the one show that's giving people actual insight into what's going on," said Spicer. "On the networks, it's five minutes of a pundit who's never been in the game, never worked in government."

All three men have had, if not a fall from grace, at least a dinging up during the Trump era. Halperin faced unproven allegations of sexual impropriety which cost him his roles at Showtime and NBC News. Spicer served as White House Communications Director in 2017 until he was unceremoniously replaced by Anthony Scaramucci (who lasted all of ten days). Turrentine is the former chief of staff to Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and became something of a pariah in his own party when he questioned Biden's fitness to stay in office before others were ready to hear it or the media was ready to report on it.

After having watched a dozen episodes of The Morning Meeting (and, full disclosure, being called on several times to be a talking head), I can attest the audience seems to find relief in conversations where they are not accused of being a traitor.

"The show is to me a little bit of a version of the 21st century talk radio, it's a two-way interaction," said Turrentine. "It's harder to be snotty or snarky when I'm looking you in the eye, as opposed to Twitter or even on a telephone, where you can flex all you want and hang up."

At 5 p.m., Halperin, Spicer, and Turrentine took the stage for what looked like an all-ages, entirely packed house. After Halperin delivered the opening grace note and said they'd be taking questions, he reminded the crowd the show was being livestreamed.

"Not unlike being in Mar-a-Lago, everything you do can be seen and heard by the Chinese," he said, then turned to Spicer. "Now, it's going to be about confirmations—who will win? The swampy establishment Republicans or MAGA?"

"Oh, MAGA wins every day of the week," Spicer said.

Halperin asked if they both thought Trump would get all his picks confirmed.

"Yeah," said Spicer.

"No. No, I do not," said Turrentine.

This was about as confrontational as things got. Halperin occasionally threw an elbow, as when he counseled an audience member to "consider Elon Musk like a less stable Kim Jong Un," but the mood was light—teasing instead of opportunistically looking to chew the other guy's face off.

"Chuck Schumer: put him on a milk carton," said Halperin. "Normally, the guy loves to talk to the press. Have not seen him. What do you think's going on there, Dan?"

"Yeah, Dan?" jibed Spicer.

"Can we go back to nominations?" Turrentine mock-pleaded.

It was that kind of night, with Spicer doing a not-bad Trump impersonation ("I don't even know who this Chuck Schumer is. I used to donate to his campaign. He'd come in and beg like a dog, and then I said, 'Get out Chuck, Chuck Wagon'") and Halperin jumping in with pop news quizzes which the audience shouted answers to— all of which created a sort of unifying soup. 

People may have started at different spots on the political field, but they had migrated here, to a room that, often to participants' surprise, skewed bigly for Trump in a city that went 68 percent for Harris.

"Raise your hand if you voted for Donald Trump in the election," asked Halperin. More than half the room put up their hands. "Incredible. Now raise your hand if you think there are people in the room who voted for Donald Trump but didn't raise their hands."

The laughter was reflexive, like something people had been holding in for years. Were they allowed to laugh now, after what had been several bruising election cycles and sometimes a shitshow? There was a sense they could, that they were among friends, that they could take a breather. It was about this time I started to see the room—and the three hosts in particular—like the Revolutionary War soldiers in the Spirit of '76 painting: battered but, with fife and drum, carrying the message forward.

But what was the message? Audience members wanted to know. They had been Bernie bros, they used to be Hillary stans, they had never not voted Democrat down the line. But this time…

"I voted for RFK, but deep down, I wanted Trump to win," said one young man. A 2020 Bernie delegate said he had voted for Trump and that he was currently wearing a Trump shirt under his flannel. "I couldn't wear it on the street," he said, to general laughter and applause.

A woman who said she worked in "heterodox spaces" took the mic. "This election, I think, has been the most divisive we've really ever seen, at least in my lifetime," she said. "The Dems, Republicans, and the media, do you think they're going to ratchet things down? Do you think people have had it or do they think they still need to kind of ramp stuff up in order to get ratings, to get clicks, to get the algorithm going?

"So basically, you're asking about Joy Reid," said Halperin.

Turrentine picked up the question. "I think the Democrats will tone it down a little because Trump thumped them," he said. "The fact that Trump made inroads in every single demographic and almost every geographic center of this country, you can't, if you're a Democrat, look at it and say, 'Yep, Hitler and fascist is the winning message. Let's just double down on that.'"

"There are some folks that want to pounce and say, 'We are finally able to be loud and vocal about our victory!' And there are others that want to be a little bit more welcoming," said Spicer. "To Dan's point, outrage sells, it's how you raise money, it's how you get on cable TV."

There was another half hour of quizzes, prescient skepticism for Trump's nominating Matt Gaetz to lead the Department of Justice—Halperin asked an audience member, "If you were at the airport and you needed to use the men's room, would you say to [Gaetz], 'Would you watch my luggage?'" to which the audience member responded, "I… don't know?"—and general bonhomie.

Halperin assured a gay woman, who said she feared Project 2025, that she was supported here, and the audience murmured appreciation and offered group hugs—they were grateful for 2Way and would follow its lead, if not into a future of peace, love, and understanding, then at least to a place where they could exercise their better angels.

"We're going to close with Sean and Dan commenting on a story that is breaking," said Halperin, reading a headline off his laptop: "The New York Times: 'Comcast is moving forward with a spinoff of its NBC Universal Cable Channels including MSNBC.' Sean, what do you think?"

"If I were Joe [Scarborough] and Mika [Brzezinski], I'd be on LinkedIn right now," said Spicer, to applause from the crowd. "Comcast is doing smart business. The viewership is gone. Look, there's a reason the platforms like [2Way] are flourishing….And so I hope the best for Mika and Joe. I look forward to them driving my Uber, all the best for them."

More laughter and even buoyancy followed, suggesting that, underneath the goodwill, there was still a little room left for schadenfreude.