It is eleven days to go, and I'm thrilled today to be joined again by Tara Palmieri of Puck News, who is one of the very best political reporters in America. Has a real handle not just on what's going on in the race, but the people in the country that will decide the race, which is often an ingredient missing in the mix with a lot of the political coverage.
Welcome Tyr.
Thank you Steve for that kind intro. It's such a pleasure to be on the show. Really honored.
I was about thirty seconds late dialing in on our set time because I got a call from a freaked out, freaked out Democrat Wow, very well known in the party and bereft, saying she's going to lose. The mood was despair, hopelessness, depression, a little bit of anger, and bewilderment about what she should be doing, could be doing, talking about the Nevada early vote numbers are terrible, real rage towards Biden that I think today you know that's just bubbling underneath there.
But my first question for you, like is that is he an outlier? What's the mood as you're talking to people, what team thinks they're winning, what team thinks they're losing, who's happy?
Who said?
What's going on on the campaign trail with these campaigns?
All right, I'll cut to the chase. Democrats definitely are anxious, they feel like they're losing. Republicans are feeling amazing. Perhaps it's misguided, but they're really encouraged by these early voting figures. Republicans are coming out in stronger numbers than ever before for a variety of reasons. You know, Republicans traditionally know voted early except for in Arizona, right, and it was always Democrats. I'm talking about the battleground states. But now
you know there's vote by mail. There's early voting in these battleground states that some of them started back in COVID in twenty twenty or just in the recent election. And you know, Trump called it rigged, he called it, you know, fraudulent. But the new messaging from the GOP and from himself, a convert, is that vote by mail. I'm going to do it. Even Marjorie Taylor Green is
voting early and by mail. So you know the party has shifted towards vote by mail, Vote by mail, vote by mail, and this is something you've never seen before, Republicans voting early, and in the case of North Carolina, yesterday they out voted Democrats by three thousand votes. That's never happened before. And in fact, like that's always been a strength for Democrats, specifically in North Carolina, is getting
their voters out early. So there's obviously a lot of anxiety about these early voting numbers, and I think it's translating to both parties because and the Republicans are super happy, but you know what, these voters they may have gone out on election day and instead they're just banking their vote now, and maybe they're just cannibalizing the people that were going to show up anyway. And on election Day, when Republicans tend to get more voters, they might not
see that. So this glee could be misguided. But I know that, you know, the RNC Coachair Michael Wattley is telling all the supporters, like, we're getting these great figures. We feel so good about Pennsylvania. You know, Democrats still haven't reached five hundred thousand early vote requests yet that's what they sort of need to counter on election day. And so you know, Republicans, so they always beat their chest like it's kind of part of the psychology of
the party. And perhaps it's because they realize that they're voters don't like going out unless they think they're voting for a winning team, and Democrats induce anxiety to get their voters out. I mean, you can see it in Harris's messaging right, It's like, if you don't vote for me, it's an ex existential threat to democracy. Trumps of fascist. He's a dictator. Think of how dark it can be.
I just had one of Harris's advisors on my show, John Angeloni, and he said, yeah, we're trying to induce PTSD. So like the psychology for Democrats right now, it's fear, but the fact that they're feeling it themselves is saying something, Right, there's one thing to be inducing fear on your on your voters to get them out as a way to it's not just persuasion. I think it's persuasion for the kind of voters who are on the fence, the devils haters,
the Nicky Haley voters, the independence the lattads. But for those like you know, base voters who maybe are just like eh, I think she's got it locked up, like maybe it's it's a get out the vote mechanism for them, and I think the part I actually think her team though, truly feels it and fears that future and sees it possibly happening in eleven days. And Trump, like I wrote about this last week, but he's in a really good move.
He just has been. And maybe he's overreading the early voting figures, like you said in Nevada, where Republicans are coming out in rural counties and even urban counties. You know, you got John Ralston at the Nevada Independent. He's kind of like the election political guru saying, this is a shocking like turnabout. We've never seen this before that you know, the Red machine, the Harry Reid machine, was supposed to
get Democrats out early. That's how we did it. We banked you know, a third of our voters before election day. But you know Democrats now have a quarter of their voters out and Republicans have a ton of voters out. And he thinks that the no tax on tips and the fact that Trump put that out there first may have been like it may have been a way to sort of like draw wedge in the you know, the the hospitality unions out there, the culinary union, you know
that that really controls like the Vegas area. So Steve, I'm hearing the same thing. But like Democrats by nature anxious, Republicans by nature, bravado. They said we were going to get a red wave in twenty twenty two. It was a red trickle. But you know it could be also a way to activate voters.
Let's talk to psychology of it, because I think it's so interesting when you take this outside of green room theory and apply it to the complexities.
Of the real world.
And I want you to call me out if I say anything that is remotely imprecise or incorrect about what what's going to come out of my mouth. I am not wrong right when I say that Donald Trump communicated as aggressively as he could that voting by mail was a fraudulent, bad thing to do that elected Democrats.
Correct, Absolutely, it's correct.
Then one day Trump stopped saying it, yes and already starts communicating to that voter base which had been socialized, don't do this to you, gotta do this.
Do I understand that? Right?
Absolutely? I mean, in Pennsylvania, write that now some of the signs you'll see are swamp them with votes, make it too big to rig vote early today. So yeah, now he's saying, if you don't vote early, they're going to steal it from me. It's an extension of his they stole my election narrative from twenty twenty. But you know, my sources tell me that it was only a couple of weeks ago that Trump was truly persuaded that voting early was a good thing, Like late early October, he
still didn't believe it. They had to push him. And you know, just like a year ago, he was still telling people he thought it was rigged and fraudulent. So whatever the Republicans have done is incredible. Now, I know, I always go back to my own family. I use them as my focus group. But I know my father is a Republican and he went out to early vote. My brother is a Republican. He went out to early vote.
At the same time, my mom, who as a swing voter, went out to early vote and she's leaning towards Harris, and brought out my grandmother who is going to vote for Harris. So, like they're in North Carolina, early voting has always been a thing in North Carolina, but Republicans never really did it. They always were election day voters. But I think people are just like, why wouldn't we
early vote? Now they've made it so much easier. I mean, but again, in Pennsylvania, early voting is down across the board. But it was like three to one Democrats from Democrats to Republicans in terms of early vote mail in ballot requests. Now it's two to one. So you know, Republicans have made gains and registrations in Pennsylvania. They're still not at the same level as Democrats, but there's something to be seen in these numbers, Like the trend lines are looking
good and the momentum it's looking good for Republicans. On election night, you got to make sure you hold on to that could be, you know, it could be that Democrats end up surging in the end. But and a lot of women have come out to vote. That's another thing there have been there's been more women have come out to vote than men. So that's also a good indicator for the Democrats. But I think they don't ever
feel comfortable unless they are surging. And like I mentioned, I also talked to Trump's polster John McLaughlin, who said, who showed me his figures? He made them public. They showed Trump winning within the margin of error, like by a point in Pennsylvania, right, And I'm like, why do you say this is a victory to me? You have a you know, forty nine percent chance of losing. And he's like, you just don't understand. We're not ever used to being up. Our psychology, even within the campaign, is
that we're down. He said, you know, something like this day in twenty sixteen, Real Clear Politics had Hillary at forty eight percent and Trump at forty one. So they're not used to feeling as if they've got a shot, and so they may be over compensating for But I think it's partially the overcompensation from the numbers that show them at parody and this belief that there is momentum just based on the early voting numbers.
Well, I think one interesting facet of it is that you have to really dig into the psychology of it. If I was sitting in the campaign, I'd be really curious to know, you know, all of a sudden and we say, if you're on the Harris campaign, if I was on the Harris campaign that the campaign's position is he's a fascist, which I would agree with, and that he is a top of cult of personality, which I agree with. So if that's true, the cult of personality is going to do what the leader tells it to do.
So if the.
Leader in all the propaganda vest will say do this, people in that cult of personality, if it's real, are going to respond.
They're going to follow the order.
So we're going to see somewhere north of one hundred and sixty two million votes. You know, the side that is going to be responsive to the order is definitely the MAGA side. You know, the liberty loving side is going to be a little bit more freewheeling, and so we're going to see if that balance is out on
election day. But if you look at this through the prism of past is prologue, or that there's a trend line and that you can make certain deductions because the next election is always a bit prefaced and foreshadowed by the last one, then it's a really ominous. It's a
really ominous thing. I want to ask you. I want to ask you too about like this other kind of element of psychology, which I think is so interesting and in the formation of the electorate, which is, if I hear you correctly, what you're saying is that Democrats, in order to be incited and to be instigated to take action, have to be approached from the prism of something bad is going to happen. Fear that fear. And on the Republican side, right, what the stimulant is, right, the.
Inducement to join is winning.
Yeah, being on the winning team. That appears to be the psychology of the teams. Right. At the same time, I think they are both using, well more so the Democrats and Republicans. They're both trying to use scare tactics. Trump is leaning into immigration, something he leaned into in
twenty sixteen crime, the idea that we're being invaded. But yeah, there's something I think for Republicans, especially these low propensity voters, that maybe they want to go out and say that they voted for their cult leader, right as you said, they want to feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves. The question is, and what we hear from people like David Ploff on Harris's side, is oh, these are all, you know, first time voters, low propensity voters.
When you're doing your models, how much are you accounting for the fact that a lot of these guys have never voted before, Like these like in cells in their basement, as they've been referred to by the Harris team. Sure, like they've never voted to before. They don't vote in twenty twenty two when Trump's not on the ballot, right, it's all about Trump. But if Trump is really like a driver of votes for these specific people that don't vote regularly, then like it's really hard to know what's
going to happen. It maybe even cancels out the fact that the Democrats have a much better get out the vote operation. You know, Republicans left it to Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk who are in way over their head. Their canvassers are mess Some of them are actually doing fraudulent door knocks, just trying to grift and it's it's like the republic Prokland National Committee is no longer a ground operation fundraising operation. It's really become an election integrity
unit or you know, stop to steal unit. A bunch of lawyers are in there. Those are the people that are focusing on trying to like create law fare around the election because no matter what happens, unless Trump sweeps, he's gonna, you know, he's gonna claim that, you know, he won, and and even if Harris sweeps, he'll still claim he wins. So he's got to be ready for that.
And he also believes that he's going to win, like he has said to his he has said to Michael Wattley and the RNC and all these people, like, I'm going to win this. And the only way i will lose this is if you fail me steal it from me. This is you know, this is it. So he's fired at warning shots already. Everybody knows that. So yeah, I mean, listen, is Trump enough of a get up the vote mechanism himself?
Like between smartphones and the cult of personality, does that match a strong operation, a strong, actual ground game of canvassers out there getting people out that the Democrats have. It's hard to say, but like I can tell you this, Harris is not a cult leader. She doesn't have one hundred percent name. I D A lot of people say they don't really know anything about her. What more can
you possibly know about Donald Trump? So it's really that is the X factor on election day at the same time, like all of these, a bunch of battleground state experts that I spoke to this past week and said, you know, Democrats are registering independence like at high at very high levels, and even in Nevada where their alarm belts have been ringing. And it's hard to say whether these are these independents are just like disguised Democrats, because in twenty twenty, Nevada
started auto registering voters. It's the same thing in North Carolina when you go to get a license register your car, you're automatically registered as a voter, or there's just like a there's just like a thing you tick off and and if you don't pick a party, you're automatically registered as a non partnerson independent. So like these and they've come out, one hundred thousand of them have already come out, these independents. So what is motivating them to come out?
Maybe it is the no tax on tips and they heard it first from Trump, or maybe they're maybe they're Democrats. So I think in a lot of these states there's there's been a big independent turnout. The psychology of it all is hard to say, because like women are also super motivated at the same time, like they may be more motivated than the in cells, and it might not be about Harris but about their own rights.
So we're going to talk about the in cells. I want to for everybody who is who is watching this. David Ploff, who is directing the strategy at the Harris campaign Obama campaign strategist. His theory, if I understand it correctly, is Trump has a ceiling that he will not get
a vote total beyond a hard number meaning right. Similarly, if you fly an airplane right into a hard object, right, because of physics to objects occupy the same space at the same time, it's going to explode, right, It's going to crash. So what Pluff is saying is, don't listen to all the noise, don't listen to all the thunder. There's a number that he's going to have to reach and he can't reach it.
Is that about, right?
Is that? Yeah, he's saying he can't get more than forty eight percent, essentially, But the Trump team at the same time counters you know, we're getting more first time voters, We're getting these young men, We're getting a lot of people feeling more comfortable about talking about votings for Trump.
You know, you have this unique situation where incumbents are losing elections across the globe because of inflationary pressure, and you have like a unique set of circumstances where the fundamentals of the campaign are sort of on Trump's side right now. So whether you like him or hate them, if you're really voting on the economy and on immigration, the two top issues that voters report are important to them, Like the fundamentals of a race are on Trump's side.
It's just like, and does that mean he can break his forty eight percent ceiling? I don't know, But does that mean that like Harris will get to forty nine point five or fifty, Like they both could have a ceiling and there could just be you know, who knows how the people in Michigan are going to go out and vote. Right there's Jill Stein still on the ballot with the Democrats right now. They might end up voting for Jill Stein. Steve, I'd be curious to see what
you think. Do you think that forty eight percent is Trump's ceiling and he can't reach it?
Well?
I was So there's a theory of the case right, and everybody has to have a theory of the case. If you watch a football game this weekend, as the game gets dound at his end, if it's a close one, coach calls the play, quarterback calls the play. That play is premised on a theory of the case that we line up this way and this player moves in motion, then these other players will react to that and be
somewhere that we can exploit and take advantage of. And so I think that I'm not sure that I agree with the premise on the theory of the case.
You know, Chuck.
Yeger is the is the pilot who broke the sound barrier World War two ACE and Chuck Yeger when he broke the sound barrier, there was a real belief that it was a barrier in the sky that was like a wall, that when you hit the sound barrier it would be like hitting a wall, and instead he flew
through it. So I don't sleep soundly as somebody who has a real rooting interest here with regard to that Trump can't break through that ceiling in the same way that the other campaign that David was involved in, Obama's campaign twenty twelve, the premise of the Romney campaign was that there was no way there could be more black people that would vote for Barack Obama in the second
term than voted for him in the first term. And in fact, there were more black people that voted for him in the second term in the re election than in the first one. So I just think, at the end of the day, you have to take a shot.
I think if you had somebody looking at this the best person in the world, Like if I could pick somebody if my brother was running for president and I had to look at him and say this, listen to this guy, I would say, listen to bluff, right as somebody who ran a race against David is how much was fact I have for them? But that doesn't make him an errant. It's not etched in granite. It's a gux and and it's a it's a very very close race. And all of the intangibles that you talked about, you know,
is women. And one of the things that you're never here talking about on a television show a lot of these cable shows is that, well, is that woman responding to the immigration message or is she responding to the abortion message? What's the I card between those two. And so the answer to that tells me a lot about that early, that early female vote, and it's kind of displacements out across out across the country where we're where
we're seeing it. I do think that the one thing that I find like really incredible about this race, which is I've never seen anything like it, is if you're working on a campaign. When I worked on campaigns, there was no tolerance or space for delusional people because you are involved in an effort that doesn't stop seven days a week, fifteen hours a day, and nobody wants to be with somebody who's telling them that the red chair is blue, that the green grass is orange, or whatever the case may be.
For so much of the year, the.
Position of the party, the Biden White House was so oppositional to what voters were saying, which is, we don't want this, we don't want this choice, we don't want him to run for reelection. Right, the party's position is basically like, we don't agree with anything on MAGA, on anything, but they agreed on one thing right, which is that the choice was the choice.
Right. It was Biden.
Versus Trump, until all of a sudden that it isn't now. I remember Bush in four o'clock to a bunch of this. I think it was like this talk he gave us. Always when I tell a story, I say it was the smartest piece of political advice that I ever heard anybody give. And the basis of it was essentially that there's nothing that any of you can do to mitigate my weaknesses. They will shine through because that's the nature
of the process. And there's an accidental genius to the American process, which is that you are fully revealed for who you are by the fact that it never ends. It's not a European election, which you're so familiar with that they say in Belgium or France, whatever, we're gonna have an election, right and we're gonna have it in ninety days, and there's the election, and it goes back on. This process is interminable. It never ever stops. Kamala Harris
took a big shortcut in the process. And what the polling has been saying through all of these months is we want to know something, we want to know something more. I talked to my Democratic friends all the time, and when you raise the question of well, the polling is saying they want to hear something more. You know, people will get enraged at you. They'll be like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Right like.
That, like what do you like he's talking about people eating dogs? And you're like, settle down again, I'm not I'm good. Right, she had me at second one, I.
Would but you're anti Yeah, in a suspended animation tank, right, that's being said, right, there's.
A there's a lot of it was.
There's a lot of people right out there though, that are saying we want to know something more elemental, something more philosophical that she just still hasn't touched if you go buy the polls, and so you know, the question is there transference?
Right?
Does Beyonce appear and influence someone in the country and say, oh shit, like there's Beyonce right now, I'm with Kamala Harris, right? Or is all of that a distraction as we come down this stretch where she's got to take it, she's got to seize it. And if that's the case, and I think it is, like, do people understand in the democratic side, is there is there a shared kind of conviction about what she needs to say to close it out?
If you win and you talk to twenty people on the campaign, would they all say the same thing about this is what we're talking about for last ten days.
Of this No.
I think you like hit it on the head in the sense that, like the one thing that she has not done is actually give a vision for her presentency, and she also hasn't been able to show how it will be separate from Joe Biden's presidency. People want change. They've made that clear when you get you know, thirty seventy seventy percent out of the country wants you know, it wants change. Once is unhappy with the way things are right, then you need to offer that vision of change,
and she hasn't done that. I think that the prior democratic campaigns before them, even if they worked or didn't work, they still had like an action of movement, momentum of progression. Like I'm with her, We're going to break the glass ceiling together, Yes we can. We're going to nominate the first black you know, President Joy not really sure. That's kind of like a tepid feeling, but it's not like moving forward. It's not it doesn't push you anywhere. It's
like just be happy with the way things are. No, tell me how they're going to change how many people aren't happy with the way things are. If you can answer that, if you can answer that question or you can answer that problem, then you win. You're the product I'm going to buy. But like, if your product doesn't fix my problem, then I'm not going to buy you. You're just on the shelf. And like and Trump says,
I'll fix your problems. We'll go back to the way things were when maybe you were actually did feel a little better. Maybe you didn't like me, but I made it a little bit better. When this other product is just not offering me, it's it's saying a lot of things that are you know, it cures a headache, it cures this, it cares that. But like, no, what I've got right now is a stomach ache, and you're not saying that you can fix the stomach ache, you know what I mean. So I just don't know exactly what
her I don't think she's offered the vision. What is she going to do to fix the problem that Americans have? And how is she moving forward? Like they're not happy with the state they're in, And I just I just don't even really like the messaging out of her campaign. What do you think do you think that joy is enough? And and now they've kindly like gotten to like fuck Joy, that's over with and they're fine weeks because they've got to go dark to motivate their voters, to kind of
scare them into the folds. And I would be nervous too. I would be three and a half months is not a long time, as you said, to run for presidents to snap election, which is a positive or negative. But like the more she's out there, her favorabilities are dropping.
Maybe it's the ads, the transgender ads. I mean, those have been really powerful, but they because they know not only like create the impression that she's a liberal, but they also seem to suggest that to waste tax payer money, right, And it hits that immigration, crime, the otherness, all of that the worst, like xenophobia of Americans. But also the view like that comment that she said, you know, what
would you do different than Biden? Not a thing that comes to mind, like the fact that that was such a powerful message, which you you know, alerted me to saying like this is this destroys the premise of her case that I'm changed. I think that's that's a really powerful thing too, and they've never really been able to recover from They've never found the right answer to that question. I'm different, I'm a different generation. I'm this who cares
insult Biden. It doesn't matter. Do you guys want to win this? Do you want to fight? Like, get your fucking knuckles out. And I know it's not like proper protocol. But if there's anything that Americans have shown it us time after time, is they're really tired of politicians. Don't be the politician out there. Sound a little different, be a little edgy. But like every time she's out there, even that CNN town hall, it's like, just get to the point. And like even asked about grief. I mean,
that's a really tough question. You know, her mother just died, but like you can, you can like talk about it like a normal person does. You don't have to think that hard about talking about grief. It's it's like it's like she's going through her role decks of things that they prepped her with the lines, and they probably didn't prep her on grief, and they it's just maybe I
think I might be being too hard on her. And I think everybody, even Democrats are feeling that way too, because of like the anxiety, like she's the one who's supposed to save us all from this, you know, from Trump, right, and if she's the savior, then you have to be perfect and I and again and back to plot. Like Pluff is obviously brilliant and amazing, but like Pluff didn't make Obama. Obama made Obama. He is a once in
a generation candidate. He is like Flick, He is smart, he is every like only Obama could really pull off that first black president thing. And she didn't have to go through a primary. She was kind of known as like she's an okay politician. Everyone thought she was amazing because of the rollout. But the more she's out there and the more she's being hit, she doesn't know how to respond and so not to like dump on her when I could go on for days about Trump and
all of his problems. But we know what Trump is and you know what you're getting.
So so this is the conversation right now, right, this is this is the conversation that I think democrats are have, right, it is it is not a measuring the Drave's conversation. It's not optimistic, right, so I'm imagining a scenario, right, I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of roll by.
The way all of my but way see, just to preface this for the listeners, all of my comments have nothing to do with how she will be as a president. I'm just talking about how she will sell the presidency to Americans. She might be a fabulous leader president, et cetera, but you don't get there until you sell yourself. And I just don't think she sold herself yet.
No, no question about it.
And I'm and I'm and I'm just listening to you and I and I just want to say to everybody, because we're living at a time where there's a lot of sensitivity about hearing any news that conflicts with your worldview, that this, this is precise, This is this is accurate, right, this is you know toward just Tonally is very much
on the line with where Democrats are. She's reporting that in a in a way that I find very real, very tangible, because I'm having conversations with actual people that are that are very very close, know, on the line to what we're to what.
We're talking about here.
So I want to kind of set the stage and kind of role play this forward. Imagine that we're sitting around the table. It's at the Capitol. You got a bunch of staffers, you know, senate staffers, house staffers, white house staffers. Everybody's nervous. You're sitting in there. There's fifty people in the room. Right, everyone is bickering, whining. Somebody washed in there, right and says, shut the fuck up, right, stop, stop.
It's an even race. She could lose. Who knows right? What are we going to do?
Who is the person that Kamala Harris is going to look to that Barack Obama's going to look to that the core inside who has the most trust accumulated in the This person knows what they're doing. We're going to listen listening to them. Who is who's that person?
Or Buff? I mean you were right, it's bluff, Buff. What didn't you say?
I mean I.
Gave maybe Axel Rod, I mean actual Rod still gets a lot of difference. He's seen as someone who sort of throws into the tent. But like you know, because he has the media job, he's got two podcasts. But like I think when it comes to what are we going to do for our closing out argument? They look at the last people who won the election, and all due respect to the Biden team, it was you know, it's it's Obama's team that people really really look up to it. Don't you think?
Do they? I do? Do they do? They do? They have that shuttled? Do they know what they're going to close on?
The closing is the fascist the fascist stuff? It's dark, you know, contrast, it's existential threat to democracy. Someone from Blueprint Polls do you know them? They read Hoff group, he's funding it. He sent me some of the polling and messaging and they found that this h you know, kind of threat to democracy language, the danger of the chaos around Trump, that it pulls really well with independence and the people on the margins, more so than the economy, immigration,
even reproductive rights. I don't know if that's true, but he said by one point eight points that pulls better than the rest of the topics when trying to reach independence. So that's that's what you're going to hear. I mean, it's the it's motivation by fear, activation by fear of Trump. So yeah, that's what they're leaning into. What have you have you heard something different?
No?
I mean, but like do you think that's congruent with like having Beyonce out there, just Beyonce drive that message or arenacy a multi city celebrity fast in the Hillary Clinton style?
Oh god, yeah, no, everyone is getting.
As in the final days.
Yeah, if there's everyone's getting PTSD and flashbacks. It's a lot of Hillary staffers to the fact that they did this multi city tour, you know, not in the battleground states with big celebrities. I mean some of these are in the battle ground states. I think Bruce Springsteen was in Georgia last week. But yeah, they might be bold. They're they're doing their Grand Finale and it's uh, they're Encore and it's it's just yeah, brusus Bruce. Maybe it works,
maybe it doesn't. Trump's doing the same thing. They're indulging in their egos right now. He's going to as in Square Garden, he was at Coachella. They're trying to prove that they're a movement right, that they can go into unfriendly territory and uh, Trump wants to be the Obama of the right. Let's be serious, right, And I think for her that maybe it's the media markets outside of Houston that she's looking at But I don't know. I would keep my head down and just grind it out.
But then again, like I'm not pluff, I'm not a political I just I just report on what they're doing. You would, don't, I mean, you've been on the other end of it.
Is the campaign? Does the campaign have a plan to deal with his Madison Square Guardan rally since they're closing out on fascism? Is that there they are they going to meet them at that spot? Given that that's the spot where the German American booned put twenty thousand Nazis into the rally in nineteen thirty nine, any talk on the campaigns about that at all, Like that's a big moment.
I know James Carvell has talked a lot about that. It's I think you would know this better than me, But I think that it might be a hard comparison to make, just because it's a difficult. Like, you know, some messages are just easier than others. Right, you can get your surrogates out there on cable saying that, but like, do you how do you put that in an ad
like Trump Nazis Madison Square Garden. You know, maybe you can do that, but you only have a week left, so do you want to use that as your final argument? It might just be like is that a weird historical reference that might be related or not, whereas like we know that they are, or would you rather run the tape of General Kelly calling him? You know, but maybe you put it all on one and like and here he is in the same place that you know the Nazis can mean it's you're cutting new ads. You've got
a week. I'm guessing these ads have been tested, and this is the final argument that they want. It does seem kind of like, you know, you save your I guess you save your best for a last right and and this is this is this is what they're going with. And it makes sense because if you're trying to win over people like those those Republicans, soft Republicans, swing voters like my mom. I mean, that was the thing that she just kept saying over and over again, like she's
a double hater. I don't really like either of these people. But January sixth, like what a nightmare. I don't want that to happen again. Like just you know, we're just right around the corner from another you know, inaugurate you know, we're just around the corner from January sixth. This is reminding people of the chaos that could come at anytime. That's civil unrest. I think it's interesting too that Trump's team isn't really using the assassination attempts in their ads either.
I think it might suggest to them from their pulling that like, actually people don't like civil unrest in either direction, Like the images of him being shot at create the impression that by electing him there will be more chaos as well. It supports Harris's argument.
Let me let me, let me go in another direction, imagining a scenario where she's going to win, and let's say I'm like it around eleven forty five pm. Pretty confident trajectory wise. You know that she's got it. Most
people who've done this believe she's got it. The Cornaks of the world, Harry Enton on CNN, all the all the math prodigies we're going to have, And let me just back up and just say that, you know again, I have I placed the phone call for John McCain to Barack Obama right in the process of the concession phone call, and.
And on that.
So Trump, let's say, goes out and says, even though he's losing or loss, that he's winning and is going to win.
Will Fox call the race?
M poor Chris Starwalt. You know, he gave me my first job the Washington Examiner. He plucked me out of the green room at what happened to him was so terrible they fired him for calling it in Arizona. I think they have to. I think, deep down well based on my reporting too, Murdoch is so fucking done with Trump. He's really done with him. Like sure, he wanted to bluns him by getting him to pick Doug Bergham to put an adult in the room rather than JD. Vance.
But I think Fox would probably be more than happy to like call it early. But I don't know. I mean, I think it's like what I think. I think the journalists are going to be nervous. Look what happened last time, wouldn't you be I mean, if you were thinking like you might get you might get fired for it.
What about Elon Musk in Twitter? Oh my gosh, if you guys talked about that at puck? What does what? What does anyone think that that's going to look like? When I mean I think that whatever we associate Acts or Twitter with regarding misinformation. Right, it like hasn't really gotten going yet with regard to what's coming, but that's going to be a big factor in the twenty four or forty eight hours as a crisis builds.
No, that's a brilliant question and something probably an assignment editor should be on for every single that every network should be covering this right now, because, yeah, what are his plans? Maybe he doesn't even know, but of course he's going to be promoting any sort of data that suggests that Trump is winning, even if it's you know, you know, it changes throughout the night, and I've got to assume that. And if we don't have the results, how long is he going to be pushing information that
suggests that votes are being stolen? Here? I mean, he's intimately involved in the process by way of supporting these super packs that are get out the vote superpacks, right, that are kind of like attached to the RNC, you know, part of the election integrity unit. He's going to have information and intel and he's going to want to sew
disinformation and distrust in the process. And we know that at least forty seven to forty eight percent of people are going to vote for Trump, so they're going to be looking at this and wondering if they're vote counted or mattered. And where they get their media, it's going to likely highlight in their algorithm, you know, information that's that shows that they shouldn't they shouldn't trust the results.
I was just thinking too about TikTok. You know, you've got Jeff Yas who's got a lot of money on the line with Jet TikTok. It's been banned, right, it's coming before the Supreme Court Federal. I think, yeah, that there's a case before the Supreme Court. Trump has said he would support TikTok. Yas is a donor to Trump. It's it's a Chinese health company. What are they going to do? I mean, if there's anything about social media, it's like counterculture and the fringes that tend to be
amplified on the social media outlet. So like h I could see them really amplifying the noise and the disc and the and the information that's not trusted. Now like meta has learned its lesson, right, So like this interaction that we're having right now probably won't be posted. If you posted on on meta on an Instagram or Facebook,
it probably won't populate high. The algorithm depress it, you know there, but if if we but the political content does really well on TikTok, it does really well on Twitter, and and I think there's a reason for it. And I could I could see I could see Musk just letting the conspiracy theories go wild, like Twitter could become like the back page of the Reddit, which I think is a completely unregulated right, which could lead to god knows what. I don't want to I don't want to
be apocalyptic. But in a lot of ways, a close race is a terrifying thing because like, without having a clear answer, it just like we distrust, it creates conspiracy.
I mean you people that I've spoken to inside of the RNC who are like adjacent to the Election Integrity Unit say there are sane people there like Watley who are prepared, who is a R and C coach Air who are prepared for some of the other lawyers that are part of this team, like Christina bob who was indicted in the attempt to steal the race in Arizona, Kurt Olsen, another election denier, who are prepared to say that machines are changing votes. Right, It's like they're they're
willing to redo the playbook all over again. And it's and what are they supposed to do? And they've already shot off emails to America. They've been sending letters to Americopa County judges who are like, back off, back off. It's crazy. They're laying the groundwork. It's going to be law there. Let me, there has to be a decisive winner. I think for that not to happen, if I.
Was, if I was on the if I was on the campaign sometime this week preserving this has not been done yet, you can tell me that this has been done, and it will make me feel better because it would be late to be having the first conversation about it. But I would I would say something like, we have to have a meeting this week.
And I don't like to have the meetings, right, so I don't I don't have to mean if I say we got to have a meeting, we got to have a meeting.
And what I would want to say in the meeting is, let's imagine where winning. We're winning in any normal election year, right, we would wait for the phone call. Now, we would give some space. There might even be some contact between the campaigns. David would be cautious in this moment, responsible, restrained, and respectful, as would Stephanie Cutter. Right, they're gonna be like, wait, not yet, not yet. So Trump goes out, makes us
first allegation they're stealing the election. I won, YadA, YadA, YadA, whips everybody up. The Harris Walls campaign is going to do. What do you think they've had this meeting yet? Is Kamala Harris going to walk out? Is the general counsel or the campaign going to walk out the moment that that happens, Right, there's a game, a deadly one. I suspect a foot Do they have this planned.
App That's a good question. I don't know that. But we know just from Pennsylvania and the way that the voting works there, you're probably not going to get a decisive vote for four and a half days. Right, they don't count all their votes, and Pennsylvania has come down to a point. So unless the sweep and all the rest of the states and we end up back where we were in the last two elections, is probably going to come down to come Sulania, Right, And so Trump
will come out and say he won. I fully expect that even before the votes are counted, unless for some reason it's I don't know, even if it was blatantly obvious that he lost, I think he'd still say he won. Maybe they do have, you know, Walls and Harris come out and say, like, right now, we haven't been able to count all the votes. If it's if it's close, if it really looks like she's down, I think she can sees right, I mean, how could she not do
the responsible thing? But if it's that close, she's like, I want you know, everyone to you know, wait, be you know, let's have some patience to get through the votes. We're very optimistic, but you know, there are a number of apps and tee ballots and we still need to count the votes in these crucial states. So please, like, have some caution and just and and I think they I would hope that they showed some responsibility in terms of how they handle this. I think they would, especially
if they're trying to show contrast with Trump. But they should have a plan for this. I don't know. It's Steve. I wish I had the answer, but I don't know what the plan is. And did you know what you were going to do ahead of time?
Absolutely you did.
Have you heard what they're going to do?
No, I don't know.
I mean, obviously there won't be a concession phone call, right, Yeah, So it's going to be a misinformation race where the chances of all the violence, all the terrible things go up if it's not contained. Right, it's going to be like a fire, like a big, giant California style inferno.
Fire which is essentially lit up by it. And we'll start with a small truth social tweet in the back of the woods, amplified by all the networks, all of his surrogates, Elon Musk amplify even go to truth social media. He goes on Twitter, maybe he live streams it in an interview with Elon Musk, and then the algorithms that go crazy.
I mean, like I would like to aboost.
I mean, if I was running the campaign, I would go see the White House Chief of Staff and I'd say, why doesn't the President fire Americ Garland this week and say that he doesn't have confidence in him to oversee the crisis that will occur in the country if a fascist movement tries to claim victory after losing an election, and I think Democrat base voters would like it. I
don't think Independence would be offended. Republicans would be enraged, which would help make the race more about them than Harris, which is kind of the alchemy that you need, you need.
At the end on all of those things.
But no, I do like I would, I would be sitting around right now. I mean, there's you know, obviously there's this, there's this, you know, part of the rhythm of a campaign when there's two hundred and fifty days left, right, There's a lot more work to do when there's eleven days left, right, because so much of this is in.
Planning, right you You have now.
Until next Thursday at about four o'clock Eastern time to make your last traffic changes, to get kind of get your last ads out, to get the points behind them for the final weekend. So there's not a lot more to do on the campaign per se, because the conventions are behind you, the debates are behind you, everything behind you.
You have. It's interesting you said that, so really you're what you're saying is whatever her vision is, whoever she is, whether you want to have a beer with her or not. It's too late to make that argument to voters at this point. And so really what they are doing is the right thing by is by highlighting the publicans, by highlighting the you know, the unpredictability of Trump, the fascism, the danger, the chaos. So they are doing the right thing, and you're remember this race.
I think whomever this race is about is going to lose. And so in the end, right, it's not going to be determined by the TV advertising.
Though his is.
A lot better than hers, right in terms of the power of the message, and it's and it's residence, but all of it together.
Right, is so much better than hers. I don't understand that there's so much footage of him.
I don't.
We've had a nine year conversation, right where what is Trump is still unsettled? Right, it's the fascist madam vice president. We're thirteen days from the election. I can go on for hours about this.
Right.
The answer to the question, and historically tangibly ideologically is yes, he is. But he has been and it's not hyperbole. But should they Democrats be talking about the economy? Does the country see Joe Biden is fdr? Is Bidenomics something that the middle class was excited by right.
So all of this goes back to kind.
Of what we were talking about earlier, which is we live in this era where there is a belligerence on the part of the campaigns towards the voters that really wasn't present I think in either party when I was doing this right in my kind of stretch, because there is a recognition that no reason antagonize the voter. Right, They're trying to tell us something here, and just a lot of that doesn't seem to matter in the moment. In the end, here, she needs to prosecute the case.
She has to give a closing argument. If he's a danger, then you have to communicate that he's a danger.
Right.
If he is a threat, right, then it's a different close than the Obama clothes ina against John McCain. So right, what she says matters, But she's got to keep the race on him. Right, that the great question at hand isn't about Kamala Harris. Great question at hand is about the country and Donald Trump, right, And that wherever that ribbon is on that tug of war rope, it's got to be on her side of that line in order to be able.
To so She's basically like, I'm a product. You might not like me, but that product is actually toxic and it is poison. And I'm warning you that you're about to buy poison. And you can buy me on water, but that's poisoned next to you.
You have to talk.
But you're like, but that's mountain dew. And I like mountain dew. I like in the end, in the end, like a mountain dew in the end.
Like Ms.
Churchill said two things right, he said, people get the government they deserve and he was like, in the end, Americans always do the right thing after exhausting all the other possibilities. So like, we're definitely in that moment, right, We're gonna see from my perspective if he's right.
You know, I like, intellectually I don't have a.
Great feeling, but faith wise in the country that I'm still not across the line where I see Donald Trump getting re elected as a as a as a matter of faith in who I think we are as a people.
But there's a lot of us.
Right, there's three hundred and forty million, one hundred and sixty two million people are voting. You know, Joe, When someone like Joy Behart goes out and says, I no disrespect to her, but she's like, I can't even imagine why someone should vote for Trump.
That's a big problem.
I think there's a lot of people around the Democratic campaigns that have no capacity, emotionally or intellectually to understand what it is about Trump that people find appealing. Right, why that insult in the basement? Finally, Right is part of a community.
Well, he feels strength. He's a guy that has always felt like he was a weak person in society, and he derived strength from Trump. I think a lot of men feel oppressed, which is, you know, despite white privilege or whatever, they feel oppressed and they derive strength from Donald Trump. I love Trump supporters. You know, they're in my family. I love them, and I can't the things they say. They may not make any sense, but I
understand where they're coming from emotionally and psychologically. So a feeling of being left out. You know, my father is an electrician, is what He's a small business owner. Where is his place in the global world replaced by immigrants that are coming through? You know, one day automation will do what he does.
Does he like it? When he gets the lecture about his white privilege.
Oh, well, he's not a white person to him because he's Italian and Italians weren't allowed to live in certain places when he grew up. So you know, that's another thing. People don't want to be called white sometimes when they know that they weren't really considered they were never allowed to be a part of the wasp class either. Right, So there's like a whole there's a whole weird psychology
around it. And like I would be it would be an amazing thing to see if young women end up carrying the day on election day, they just come out and drove and say like just like fuck you, we're voting for for for cos it's such a that's the antidote to it, right, like.
It is it is, that is the serum to it. Right, It's just a surge of women to say no, you say no.
Yeah, because everybody has like everyone is a victim in their mind right, and so like if you can activate that, how you can like how whatever you represent gives that victim's strength, then like I think you're going to win them over in some way. And I do think that Kamala Harris is a powerful symbol for women, Like I even remember in the last election, like I'm trying to make a point of not voting. When I'm covering an election,
sometimes I don't really cover it. Like last election, I didn't really cover it, so I was like, I can vote. I was doing Epstein work. But you know, like I felt like a real pride when I saw her get to the point of vice president and just like not I was like, whoa, this is a big moment. Like I felt like a woman is in the White House,
like that was a big deal. It represents a lot for women, And I do think a lot of women feel victimized right now by the idea that they don't have control over their autonomy of their body and they and and and her, and that message is really strong. But there is a whole other segment of women who are past that phase of their life. Maybe they're they've already had children. It's on top of lists for them,
they're worried about. You know, someone like my mother, for example, who's like, you know what, I'm past that stage in my life. I mean, I'm sixty, I about to do this, this and that. It's like much as I care about that, I've got another I've got other issues, so but I also think she's ultimately going to vote for Kamala Harris. I don't know. I want to understand the psychology of voters, but I don't think they can even really rank their positions as what's most important to them in their heads.
I think it's just a feeling you have and who you like and who you relate to, and who you think is going to give you more power in the world. And it's it's hard to say like and if you don't feel like you're going to derive any power from that person, maybe you won't go and vote for them. I don't know.
Well, it's a great place to leave it. I'll just conclude it by saying that this is the sixtieth quadrennial presidential election. We've done this as a country sixty times. Women have gotten to participate in the last twenty three of them, and black people if you lived in an apartheid state in the South the last thirteen. There's three hundred and forty million people that live in the country.
There is only seven hundred million of us that have ever been in all of history, in all of human existence, which means half of us who have ever lived, roughly or alive.
Right now in about.
One hundred and sixty two million people, roughly about half of that are to come out and vote in this election. And what you said, I think is a perfect way to end it, because nobody really knows in what mix voters will turn out. That there's a small geography that produces the overwhelming amount of people that go on television and opine about who's gonna do what and where, thousands of miles from them. But the fact is we just
don't know. And so in this final week, as you come down, I think a couple of things you said are just really true. That there's a real sense in the electorate that her vision is not yet clear. There's a lot of anxiety and worry among Democrats. There's a real recognition that there is a surge towards Trump of mail vote that will cut into black and Hispanic numbers
that is material. And there is an un known question around how America's women will respond to years of antagonism and the loss of a right for the first time in history granted by the court now stripped away directly because of Donald Trump, who's made clear this is his achievement.
So I have in all of my you know, I'm fifty four now, right, so you know, going back to nineteen ninety two when I was twenty two and coming out of college, this is the one that is the closest and hardest to really tell where it is is close to the end.
If you had to make a prediction today, though, who do you think wins?
I say this, I'm not trying to dodge it.
Like my intuition, my instinct, my feeling is not good, right, it's he wins. My faith, which is as I kind of get older and which is tough for me, kind of an acceptance of letting go, a serenity almost. I have a deep, deep, deep faith in the country, not as a Djingo, not as a nationalist, but in the country, the idea of it, the people in it. And I don't believe the American people are going to elect this guy president again. So if you make me pick, she wins.
But I'm literally taking a leap of faith, and I'm taking it with a strong voice in my head telling me the parachutes not going to open when.
I jump out of the door of the of the plane. So so there you have it.
I I don't know Steve, like, I actually think he's gonna win, and my sense is like, only he could fuck it up because so many of the fundamentals of the rates are on his side. But I also just and maybe it's because people are unafraid to say that they're going to support Trump now, like maybe the stigma around Trump is gone. But I just feel that there's
a more intensity for him. I think there's a lot of intensity for her when she first came out, But you're seeing her favorability favorables starting to drop, and I don't know what to make of that. I mean, why do you think her favorables are dropping now? The more she's out there and the more people geting to know her, her numbers go down.
When you're aiming at a target, they teach you how to shoot a rifle, right, there's this saying, you know, aim small, miss.
Small, right, So.
You have to be able to evaluate what elevation you need to climb to to clear the mountain where you're going to fly into it. I don't know a better way to explain it. If you were talking to somebody associated with the space program, they would tell you that the rocket has to hit seventeen thousand miles an hour for it to break Earth's orbit and get into space. If it doesn't, it'll bounce off and it'll burn up
and everyone will die. When you saw the polling right develop in August, it's September where the elector is saying we want more. That was a signal that they wanted more. And so like, if she does not win, I've been able to for some time, I feel like be able to articulate why not. Right, I'll be able to diagnose it, so I know why it wouldn't be the things that she didn't do that she had to do to win. And the question is did she do enough, Because she did a lot to get over the line. It is
to be really close. Look, I think that there has not been in our articulation right of a vision about where she wants to lead and tough as it may be,
tough as it may be personally. As you're sitting around the table in the campaign, surely to god, somebody sat there it had a serious discussion that we're not going to lose this race to Donald Trump because we're afraid of offending Joe Biden's ego about answering the question on what we would do differently, because we need to not only say something that we would do differently, probably don't need to communicate that we would do a bunch of things.
Differently and call out maybe some things you could have done. What's wrong with saying I didn't that's right?
Yeah, I don't know.
So that weakness, Well, the concept of accepting accountability, it's my fault in meaning it. You know, Afghanistan, for example, is reported right as the catastrophic withdrawal in every news organization in the country, right from Fox News to the New.
York Times at a Wall Street Journal. As an objective descriptor.
You don't even need those papers, just look at the images.
Yeah, you know, so you obviously say, right in Republicans, right, this was this was an important question, right, And anytime when you look at one of these questions, right, that's uh, that's in the end. Right is a disqualifying right, You could lose the election issue. There's always the oppositional, right, there's always the opposite version of it any other party.
Right.
So you know, during during the height of the Iraq War, right, two thousand and eight, Barack Obama comes on the scene as an Iraq War opponent, but for years afterward, right, the question would be asked in this plate role in helping make Trump the nominee was knowing what we know now, would we have invaded Iraq again?
Is the world safer?
And so all the crazy things that Trump said in twenty sixteen, none of them were crazier than Jeb Bush saying, yet, we would have invaded Iraq again? Right, So you had an entire party to a position that the entire country knew was wrong. And it wasn't like they wanted to hear them renounce the Iraq War. They wanted to hear that candidate common sensically agree with the proposition that they knew to be true, which was, of course not. We wouldn't fucking do that again. It was a disaster, Right,
That was the question. And so when Jeb Bush says it politician now, Trump goes, of course not. So the version of that question for Democrats, right, that you could see coming from a mile away, was Okay, what are you gonna do differently than Biden?
The other hard one is how long did you know that Biden couldn't run or really be president? And that's just like plain of day to any human being. You really have to be a partisan to be able to look past that. Yeah, and that's that's that's really what it comes down to. Or you have to like really hate Trump. That's a hard one and.
It's a it's a bigger issue with real people in the country than is covered, you know, and for sure.
Because it looks like a scandal. It frankly looks like a scandal.
People.
Well what it does, right if you say that Biden was fine and the border is secure in the end, you help make Trump the most prolific liar in American history and to the honest candidate in the race. So when you're sitting around strategically and you're kind of how the fuck did that happen?
Right, that's how it happened. Right.
So when you look at this from a political perspective of, hey, why did we lose, Well, the most dishonest guy that's ever been, a guy who's making up lies about Haitians eating cats and dogs. Somehow, because of your dishonesty, was able to encircle us neutralize the issue.
And there you go, right, So, you know, politic top issue.
I mean, did you see Anderson Cooper in the town hall with her when he was like, well, why don't you just do the Title nine executive order again? What took so long? Why not do it at the same time. I mean, that was very insightsive question, but it was pretty pretty basic. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that he could have could have fixed the problem along. And it's a hard one. I mean, maybe just take accountability. We thought we could fix it
with Congress. We should have done it this way. But is weakness solve something you can't do? And Trump's or of never say sorry, you know this is or never admit be accountable to anything you're right? I mean, these are these are the things that we're going to look back on, and I think a lot of the blame is going to be on Joe Biden if they lose. I think people are going to be furious with Joe Biden.
Is going to be a brutal, brutal, uh brutal thing for Joe Biden, for the people around him. It will shatter his legacy and it will it and it's going to have it will have a profound impact on the media business, right, which is you know, a subject for another day.
In that you know you're in.
A news organization that is disrupting it. The media business is going to be further deeply disrupted by a by a Trump win. There's gonna be a lot of soul searching about the total disconnect and how he was covered over the last nine years. But for sure, that being said, I do want to say at this moment, you know you heard, you know, it's it's close. You know, for those of you who are out there, you got to be involved. You know, politics is a uh part of citizenship.
Be a good citizen, do something, get involved, don't wind, don't complain, get in the fight.
And with that we there.
This is the warning. Thank you, Tara Palmieri, thank you so much for taking time this fleet Friday afternoon from the East Coast.
Have a good one.
I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning and I invite you to join. Subscribe on our sub stack, on our YouTube channel, follow us. Welcome to the community.