This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, The Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. We are broadcasting live from the DNC in Chicago. Special guest here on stage with us now.
Former Chicago Mayor Lori lfefoot, Now, one of the political analysts that we see on TV many times.
Thanks for joining us today. It's my pleasure. So you are.
Instrumental in bringing this convention to Chicago.
Yes, you know.
Look, I feel a tremendous sense of pride that the convention that we work really really hard to win the bid and then worked hard to get the foundation up and running is actually now here and that people are experiencing it. People are happy. I'm talking to people from all across the country, folks that have been in Chicago before but maybe not for a while, or have never come. And I'm pleased to say that the reviews have been
extraordinarily positive. What's happening on the convention floor so far has been incredibly inspiring, and I think the week is only going to build and build and build to Vice President Harris formally accepts thee the nomination in front of the millions that are going to be watching.
That's going to be quite a show, because last night was quite a show.
It's quite a show. If it continues to.
Build, like you say, it's going to be quite a big deal.
I need them to be a little more conscious of time. Though for somebody in my dotage, staying up till midnight I was a little challenging, but it was just an incredibly inspiring night.
You've talked about the importance of toning down the rhetoric we've gotten out of control in this country, slinging mud. There wasn't a lot of that last night, which was refreshing to see.
Well, look, I really think that Vice President Harris has really set the tone. You know, it would be easy for her, the former prosecutor. I've seen her make her arguments to give as good as she's getting from the Donald Trump and the Republican side, but she has I think, made a conscious decision to take a little higher road.
She's not ignoring some.
Of the craziness that comes out of there, but she's dismissing it and then projecting her positivity, her vision, and I think the strategy so far has been working earliantly.
Just to follow up on that. We're going to hear from Michelle Obama today, and I think it's been talked about her quote, you know when they go low, we go high, and we kind of moved away from that a little bit for some time, and I'm wondering if that is another theme that we hear today.
Well, I would be very surprised. So she didn't herself repeat that tonight. I think she and her husband, the former President, Barack Obama, are going to emphasize the thing that I think they feel very strongly, which is you've got to gotta get people hope, You've got to get people a sense of the possibility. I would expect both of them to talk about that tonight. But yeah, Michelle Obama, former first Lady, beloved of course in her hometown. It's going to be a lot of happy, cheering people when
she takes the stage tonight. But this has got to be an election about the future, not the past. And the slogan I think that the Vice President adopted when she introduced Tim More, her running mate, that we're not going to go back, We're not looking backwards.
That is her backhanded I.
Think punch at Trump, But I think it's important because that's what people want to see.
We're talking with Lorie Lightfoot, former mayor of the Great City of Chicago, and I've never spent a whole lot of time here, so these last two days have been really great walking around downtown. The criticism that has been leveled against Vice President Harris so far has been she's not sat down for that long form interview. She's not answered questions specifically about policy.
If you are advising her.
Would you put your foot on the gas for that, would you say, hey, we need to get at the very least, we need to stop the criticism about it.
Well, look, I think it's important. I thinkly think the strategy that she's engaged in is exactly the right one for her at this moment. She has to reintroduce herself to the public, and you always want to define yourself, you always want to.
Create your own narrative.
So I think the strategy is, rather than sitting down for a long form interview that's going to be parse twenty ways from Sunday, people would be peeling back the layers of it. She's saying, you know what, I'm going to go out. I'm going to talk to directly to the American public. I'm going to tell them who I am, what I stand for, and what I want to do for the future.
Last question, I know you've had some heated exchanges with Trump in the past.
Yes, Look, you know I've spent a lot of time, frankly this last couple of weeks thinking a lot about twenty twenty, which was a very very difficult time for me personally. I think it was a different time for our city. The President didn't help, ironically when he would call me, not that often, but we call me and talk one on one. He was the nicest guy in
the world, really and very complimentary. But if you match that up with the rhetoric SS was out there and how he was, you know, bad, mounting me by name baths and mounting my city, it's like.
This is schizophrenic and out of both sides of it.
Yeah, but that's him, Yeah, right, that's him.
Well, thank you so much for I know you got to go, Laurie Lightfoot, Thank pleasure.
All right, So there is more today that's going on.
Yesterday, as we were leaving, we saw, of course, the protesters that had started up near Union Park, which is only four or five blocks away from us, and as we were making our way towards our ride basically get back to the hotel, we saw the skirmish lines and we saw some of the protesters while it was still contained in the park. Then the protesters made their way down here closer to United Center and were able to break down a couple of those security barriers that have
been erected around the perimeter here. What's amazing to me is or not amazing, what I think you have to remember when you see the images of those people knocking those barriers.
Down, is they didn't go in because they knew.
That on the other side of that was about seven thousand of Chicago's finest of Illinois State's finest, of the secret services, finest of the Homeland Security investigators at finest.
They were all waiting for them.
We just totally hogged LORI light Foot. By the way, there's like all these other people waiting to interview her, which at the small window, and I knew it, but I didn't care, because you know what this show first. I am this show first. You are not taking note for an air, not going to help any other shows. This is this show first. And you know you gotta be cutthroats sometimes.
The protesters yesterday were for the most part smaller than expected. At least the numbers were smaller than expected. They didn't do as much damage as was expected. This morning, Governor Tim Walls, of course, the vice presidential candidate, was interrupted by some pro Palestinian protesters when he was addressing the Women's Caucus today. The demonstrators from Code Pink chanted things like stop killing women in Gaza. They had a banner that said Kamala, no weapons to Israel and arms embargo.
Now, Tim Walls.
Didn't say a word to the protesters, didn't acknowledge them as matter of fact, they were simply drowned out by chance from the crowd of USA USA. They were at McCormick Place this morning and they were eventually let out by security.
All right, Coming up next, we will be talking with Alex Thompson from Axios about Kamala Harrison, this controlled rollout that we've seen, how they've been able to manage this.
We are live today at United Center in Chicago for Day two of the Democratic National Convention.
Carl Road, Carl Rode just walked on. It is the weirdest thing.
They were explaining that when we left yesterday, you know, we leave here three o'clock Chicago time, and we.
Like I said, we went and got the car, and the protests were going on just down the street.
That this area right here in front of the Michael Jordan's statue is where all of the VIPs came in.
Not the v.
VIPs, not the president, vice president, but they're families, some of those people. They were all walking right in front of us. So it's just been you know, every once in a while, you'll see somebody that you regularly see on TV and you think, can Bernie Sanders hair really be that crazy?
And the answer is one thousand percent yes.
And is Lori lightfoot really that small?
Yes, she's shorter than you are, yes, which that takes something.
Okay, I'm just saying.
We want talked about Kamala Harris's controlled strategy, the fact that she has not sat down for an interview, she has not taken questions from the press at length, and how they're able to get away with that, how they're able to just put on this beautifully choreographed movie and not get an interview down this far along.
Alex Thompson from Axios wrote an article specifically about this and this maybe unusual way that they're rolling out this campaign.
Alex, thanks for joining us today.
Thanks so much for having me.
Hey, this is an interesting aspect because this woman is running for president, but she has not in the last several weeks at least since getting the nomination officially sat down with anyone for any sort of long form interne and that appears to be the plan, right, that's what they want to do.
Yeah, I mean, it really is extraordinary that you're going to have a Democratic nominee who has not gotten any votes, has not sad for an interview, has not done a press conference, has not laid out in detail her policy vision and priorities for her first hundred days and beyond. But that is the place we are at, just given the extraordinary circumstances of Joe Biden dropping out and the fact that.
She has long been even.
Before this, a very cautious politician, and some of her worst moments as vice president have been in unscripted moments, unscripted interviews. She has not always been been deft in those moments, and I think they were clearly trying to avoid anything that could stop sort of the momentum and some of the positive media coverage that was coming with her, and so they didn't see a need to do an.
Interview Alex who is the choreographer of this risk adverse strategy, who's pulling the strings here? And is there a boot camp for her behind the scenes where she's learning to be better off the cuff?
Great question.
So the choreographer here is Kamala Harris herself. I can tell you, having talked to a lot of her former aids, that this is a candidate driven in some ways. You know, it comes from a place of insecurity and frustration when she when anything goes wrong, and so aids sort of start learning that they don't really push to put her an unscripted moments unless they feel like they really need to. But you know this is coming from the top herself.
Now.
In terms of behind the scenes boot camp, I can tell you that Stephanie Cutter, a former Obama AID who is also helping produce this convention, has been working behind the scenes with Kamala Harris and media training and other things. For the last several months. She has been visiting the White House and visiting the Vice President to work on these things to try to improve, you know, her dexterity
in those unscripted moments. But the thing is, we don't know because the last interview we saw was right after the disastrous debate in late June, when she talked to See in MSNBC, and since then we haven't we haven't really seen her.
It's interesting I was reading your piece in Axios today and you referred to a plan to ask Kamala Harris to be the headliner for the Gridiron Dinner, which is generally a less serious event, but that she resisted. Is it because she doesn't think that's fun. She doesn't think that would be beneficial. I mean, why would she not do that put herself, especially as vice president, kind of raise you know, raise her own level of appearance.
Perhaps, you know, I think it goes to this very you know, she does not this this caution that she has, she does she likes now her defenders would call it being very steady and very disciplined. But it was not very fun jobs necessarily be in that office, you know, doing some comms work, because it was very difficult to convince her it was worth it and that it was it was worth to squeeze and you know, I think that first year as Vice President in particular was really tough.
This invite to the grid Iron Dinner came in early twenty twenty two, and the thing, the thing that was like surprising about it is that the White House wanted her to do it. It wasn't necessarily the grid Iron
was inviting her. The White House wanted her to do it, and she and she said no. And basically the staff did not want to, you know, push her to do it, given that they you know, given that they knew that it could if things went wrong that or if things went badly things didn't go off with that hitch, that
she would be frustrated by it. So it creates this sort of self fulfilling cycle of being choreographed and scripted because staff don't want anything to go wrong, so they only do things that are very very tightly controlled.
Well, you know, when you think about presidents, and that's generally the climate that they operate in is a very controlled environment in terms of picking and choosing when they speak, when they address the nation and all of that. So, I mean, I guess you can get away with it at least right now.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's very possible that she goes through election day with very few interviews and very few unscripted moments. I mean, Joe Biden has done fewer interviews with the press than basically any president in recent memory, and so I do think, you know, the thing that's interesting is that even though the presidency is very highly you know, stage and choreographed, that you know, she did stand out amongst aprs I've talked to for being on
certainly the far more cautious end of the spectrum. There are definitely some politicians that are much looser and are more willing to you know, take the good with the bad, you know, including Donald Trump is very is basically on the opposite end of the spectrum, where in some ways his lack of discipline can get him in trouble, but he also is more willing to just sort of let it fly and move on to the next thing if things didn't go well.
Alex Thompson from Axios, thanks for your time today.
Thank you so much. It was great to be on.
You.
Bet Alex there, I would talk to him again.
There is a there's an interesting thing that he I was just thinking about as he was making that last point.
It's we'll come back and do it. How about that. We don't want to blow over time.
Okay, yeah, live this week in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention here at United Center. There are other things going on, other stories that we have been talking about. For example, the American intelligence agencies now say, in fact it was Iran that was responsible for hacking into former President Trump's campaign and trying to breach the Biden Harris campaign.
It was widely expected, not a surprise.
It comes just a couple of days after Roger Stone revealed that it was his hot mail and Gmail accounts that had been compromised, allowed some hackers to impersonate him and get some access to emails of the campaign aids. And there was a follow up to a story that we talked about last week out of Galveston, Texas. This was a jury the parents of a teenage school shooter were on trial. Then it was a civil trial, and
the parents were Antonius and Rose. They were accused of being negligent and allowing their son, Demetrius, to get a weapon from their home and for not warning school officials or police about the fact that his mental.
State was deteriorating.
A judge, sorry, a jury yesterday found that the parents were not liable for any part of the violence, and therefore an ending that that civil suit. It turns out that the kid, Demetrius the son did, was found I should say liable.
The company that.
Sold him the ammunition, Lucky Gunner, was also liable. So even though he was too young to buy the ammunition is part of the reason. And then Lucky Gunner sold it to him. They were liable for deaths and injuries. And the families were awarded three hundred and thirty million dollars in damages.
From what who's going to pay that?
Maybe the gun company has or the company, I don't know if it's a store specifically. They've got insurance, I suppose, but you're not going to You're not going to get any money out of that kid.
He's seventeen, eighteen years old now and in jail.
Remember Hulk Hogan was at the RNC. Yeah, well he's blaming it on alcohol. He's talking about performing one of his famous wrestling moves on Kamala Harris. He was at the Thirsty Cowboy in Medina, Ohio, promoting his new beer. This happened on Monday night. Apparently he grabs the mic and starts firing up the crowd, and things got a little off track. He asked the place you want me to body slam Kamala, Harris, You want me to drop the leg on Kamala? And the crowd eats all of it up.
Of course they do.
Yeah, that's great.
I can't do that.
I mean, it's not great. It's where we're at, folks.
The other thing that we've been asking for repeatedly is just for the asteroid.
Yes, Oh, is there a good asteroid headed here?
News, Well, it's possible, and it's better than that because whatever objects we're looking at that has been discovered by civilian astronomers analyzing information from one of the NASA telescopes, they say, have they have found a unique celestial object caught hurtling through space at a million miles an hour.
Oh that's fast, and it's massive.
It's approximately twenty seven thousand times the size of Earth.
Oh, that'll wipe us.
So we would be a bug on the windshield or whatever this thing is.
We wondn't even know, no idea.
That's kind of best case scenario, isn't it.
This new object, they said, is called c wise Cise j one two four nine not yet identified by NASA experts, but some of the people who are looking at the information from NASA telescopes believe that, in fact, it could be headed through our fetalax.
I have a fun story that's not politics, Okay, tod I saw this in the Washington Post this morning. They say it's a new loneliness cure. Remember we've talked about how dangerous loneliness is, how bad for your health, it is, all of it.
Well, now there.
Are apps that will match you with strangers for a meal. Several services are trying to help isolated remote workers and others find offline friends.
Well, one step to that is to go back to work.
In July. Yeses in July. The dating app Bumble, which does have modes for networking and friend fighting. Yeah right, you're just trying to have sex with those people that you claim you want to be their friend.
Right, Well, sometimes, you know, that's how friendship start.
So it completed its acquisition of Geneva and app designed to help people make new friends to spend time with offline. That's how friendships start. Who have you ever had sex with that then just became your friend?
It goes back to the when.
Harry met Sally, conundrum of can men and women just be friends?
Can they?
Yes?
Oh?
Okay?
But to my question, have you ever had sex with someone and then they became your friend?
No? No, I think my wife is friendly.
Yes, but you still have sex with her.
That's a good point.
You can't have continued the sex if you're just friends.
You can't.
I don't like your rules for one thing, but I'll go with it for now.
I'll go with it for now.
It's refreshing not to talk about politics.
When we come back.
We are trying to effort an interview with Congressman Dean Phillips, by the way, speaking of getting screwed by the Democratic Party.
Price he's allowed in here. I mean, he tried to get rid of Biden two years ago, and you know a lot of people this party didn't talk to him anymore. They may have had sex and didn't become friends.
So anyway, he's in the building here. We're trying to get him to come over and talk more about Also.
Conan Nolan from NBC four caught up with him this morning at the California delegation breakfast where he was reporting. Did an interview with him because he's covered these things since eighty four, so he's got some great insight into these conventions and great moments in convention history.
Live today in Chicago for day two of the Democratic National Convention.
Yeah, we talked about seeing Dean Phillips in the hall here, and we actually quipped, I'm surprised Dean Phillips gotten invites. I mean, two years ago, you were one of the first, if not the first, person to kind of have a little bit of concern over a second term for this president.
A lot of bit of concern.
The nice thing is I've been invited back to the popular Kids table and the Cafeteria's kind of a nice you know. I actually was not even planning to come to the convention. Last minute decided I would, and I'm so glad I did because it restored my faith in a lot of people that had been disappointing to me. High fives, hugs and handshakes, and just a reminder that when you walk through the rain, you might find the rainbow, and I seem to have done so. And a joyous couple of days here so far.
Yeah, I was going to add that was going to be my first question. Is in your opinion, is the party unified right now?
It sure seems like it.
You know, I'm much more accustomed, as our listeners to a party that seems to be in disarray. More often, there seems to be a little bit of a pendulum shift where we are consolidating. I think the way that Kamala Harris consolidated democratic support so rapidly is a hallmark of leadership.
I was surprised by it. I think some colleagues were as well.
And yes, I'd argued for change for the better part of a year and a half and it was a lonely argument. We have a conventional wisdom that says you never take on an incumbent, and I said, even if the incumbent it's going to lose a historically important election. And people are so reluctant to challenge that orthodoxy out of fear of losing their political careers. I was one of the few that I think was in a position to do so. I have, but that's fine, it was worth it.
I was a big fan of yours because of that, Because it seems like there is this coronation, or there's this you know, this this pathway to the throne. You know and just ask you know, Bernie Sanders about it. And it just seems like there have been candidates have been sandbagged by their own party and the own party rules, and I just hate that as a voter, I want to be able to have a say. I don't want the machine to pick the candidate. And so when you came out and said that, it was refreshing, and I
think it started a lot of conversations. Have you gotten any I'm sorries you were rights?
I have gotten a lot of them.
Yeah.
I didn't do this to attract sories or apologies, but I have and from people that actually surprised me proactively coming up to do so. I don't need to name names, but that wasn't the mission. I was trying to be Paul Revere more than a George Washington, if you will. But I gotta reflect on what you just said. That's my frustration that we have two political parties private corporations that are much better at suppressing competition when it's helpful
than they are promoting it. And that's because we still are affording a handful of Americans on the right and the left with I think a little bit too much power and these conventions used to be where the candidate was selected. We didn't used to have primaries. This is where the work was done. That's why they called it in the smoke filled room. So my argument is, either we entrust voters to really make this decision, and if so,
you got to get out and vote. When only you let when you let the far left and far right choose the candidates, why in the world would we think we have people of moderation and centrism and maybe in capacity in November. Too often we don't. So I'm glad you refer to that, because that is the ultimate mission.
Joe Biden happened to be the man. This happened to be the season, but this is something bigger, and I intended to dedicate time in the future too, inspiring more competition, because absent it, that's the vitamin of democracy.
Right.
Well, I tied Kamala Harris in terms of the number of delegates that.
Received in the primaries.
You at least got four delegates during the primaries. There that's I think that still should be part of the conversation, which is she did not get the approval of the Democratic voters.
To be in the position that she's in now.
I'm not saying that she shouldn't or she doesn't deserve it, but it is a very different process that takes place than we've seen in the recent past.
And you're right, and I feel the same way.
But if you recall when I actually when this occurred, when the president announced he wouldn't be running again, I immediately called for a series of four town halls, even if only in three weeks. My point was let each region of the country host Democratic delegates who had already been selected, but entertain some other candidates, including the vice president. That didn't happen, but I agree with you, generally speaking, we should have competitions. It wasn't in the best interest
of the party. I do think what has transpired is actually probably a good thing for Democrats.
But in the future that's what we need to do.
And I should also reflect on the fact that this compressed timeline one hundred days or so, it kind of feels right, these two year cycles of NonStop paigning. Let me tell you, as someone who's kind of had to do it, it's not.
Helping this country right.
Most countries figure out how to do it in really short windows, and there's something kind of refreshing about that. So I think maybe things that have happened recently, if we employ them in the future, could be really beneficial.
Do you think it is just a conservative slash Republican call for her to sit down for an interview or do you think that voters deserve to hear her in her own words, not on a teleprompter, off the cuff, about what she believes.
There's no question voters are entitled to and she will have to answer to them in unscripted moments, and that will come. And I understand that if I were a Republican,
I'd be calling for the same thing. And I understand with that said, I think, you know, this is the coming out party, and I think that this honeymoon phase, which has been quite remarkable, I'm sure for her and Tim Wallas, you know, we'll probably dissipate, and then she will have to issue her platform and our reconcile policy, and to your point, ask subjecting ourselves to interviews, and I you know, I know from experience there are times where it may not be politically advantageous to engage in
debate or to consent to interviews, But.
That doesn't matter.
You know, this is a democracy that begs for you two and so many others here who make their you know, their lives, help and democracy, and every single candidate should consent to it. And I'm really troubled by the fact that even on the debate stage now it's being managed by the campaigns themselves. That should be independent and it should not be up to the candidates to decide how American voters assess them. It should be up to American voters to tell the candidates how we.
Do so, how does a voice like yours get heard in that mechanism that is a party.
I mean, you talk about it and refer to it as a corporation.
That is not what we think about when we think about parties. We think about those dark, you know, smoke filled rooms and things like that, where everybody's voice is heard.
That's not the way it works. Industry.
There was like a great Freakonomics podcast about this and about how we have no say and you're right, and you.
Know, think of me as I was a middle manager and a large corporation that challenged the CEO, and like private corporations do, they don't take kindly to that. And because their private they can do whatever they want with that middle manager. But the middle manager can also you know, cry, you know, call bs and go to the press, and that there's.
A little bit of a tuggle war.
But that is you still get provided to the company.
Picnic Well, to your point, I think I came in second place here in the delectaty. They wouldn't know that, right, you know, it's not like I got an invitation to speak. But that's not you know, that wasn't the objective. And I'm not going to play by the rules as they exist because I think it's broken. I think we need to focus on how we change them to have more dissent, not less. You know, whether it's protesters, whether it's people
in the party that have different perspectives. You know, we're not represent neither parties representing the majority of America right now.
Let's just get to the point.
Yeah, that's why I think fifty one percent of Americans are now declared independence. As an entrepreneur, I've never seen a market opportunity like I see in front of us right now in the political industry, which is now dominated by a duopoly. So there's a there there. And to answer your question, no, it's not easy to get platform. MSNBC did not invite me on one time. From October
when I declared my candidacy to this very day. The only time I had an MSNBC interview was the day after the South Carolina primary, which was Joe Biden's massive victory. So you get a sense of how this environment works, how the relationships work, and most importantly, how perverse the incentives are, including the right and left media.
Well, it's a real conversation about how the media protected a president who had no chance of serving another four and a half years. It's just you know, your eyes tell you. We all watch that debate. It's common sense. We know what we saw, the fact that they were spinning oh behind the scenes, you can't keep up with him. It's like, you know, don't lie to us.
You know.
And I think that there's such distrust with the media for having shielded a onions like yours, whether whether it's MSNBC or what have you. And it hasn't really been felt yet because we're in this whirlwind. But that's going to be a conversation that's had, and if I can.
Speak to that as a member of Congress. You know, the game is played probably better than I do. You know, there are a lot of media outlets, especially in Washington, whose lifeblood.
Is access to the White House.
So if you if you get out of line or you bother them, they're not going to afford you the talent, the leaks the information.
It's the same thing with the NFL exactly.
That's an interesting embarrassary. So you get the point that that's why. And by the way, yeah, the media dropped the ball. You know, the New York Times started getting a little bit more interested in that story, and then they stonewalled them. You know, they kept me off the airwaves, that at least the left leaning airwaves. And that's how the game works. So independent, that's the perverse and sentence. The media has got to be independent. And the same
thing with politics. Why are we punishing courage and rewarding cowardice. That's shameful in both my in my business and yours. And that's I think we got to some light on.
We're talking with Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips.
Can you hang on for one more segment. I'd love to have a couple more questions that came to mind. Absolutely all right, We're talking again.
Dean Phillips four delegates during the primaries, and he's here in Chicago for.
The Democratic National Convention.
We'll come back with more with the congressman in just a couple of moments here.
You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.