From CAFE and the VOX Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I'm Preet Barara. The challenge right now that she has is defining who she is. A vice president is, you know, obviously people know the name. They know what she looks like. They don't really know anything about her. That's Jonathan Karl. He's the Chief Washington correspondent at ABC News. He's also a co-anchor of this week with George Stephanopoulos and one of the country's leading White House reporters,
name and beat in Washington and Karl has covered it. From the White House to Capitol Hill to the State Department, Karl is deeply sourced and often breaks the biggest stories and politics. He's covered four presidencies and seven presidential elections. He's also the author of the book, Tired of Winning, Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party. He joined me today to talk about this unprecedented historic and frankly unhinged election season. That's coming up. Stay tuned.
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$45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three month plan only, speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan, additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply, see MintMobile for details. The 2024 election has been turned upside down. Again, ABC News' chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Carl is here to help us understand what's going on behind the scenes. Jonathan Carl, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. A couple of
things going on in the news politically. It may be the most insane three and a half weeks of American politics that I've ever witnessed. Yeah, it's, you're hard to believe it's only been three and a half weeks or a little less than four weeks since the debate by the time this thing comes out.
So there's a lot of things to talk about. I want to talk about what's next for Kamala Harris, how you see the race, how you as the author of the book Tired of Winning, Donald Trump in the end of the Grand Old Party, how the Theses from that book sit as we look in today's climate, before we do any of that. I wonder if you have a sense from your reporting of the real TikTok with respect to the sitting president deciding not to run. We were told in Adam and terms by him
and all the people around him that he was in. He was in. He was in. And then sort of out of nowhere on Sunday afternoon, suddenly he was out. And the reporting has been that even fairly close members, fairly high ranking members of his staff and his orbit learned about it, learned about the withdrawal from social media. What was the final straw for the sitting president? Well, I'll tell you what I know and I with the understanding there may be other elements that we
haven't learned yet. But what would I have learned on Saturday when all systems were go when he was still insisting he was in, when people closed him were saying, you know, he's in. He's in. I had been told that a group of senators led by Senator Patty Murray had essentially written a letter calling on him to drop out of the race. A letter that they were making it clear would go public if he didn't make his own decision. They didn't want to go public with it, but they were
ready to, you know, to put turn the screws. Why why Patty Murray, by the way? Well, you know, Patty Murray is the most senior Democrat in the Senate. She was among the first. Well, I mean, Chuck Schumer had as I reported in the midst of the Republican convention, Chuck Schumer had gone directly to Rohobeth to make that case straight to Biden, but in a private way.
I learned about it days later. By the way, that trip of Chuck Schumer, which I think was also an incredibly important piece of this puzzle, that trip was Saturday, just a couple of hours before the shots rang out in Butler, Pennsylvania. And Schumer's office put out a one sentence statement about that meeting at 605 PM on Saturday. The shots rang out at about 611. So nobody like, even noticed that the Schumer had gone to Rohobeth, but his message was quite blunt as I reported
a few days later. He basically made the case that it was best for Biden. It was best for the party and it was best for the country if he made a decision to leave the race that he was poised to lose and that he was poised to be a drag on Democrats running in the House in the Senate and possibly cause Republicans to be in a position to win all of it. But then so that was key. And clearly Nancy Pelosi's role was central here. You could see it. Pelosi herself was saying
very little publicly, but what she said publicly, she said very loudly. I mean, she said, when she went on MSNBC and said, it's the president's decision to make. And he had already made the decision. So what she's talking about, what decision? He had already decided to stay in. But then when you saw Adam Schiff come out and publicly call on Biden to get out and then you saw Congresswoman Lofgren come out. These are perhaps two of the very closest allies to Nancy
Pelosi in the House. So when they're coming out, you know, it's you get a sense that it's Nancy Pelosi speaking, but she didn't want to be publicly gay with her. I mean, she's the conscience of the party. She is along with Obama, you know, the most prominent elder statesman in that party. I mean, maybe we could put Hillary and Bill in that category, but she's up there. She's
one of the absolute most prominent and she was working clearly behind the scenes. But I think that the idea that a significant number of his Senate colleagues were going to come out publicly, not the private conversations, but publicly came out. I think was a big factor in that final
decision. This is a decision he didn't want to make. I mean, one prominent Democrat also on Saturday again, the day before he announced, put it to me, the little tongue in cheek, but said the message is basically, are you going to do the right thing or are we going to do it for you? I mean, he was truly left without a choice. I mean, the other way I heard it was, apparently from the words of Nancy Pelosi, some version of the message, we can do this the easy way or we can do
this the hard way. Yeah. Is that what happened? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And by the way, he held out so long that it was basically doing it the hard way. I mean, he did it. He didn't have to, you know, go I mean, it was as everybody knew from the beginning, he had to do it himself. You know, there was no way to deny him pledge delegates that he had already won.
Although I did take note when he did that press conference at NATO and he was asked a question about his delegates and if he would allow them to, you know, free them to vote for whatever they want. He did say yes. I didn't have a necessarily carry any legal authority, but I thought it was very interesting that he said they can vote for whoever they want. Oh, really? But nobody was, you know, I mean, Kamala Harris wasn't going to step up and challenge, you know, the president that
she was serving with. What was the level of consensus and or unanimity amongst senior elected democratic officials that Biden should should withdraw? I was told that if you want to look at it in terms of a whip count in the Senate, that it was 45 to six, 45 senators believing he needed to go six that were saying he should stay. Do you know some of the six were? Yeah, we know,
publicly we know Chris Coons, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders. I mean, they were, they were essentially public that the six were much more public than the 45. Anything they really thought that or they'd try to be publicly loyal to the president? The six. You know, I think that the big part of it was loyalty, although, you know, Elizabeth Warren doesn't exactly have a long and warm relationship with Joe Biden,
either frankly does Bernie Sanders. I think that they saw a position, you know, saw a situation where Biden really, really needed the progressive left of the party and they could exact a price for that. And they had, I mean, you know, you'd seen Biden clearly tacked pretty far to the left as he was trying to maintain his support. So I think that politics was a big part there. You know, a guy like Chris Coons, it's clearly loyalty. Okay, so here's a tough question.
So you were the sitting vice president of the United States. You were only in that position because Joe Biden, the president put you there. Everyone is calling for Joe Biden to withdraw. You probably, if you're hearing and seeing things yourself, had a feeling that maybe those time was over, but obviously both privately and externally, you have to be supportive out of loyalty and out of good faith feelings about the sitting president.
But what was really going on? Members of the vice president staff figuring out a strategy for what to do if and when the moment came that Joe Biden would step back, did they have a statement prepared? Were they coordinating with the president staff? How did that work to your knowledge? Well, she had to do two things. She had to be absolutely and totally and completely loyal to
Joe Biden completely. And part of that reason is obvious. The most important thing for her future, if she used to be the next president, was for Biden to step down and for him to endorse her. There was no coordination between, unless we learn some time about secret conversations between the principles. There was absolutely no coordination with staff. Do you find that there would be not any coordination at all, even between the principles? Look, there was no coordination
with Biden and his senior staff. I mean, his inner circle had become so small. Yeah, who was it? It was it was Rashadi and Donnellan and I'm told Bruce Reed who also was looped in on much of this, but Anita Dunn, Jeff Zients, General Malley Dillon, the people that were at the uppermost reaches of the campaign and at the White House were not in, I mean, I'm not talking about just the final decision that they weren't looped in due. They weren't looped into
into some of these conversations in the final days. The inner circle was and obviously I would add to that family. I'm talking in terms of the staff. Obviously, Valerie, Sister, Hunter, Son, and Jill, the first lady. But I've seen the other thing that Kamala Harris had to do while being totally and completely and utterly loyal is to be prepared to move immediately when it happened
and clearly she was. It was an unbelievable display. She made something like a hundred calls in the hours after the announcement, including calls with the people that would have been potential rivals. It was very interesting to see in the immediate aftermath. If you look at the first hour, hour and a half after the news is out, after that letter pops, you saw people like Josh
Shapiro and Cretch and Whitmer, Governor Pritzker. You saw them put out statements praising Joe Biden and talking about what a great legacy he had is great president, all the great stuff he did and no mention of Kamala Harris whatsoever. But it didn't take long for some of them to realize that, well, I guess we better get that Harris endorsement out. But even after Biden's letter,
does it mention right Harris. I was saying to a guest earlier in the week on the podcast. I was on a plane with with not very good Wi-Fi and I saw the letter it didn't mention Kamala and I thought that was very, very significant. I'm not sure when I was focusing on it and then sometime later when the Wi-Fi started working again, I saw the separate tweet. Yeah, which came almost immediately after. But yeah, we all read that letter and we're like, oh my god, he's not endorsing Harris.
And I still don't have a clear understanding of why that is and why do you think someone was like, oh crap. Oh, wait a minute. Get the Kamala piece. Get back on Twitter. It wouldn't be shocking. But do you think in retrospect, have a couple questions? In retrospect, it was a foregone conclusion that Biden was going to endorse Kamala because I don't know many other people, speculated that if Biden got out, there were all sorts of scenarios of somewhat similar probability,
maybe Kamala, maybe there'd be an open convention, people would vie for it. Some people thought that would be a good thing because even if it ended up being Kamala at the end of that process, she would be stronger. She would have been vetted. She would have had some struggle that she would have overcome. And none of that came to pass. And it almost looks in retrospect like this was the
only way it could have gone down. Is that fair or not? Well, I'll tell you this. I had very good sources as these in these final days that were close to the president, that were close to those that were and some of those who were pressuring the president to do this. And there was a lot of a sense that it was inevitable that he was going to have to do it, that he would have no choice. But the people I was talking to truly had no idea whether or not he would endorse Kamala.
Right. I'm sorry. Given the endorsement, did this go the way it did because of just the structure of it and the logic of it? Or was it that in combination with the extreme deafness of Kamala Harrison, her team? I think that there was an inevitability to this, but it was the deafness that made it happen so quickly. She had a built-in advantage here. There's some sloppy talk by some Democrats that she had 14 million votes in the primaries because those were people that were
voting for Biden. Harris, no. Joe Biden was the only one on the ballot in those states. So she actually didn't have any pledge delegates. But those delegates were, there's a rules committee at the, you know, for the convention. And those delegates were carefully chosen as allies of the Biden-Harris ticket. They were not going to have a repeat of 2016 when you had a whole, you know, a bunch of, you know, angry Bernie Sanders delegates fighting still into the convention,
Hillary Clinton's nomination. And the whole mess that we saw in 2016 at that convention, they were very careful that this was going to be, you know, a clean convention with delegates that were loyal to the ticket. So I mean, she had an absolute prohibitive advantage. If somebody had tried to come in, even without Biden's endorsement, it would have been, it would have been virtually impossible to beat her. Now, the scenario for somebody else to win was for her not to get a majority
on the first ballot. And then the super delegates get to vote, so-called, you know, super delegates for the Democrats, as are, you know, kind of party officials, elected officials, elder statesman in the party. And among that group, you know, there are many that had doubts about whether or not Harris would be the strongest candidate. So, you know, you could have had a different race. But in terms of the delegates that were coming in on that first ballot, those were going to be heavily
weighted towards Harris, regardless of whether or not, you know, somebody big jumped in. Yeah, as we think about this and talk about it, I'm just stating the obvious, but the Biden blessing, the Biden endorsement in that second tweet was all important. I mean, she probably would have prevailed otherwise. But it might have been messy. Yeah. And the only way that might have been an alternative was if Joe Biden remains silent. Now, what about some of these other folks that took
a day, including my former boss, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi. And I have a particular question about Chuck Schumer, who I used to work for. I know him fairly well. He did that press conference in the last day or two. And he was positively giddy. He was giggling like a kid. And I wonder, if that's the consequence of seeing how the rollout happened. I mean, I tweeted yesterday that it's about as flawless of 48 hour rollout as you could have imagined. Was that part of the plan
for Nancy and Chuck and others to wait a couple days? Or is that a function of their being so pleased with how this is going that they're happily in the camp? The answer is kind of yes to both. But you first of all, they, they're the party leaders. They obviously played a central role behind the scenes in getting Biden to make the decision he made. What they didn't want to see
is the perception that this was a few people behind closed doors. I guess we don't have smoked filled rooms anymore, but, but, you know, party leaders kind of pushing one, one person out and anointing the other person. They wanted to see, you know, an organic process and not to be seen as kind of pulling all the strings. So I think that was absolutely not about any doubts about Kamu by, by any of them or any question about whether or not they would or whether they would
endorse somebody else. It was, you know, to we've already pushed pushed the president out. We're not going to be the ones that look like we're, you know, we're driving the ship on everything. And then the reason why that press conference you mentioned from Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries happened so quickly is because of the absolute flawless rollout and the fact that she had really become the presumptive nominee by the time they helped that press conference and made the endorsement.
How, how happy are the Democrats about how it's gone? I mean, my perception is as a voter and I'm not unbiased here. I am, I want Kamu Harris to be the next president of the United States and want Donald Trump to fade into oblivion. I don't have to be neutral and objective like you on the podcast, but I wonder how widely that view is shared. I have a sense it's fairly widely shared. Is that true? I mean, they're ecstatic. They're ecstatic because you had a situation where
the perception was Biden was going to lose. Now, we don't know that Kamu Harris is going to win in these 48 hours. In her first 40 hours, they'll be reflective of the next 100 some days, but it's a whole new race. And it's race that they believe that they can win, which is not where they were a few days ago. They believe they can win. And also, all you have to do is look at the way Donald Trump is reacting. I mean, you've had full meltdown. And he's in a state of panic.
And they're making noises about trying to block, you know, saying this was a betrayal of democracy. And they're going to try to challenge the switch and, you know, all this stuff. And he's, and, and by the way, the other thing, you know, you didn't ask this question, but I just, Kamu Harris is going to bring out the absolute worst in Donald Trump. So scramble the race. And you're going to see polls. You're already seeing some. It's all
March and Bear. And national polls don't mean that damn thing as you know, but they can be an indicator of where, of where the battleground state polls are headed. But clearly, you are going to see polls that show a bounce for Kamu Harris. And the reason why you know that is because Tony Fabrizio, the chief pollster for Trump has already put out a memo explaining why we're going to see polls that that show Harrison lead because they're already seeing in their own
research. You guys have a question. Did the Trump folks not anticipate that Biden might step out? I mean, it was on the lips of every senior democratic official. The polling showed that something over 70% of the public, which includes Democrats and Republicans, but the overall number was something over 70%. I thought that Biden wasn't fit and was too old to be president again.
Do they do any contingency planning? Do they have an alternative strategy? Do they have messages that were in preparation or strategy that was in preparation in the same way on the other side, Kamu Harris totally did? So before answering that, I want to give a little context. Is strategic planning is not a big thing in Trump role? Well, he won what he won once without it and he lost once without it. You would think the third
time you might want to try it. There's been a lot of talk about how Chris Lasavitas, his eWiles, have created this this incredible campaign that has, you know, none of the drama that you saw in 2016. It's a much sleeker and more effective operation than he had in 2020, etc., etc. That's true in the animal space that they put together at least for a production standpoint. A very good convention. The convention in 2016 in Cleveland was a disaster on like all fronts.
I remember being on the floor watching their keynote speaker who was Joni Arns speaking and the hall was empty because they had just it was just disorganized the whole thing and they put together a pretty solid convention in Milwaukee. So it is a more competent campaign, but it is not, it's a small campaign and not particularly strategic. But look, there had been people around Trump had been thinking that Biden was going to be replaced for a long time. I mean, there were all
the fever dreams of like Michelle Obama is going to come in and take it over. And nobody who has any relationship has any experience with the Obama's ever thought that was remotely possible except for the people around Trump really thought that was a possibility. So they were thought it was a real possibility for months and months and months that Biden would ultimately be jettisoned. But I see no evidence that there was any strategic planning about what to do if he was.
But anyway, just going back to the point we were discussing a few minutes ago about the defnance of Kamala Harris's rollout. No, no, then then Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC told a reporter quote, anyone who doubts Kamala Harris's political expertise should pay attention to how she's so perfectly handled every step post Biden's exit. I will donate the maximum to her campaign. End quote, are we hearing the same thing from wealthy and powerful private citizens
who are in a position to help her campaign? We are. I mean, there's a little bit of, we have heard from a few donors who are doubtful about where she'll be policy wise. But I mean, you have, I mean, look at what they've done. And the 81 million in the first 24 hours was was largely a small dollar donation and kind of a reflection of grassroots strength. But all the donors who had stepped back and said, you know, we're not going to pour money into a losing
Biden campaign. I mean, most of them are right back in with inventions. This campaign will not be wants for money. You know, there's enthusiastic as the people you saw show up for, you know, her first rally as a presidential candidate in Milwaukee. They are, they are all in. I'll be right back with Jonathan Carl after this. There's a lot of things you might say when your small business has a problem. You've got to be kidding me. Come on. Well, I didn't see that one coming.
But that won't get you the help your business needs. What you should really say is something that can help like a good neighbor state farm is there. State Farm agents are ready to help you with your claim to help you get back in business on the phone or in person your state farm agent is there to help like a good neighbor state farm is there. So you've arrived. You head to the Brassory, then the Terrace cocktail. Don't mind if I do. You raise your glass to another guest because
you both know the holidays just beginning. And you're only in terminal three. Welcome to Virgin Atlantic's unique upper-class clubhouse experience where you'll feel like you've arrived before you've taken off. Virgin Atlantic. See the world differently. What if you could remember everything? Everything you said, everything you did, everything other people said and did around you, everything you ate, everything you watched, everywhere you went. What if you could remember all of it?
On this episode of The Vergecast brought to you by Metta, we explore how AI might make that possible and what it might mean to be a person in a world where nobody forgets anything ever again. That's The Vergecast, anywhere you get podcasts. Is this just a sort of normal bump? Is this a honeymoon period? Don't we expect
like the Trump pollster predicted that it'll settle back? Or is this sustainable? I mean, they have another opportunity for a bump as almost always happens with a candidate of either party after their convention. So Kamala Harris with great fanfare has been put at the top of the ticket presumptive nominee and then she's going to get inaugurated as the nominee in four weeks. How do you think that'll play out or how do experts think this is going to play out in the polls?
The challenge right now that she has is defining who she is. A vice president is obviously people know the name. They know what she looks like. They don't really know anything about her. So she has both the opportunity to define herself and also has to fend off the fact that Republicans are working very hard to define her. And how are they defining her? They're defining her as a radical, as a leftist, as basically indistinguishable from the squad. She's like,
you know, AOC and the far left of the Democratic Party. There's the overtly racist, you know, stuff that we've thrown at her. We've already seen from at least one member of Congress calling her the DEI nominee. So she has to, she's going to have to fend all that off. And by the way, I think there's a real opportunity for her to do that. And she's done it to a degree with what she's done in the first, you know, in the first couple of days, which is to lean heavily
into something that she didn't emphasize much when she ran for president in 2020. The fact that she's a prosecutor. She was a DA in San Francisco. She was the attorney general of the state of California. She's not some soft on crime, defund the police far left progressive. And the primaries, you know, people on the left called a cum laude cop. And they attacked in pejorative way.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So she has to lean into that. And look, I think she has, you know, one question is, will she do what ironically Biden had failed to do this time around, failed pretty spectacularly to do one of the things that helped him win in 2020, which is to reach out to the independence and disaffected Republicans who are horrified, but what they see in Donald Trump.
So, you know, I kind of think that she needs a for a dated reference that you will understand, you know, a sista soldier moment, an effort to show, you know, who she is, and to dispel this notion that she's this, you know, exotic radical far left progressive and pick a fighter to. And can she do that? This is her soldier moment. Maybe you should explain that it's crazy that we're old enough that many people may not remember that from the Clinton campaign. So I'll allow you to
do the honors in a moment. But can the Kamala Harris team be confident given the structure of the race and who she is and how things have been trending that black voters, black women voters in particular will vote Democratic in the fall? I mean, look, it's a new start. She's going to have, you know, like, I'm sure just by way of background, I asked the question in the context of reporting and polling the showed that black voters were leading the Democratic Party. And some, you know,
not large, but material percentage of them were thinking about voting for Trump. Has that been arrested? I mean, I think that you're going to clearly see that that has been arrested. We have to see if it can be sustained. But, you know, she's, I mean, there's that factor. There's also the issue that she has been kind of pigeon-tall within the within the White House and the and the previous Biden campaign. They were basically using her as the vice president of
reproductive rights. I mean, like so many of her events were on abortion, which is obviously going to be a central issue in this campaign for Democrats. It's the major weakness for Republicans. But she doesn't need to be the one emphasizing that as much anymore. I mean, that's, that's baked in. The weakness for Republicans is obvious. Where she stands is totally obvious. And it's interesting also that that she hasn't leaned as heavily into, at least in the first couple of days,
into what Hillary Clinton did, which is, you know, her identity. You know, I'd be the first woman president shatter that glass sailing and all that. All true. And we all know it. And everybody, everybody can see it. But, you know, she's showing that she can be a president for all Americans. And she's going to, she's going to make history if she's elected. That's a given. So, you know, what does she stand for and what does Donald Trump stand for? She doesn't need to lean into that
stuff as much because it's, it's there. It's obvious. And she's going to have that advantage. We'll talk a little bit more about the Trump reaction and their strategy here before we come back to V-stakes, which is on everyone's mind. So Tim Alberta, the Atlantic tweeted this a couple of days ago, quote, the most striking thing I heard from Trump allies yesterday was the second guessing of
JD Vance. A selection they acknowledged that was born of cockiness meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail bider and quote, is that the assessment that that you're hearing as well? There's first of all, we're not going to have to do another data reference. We're not going to see a Thomas Eagleton situation where they, where they replace him. I've read about it. But yeah, yeah, I to be honest, I think I was like four years old.
Yeah, I was I think you and I are about the same age. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, but are you sure about that? I'm not with Donald Trump. You definitely cannot be sure because the writers, you know, the writers of this series, yes, as they are. They've kind of used another big surprise. Right. They've done the debate. They've done the assassination. They've done another major plot turns. Yeah, what what I'm trying to think what other major plot I get there could be war, but what other
major plot I think you can't have another, you know, similar kind of thing. Well, I guess this would be a similar kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Like in some, in some future episode, if this was being written in the style that it's been written in so far, JD Vance gets replaced, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah. Whether in reality, I mean, it's a little complicated. Well, he's he's the he's formerly the nominees. He's formerly the nominee. So they got to go back in and and, you know, talk about something
that might actually face a legal trend. But are they disappointed? Do they, they appreciated now that the assessment that I am making to say as an observer is a JD Vance is utterly uninspiring, rambling, boring, and a turncoat on his prior beliefs in a way that some people think
is real, but it's very easy to say is not. I had heard doubts about JD Vance on the floor of the convention in Milwaukee, you know, so, so in the speech before the speech, before the speech, you know, as a one one delegate said to me, I thought is perfectly kind of encapsulated the at the Trump Republican Party is like, so what do you think of the Vance pick? And, you know, I don't know. Here's what I think. I think that he just got shot and he survived and he can
he can do whatever he wants. I mean, there's no like, I think that's great. But, you know, he said it was great. So I'm all in. And, and he's had, you know, a less than perfect rollout. I thought that watching the body language in the joint interview they did on Fox with Jesse Waters, I mean, you could just see, I mean, I've gotten to, I've gotten to unfortunately be able to kind of read Trump's body language and facial expressions. I think pretty well. He does this thing with his
eyes when he's really annoyed with people. And I was seeing it all play out in that interview. And Vance was talking too much for Trump's, you know, what Trump would want. Trump wants a vice president. It's going to sit there and nod and look glowingly at him. He doesn't know one of vice president. It's going to be adding new points and, you know, redirecting the conversation. And then, you know, I mean, you looked at his first rally and he's supposed to be the red meat, mega choice, the,
you know, doubling down on mega. But it's none of the spark. I mean, it's, it's to use a phrase that Trump had used previously. It's a little low energy. So I don't, there's no public acknowledgement among the Trump campaign that there's anything hinting of, of second thoughts. And frankly, there's really nothing even privately. I mean, the top talker there, they're like, no, no, he's going to be great. But you can see it. You don't need to. You can just just look at,
look at Trump's reaction. I mean, does anybody really care? I mean, when he picked Mike Pence, my recollection is that had some meaning and importance because he was a, you know, pretty stayed, died in the wall, traditional conservative from Midwestern state. And Trump was unknown. And a little bit, you know, nutty. And that kind of balanced the ticket. Reassured the evangelicals. Yeah. And in this time around, everyone knows every single human in this country knows Donald
Trump has an impression of Donald Trump. Know that he's the alpha male in the White House. He calls the shots. The only, the only relevance of the vice president, it seems to me in this case, is that Trump is also fairly old. And there is, you know, some chance, given his age and how, you know, the world works, that the vice president might have to assume the presidency. And so, you know, other than that, assuming that the Trump gets reelected and is healthy for four years,
JD Vance is an afterthought. I mean, just look at Trump's approval rating. He went through three plus weeks of the politically the best three weeks you could have. He's ever had. I mean, getting shot, it's hard to say is a good thing. But the way the assassination attempt worked out, the way he handled himself, the, you know, iconic pictures of him raising his fist, blood down his cheeks, the debate, the lawsuit getting dropped in Florida, Democrats, you know,
in their circular firing squad, all of that. And his approval rating in our ABC, Ipsos poll, on that we came out over the weekend before the news Biden had dropped out. But after all that other stuff, and Trump's approval rating stands at 40%, 40% favorability. That's his ceiling. That's the ceiling is enough. I mean, what more? So yeah. And by the way, his floor is probably at like 37%. I mean, it's, and it's all about what the the opponent in this case,
likely to be Kamala Harris can expand her base and her voting blocks, right? Yeah. And what's the strategy for Harris? Is it to simply goose up the energy and enthusiasm of the base of the party? You know, to ensure something which Biden clearly didn't have and, you know, win that way. Or is it to appeal to the independence and disaffected Republicans who would be key in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada? You know, one person that I'm kind of
looking to who has said very little publicly for some time is Liz Cheney. You know, Liz Cheney's dedication to the idea that Trump must never get back to the White House is, is well established. I think that Liz Cheney could be a real prominent ally and important ally to Kamala Harris if they actually reach out to her. And it's not just her as one individual. It could speak out, but it's, it's the people who come from where Liz Cheney is, which is,
she's a lifelong conservative Republican who will never vote for Donald Trump. Kamala Harris has to give the people like that a reason to vote for her, not just to vote against Donald Trump. Yeah. So how is Trump going to run against Harris? We're going to make her out to be an extreme leftist, even though she had two substantial jobs as a prosecutor. I mean, I note that Trump is having trouble with the thing that he's usually pretty good at. And that's a
fixing a nickname to his political rivals. I mean, he tried lying Kamala. It doesn't really seem to stick. Is he out of good nicknames? And does that say anything about how this is going to go? Crooked Kamala doesn't really work either. Does it? At least Harris crime family. That's not really going to work either. I think that it's going to be, you know, there'll be a mix of the kind of vaguely and maybe not so vaguely racism and sexism for sure.
Not, you know, that you're going to see thrown at her from the kind of far end of the of the Maga base. But they're going to portray her as the borders are. I think that's going to be one of the first thing, even though that was not the job she actually had. You know, the job she had, of course, was, was to work diplomatically on the root causes of migration from Central America. But they will portray her as the borders are and therefore responsible for
what they see is the single biggest failure of Joe Biden. They will try to tie every negative from the Biden administration, from Afghanistan to inflation, you know, to Kamala Harris. This was the Biden Harris White House that did this. So it's, you know, that'll be the playbook and portray her as basically all the negatives you have with Biden. Plus she is a far left radical is what they will say, which, you know, is not
who she is. I actually think that, you know, Harris had a very liberal voting record as a senator. And I think that one of the things that drove that is, you know, from the almost from the minute she got into the Senate, you know, there was a sense that she was preparing to run for president and voting with an eye towards the Democratic primaries. So again, it'll be, you know, part of it will be how she, you know, how she pivots and how she acts as a general election candidate,
which we've never really seen. I mean, we saw it as a vice presidential candidate, but that's different, obviously, and that was such a weird campaign with COVID. So, you know, I think that, again, it gets to this notion that there's 100 days and probably the next, you know, 20 of those days is absolutely critical and how she will be defined in the eyes of most Americans who know her
name, but really don't know anything about her. You know, I have seen online already. So the most disgusting, misogynistic and racist things you can be saying about a major party nominee. Is there any feeling or thinking or discussion among the Trump side to try to knock that shit off among allies? Because a, it's immoral and bad. And b, it's probably counterproductive and we'll
hurt them, no? Well, the speaker of the house, Mike Johnson, as already privately sent that message to fellow Republicans, already seeing, you know, some pretty, you know, gnarly stuff coming from within that conference, saying that that's wrong and also counterproductive. And look, Chris Lasavita, who is, you know, one of the key figures, obviously, and running that campaign, made it very clear during the convention he gave an interview with Jonathan Martin, who was trying to say, you know,
where's the January 6th stuff, the host, J6 hostages, where's, you know, the stolen election, and he just responded by saying, you know, inflation, gas prices, the border, a crime, you know, they, they want to run it on issues where they think Democrats are very vulnerable. The issue said does benefit Republicans right now? If you look at it, Trump has, Trump have a, may have a low personal favorability rating, but he has, and we'll see where the polls go now,
but I can't imagine this change is overnight. A huge advantage on the issues that voters say are the most important inflation economy and the border and crime. All issues that Trump had to, you had a really big advantage, double digit advantage in many polls over Joe Biden. So Vice President for Kamala Harris, there was reporting that a number of people are being vetted. There's also reporting that Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Markelli of Arizona,
right at the top of the list. What are you hearing about? How this might shake out? I think it's a little too early to say it was at the top of the list, but I am told that Kelly Shapiro, Roy Cooper and Andy Bashir, so the governor of North Carolina and Kentucky are also on that list. I'm also told that that is not exhaustive, that there is maybe another name, perhaps two, and there's truly no front runner yet. Obviously,
hasn't had time to sit down and do the formal interviews. The vetting has happened, the requests for documents and the like has gone out. Obviously Eric Holder's firm is handling the vetting, which has to be done in a much quicker time frame than you would normally see, which is why you're not going to see anybody out of left field. This is not the time to go to like Mark Cuban or George Clooney or whatever. It's going to be somebody who has been tested by
winning and key races themselves. Are they thinking someone to the left of Kamala or someone to the right of Kamala? Someone to the right of Kamala. You can see that with those names. Cooper, Shapiro, Bashir. Is that going to upset this amazing coalition? She has stitched together in three days. This coalition is energized by the notion that she could be the next president
and energized by the need to defeat Donald Trump. I think that she's going to have tremendous latitude and goodwill among the core constituency of the Democratic Party. She may do a thing or two over the course of the next 100 days. It might upset Bernie Sanders. But this coalition is her. She's going to have to navigate the Israel Gaza issue, which is a sensitive one. She couldn't make it to BB Netanyahu's.
Yeah, she had some trouble. She was being... I mean, I'm sure she would have loved to have been there, sitting behind him as he ranted from the House Chamber there. But she has tremendous latitude that, frankly, Biden didn't have. So remind me, Jonathan, what network are you with? I think it's ABC news. Oh, yes, ABC. So why do you think I'm asking that? Because you're going to ask about the debate. Yes, sir. So Trump is alleged that you guys are not
fair in your biased and maybe he'll skip that debate. Whatever bias he may have thought ABC had, must have existed at the time he agreed to do the debate. So what's going on there? And will there be a debate on your storied network? I expect it will be. And by the way, you should go back and see if you didn't catch it. Michael Wattley, who is the German and Trump's hand-picked chairman of the Republican National Committee, said on ABC, after Trump made whatever comments he made,
on true social that he fully expected that the debate would go forward as planned. And I fully expected will. And by the way, you know, Trump likes to pop off from time to time. He did call me on Monday. I don't know if you caught that, but he was about that. It was an interesting call. I had texted him and I had actually left a voicemail message. I had not spoken to him for some time, but what are you writing to text to Donald Trump? Well, it was after the shooting in Pennsylvania.
So I checked in on that and said, you know, everybody was horrified, but what happened and relieved that you're okay. And then I suggested he give me a call. And it said the same thing in the voicemail message. And a few hours later, my phone rang. And you know, it's interesting when you get a call from Trump, usually when you get a call from somebody in a position like that, the number is blocked, but it's not. So it pops up on the screen, Donald Trump. Okay. You want to share the number?
And yeah, yeah, not. I think I'll keep that. But he spoke to me for like 10 minutes and was gracious, seemed to kind of almost, you never want to use the word humbled with Donald Trump, but perhaps a bit by what had happened in the fact that he had survived and marveling at the fact that he had survived and it had all happened. And this is when he said that he was going to rip up his convention speech and have something that had more of a note of unity. He talked about
vans. He talked about in detail, you know, what happened in Pennsylvania. And then he said to me, you know, written three books on him and, you know, at least one of which he actually liked, but but he said, you're a good man, Jonathan. And then like he realized what he was saying and he quickly added, he used to be a better man. But, uh, but, you know, he called himself saying something kind and yeah, yeah, yeah. So so my point is like I think we'll be in a, I think we'll
be in a good shape on on September 10th. And ABC will have a great debate. What happened with his speech at the RNC? I didn't catch all of it, but I got a lot of reports and I saw parts of it. Um, that was why I didn't have, you know, 14 hours to spare to watch that speech. I had a copy of the prepared remarks. Uh, so I was reading along. We put how much of the prepared remarks were read. Uh, almost all of them. It's just that you
had an additional, so he gave two speeches. He gave the speech that he had ripped up and said he wasn't going to deliver and he gave the unifying speech. But he read all the remarks and then, and there were some, there were some very unifying lines in that speech. I am not running to be president of half of America. I am running to be president of all of America. And then there was a line kind of, you know, about, uh, not quite united. We stand divided. We fall, but, but, you know,
uh, expressing that, that same sentiment. Um, and they prepared remarks. Didn't mention Biden. Uh, didn't mention quote, crazy Nancy Pelosi. That was all the ad lip stuff. But he would be reading from prompter and then he would go off for extended riffs. They were not on prompter. Then he would go back to the prompter and then go off on extended riffs. And I wasn't on the floor. I was in our booth because we were broadcasting it. You know, we, we were, we were, you know,
we had a show in and out of the, of the speech. But the folks who had visibility on the teleprompter in the back of the hall were, were noting in how the, the poor teleprompter operator was trying to figure out what was going on scrolling forward and scrolling back and, you know, I saw a similar thing, but not in terms of the substance, but, but with, uh, with Bill Clinton in 2012, um, at, uh,
at that democratic convention, uh, in Charlotte, where there was a lot of back and forth. And the, the organizers of the convention wanted Clinton to keep his speech shorter than what Clinton wanted to do. So they edited him, edited him down. And then he went out and he gave the full speech. And, and I was on the floor for that. And I could see the teleprompter. Yeah, from memory. And, and, and I, I could see the teleprompter and I could see him read, you know, flawlessly from the teleprompter.
And then go off. But, you know, clearly in what he had written and then pick up the teleprompter. And the amazing thing about Clinton was if you were just watching him, you would have no idea to tell when he was reading and when he was, you know, reciting what he had memorized. Trump, it was pretty obvious when he was on teleprompter and when he was off. Political speech is interesting
to examine what's effective and what's not. And I've always said one difficulty in being a politician, if you have a, a brain is on the one hand, politics suggests you should repeat the same thing, simply again and again and again and again. And that's what gets through to the electorate. That's how people understand your platform. Because overlapping groups of people see different parts of the, of the news and your speeches. And so in that sense, Trump has extraordinary discipline.
One could say because he says the same stuff again and again and again and again. But, in reflection, I often think it's not discipline. It's just the way he is. He doesn't have novel or newer, interesting thoughts. He doesn't have nuanced views about policy. He doesn't evolve very much.
He doesn't mind repeating himself and that actually turns out to be very effective. I heard one of Trump supporters and maybe someone who will be back in the cabinet, Rick Grinnell, literally comment on Twitter when Kamala Harris's speech was televised at the rally, said, oh, this is the same speech she already gave. As if that's a, as if that's a bad thing. And as if his mentor and former boss doesn't deliver the same damn speech every day for years and
years and years. So it's, yeah, how do you think about the discipline of message and who's going to be able to do that better? Well, we, I probably what Grinnell was referring to was the real money line. You have a money line like that. She's like, I mean, she says, I've dealt with all sorts of perpetrators. That's a laugh line. And she talks about the crimes she prosecutes. And you know, so,
so hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump's type. That's a money line. And she should be saying it again and again and again, up to and including the convention is not, and until the eve of the, of the election. I mean, she'll, she'll say that over and over again. And good campaigns do have message discipline. But to some of the Trump supporters, do you think, I don't mean to ask you to make a partisan comment, but I try to do the same. And I'm sure there's, you know, some version of
this bias on the other side as well. But I sometimes hear Trump supporters, you know, significant public facing supporters say things about the Democrats and about Kamala Harris. And I wonder, are you, are you even listening to yourself? Like, are you familiar with your guy at all? Well, they have an amazing ability. It's what, it's what Trump is. It's how he's remade the party. It's to have total flexibility. Like from time to time, you'll see someone say, wow,
Kamala Harris has no class over, you know, some comment. I mean, are you literally, are you effing kidding me? So, you know, there's some collective mind rod, I think, that goes on. Yeah. And, and, and, and, you know, you mentioned the idea, I mean, Cornell criticizing or giving quote, the same speech, which wasn't quite. But, you know, Trump has been giving the same speech since 2015 with, with a couple of exceptions. He no longer talks about Mexico paying for the wall.
But he still talks about the wall. But it's, you know, it's the, it's, it's the same speech. And Trump's had the same ideas. He's, he's done his Hannibal Lecter riff repeatedly. Yeah. And if you're going to repeat something, it should be a good riff. And when he gets criticized for something like for that, it will tend to make sure it stays in this way. Yeah. He doubles it down on it. Yeah. Jonathan Carl, thanks so much for being on the show again. Great. Thanks a lot, Pete. Take care.
My conversation with Jonathan Carl continues for members of the cafe insider community. In the bonus for insiders, we discuss what Kamala Harris's foreign and economic policy might look like as president. I just don't think you should expect that it will be a straight-on, you know, continuation of the Biden policies. To try out the membership for just one dollar for a month, head to cafe.com slash insider. Again, that's cafe.com slash insider. Well, that's it for
this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Jonathan Carl. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics and justice. Tweet them to me at Prit Barara with the hashtag AskPreet. You can also now reach me on threads or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338
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