Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Katty Kaye. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Welcome. I am a super excited Anthony because I get to be in the Goalhanger offices and actually meet all of these amazing producers who put our show together every week and you're in New York. I am New York. I'm in my office in New York trying to make a living, Katty Kaye, and despite the political mouth from trying to be a living.
Shorting or longing something. That's about all I understand of your business. Mostly longing, mostly longing. Just double meaning to that word. I'm longing and longing. And longing. So what's going on, Katty? We're doing this extra episode because clearly there is so much going on, right? And we did that great live stream on Sunday evening with Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell of The Rest Is Politics UK version. But even since then, the news has moved on and it has been
another whirlwind week. And we want to talk about what is next for Kamala Harris because it looks now likely that she's going to be the Democratic nominee after Joe Biden suddenly pulled out of the race on Sunday. And then we're going to go through what happens on the Harris campaign and how that's taking shape. That's interesting. Who's staying? Who's going? Who might be added? Take you a little bit behind the scenes on that, what we're both
hearing. And talk about what her strong points and weak points are. What the Democrats should be worried about, what they're excited about and how the Republicans are framing a Harris nomination. Can I just start though by saying I'm super excited about Kamala Harris' nomination because she is two weeks older than I am and she is being described as somebody who is very young. So that's, I'm all in. She's mid-October. I'm early November. She's going
to be 60 before me and I suddenly feel 20 years younger. What's going to lie? So I'm, listen, I'm older than both of you. So I don't know if I'm supposed to feel good or bad, but I do love the fact that she pursuant to what you and I were talking about four weeks ago around the 4th of July holiday. We were talking about her replacing Joe Biden by the end of July. That looks like that's happened. I guess the question I have for you
is, did you think it was going to happen this quickly? Were you astonished that there were no challengers to throw their hat in the ring and that ranks close so quickly? So the moment Joe Biden came out on Sunday within a kind of nanosecond and endorsed
her, I thought that that window for a challenge had shut. I know we were talking about this on Sunday night with Rory and Rory was kind of pushing the idea that there should be an open convention, but pretty quickly it was clear that nobody wanted to challenge her either because they were thinking about 2028 or because they realized that they have almost
no time. I mean, yeah, of course, by the standards of a UK election four months is long, but by the standards of an American election that normally takes four years, they're on, they've got to be on light speed now. And I think that whatever the pros and cons and we can get into that of Kamala Harris' candidacy, the fact that she's older than me aside, they don't have time to go through that process. There is of course the risk that
some kind of challenge process would have weakened her candidacy. So as soon as Biden came out and said, I'm in for her, I could see it was going to be difficult for the rest of the party to say, okay, let's throw this wide open and for those challenges to step in. Were you surprised? I was actually surprised. I'm not surprised that she's the ultimate nominee, but I was surprised that some of these ambitious politicians didn't want to throw
their hat in there. Now, Trump looks stronger than he did coming out of the convention, assassination attempt. Some of that stuff was galvanizing, but he's weaker in other ways because he's now the oldest candidate in the race. If age is an issue in the campaign, he has age. And he has some of the declining faculties that come with age. And I also think he's got a
millstone around his neck in the name of JD Vance. And I think we need to talk about that because they're going to juxtaposition somebody who's going to be very competent in my opinion. And I'm going to go with Senator Kelly from Arizona. That's my pick. I believe that she will nominate him at the convention. She'll probably signal that before the convention. She won't go with Josh Shapiro, though he'll be part of the campaign and possibly part
of her cabinet. Should she go on to win? But I do think it'll be Kelly and I'm happy to tell you guys why. But I guess my question, I have additional question for you. How is she going to campaign? She flumics the last campaign and she gets brittle while under attack. So I did a couple of things in preparation for this podcast. I watched her debates going into the 2020 primary season. And you know, when she was trying to flex on Joe Biden and
insinuating that was some racist tones to Joe Biden's career, very awkward stuff. And she was flumixing. She looked great yesterday. She was well presented yesterday. And she came up with a couple of clever lines. And there's obviously a lot of excitement around her right now. But I guess what I'm wondering about is her long range skill set. Yeah. I mean, look, I think what I'm hearing from Democrats is kind of three things. Relief
that the nightmare of the last couple of weeks is over. That period since the debate. Excitement that there's this shitload of money coming in. I think she has raised more in the first 24 hours of her campaign that the cost of a whole UK general election. But also some realism that we don't know how good a political athlete she is. There's this talk in democratic
circles. And I'm sure you're hearing it too about how she's got better, right? That it somehow in the last six months, she's improved and particularly because of her conversations over the abortion issue. And I thought she was good. Up at campaign headquarters, she looked happy to be there. She smiled a lot. She delivered those good lines on. I'm a prosecutor and I prosecuted, you know, Trump's type of person. She gave a convincing theory of the
case. And most critically, she turned the conversation back to Donald Trump, right? That one thing that Democrats need to do to win is to make this election about Donald Trump. And within 24 hours of Joe Biden pulling out of the race, she had managed to do that. She ran through the litany of all of the things that she's going to run against him. But
I'm still not convinced that she's going to be a great candidate out on the stump. I mean, there's no reason to think that because she clearly wasn't as you say she was awkward in 2019. And we haven't seen that much of her. But I think we'll know that in a week or two. If she, if she's that awkward candidate you're talking about from those debates and
I watched those again too, then I think the Democrats have a real problem. But if she's, if she genuinely has got better, then then the excitement will last longer. Okay. So I mean, I also did some research here. I wanted to react to this research. Okay. 20.2 million baby boomers. These are US baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964. So I'm technically a baby boomer. I think Amal Harris is a baby boomer. But I'm not sure
if you are. But I'm at the last piece of it. I think she, the other thing that excites me about her is that she calls herself Gen X. So I suddenly went from being a boomer to being Gen X, which was good for me too. Yeah. Okay. So so you guys like living in denial. I love that about the two of you. I accept the fact that I'm a baby boomer. But let me just give you these stats. Okay. 20.2 million boomers have died since the 2016 election.
At the same time since 2016, 41 million generation Z people have risen to the age of voting. So we're having a recirculation of our democracy. Older people are dying off. Younger people are coming into the game. They're making money now. And so now they're thinking about politicians more than they did when they were students. And this is the killer number.
The eight million have come into the game since 2022 since the midterm elections. Now when poll the 41 million people, the eight million people, 63% of them are hard Democrats. And so I'm telling you that the Trump campaign is looking at this data and they're worried about this data. And I'm going to tell you who else knows this data better than anybody is a gentleman by the name of David Plough. He's an Obama campaign veteran. He wrote
the playbook on how Obama won. He's joining Kamala Harris's campaign. And he is going to rebuild the coalition that Barack Obama had. Now Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, she may lose some of the white baby boomer blue collar voters that were adhered to Joe Biden. But she has this unbelievable opportunity to pick up the demography that I just described. So what's your reaction to that? And are you impressed with the research that I did?
Are you a little bit? My head is spinning. I forgot your numbers guy. And I need I need kind of graphics. We need another goal. We say need a little bit of nerditation. I just did a little bit of nerditation on you. Yeah, you flexed on the research. A lot of those eight million that have come in since 2022. You impressed by my memory, by the way, that I was paying attention in class are actually Hispanic voters because they are the ones that are turning 18 at the highest
percentage rate in the country. So the question is going to be how does she reach them in particular? Does the fact that she is a woman of color necessarily entice Hispanic voters? I'm not particularly convinced that it will do. She is definitely more liberal than many Hispanic voters are, although perhaps she's not more liberal than young Hispanic voters. So it's going to be interesting to see how she reaches that pocket. I think she has huge
opportunities. She's got clearly opportunities with women. She's got opportunities with African Americans that would be interesting to see whether she can reach into that pocket of African American men who I think won't like the way that JD Vance is talking about her as a diversity candidate. You know, this phrase that's being used by one Tennessee congressman that she's a diversity candidate. And some of the language that JD Vance is using.
I don't think they're going to like that. So they may come back as the Biden campaign always thought they would. African Americans would always come back to the fold. And I think David Plough, who would join Kamala Harris, has said that she's keeping Geno Mali Dylan as the campaign chair and Julie Shavez Rodriguez as the campaign manager. So she's
keeping in place Biden's team. And that's why she went to Delaware on Monday. All of those people who worked for Joe Biden, young old senior junior volunteers, she keeps them in place. But what everyone is talking about with some excitement in the messages I'm getting from Democrats would be David Plough, who's this kind of legendary campaign strategist and got Barack Obama that 2008 victory. And remember when Barack Obama won in 2008, yeah, he was
an exceptional political athlete, compared way better than Kamala Harris. And I know that she admires him enormously for his political skills. But it was still a big deal for America to elect in the way that it did a black man. So David Plough, I think, would be a huge asset to the campaign. Does he come on though? Anthony, is it, I mean, she's made the point of saying these two women have been running the campaign, are staying in their position.
So he what he kind of comes in over the top of them, or he comes in alongside them. How is that going to work? Campaigns are famously kind of competitive places. Yeah. So I'm assuming it'll be a little bit like what happened at Trump in 2016 where Kelly and Conway was the campaign manager. Bannon was brought in as a strategist. And so this way their egos, they have good titles for each other and they have separate lanes. And I think that the job for David Plough
is to help her build that Obama-like coalition. So it's an exciting time for Democrats. As I've said on this podcast, they do better bolder when they make bold decisions, they do better. And so now they have their first Indian African American South Asian presidential candidate. And it's an exciting time for them. And I think they can galvanize a lot of people and perhaps pick up in the demography that I just described people.
Beyond the kind of identity of her being younger and being the first woman, potentially, to be president and the first woman of color, what do you think there is about Kamala Harris, herself, as a candidate that particularly is going to appeal to voters? What is it? That's a good question. Where can she chip into getting more votes? So this is a brutally honest assessment. And that's why I get in trouble with people.
I probably don't get invited to as many cocktail parties as I should be. It's another topic at some point. But the brutal assessment is she's not Trump. That's number one. Number two, she's a competent steward of the American century. And so what do I mean by that? This is a woman that's shown up at the Munich Security Conference. This is a woman that understands the importance of the NATO alliances. This is a woman that understands the need for the
United States to check China, but to also cooperate with China. And this is a woman that understands as people do that attend something like the Munich Security Conference that we need to repudiate totalitarianism around the world and autocracy. And so as we both know, democracies rarely go to war with each other. It's usually a democracy in a fight with an autocracy. And
this is a woman that understands all those things. And when you contrast at the Donald Trump, who is not necessarily for allies, he's willing to betray our allies and he's willing to flatter and cohort with dictators. So those are very positive things. That could be generically true of almost any up until now, any vice presidential candidate,
right? I mean, I think most VPs would believe in those things. Is there something about her in particular that you find appealing or that you think voters will find appealing? So again, I have met her on a personal level. I've interacted with her on a personal level. I think people are going to find her appealing because she likes people. Okay. Donald Trump treats people like objects and she actually likes people. Okay. So now the
question is, is that going to be enough? We accept that she's not Barack Obama, but she's infinitely better than Joe Biden at this point in Joe Biden's career to prosecute the democratic narrative and to prosecute the success that the Biden administration has had in the three and a half years of the administration. And so the thing that I will say, which I'll make this prediction here on our podcast, is that she's going to surprise people. The detractors
are going to say she's going to have a big bump up. She's going to return to the 2019 version of Kamala Harris and Trump is going to slay her. It's going to be a very big margin of win for Donald Trump, both at the electoral college and both at the popular vote. I don't see that. I think what happens is she rises to the occasion, the demography that I just described gravitates to her. And they replay the disorganization. They replay
the impetuousity of Donald Trump. They promote the project 2025 stuff that you and I have talked about the Latin community, the Latino community. They do not want their neighbors deported. You can pretend otherwise, but I'm telling you, because I live here in New York, a good part of the labor force here, the legal Latinos do not want the quote unquote illegal Latinos deported. And I think it's going to be a big factor in this election.
And I'm going to take a leap of faith here that she goes with Mark Kelly over the others, Mark Kelly provides a lot of things to her that she needs. I would add two more things to what you just said. One is that Kamala Harris was brilliant in the Senate when she was in a prosecutorial role. I'm thinking of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings and I rewatched those as well the other day. And I remember covering that day live. And
she was forensic in the way that she went off to Brett Kavanaugh. Now in the end, of course, he became a Supreme Court justice, but she didn't hold back. She was clear. She was calm. She had her facts. And I think if she can bring that prosecutorial spirit to the case against Donald Trump, then she adds a net positive. The other thing I think is that she's been from the democratic point of view. She's been strong on abortion. It's probably been her strongest
issue. And because she will put abortion, which has, she has been the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic. She has held dozens and dozens of events around the country. She's very versed in this. She's happy talking about it. She combines with that the empathy that you're talking about. She'll put it front and center again in all of these states. Women have decided the last five American elections and we'll talk more about this
on Thursday when we tape guys our regular podcast as opposed to this bonus one. But she's going to get women excited by raising this issue and by reminding them of what she said. One thing on the empathy, I have a story about Kamala Harris that a friend of mine told me who has a flower business. And she was asked to go to the vice president's mansion and do some Christmas flowers for them. And she brought with her daughter who is severely
autistic. And she said Kamala Harris could not have been nicer with this little girl. And I've heard that story in multiple settings of how good Harris is and how warm she is with people and with people who perhaps might not feel so seen and with teenagers and with kids. And I think that if she can bring that warmth out onto the campaign trail, that's going to do a lot of advantage for her. A couple of reactions that I see that in her
personality. You mentioned the DEI stuff that she's a diversity equity inclusion hire, which means she's inferior from a performance level. Donald Trump has also referred to her on his true social as dumb as a rock. Yeah. Okay. And I'm telling you that is not going to play well in the African-American community. If he had said I look forward to debating vice president Harris on the issues. And I look forward to describing my version of America in its future, being a better version than
hers. He would have done so much better, but he's now alienating himself against some of these people in that demography that he wants to get. And I think it goes well. JD Van suggesting she doesn't have enough gratitude about America. I think that's a dog whistle that African Americans often hear too, that there are a bit uppity that they should be grateful to be American somehow. And I think that that's going to hurt not just with black women,
but with black men too. Really bad stuff. And one of the producers is asking me the people that I grew up with, I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood, how do they react to her? And so the answer to that is very negatively because they don't see themselves like their grandparents saw themselves. So my grandparents would have been attracted to her because they felt left out of the system. They felt like they weren't inside the club
of what is known as America. And they were treated differently. The Italian American community now sees itself as part of it. It's for mine people that Teddy Roosevelt in 1905 said for immigration purposes, Italians were to be treated as non-cultacian. And that used to rile up my grandparents. And so they would have gravitated to somebody like Kamala Harris and they would have been found her appealing. Because of the aspiration
of success that she has. But now there's a group of people that sort of feel like they want to be in vogue. Okay. And so more blue collar people are with Donald Trump. But here is her opportunity. She can explain to these people what the Biden administration has done for them over the last three and a half years. Joe Biden was having a very hard time cognitively explaining the triumphs that he said legislatively. And I think if she does that, she'll win over
more of those people. I know we're going to talk about the vice president in a second. And I'll tell you why picking somebody like a Kelly over Roy Cooper or Josh Shapiro will be a big advantage to her. I think making the economic case, maybe she'll do a better job than Joe Biden. It seems to have been a very hard case for this administration to make. I don't know that that's going to be her strongest suit. I think she's going
to have to lean more heavily into the abortion issue. And she is seen as very far left. And she'll talk about the kind of problems that she has in the second half of this program. But she's seen as very far left. And I don't know that might rattle some business, some small business people, some middle of the road, more centrist voters, particularly around
the economic issue. Let me just say this. There are many business people that are on her donor list that raised the 81 or the $100 million in the last 24 hours. There's a lot of money. There's a vote with your wallet from business people that they're okay with camel errors. Yeah. And actually, if those business people actually start looking, as we did a few weeks ago at Project 2025, they might see that their taxes
could go up. Their Medicaid could come down that tariffs could produce more inflation. I mean, there are a whole reasons that they might be nervous about Donald Trump's impact on business. I think Mark Kelly kind of is the flavor of the moment. I think he is a good pick, you know, a former astronaut. He has a compelling story, Arizona, obviously, an important state. He's not the most charismatic of candidates out on the stump, but maybe
that isn't a problem if it's somebody running for Vice President. I still think Josh Shapiro is a strong choice. If she's feeling confident, she might go for somebody like Josh Shapiro, who's younger, who clearly is ambitious himself. And you could make the argument, well, he could help deliver Pennsylvania as governor, just as well as he could VP. But there is something about the VP candidate being chosen from your state that might end up at Pennsylvania
and sitting on the fence. If it's a vibe issue on the last day, and you think, oh, yeah, there's Shapiro. He's my governor. I vote for that ticket. I still think he's a good choice. He would bring a lot of money with him. He's very close with Mike Bloomberg. He's raised tons of money for his gubernatorial campaign. He could bring a lot of money with him. He also has reached into those other states because they are like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
Michigan, etc. But I don't think she's going to pick him. I think she has better chemistry with Markelli. I think second to him is Roy Cooper. These are personal friends of hers. Roy Cooper less threatening older, the governor of North Carolina, Democratic governor of North Carolina and might not threaten her in the same way as somebody young and ambitious. He doesn't want to be president. I don't think her. Remember, Kelly has a good gun control narrative because of what happened to his wife.
The Congresswoman who was shot. Yeah, representative Gifford, who was shot at the open shopping mall, wounded, is recovered from it, but she's obviously been impaired by the injuries from the gunshot wounds. He's an American patriot. He is again, the type of story that bolsters her because she can play to the progressives. She can play to the abortion issue, but he can play to the moderates. I think he helped.
Remember, she's down nine points at Donald Trump in Arizona. I think she helps her close that gap if not win Arizona. He has the type of personality that can help her in places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. We'll see what happens. I think it's also a personality fit for somebody like Carmel and Harris more than just a strategic. She's not Jack Kennedy picking Lyndon Johnson to win Texas and him and Bobby Kennedy hate Lyndon
Johnson. She's going to pick somebody she likes. That's my, that's my, you know what? If somebody told her today, Crystal Ball, Josh Shapiro will definitely get you Pennsylvania you might take that kind of Lyndon Johnson type. No question. Well, she's going to, she's going to have a big issue in Pennsylvania. What to talk about that after the break? Yeah, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be back to talk more money is Anthony Scaramucci going to donate a little bit more to the Harris
campaign with that. The answers, yes. You don't even have to, you don't even have to wait. That was meant to be a cliffhanger. I don't like cliffhanger. I don't like cliffhanger. I wear everything on my, my sleeve. We'll be back. This episode is sponsored by N. Cogney. N. Cogney is a personal data removal tool that prevents scammers and shady businesses from profiling you or using your data for identity theft. Did you know that every year the number of data breaches are rising and the likelihood
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exciting news. Now to celebrate this year's Olympic Games, which of course are being held in Paris, we thought that we would dive into the story of another period when incredible spectacles were being staged in the French capital. To much bloodier effect than anything
we will see in the Olympics. And this is the story of the French Revolution. Over the span of eight episodes running throughout the duration of the Olympics, we'll be looking at the incredible life of Marianne Tornet, the storming of the Bastille, King Louis XVI's tempted escape from Paris with the rest of the royal family and many more seismic events. So to hear our series on the French Revolution, simply search for the rest is history wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back to the rest is politics US with me Katty K. And I'm here to be scared of cheap. So listen, Anthony, if you were a strategist still for the Trump campaign, how would you go after Kamala Harris assuming she's going to be the Democratic nominee? So again, this is not Trump's strong suit, but I would calm down. I would not attack her personally like he's doing. I wouldn't be blowing racist dog whistles or sexist
dog whistles. I would go after her anti business stance and I would go after the fact that she wanted a ban on fracking. I would go after the fact if you looked at her voting record, it looks a lot like Elizabeth Warren's voting record or Bernie Sanders. I would attack her left and right on the city of San Francisco and the state of California. I would pin all of that dysfunction on her, the lawlessness, the homelessness. I would say that these
policies did not work. It led to mass migration out of California. 500,000 people left that blue state into red states. And I would say that she's wrong for America too progressive and she doesn't understand business in a way that's necessary for America to prosper. The other thing I would say is that I'm more muscular on our national defense and I'm
more muscular as it relates to projecting American strength. I would not attack her on the personal stuff because once he starts doing that, he falls into a trap that excuse me, this guy is an A-hole. I don't want to listen to this guy for the next four years with this type of bladder. So, Dumb as a rock might not be the first thing you'd suggest for him to say. And here's the thing, you know, like Jared said this to me once that when I used to talk to Trump, he's like, you know, he
liked you because you reminded him of Fred Trump. You made your money from nothing and you didn't really give a shit and you would just tell him exactly what you thought. All these other sick of fans were like dancing on broken glass. I would get in his grill. I would grab his face mask to use an American football expression and say knock it off. You sound like a bozo and this is going to hurt you. And stuff like that, believe it, I would wake
up Donald Trump. So, I know Susie Wiles is pissed at him, guaranteed. I know her for a very long time. She's probably pissed at him for choosing JD Vance as his running mate at this point who's looking like more of a liability than an asset, but anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, JD Vance is going to go down as a dud. But JD Vance is doing two things that Donald Trump doesn't like. Number one, he's a Mimi guy. The Donald Trump did not want
to hear that convention speech. Donald Trump, what are they here? I'm JD Vance. I'm a Senator from Ohio, a bestselling author. Let me talk about Donald Trump for the next 35 minutes. He did not want to hear the up and coming next president of the conservative movement of the United States. He didn't want to hear it. And you could see it in his face. He looked like he was eating a shit sandwich while he was listening to JD Vance. Okay. Number
one, number two, JD Vance on the stump is a clot. Okay. He's not very good. He's kind of heavy. He's stepping on himself. He has no ability to self-deprecate. That weird thing of saying things that he thinks are a joke and then kind of looking around rather awkwardly waiting for applause lines that aren't there. Yeah, but also he's not he's not a good comedian. Here's something that Trump is good at. Okay. The other night, he was looking in the camera
reflection, the television image of himself. And he was like, oh my god, my comb over looks terrible. Okay. Trump could not do that in 2016, but at age 78, he can be more self-deprecating the crowd laughed and humanizes him. JD Vance is literally like a conservative robot. You know, he he's like the cabbage patch doll that married Chuckie, you know, the horror show doll. And he's coming across as a little mean. Oh good. It's a big albatross and Trump is going to
sour on him very quickly. And you're going to see that dysfunction show up in their joint interviews. So the other thing that I would say from the Republican side that you could go after Kamala Harris on and they're already doing this, obviously they're calling her the borders are. You pin immigration, you pin all the people coming across the border. We spoke about this on Sunday night. Let's see what
happens in the fall because numbers are down at the moment, but they could tick up again. But you you pin all of that border chaos on her as well. And you pin inflation on her. You say whatever was Joe Biden's policies on inflation, they are Kamala Harris's policies on inflation too. I think the risk for Democrats is look around the country. Democrats succeeded in 2018, 2020, 2022 and all of the special elections in between when they ran centrist candidates who worked
well in those districts. I'm thinking like Mark Kelly, like Josh Shapiro, like Abigail Spanburger, the congresswoman in Virginia, former CIA analysts, Mikey Cheryl from New Jersey again, former pilot. But people who were pretty conservative have quite conservative centrist backgrounds. And that's when Democrats did well. And Kamala Harris came out of San Francisco like you say where she never had to
run even to the center, right? To get elected, Kamala Harris's background is running left. It's not running center. She's never really had to even when she ran a senator for the Senate seat in California. Her contest was in the primary. It wasn't in the general election. So all of her political career, whether she believes this or not, we don't really know because 2019 was a bit of a sort of weird flip flopping campaign where it's hard to tell what does Kamala Harris stand for,
what is authentically her. She's going to have to attack to the center to win this thing. And is she going to be able to do that authentically without sounding like she's just being a politician? So, Lissani, I think you bring up a brilliant point. And so if I was coaching her, I would say you grew up in a one party system. Everything that Cadi Cage has said is true. And you grew up in a one party system. So you'd never had to step out of your party box and become more centrist or moderate
your positions. Take a look at the demography of the United States. Take a look at what the independence want and speak to those independence and explain to those independence that you expect to be a president of the United States for them. You may have started in San Francisco or California, but that's not where you are now, right? You know, there's a great expression in life. You have to remember where you came from, Cadi, but you also have to recognize where you are now, where she is
right now. She's in a position to advocate on behalf of the majority of the people of the United States, though really don't want to return to Trump's craziness. His approval ratings are also very low. Right. And so she has an opportunity to change the whole sentiment of who she is. She said, yep, you're right. I did start in a one party system. I did start this way. You know, Truman did this. If you remember, he started in sort of this one party system in Missouri. He was hand
picked by Pender Gas, who was a sort of a semi corrupt politician. But when he got the job, one of the most famous lines for Harry Truman is there are no lobbyists in this city for the average American. And so the president of the United States needs to be the lobbyist for everybody, not just the special interests. That's her move. That's her move. It does she actually need to be a little bit
populist, but from the kind of Bernie Sanders school of American politics. I mean, it's interesting that JD Vance, who's an out-and-out populist, right, actually has some crossover appeal with Bernie Sanders. I think if you track the districts where JD Vance did well in Ohio when he was running for the Senate, you find that Bernie Sanders also did well in those districts. And I'm just wondering, is there a way, and I'm floating this? I don't even know if it's possible. Is there a way that
Kamala Harris can not try to be something she isn't? Because I think people have great bullshit radars and they spot that. If she comes across as inauthentic, it's going to kill her. But is there a way she says, listen, all my career, I have stood up for average Americans against, you know, when I was a prosecutor, I was putting the bad guys in prison, like she said, on Monday, when it comes to
her economics, I'm standing up for American families. But do it in a way that, I mean, maybe you think this is not possible because she's just got to get over something, for example, like being against fracking in Pennsylvania. But if you look at young people, they care about climate change. If this is going to be what you say, the election of young people, then actually suddenly denying that
she's in favor of fracking, is that worse in a way for her than saying, yeah, you're right. I did oppose fracking because I'm concerned about young people and their future and what it's going to do to the planet. I don't, I'm just what, if she has the political skill to somehow finesse her past without denying her past, is that a stronger play for her than pretending to be something she isn't? So it's interesting. So what, what used to kill Hillary Clinton was she grew up, she was actually
born in Scranton, PA, but she really was raised in Illinois and she used to wear a Cubs hat. When she got to New York, she swapped out the Cubs hat for a Yankee hat. And so any baseball purist, that was like a stab in the heart. You don't do that. I'm a lifelong Med fan and I've been a, I've been a suffering Med fan for 50 years. I mean, nothing more brutal than being a Med fan, but that's disingenuous. You see what I mean? And so everyone said, oh, that's totally disingenuous. Trump has a
gift that no other politician has. I don't know exactly why, but he can say two contradictory things out of his mouth at the same time. In the same sense that everyone accepts it. I hate crypto, but now I love crypto. Okay, Trump's for crypto. He's my guy. I'm pro choice, but I also want to overturn Roe v Wade. He could do it. He could pull it off. I don't know how he gets away with it. And I can't even describe how he gets away with it, but she cannot get away with it.
Okay, Hillary Clinton cannot get away with it. Even Barack Obama as talented as he is as a politician and as a human being cannot get away with that. So she's got to get in a lane and she's got to tell people what she wants to do. Now, if she turned to people in Pennsylvania and said, yeah, I'm for a national ban on fracking. I recognize how important this is to your economy. And so I'm now president of the United States. I'm not a senator. And so I have to put slack in my policy decisions.
That's a very authentic thing to say. Yeah, you can't say I was for it before I was against it. You're going to say, listen, I'm worried about the environment. I'm worried about our future generations of America. And I want to choke them with asthma where they believe in global warming or not. The pollution is really hurting us. But having said that, I'm going to be president for everybody. And I have to put some slack in my policies to make this work for you.
And by the way, the fact that Pennsylvania is receiving $400 million from the inflation reduction act doesn't hurt, right? You can point to the things that the Biden administration has done for communities like Pennsylvania to make that transition from fossil fuels to new forms of energy. So I think she, I think there are things she can do there, but it's going to take some political skill. And I think most of all, it's going to take authenticity. And I think that's a
little bit the concern with Kamala Harris. I remember from the 2019 2020 campaign. It was at what is she about? What does she believe? Why is she doing this? She's searching for voters. She was searching for voters shooting. You can't weather vane this. You can't put your finger up in the air, which way is the wind blowing? You got to say, listen, I've been to the mountaintop. Here are the two tablets that I'm going to run on. Here are my ideas. Here's why I have moderated
my ideas because I'm now running for the presidency. And by the way, again, as I've said to you, Cadi Kay, this is the only job in America where the entire electorate votes on it. Only job. Every other job is a micro job, the representative of the Senate. You picked the job, but in the United States, the president, all 50 states, all eligible voters votes on it as a result of which I'm going to modulate some of my views. And I'm going to explain this to you and hear my tablets that I'm
going to run on. And I know we have to wrap it. Reagan had one of the best lines ever. The John Burst Society of our alt-right of his day, they came and they endorsed him. And seers that was running his campaign at that time ran into his office and said, what are we going to do? This is a disaster for us. You're trying to tack to the middle. And the John Burst Society has endorsed you. And Reagan looked at him and said, I don't care about the John Burst. So here are my principles.
Here's where I stand. They're endorsing me. I'm not endorsing them. If I don't win the election, I'm going to go up to Santa Barbara. I'm going to cut brush and hang out with my wife Nancy. Here are my principles. This is what I stand for. This is what I'm doing. You got to get a little bit of that California-like feeling from Kamala Harris if she wants to win this thing. With a little bit of sunshine and a smile, which is what, which could run up against the kind of
American carnage theme, right? And I think she did that well on Monday. We may be at peak Democratic excitement at the moment, but let's see how she performs over the next. I think we'll know. I think we'll know in two or three weeks. We didn't mention my $30,000 donation. Yeah, I know. That was written up in the New York Post, by the way. So you gave $30,000 to the Biden campaign just after the classic debate, good timing, Anthony, by the way. Yeah, because you know
what? This is what people from my neighborhood do. You run towards people when they're having a problem. You don't run away from them, right? I was like, all right, Uncle Joe's in a lot of trouble. Million family. Exactly. Uncle Joe's in a lot of trouble. I'm going to run towards them. Just so why was it $30,000? Because there was like a menu they gave you, okay? And the menu was for the $30,000 you got the photo op. And then there was other things, you know, where maybe you got a
cocktail or like a little hot dog, you know, or something like that. And so I said, you know what? I don't want the photo op because I'm actually not a Democrat. I'm a lifelong Republican. I'm just know the danger of Donald Trump, but I'll give the $30,000, but he doesn't have to take a photo with me. I think they were happy about that. And I was happy about that. So that's the story behind that. Kat. So I'm, we'll have to do an episode when you give your next $30,000 to Kamala Harris when
she comes calling, which I'm pretty sure she will. I'm going to give her money and I'm going to support her because I understand the dilemma that the country's in right now. And you do not want to return to the nonsense of Donald Trump. And if she wins, it'll give the Republican party an opportunity to remake itself and to renew itself and to bring it into the modern era. If she loses, look out, Caddy Kay. And I know you're in the UK right now. Hopefully you'll find
a place for me to live. Okay. That's why I'm here. I'll move from resident to resident. So I'll be in an undisclosed location doing the podcast. And possibly with a voice modulator. Then my action is not so great. You're going to be in in Rory Stewart's basement. I think we determine that. Roy doesn't look like he's a good eater, by the way. I just want to point that out. I need to be a tenant of a chubby person. Okay. So I like to eat. And you need warm because I tell you they're
not very good on heating in this country either. And the Long Islander is not going to like the cold weather without the ice cubes. I need warmth. I need all the ice cubes. I expect from America. You need heating. You need a private bath. I know I get it. I get the whole thing. I'm listening. One other thing just before we go to Democrats who are listening, Democrats are at kind of peak excitement at
the moment around all of this. But Donald Trump is not going to be easy to beat. I think they have to take this very seriously. They're going to have to work super hard. They only have a short amount of time. And she's going to have to run a pretty flawless campaign if she wants to overcome the polling disadvantage that she has at the moment. Very well said and very true. We'll be back on Friday
with a regular episode of the Restisted Politics US. Thanks for listening today. Thank you guys. We'll see you on Friday.