The Tucker Carlson Show - Mark Halperin on Why He Thinks Trump Will Win and the Left’s Mental Collapse

00:00:00.000 We're proud at TCN to announce the rollout of a new six-part documentary series called

00:00:04.600 All the President's Men by our friend documentary filmmaker Sean Stone. It is an in-depth look at

00:00:10.380 what happened to the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, 2016 to 2020.

00:00:17.480 And while the rest of us were watching unknowing, the deep state, particularly the intel agencies

00:00:22.640 and the law enforcement agencies under the indirect command of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama,

00:00:27.680 set out to systematically destroy the lives of people who had supported Donald Trump.

00:00:33.420 This series explains how they did it with interviews with the people to whom they did it

00:00:38.340 and presents it in a way that will shock you and that will challenge your understanding of American democracy.

00:00:43.200 Only on TCN. It debuts October 21st, six episodes, every Monday. Go to tuckercarlson.com. We highly recommend it.

00:00:57.680 Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show. We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else.

00:01:09.240 And they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers. We are honest brokers here to tell

00:01:14.480 you what we think you need to know and do it honestly. Check out all of our content at tuckercarlson.com.

00:01:20.620 Here's the episode. So where, like, where are we? So we're three, I think three weeks out today.

00:01:28.800 What's the state of the race?

00:01:31.220 Well, people say it's going to be close for sure. I don't agree with that. I think it could be one,

00:01:36.360 one of them could win easily. And I think today that's more likely to be Trump.

00:01:39.600 All the variables that you would look at to say who's going to win point towards Trump with four

00:01:46.900 big exceptions that I think I know is what the Democrats are relying on. So barring these four

00:01:52.440 things coming together, I think Trump will win. And I think he might win easily. But she could still

00:01:57.340 win. Number one is abortion. Just don't know how big a vote it will be. Now I say to people,

00:02:02.960 why wouldn't that be showing up in the polls now? Why would that be a secret? But the reality is

00:02:08.020 there's an emotion to that issue. As you know, politics is about emotion more than anything

00:02:13.440 else. There's an emotion to that issue that may be bigger than is currently measured. Number two is-

00:02:19.400 But to be clear, that's not showing up in the public polls right now.

00:02:23.620 Well, I mean, by definition, it's not showing up in the two places you'd look for. One is in the

00:02:27.760 horse race. She's not way ahead in the horse race. And number two, when we ask people, what's the

00:02:31.800 most important issue to you? Abortion is well behind the economy, inflation, immigration. But

00:02:37.600 we've seen its electoral power. And we know that Donald Trump thinks it's a big issue because he's

00:02:43.780 struggled to neutralize it. He's not doing that for fun. He's doing that because he sees the same

00:02:48.440 data that there's a power to this issue that may be beyond the current measurements. That's number

00:02:53.760 one. Number two is simply is the gender gap. Just the reality that women vote more than men.

00:03:01.560 And again, it connects to abortion, but it's not just about abortion because a lot of women 0.99

00:03:07.160 don't like Donald Trump. That may just power a victory. Three is her ground game, right? The

00:03:14.600 mechanical process. Her campaign is run. The chair of her campaign is someone who grew up as a field

00:03:20.080 person. I don't think that's ever happened in a major presidential campaign before. And they have

00:03:24.240 way more money. And President Trump has gone out of his way to demonize early voting. He's trying to

00:03:30.020 change it now. But the mechanics of that, if it is in fact close, people say they could be worth

00:03:34.500 three points. Three points could well be significantly bigger. And then lastly is the

00:03:40.500 notion that he has a ceiling. That if the third party vote is very low, and it's much more likely

00:03:46.580 to be low like it was in 20 than high, like it was in 16 from the Libertarians and the Greens and

00:03:51.500 Cornell West, then it may be that he can't get above 47%. That they simply, we call it Trump fatigue

00:04:01.160 or January 6th, whatever you want to call it, where it puts off limits to him some number of voters

00:04:07.240 that she may, in effectively a two-person race in the seven states, may be able to get to 48, 49,

00:04:15.140 and he can't. Those four things are what give Democrats hope that they can win. But in my

00:04:21.160 reporting over the last week, Republicans are not measuring the drapes and picking the cabinet,

00:04:27.160 but pretty close to it. Not at the level they were at the convention when Joe Biden was still

00:04:31.720 their opponent. But there's extreme confidence that they're going to take the House, take the

00:04:35.520 Senate, take the White House. Democrats are somewhere between worried and freaking out.

00:04:39.540 And her conduct and her capabilities as a candidate are not reassuring them. If they were honest

00:04:45.240 about it, they would say, as some of them have started to say, how could we have dumped Joe Biden

00:04:50.860 for someone who has a few advantages over him, but has many of the same problems? And by the way,

00:04:56.460 some additional problems of their own. And I think they're recognizing that when you choose

00:05:00.800 a candidate like that, you're taking a bit of a risk and the risk may not, just may not pay off

00:05:06.000 for them. So on what basis are they evaluating the race? Like what polls are both sides, people,

00:05:14.740 you listen to the smart people with predictive success over time, like what are they looking at?

00:05:19.600 Well, they're looking at the reality that the race may be back. As some Trump people told me

00:05:26.360 immediately after she became the nominee, we may be looking at a situation where she's back

00:05:30.760 to where the party's back to where they were when Biden was the nominee before the debate.

00:05:35.960 Before the debate, he had one electoral college path, which was to win the three Great Lake States

00:05:40.500 and the Nebraska Congressional District. And that's it. No one's ever won when they had one

00:05:45.020 electoral college path. It's, you know, margin of error, but not impossible. But they would have

00:05:48.720 to be all in on that because Biden was not going to win the four Sunbelt battlegrounds. She's edged 0.60

00:05:53.880 back closer to that. Okay. She, she may be able to win them or one or two of them, but it's possible

00:06:01.280 that those are going to be as off limits to her eventually as they were to Biden. And she's weaker

00:06:06.620 in the Great Lake States than he is. So if you look at what, what, if you look at the private data

00:06:12.020 and where things stand, these races are close. And if it's, if it's within two points, if Trump

00:06:16.580 has consistently has a two point lead or a three point lead or a four point lead, does that mean

00:06:20.780 he has to win the state? It doesn't, but it's the consistency that, that has come in the last

00:06:25.740 couple of weeks in both parties data where she has come down and he has come up a little bit

00:06:31.300 that make them worried that she simply hasn't done enough to win. Her problem is, I say the P 1.00

00:06:37.760 problem of, of policy. People just, the undecided voters just don't understand what she's about. 0.51

00:06:43.940 And she has not done, they've, some of them find it insulting how little she's explained

00:06:48.520 what she's about. And we really don't know. I've known her a long time. I've covered her a long time.

00:06:52.560 I've studied her positions and, and her public policy engagement. I don't really know what she

00:06:57.580 stands for. I don't really know what she'd do as president. I don't really know what she believes

00:07:01.520 in or why she's running. And you contrast this with Trump where even his enemies can tell you

00:07:06.160 right away what he stands for, what he would do in a second term, at least the big picture.

00:07:10.580 And his problem is personality. And he's done almost as little to address that issue as she's

00:07:16.220 done to address hers. And that means, I'm, I'm amazed people have said for so long, no one,

00:07:23.100 so many people in the electorate don't want Trump or Biden. They want a third choice.

00:07:26.780 You don't really hear that now as nearly as much, but, but it's, it's, it's almost as true,

00:07:31.640 not as true because she satisfies a lot of Democrats who are not satisfied with Biden,

00:07:36.700 but a lot of Democrats and certainly a lot of independents and centrists and moderates,

00:07:40.420 they don't like either of these choices. And that that's part of what Democrats are looking

00:07:43.880 at. Cause I think in the end, as much as she's not satisfied people's desire for knowledge about

00:07:49.360 her, they won't vote for Trump. They just simply don't want four more years of Trump. And she's

00:07:53.500 turned to that message in the last 24 hours, the way Biden did. Now, I don't know if she'll stick

00:07:58.440 with it, but she's now emphasizing this notion of, we can't go back to somebody this unstable

00:08:02.580 and this, um, and this unattractive in terms of personality.

00:08:07.660 Changing your personality is hard. Well, it's probably impossible in any attempt to do it

00:08:12.820 comes off as false. So there's of course, a cost and risk, but coming up with a platform

00:08:17.820 is not hard. You just sit in a room with your pollsters and your policy guys and like pick three

00:08:23.340 topics and stake out positions that contrast with your opponents. And like, why, why haven't they done

00:08:27.720 that? Yeah. A lot of the questions about things she's doing and not doing, um, are mysteries,

00:08:36.260 even to a lot of Democrats, even some people close to her, you've named one, but why is she doing one

00:08:41.560 event a day? Some days, most days, why isn't she flying to three battleground states in a day? Um,

00:08:47.600 when, when, uh, people ask me why I think she, she, she's more likely to lose than not her, her great

00:08:56.740 weakness is she is indecisive. She doesn't like to make hard decisions and coming up with policy 1.00

00:09:05.180 choices is difficult. If you think of everyone who's been elected president since, since HW Bush,

00:09:11.920 so Clinton onward, they've all put at the center of their campaigns, a set of policy proposals and,

00:09:17.880 and kind of an ethos of the things that start with this sentence. What my party's gotten wrong

00:09:22.960 is X, right? They've, they've, they've, they've, they've seized on some things that they really

00:09:29.860 believe their party's at a step with the country and wrong on the substance. So Bill Clinton, 92,

00:09:34.400 supported the death penalty, right to work, NAFTA, uh, and welfare reform. And he would say,

00:09:40.640 my party's wrong on these things, right? All I, it's obvious for the rest of what they did.

00:09:45.940 Not only has she not said that, I'm not sure she believes that. I'm not sure that she thinks the

00:09:51.400 party's out of step with the country on anything. And when you see, you know, uh, government funded

00:09:57.620 operation, uh, operations for, uh, illegal immigrants who want, who want to change their sexual identity, 0.75

00:10:03.500 no, no way would Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or John Kerry, no way would

00:10:10.920 they have said, I'm, I'm for that. What is she? Because there's not strong public support for

00:10:16.560 that. No, no, just the opposite. So, so, so we say, why can't she come up with a platform? 0.99

00:10:22.380 Any position she takes is going to be, uh, criticized if she moves to the center by the left. 1.00

00:10:29.240 And if, and, and even on the left, even if she takes something further to the left, as she has

00:10:34.380 some of the things she's come up with, new government spending programs and tax programs,

00:10:37.980 they're still subject to be criticized. And she doesn't like to be criticized.

00:10:42.240 She'd rather try not to take positions. Now the other day.

00:10:45.980 But can I just ask, even within the democratic party, which I routinely dismiss as crazy and evil 0.91

00:10:52.820 and poisonous and all that, but paying for sex changes for legal aliens, that can't be a hugely 0.67

00:10:59.280 popular issue, even within the party.

00:11:01.540 It isn't, but it, but it is a popular position for the loudest, angriest, most influential part

00:11:08.080 of the party.

00:11:08.640 But if you do this as to soldier, that actually works. So if your goal is to get elected, I mean,

00:11:15.220 I'm just, I'm just, this is an amoral evaluation of this. Right. But you just denounce the unpopular

00:11:22.260 wackos in your party. It's not hard. Yeah.

00:11:24.740 Right.

00:11:25.280 Well, it's, it's hard for her because she's indecisive. She doesn't like that. That is, 1.00

00:11:30.000 that is, I think what explains it. You know, her big sister soldier moment was to say, I want to,

00:11:34.500 I want to, um, cut, I want to raise the capital gains tax rate less than Joe Biden. That was her big

00:11:41.240 sister soldier moment. Um, she also, uh, uh, you know, you look at her career, she's not really

00:11:47.640 been a font of policy ideas and that, you know, she's stolen a lot of Trump's ideas, which, you

00:11:53.120 know, Trump people don't like, but I guess it's smart if the other side's got a smart idea and you

00:11:57.400 can claim it do. But in terms of original ideas, it's just not been her thing. And again, I think

00:12:03.300 partly is she doesn't like to go onto terrain where people might shoot at her from the left or the right

00:12:09.160 or both. And she is in a complex position just because of the, the nature of how she got to where 0.90

00:12:16.820 she is now. The fact that there's a sitting president sort of in the shadows behind her. Um, what is her

00:12:23.980 relationship like with Biden? Well, it's gotten a little bit frayed of late because I don't think

00:12:31.440 he, I think he, there are people who say he doesn't want her to win. I think he does want her to win.

00:12:35.260 There are people who say, um, he only wants her to win without disrespecting him, even though he

00:12:41.020 has said privately to her and the teams have said to each other, she needs to do what she needs to

00:12:45.980 do to win. I mean, I, you know, I saw his mental decline in, in 2017. I did too. You know, I saw him

00:12:54.100 do a public event for a book in 2017. And I said, after the event, thank goodness he's off the public

00:13:00.680 stage. Thank goodness this didn't happen earlier. And so the, the, those of us who knew him before

00:13:05.640 and speaking for myself, I always liked him, um, in a very shallow way, but you know, he's a

00:13:11.300 fun to be around. Totally. And sort of large personality, touchy Irish guy. I like people 1.00

00:13:17.720 like that. And, but those of us who knew him, it was immediately obvious that he had some sort of

00:13:23.580 cognitive decline. I mean, it was just obvious. So I think the things he's done of late that,

00:13:28.400 that the press cast is hurting her. I just think he's doing cause he's, you know, he's not,

00:13:33.840 he's not super sharp. It's kind of out of it. And the staff is as they have when he was still

00:13:37.900 the nominee to being deferential to him. But there is a, uh, again, just recently in the last 10 days

00:13:44.920 or so, there have been a number of things like he went out in the briefing room right when she was

00:13:49.040 starting her event. Um, no one's really explained how that happened. Uh, it's hard to coordinate right

00:13:56.780 between the West Wing, Wilmington, and the vice president's office. Like those are three entities,

00:14:02.700 busy people doing other things besides coordinating. So I think they've dropped some

00:14:05.620 stitches. I think they're determined to stop dropping stitches the rest of the way.

00:14:09.280 So you don't think it's passive aggression?

00:14:10.780 I don't think it is. There are many people I respect who think it is. I don't think it is. I

00:14:14.040 think it's just, it's hard and he's not up to doing hard things. And she's, even though she's not

00:14:20.360 campaigning very much, she's still on the road. And it's just, I just think they're dropping

00:14:24.240 stitches. I really don't think there's a passive aggressive or, or even a, a mixed feeling about

00:14:29.560 it. I think he wants her to win. I mean, the toughest question for her that I have seen is

00:14:37.380 how will you be different from, from Joe Biden? Yeah. Why can't, why haven't they thought through

00:14:43.980 a better answer? Again, it's hard to get a straight answer about that. I think there's three things at

00:14:50.080 play. Number one, she doesn't want to appear disloyal. And, and that is something he does

00:14:54.220 care about. As I said, he wants her to win, but he wants her to win his way. He doesn't want her

00:14:59.420 to win at his expense. Okay. That, that is an ambivalence, but not, not, not the fundamental

00:15:04.680 question of does he want her to win? So number one, he doesn't, she doesn't want to disrespect him.

00:15:08.680 Number two, taking different positions from him involves risk. There could be, there could be a

00:15:14.800 backlash, right? And she doesn't, as I've said, she, that's her main problem. She doesn't like to take 0.99

00:15:19.240 risks. And then finally, um, there's a, there's a, um, there's just a basic performative question

00:15:25.840 with her. That's not her only bad answer, right? That's the one that people have focused on the

00:15:29.820 most, but she's just not good at delivering sound bites or complicated messages in a way that, 1.00

00:15:36.280 that, that is helpful to her. You know, she does these interviews where nothing bad happens and

00:15:41.460 they give high fives that nothing bad happened or only a few bad things happen. None of these

00:15:46.360 interviews has she come out of her. People said, wow, now I get it. Now I get why this person should

00:15:51.560 be my president. And that's, again, just testament to, she's just not that good at this thing called

00:15:57.460 answering questions that are hard or easy. What, what are the donors who put her there think of all

00:16:03.940 of this? Yeah. So I'd say impressionistically, cause I haven't talked to them all, but impressionistically

00:16:10.220 about 80% of them are just, we got to look forward. The election's coming up. Trump must lose.

00:16:18.220 We have to do everything we can to help. 20% say, how could we possibly have replaced? You know,

00:16:27.260 we all said the only Democrat who could lose to Joe Biden, to Donald Trump was Joe Biden. How could

00:16:31.740 we have possibly played a role in replacing him with apparently the only other person who could lose to

00:16:36.980 Donald Trump? Now, Joe Biden and I, and Kamala Harris would say these other Democrats would be

00:16:42.540 struggling as much or maybe more than she would, even though they wouldn't have been as burdened

00:16:47.160 with the Biden Harris record. So what they're saying is, this is the best we could do. This is better

00:16:52.200 than Biden. The pollsters are saying, the public polls are saying she can still win it. Let's put our 0.67

00:16:57.060 heads down and win. But there will be a lot of soul searching about how they possibly could have

00:17:02.080 placed her in this role without, um, without the benefits of, of actually beating Donald Trump.

00:17:08.040 How did that, um, I think you were the, one of the very, maybe the first person, uh, to report that

00:17:14.160 this was coming, that Biden was going to step aside. How'd you know that by the way? Um, I predicted it,

00:17:21.220 but just predicted you reported it. Yeah. So how did you know that? And how did, how did that happen?

00:17:26.500 Yeah. I reported it against my instincts because I did not believe Joe Biden would give the

00:17:31.120 nomination up. First of all, it's embarrassing and, you know, it's staying on his legacy as much as

00:17:35.680 they built it up as great for his legacy. Uh, but also he believed that she would become the nominee 0.51

00:17:41.000 in all likelihood and that she could not be Donald Trump. And that if somehow she didn't become the 0.99

00:17:45.800 nominee, he didn't think Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer or any of these other people could beat

00:17:49.960 Trump. And I think two years ago, Biden didn't think Kamala Harris could win. No. Or be a good 0.56

00:17:55.620 president as I understand it. So he was really, yeah, he's, he, from the day, from the transition

00:18:02.160 forward, he told Ron Klain and everyone else, she needs to meet with foreign leaders all the time.

00:18:07.780 And she did. I mean, she's had an unprecedented, uh, you know, kind of tutorial in that she needs to be,

00:18:13.000 you know, supported and all that. We all know what happened. She, she, she did not run a good

00:18:17.340 operation. Uh, there was leaking and, and her approval ratings were ridiculously low. He, he,

00:18:25.420 part of it was his own, you know, pride in himself, but, but, but the people around him to a person

00:18:31.200 would, would not have told you that she could be Donald Trump. Um, so my point is I reported on it,

00:18:37.580 uh, thinking he's not going to step down. And, and I had lots of people who we know, you and I both know

00:18:42.440 very smart who say you're, you're wrong. He's going to have to step down. Particularly Republicans

00:18:47.020 said the party can't be that irrational. They can't be to say, we're going to continue along

00:18:52.540 with a guy who is, who 70% of the Democrats say shouldn't be the nominee, but he didn't have to

00:18:58.740 give it up. So I broke, I can't obviously say exactly how I broke it, but it started with a tip

00:19:03.940 about the vetting of, uh, vice presidential prospects by her. And one of the stories that

00:19:10.720 hasn't been written yet, I'll tease it out here. And hopefully someday somebody will give me a big

00:19:14.480 enough book contract. I can write it as she started maneuvering for the nomination well before

00:19:18.980 the Sunday morning when he called her and said he was not going to run. And part of that was vetting

00:19:23.940 of, uh, potential running mates, which her team knew that couldn't wait, that had to get underway.

00:19:29.600 That's something that, you know, normally takes months. So I got a tip that that was happening.

00:19:33.540 So every year when Apple releases the overpriced new iPhone, the big carriers play the same old game.

00:19:39.200 Sign up now, next two years, some big cellular contract, get a free iPhone. Well, what do you

00:19:45.920 give up in return? A lot. Don't fall for it this time. Choose PureTalk. With PureTalk, you get great

00:19:53.220 savings on the new iPhone 16, and you still get an affordable data plan that fits your needs on

00:19:58.320 America's most dependable 5G network. Stop falling into the same trap and paying for unlimited data that

00:20:04.440 you're probably not going to use. Pay for what you use. With PureTalk, for just 25 bucks a month,

00:20:11.080 you get unlimited talk, text, and 5 gigs of data. That's more than enough for most people. It's not

00:20:16.680 enough where you can buy more, but it probably is. So why pay for something you're not going to use?

00:20:21.800 With PureTalk, you don't have to. It's proudly veteran-led, and its entire customer service team

00:20:26.960 is right here in the United States, the country that you live in. So everyone can understand each

00:20:31.520 other pretty well, and they're responsive. No contract, no cancellation fees, 30-day money-back

00:20:37.100 guarantee. PureTalk is easy to switch to. The average family saves almost a thousand bucks a year

00:20:44.120 when they switch. Try it. Go to puretalk.com slash Tucker, and you'll save an additional 50%

00:20:49.420 off your very first month. That's puretalk.com slash Tucker. Switch your sales service to a company

00:20:55.300 you can be proud to do business with.

00:21:01.520 I mean, that's more than vying for the job. I mean, that is measuring curtains.

00:21:15.240 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

00:21:16.280 You're vetting your VP candidate when you're the VP?

00:21:19.200 Yeah. But because she knew, as my sources said, that he was strongly considering getting out,

00:21:25.780 and more than strongly considering. There was a period of at least a week and maybe more,

00:21:30.160 where amongst a very small circle of people, the default was he's getting out. And it's just a

00:21:35.600 matter of when and how. You'll recall he got COVID, and that kind of delayed things a little bit.

00:21:41.360 Was that actually COVID?

00:21:43.600 I don't know of any reason to believe it wasn't. I know there's lots of speculation about it,

00:21:46.980 but I think it was. So on one track, you have him sort of starting to realize he needs to.

00:21:53.000 And then you have the Pelosi track. And the Pelosi track is part of why I was able to report what I

00:21:59.840 was able to report, because she was determined to get him out. And she saw that Hakeem Jeffries and

00:22:06.680 Chuck Schumer and the donors were not doing enough to get him out. And so she felt she had no choice

00:22:12.680 but to get him out. But again, not reported yet. She didn't want to be Kamala Harris.

00:22:17.640 Yes. She wanted Shapiro to run, governor of Pennsylvania. So she intended there to be a

00:22:24.120 two-step process. And I'm not sure, because I don't know this from her, and I would take it only

00:22:28.560 from her. I'm not sure if she knew the outcome, whether she still would have been for it. I think

00:22:32.800 so, but I'm not sure.

00:22:33.700 What would this do? I remember hearing people told me the exact same thing, that Obama wanted

00:22:40.460 a two-step process. What would that have looked like?

00:22:42.840 Well, lots of people talked about it publicly, right? There were people like James Carville and

00:22:47.180 I'm trying to think of the other prominent people who talked about it. There's others who wanted

00:22:53.880 basically either in the run-up to the convention or at the convention, like one proposal was that

00:23:00.140 Obama and Bill Clinton would pick six people and that those six people could run for the nomination

00:23:05.560 by giving speeches and having the delegates vote. And they didn't rule out Kamala Harris,

00:23:09.900 but the clear kind of gestalt of it was, this is the way to stop Kamala Harris.

00:23:15.320 Yeah.

00:23:15.860 The delegates were Biden-Harris delegates. She's the incumbent vice president. She's a black 0.99

00:23:19.880 woman of color. And the campaign money could only transfer to her. So those are pretty big

00:23:25.880 advantages, particularly this question of the delegates, right? They're Biden-Harris delegates.

00:23:30.160 Were they going to vote for somebody else in a competitive contest? So the assumption was,

00:23:35.540 even if you couldn't get her to stand down, and they knew they probably couldn't get her to stand 0.65

00:23:39.080 down. Who's going to run against that? Who's going to run against somebody with all of those

00:23:43.780 advantages? And so I think part, I think what some people don't take sufficiently into account is

00:23:52.500 the clock was ticking. If they'd had a year to figure this out, maybe things would have gone

00:23:57.380 differently, but they didn't have much time. And the minute she made it clear to people, she was

00:24:01.380 going forward. And he asked these other people, will you run against her? None of them wanted to.

00:24:06.800 None of them wanted to. So it wasn't a matter of, of, uh, uh, who didn't, I thought Gretchen

00:24:12.260 Whitmer wanted to. None of, well, first of all, my sense of, of the people who get talked about the

00:24:18.420 half dozen, none of them are in a John Edwards, Barack Obama, George W. Bush school of, I must be

00:24:25.840 president. And of course, Bush was relatively ambivalent, but he, he is like, yes, that's something I

00:24:30.660 want. I think if you look at the six of them, not only are they ambivalent about running, let alone

00:24:35.640 running against an incumbent vice president, I'm not sure if you offer them the presidency,

00:24:39.880 any of them would take it like that. And some people think I'm naive about that. There are

00:24:43.580 politicians who are ambitious, who think about the white house, but just from knowing them and

00:24:47.600 the people around them, I don't think you could say about any of them automatic. Here's, here are

00:24:52.520 the keys to 1600. I don't know that they would take it. And I say that without hoping I don't sound

00:24:58.300 naive. They're politicians who we have aspirations, but they're all, they're all relatively young.

00:25:03.500 Some of them have younger kids. They recognize the, the downsides of how it changes your life

00:25:08.780 forever. And none of them are, again, in the Bill or classic Bill Clinton, like I'm at Georgetown

00:25:14.940 plotting how to get to the white house. They're just not like that. So, so. I absolutely strongly

00:25:21.260 agree with what you just said. Okay, good. And I, and I've seen it happen. I saw Chris Christie. I saw

00:25:25.700 him do that in 2012. Exactly. Exactly. There are plenty of people. It's a big step. Yeah. It's a life

00:25:30.840 changing step. And if you've got younger kids, it's just like for some of them, it's a non-starter

00:25:35.560 or if you've got a spouse who's ambivalent. Exactly. You can't do that. And, and, and if

00:25:40.840 you look at the politics of the era we're in now, like a democratic president is going

00:25:46.840 to be attacked every minute on social media, no matter how good a job they do, unless they

00:25:52.860 can revolutionize our political culture, they're just going to have, you know, constantly

00:25:56.840 bombarded. None of them have national security experience. Like it's a big job. So, so in

00:26:03.320 some ways, in retrospect, it was a fantasy to think anybody would run against her to

00:26:07.340 say, I'm going to, I'm going to tear away Biden, Harris delegates. In addition, how are

00:26:11.540 you going to design a system really where Bill Clinton and Barack Obama get to pick? They,

00:26:15.900 they were put a premium on, and she did on, I, the nomination wasn't handed to her. And

00:26:22.140 it really, in some ways it wasn't. She, she earned it in the sense that she figured out

00:26:26.180 what the rules of the game were and she won the game. Yeah. I mean, if you had Obama

00:26:30.260 and Clinton just make the decision, you have to admit publicly that it really is an

00:26:33.660 oligarchy. Correct. Correct. Correct. And so would they pick Bernie Sanders? You know, 0.96

00:26:38.460 he might win if they picked Bernie Sanders. Yeah. They faced that problem twice

00:26:42.600 before. Yeah. So, so I was able to figure out that she was underway and then I was able

00:26:51.700 to figure out that he was working on a withdrawal plan. And then I was able to figure out that he

00:26:57.460 had decided to withdraw as early as that weekend. This is on the Thursday night, the final night of

00:27:01.840 the Republican convention. And, you know, people said, how could you risk, you know, I don't work

00:27:07.600 for a big legacy news organization with lawyers and, you know, PR people. How could you risk reporting

00:27:12.180 it? I had it just completely nailed. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't like a

00:27:18.160 tough call to report it. I reported that he was not going to endorse her, which when I reported it

00:27:23.840 was true. What happened after I reported that was he, he, there were people in her camp who didn't

00:27:30.300 want him to endorse her because he didn't want to seem like a coronation. They were confident that

00:27:34.460 she'd be the nominee and they didn't want it to be the president chose the vice president, but he got a

00:27:39.520 lot of heat from the minute I reported that from women close to her who felt differently about it. 0.91

00:27:43.840 And some women in Congress who said it would look horrible for you not to endorse her. 0.79

00:27:49.020 So from the time I reported, I think because I reported till Sunday, he changed his mind and

00:27:53.620 decided, yes, he would endorse her. But others, as you know, did not because they wanted to not

00:27:57.800 create the impression that this was just a, an elite, you know, selection of the new nominee.

00:28:03.920 How did he, I still don't fully understand how he dropped out. So the media, which had cheerlead for

00:28:10.400 him, obviously, um, but had stopped, not only stopped, they started attacking it. Right. So

00:28:17.480 there's that. I felt that was a big deal just as an observer. Yeah. Um, but Biden himself was

00:28:22.680 resolute, at least in public, but also every story you read said in private, he was resolute. And then

00:28:27.160 it just seemed to change. Well, you know, it's, it's a normal thing. It's, this happens gradually.

00:28:32.120 And then all of a sudden, um, uh, so I'm very frustrated with our business and with kind of

00:28:41.540 our political media culture that, that for seven years, there could be this coverup of all the

00:28:50.160 major. How many years have you been in this business? Since 1987. Long, long time. We're

00:28:56.500 moving toward 40. Okay. So just to, for people. I think this is the worst scandal in journalism,

00:29:01.980 American journalism history, because, because anyone knew what was happening. The public knew

00:29:09.580 what was happening. And yet the coverup continued. And when the coverup was exploded, a coverup of

00:29:16.100 Biden's condition, a decline of acuity. He spoke to a dead congresswoman. I mean, what more do we need

00:29:22.180 to know? He, a congresswoman who had died, he, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Okay. He speaks

00:29:27.240 to a dead congresswoman and his press secretary says he spoke to her because she was top of mind,

00:29:31.460 because he was going to be meeting with her family. That's not forgetting somebody's name.

00:29:36.520 That is a loss of acuity, which would disqualify him from being a museum docent.

00:29:43.020 Right. Much less having access to the nuclear codes. So, so, so that coverup goes because

00:29:49.900 some affection for Biden, the bullying of his staff, but primarily because of, of desire to

00:29:55.480 make sure Donald Trump doesn't win. And then when there becomes no choice, but to say, we got to

00:30:03.020 get rid of him now because he's a threat to, to the Republic as Trump could beat him. They turn

00:30:09.060 against him. They never acknowledge their participation as co-conspirators in a seven year long

00:30:15.180 coverup. And then the same people get to cover the new candidate and Trump. It's, it's staggering to

00:30:23.560 me. Like after weapons of mass destruction, there was some soul searching. Yes. After the Mueller

00:30:29.640 investigation, there was some, not, not more than 5%, but some acknowledgement that, that perhaps the

00:30:38.700 coverage was a little bit off. There's been zero, as I see it, zero soul searching acknowledgement.

00:30:46.160 We, we, we wrote story after story about how well Trump misspeaks too. And well, Biden, you know,

00:30:52.260 there are days when he's good. And there are days still to this day, there are days when he's fine,

00:30:55.860 but we all have seen people in decline. They have good days and bad days. Of course they shouldn't

00:31:01.460 be president. And that's not a partisan statement. That's just a statement about the rigors of the job,

00:31:06.760 but, but, but the press turned on him and then acted like they had not propped him up for seven

00:31:13.520 years. In, in one day, in one hour and watching my former colleagues on CNN pivot like that.

00:31:19.500 It's incredible. I was my job. I couldn't, so I was out, I'll say I was out of the country when that

00:31:25.820 happened and which made it even weirder to watch, you know, your country from the other side of the 0.99

00:31:31.840 world and wonder what is going on here. And it looked very much like a setup, very much like a

00:31:38.760 setup. Um, I think that because they all said the same thing at exactly the same moment. Yeah.

00:31:46.360 I think that they just, I don't, I don't, I don't think the conspiracy is that discussed. They just

00:31:52.720 all have the exact same orientation and they're bullied in the same way. So I don't know that they

00:31:58.100 have to react to the bullying the same way. So I don't know that they had to discuss it. I do know

00:32:02.780 that, um, when I would talk to white house reporters privately for major news organizations,

00:32:08.640 they would acknowledge Biden, the acuity decline was substantial. They, they saw it. They just

00:32:15.380 were in newsrooms that were, that was, it was impermissible to say it.

00:32:19.140 How could you not report?

00:32:20.400 I don't know, but no one did except for, except for people from places like Newsmax and Fox. No one

00:32:27.240 did. I really do. I really, I really do wonder how people look back on that because again, they've

00:32:34.960 moved on now.

00:32:35.880 But you know them all very well.

00:32:37.460 I don't know how they think about this.

00:32:39.000 By the way, for people who don't follow this stuff, you know, people who are watching this,

00:32:43.080 I mean, I should just say the obvious, which is you are not just part of the news business,

00:32:47.480 but really at the center of the political news business for, you know, many decades.

00:32:53.020 It seems like decades.

00:32:55.600 Because I think it was, it was there. Um, so you know, every single person personally. I mean,

00:33:01.020 I just know that.

00:33:01.520 Well, I know a lot of them, but you know, there's a bunch of new, new ones.

00:33:04.380 All right. But I'm saying a lot of them. I know a lot of them.

00:33:07.040 Anyone over 30, you know. So what do they say? I, I don't understand like how they could explain 0.98

00:33:13.640 that, you know, the presidency now, but you don't tell your viewers or readers that?

00:33:18.080 The ones who will offer explanations, blame their bosses, that their editors and their

00:33:23.400 executive producers and their anchors didn't want to hear it and that they would say it. And it just

00:33:27.860 didn't become part of the, the, the, the, the coverage. Some of them have said that, but again,

00:33:34.580 to me, the failure to acknowledge it, what, what they did, I won't say it's worse than the original

00:33:41.940 crime, but it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. And of course, along with lawfare, it helps Trump

00:33:48.980 extraordinarily because we will say sometimes in our business, Oh, I trust the American people.

00:33:53.440 They're way ahead of us on this one. It's true. It's not just a trope. Yeah. American people,

00:33:59.480 including Democrats, they saw what was happening. They saw the clips on social media and that period

00:34:04.940 leading up to the debate, like when he was overseas, when, when the white house said, Oh,

00:34:09.060 this is, what was the word they had for it? A cheap fake that these clips are, are selectively

00:34:14.920 edited. I'd say he talked to a dead Congresswoman. We don't need more examples. Yeah. We sure.

00:34:21.060 Are, are there some Republicans and some red people online who, who choose bad examples? There

00:34:25.840 are, but we don't need, we don't need good or bad examples. His mental acuity decline is obvious.

00:34:32.260 And so they, everybody knew just to bottom line and everybody who covers politics in Washington

00:34:37.860 covers the presidency knew. Of course. How could you not? Now they might've had a different sense of

00:34:43.880 how bad it was. Right. But, but, but, but I'll, I'll give you an example of the lack of accountability.

00:34:49.840 Not only have they not acknowledged their own role, what about the role of the people around

00:34:54.220 the president who to this day say he didn't fail. He didn't decide not to run because he had to

00:34:59.700 acknowledge that his loss of mental acuity made it unlikely he could beat Trump. They continue to

00:35:04.180 say he didn't think he could win or he was going to divide the democratic party. The people, the story

00:35:10.200 of how they protected him. There've been some piercing of that with foreign leaders saying, you know,

00:35:15.700 anonymously that he had this, Biden had this problem or that's problem. You had the Wall

00:35:19.460 Street Journal piece, which was actually weak tea about, um, about mostly Republicans saying.

00:35:25.500 It was an absurd piece. Yeah. It was ridiculous. But, but I know many examples, most of which I

00:35:30.560 can't describe because the terms in which they were shared with me, but democratic members of

00:35:34.920 Congress knew full well. Of course. And that Wall Street Journal piece, you know, the editors of the

00:35:39.280 Wall Street Journal, um, I'll just say, I think are very dishonest, but, uh, I know that they are,

00:35:44.760 some of them, but that piece was really the only piece in a big, from big publication to make the

00:35:53.320 point that, hey, people are talking about his senility, but that piece was so watered down that

00:35:58.680 it was like, what was the point of even running that? I'm, I'm surprised they spent so much time

00:36:02.800 on it. And that's what they came up with. It, it, it, it, but again, it helped, it helped Biden

00:36:08.740 because it was certainly, it was a weak piece. Now it hurt the democratic party because if, if Trump

00:36:14.440 wins, history is going to show, of course, if they'd replaced him sooner with anybody, including

00:36:18.680 Harris, they'd have had a better chance rather than rushing her into this. But, but how there could

00:36:24.600 not be, I mean, she's not been asked about it. She was in the town hall the other day, but she's not

00:36:29.920 explained her connection to this coverup. Kind of incredible. What was her connection to the,

00:36:36.280 like, what is the truth? I don't think she was heavily involved with it because that wasn't her

00:36:40.560 responsibility, right? She wasn't in charge of making sure the president's okay. Now you could

00:36:45.080 argue they should have been, but that really is not the role of any vice president, let alone this one.

00:36:51.680 Again, he had good days and bad days and he'd good hours of the day and bad hours of the day.

00:36:56.580 So my guess is when she saw him, most of the time he was fine, but I'm sure just by law of

00:37:03.300 averages, I'm sure she saw him when he was not. Well, she must have known. Yeah. I remember when

00:37:08.080 I was a kid and going into this business and hearing people speak derisively of the White House

00:37:13.300 press corps during the 1930s, which covered up the fact supposedly that FDR was in a wheelchair and

00:37:18.380 thinking, you know, how could that, you know, I mean, that's so North Korean. Yeah. That could never 0.99

00:37:23.720 happen again. I've long been a critical critic of the press. I think that the degree to which

00:37:30.260 Trump was helped from 15 onward with the press hostility is obvious, but this one really frightens

00:37:36.020 me. It really frightens me that it's, it's, it's beyond just like, you know, North Korea or communist

00:37:42.320 China. It's beyond that. It's, it's the, it's the fact that it's occurring in a society with 0.98

00:37:48.560 alternative media and social media and, and, and White House briefings and reporters presumably

00:37:55.540 wanted to make their bones by getting big stories. No one reported it when it was clear they needed to

00:38:02.300 turn. They just turned against him. No accountability for themselves or for the people in the government who

00:38:07.780 engaged in the cover-up with them. I just find it frightening. Not just, it's fun to say it's a big

00:38:13.440 media scandal and provocative to say it, but I find it frightening that that could happen in this

00:38:19.460 country now. I find it frightening with all the media that we have different from back when other

00:38:25.680 presidents, Kennedy, Roosevelt, et cetera. Wilson, this is now, this is the age of transparency.

00:38:31.620 And had he not had a bad debate, he'd still be running for president. I, I find it frightening.

00:38:39.620 How did he have, how did that debate happen? Well, like how did, there are a lot of Republicans

00:38:45.900 who say it was a setup and there were people who knew he'd do badly and they made him debate to

00:38:49.680 force him out. I just don't believe that based on what I know. He was on track to lose. Okay. And

00:38:55.440 there was no precip, there was no intervening event that they saw could turn things around.

00:38:59.840 He was on track to lose before that debate? Yeah. He had one path to win, which was to win the three

00:39:04.960 Great Lakes states and Nebraska two CD. And he was behind in Pennsylvania. I don't remember ever

00:39:10.980 reading that story. I mean, also there seems like there's a lot of pressure not to report

00:39:16.160 what the data show, which is, you know, if a democratic candidate or president is behind,

00:39:22.060 no one wants to report that. Yeah. Is it, do you think that's true? Well, it's true if it's a

00:39:25.620 Democrat. That's what I'm saying. Oh yeah. He was on track to lose. He might

00:39:29.760 have lost all seven battleground states and he was, and he was, he was, he was in trouble in,

00:39:33.820 in New Mexico and in, um, and in Virginia and in Minnesota. Not as bad trouble as he was after

00:39:40.760 the debate, but before the debate, things were very grim. Really? Oh yeah. He had, he had one

00:39:45.640 electoral college path and he, and it was not, not in states. Again, I just don't remember ever

00:39:50.500 reading that. It's, it's, it's true. And not to make it too personal, but I should just say for

00:39:55.380 those who don't remember, I always thought that you were a liberal Democrat. I have no

00:39:59.420 idea what your politics are. I'm not going to ask you. I just assume. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a

00:40:02.960 journalist. I'm an old fashioned journalist. Okay. So, but I just never even, I didn't think

00:40:07.000 of you as any kind of right-wing activist because you weren't. But I remember in 2016,

00:40:10.700 when you said shortly before the election, I think Trump's got a pretty good shot of winning.

00:40:14.800 Yeah. And you, and that was, I think just like your analysis analytically.

00:40:19.520 I covered Trump rallies in 30 States and talked to voters across the country. It was clear he could

00:40:23.360 win and he did. Yeah. So you were right, but you were attacked. You were denounced for saying that.

00:40:30.580 Yeah. I think covering Trump's really hard. Covering Trump is really hard. Even if you want

00:40:37.380 to be fair, because he does say a lot of things that are untrue. He does break a lot of norms that

00:40:42.360 at least cause reasonable people to wonder whether those are good norms or bad. And he doesn't play

00:40:51.480 straight with the kind of decorum of, of, um, of interactions with the public and the press

00:41:00.040 and January 6th. And some of the things he said publicly that are hateful and hurtful. Okay.

00:41:06.700 Makes him very hard to cover, but he's also hard to cover because the most of the press covers him

00:41:11.300 in a way that is unfair and that the American people, not everyone, but anyone who doesn't

00:41:17.000 watch MSNBC primetime knows is unfair. It's, it's right there with the law fair. It's unequal

00:41:22.820 treatment that's hostile to him. So covering him is really hard, but, but you should be allowed

00:41:28.620 to analyze the poll numbers. Well, of course, but also to me, it's more, I mean, that's crazy.

00:41:34.060 To me, it's more, it's more to appreciate that the things that people liked about him who liked

00:41:39.600 him in 2015 and 2016 are legitimate things that they, that they, that they don't believe

00:41:45.740 Washington stands up for them, that they don't believe they believe there's too much government

00:41:49.620 regulation. They believe that there's no plan to deal with China. There were, there were serious

00:41:53.580 things he talked about that the border needs to be secure. There are serious things he talked about

00:41:57.180 that are, he talks about them some often, almost always in a cartoonish way, but those are,

00:42:03.020 those are aspirational things and worries of the American people that other politicians in both

00:42:07.940 parties weren't addressing. So you can, you can analyze the poll numbers, but you can also say,

00:42:13.040 as I said in 2011, which is really how I met Trump, he's talking about stuff that people respond to

00:42:18.980 viscerally that aren't being addressed and they're not incidental things. They're core things for tens

00:42:23.640 of millions of Americans. So when it wasn't to me, when people say, oh, how did you know? It was not,

00:42:29.380 it was not hard. With the election just weeks away, Kamala Harris has only won a single clearly defined

00:42:35.920 policy objective, and that's more abortion. This is not the pro-choice position of your youth,

00:42:42.900 the safe, legal, and rare pretense. This is more abortion is a good thing. Abortion anywhere, 0.99

00:42:51.380 anytime, for any reason, at any stage of development up to the ninth month. Who can be for that? Well,

00:43:00.500 the modern democratic party is for that. The result, thousands of babies dying every day. And that's

00:43:07.060 why Preborn's clinics, its network of clinics, are located in the highest abortion areas nationwide

00:43:11.820 to help women, provide counseling, care, and resources to women who are pregnant and desperate to help

00:43:19.500 them. Preborn has, over the years, rescued 300,000 children, all while sharing the message of God's love

00:43:26.220 and offering up to two years of aftercare. The Preborn approach is changing hearts for generations 1.00

00:43:32.020 to come. And that's the key, changing minds and saving people. They do this with ultrasound. One

00:43:37.900 ultrasound cost just $28. That's roughly the price of a very cheap dinner, maybe fast food. And for that,

00:43:44.500 you can sponsor five ultrasounds for 140 bucks. Preborn are committed to saving as many children as

00:43:50.740 possible, changing minds, changing hearts, and they need your help to do that. Abortion should 0.97

00:43:56.160 not be the basis of an entire political party. Even if you're pro-choice, that's disgusting.

00:44:02.160 So if you want to help donate securely, visit preborn.com slash Tucker or call

00:44:06.580 hashtag 250 and use the keyword baby.

00:44:10.080 But it's, it, right. Well, I agree with you completely. And I also wrote a story in Politico

00:44:29.780 making some of these points, but I wasn't attacked for it because I was already on the outside.

00:44:36.720 You were very, you were the inside. And I just thought it was the response was so interesting

00:44:42.880 in 2016, because really the demand was not that, you know, you be like a democratic partisan. The

00:44:50.860 demand was you just deny observable reality. Yes. And that's a different thing. So, so I have great

00:44:57.380 empathy for the people who support Trump and who are angry that the establishment media and universities

00:45:06.040 and all these liberal cultural institutions are hostile to them. I, I, I, I appreciate, and, and to see

00:45:12.440 their candidate get four indictments, uh, uh, that are wholly political, even though some of the underlying

00:45:18.840 actions were wrong, but wholly political indictments. But I also have sympathy for the people of Trump

00:45:24.580 derangement syndrome. I get why they think this is the worst thing that could happen to America.

00:45:30.600 And I hear it from Democrats all the time. We say Donald Trump being president is not the worst

00:45:34.720 thing that's ever happened in my life. Politically. It's the worst thing that's ever happened in my

00:45:38.160 life. Uh, I don't want to put myself on a pedestal, but no, I don't believe there are too many people

00:45:43.160 forget just journalists. I don't think there are a lot of people who have empathy and, and, and

00:45:47.520 understanding for both those groups. And I think that's the core challenge for the country right now

00:45:52.120 is for all of us to try to understand both groups. But why do you, I mean, you're from Washington DC.

00:45:58.080 Your father worked at high levels of government. Um, you're very much from that. I mean, you're from

00:46:03.440 literally from that culture. Yeah. And then you spent most of your life in New York. I was once

00:46:07.060 called the high priest of establishment journalism. Well, and that is, I was, I'm 55. I was there and

00:46:12.200 that is totally accurate. Yeah. So how do you wind up with empathy for Trump voters? Um,

00:46:22.120 because three things. One is I covered Bill Clinton was the first presidential candidate

00:46:26.640 I covered. And I went to 46 States with him and listened to people unhappy with the status quo,

00:46:33.480 not just the short-term economic pain, but the long-term dislocation we've seen since

00:46:38.280 with surveys. Are your kids going to have the same economic future you didn't know? Uh, do you,

00:46:43.460 do you understand your place in the world in terms of the economy? Are you confident that you'll

00:46:47.840 have a career that you like are social changes? Is a society changing ways that are offensive to you

00:46:54.620 or, or unsettling to you? So I saw the importance of getting out of Washington and New York and

00:47:00.140 watching presidential candidates, talk to voters and talking to the voters. And I saw some people

00:47:05.440 like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan. I put those three ahead of the others,

00:47:11.080 saw the mood of the country and saw that their party was not necessarily addressing everything

00:47:16.920 that needed to be addressed. And they did. So that's number one is I just understood the concept

00:47:21.700 of someone speaking against the status quo in the establishment. Number two, um, I've always seen

00:47:29.480 liberal media bias. Even when I'm early in my career, Peter Jennings was my mentor. He saw it too.

00:47:35.200 He was ahead of his time and understanding half our potential consumers were conservative. And so you

00:47:40.340 have to constantly be questioning whether your news product and your, and your analysis is appealing to

00:47:47.480 the entire country and not just the people on the upper West side of Manhattan. And then lastly,

00:47:54.020 um, I've always, uh, uh, uh, been concerned that the, uh, uh, how do I explain this? It's like,

00:48:05.100 you, you, you, you, you have to be honest as a journalist. You can't just go, not just not go

00:48:10.640 with the upper West side, Washington, DC mentality, but you have to be constantly questioning the

00:48:15.280 assumptions. That's a, that's core to the, to the job. And so I did that whether it's politics or not,

00:48:21.000 just is, are we thinking about this right the way I covered the gaming industry for a little bit

00:48:25.760 and I'm fascinated by it. And I think the way we cover the gaming industry in this country is insane

00:48:30.160 and it needs to be, uh, it needs to be different. If you look at most coverage of it, it's not. So

00:48:36.400 you can say it about sports. What does that mean? I mean, not to get too sidetracked, but I'm

00:48:40.440 interested. What does that mean? It's a, it's a huge business that's completely unscrutinized.

00:48:45.540 Are you, pardon my total ignorance? Because I hate all of it. Yeah. Are you talking about gambling 0.85

00:48:50.500 or computer games? No, no, no, no. Uh, well, I could say it about both, but I'd say it about, I say,

00:48:55.620 I would say too about social media and about kids on iPads. No, I'm just talking about,

00:49:00.440 casinos, sports betting, gambling. How, how is it covered that you think is wrong?

00:49:05.240 Well, it's barely covered. And it's the, the, the, the fact that it's like a regressive,

00:49:10.560 you know, that it hurts poor people. Yeah. The fact that these businesses are extremely powerful

00:49:15.860 and they're lobbyists and they rarely have rules that are deleterious to their interests. Uh, and,

00:49:21.520 and the fact that they create economic opportunity, some places, uh, that, that has been successful,

00:49:27.020 but just, it's one of the biggest businesses in the, in the world. And it's, you, you pick up the

00:49:31.800 New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Associated Press, the networks, they're barely

00:49:35.380 covering it. And when they do, they're not covering to me the essence of, of what it's really like.

00:49:41.060 So when I covered it, I got backlash from the people in the business, both in the journalism

00:49:46.160 business covering it and from the gaming industry, because I was coming in and questioning assumptions.

00:49:51.840 How, how, as a society, are we thinking about this?

00:49:55.180 I don't think we're thinking about it at all.

00:49:56.300 Well, we're not, but, but we should be both, both the positive, but also the negative,

00:49:59.840 the lives it destroys and the, the percentage of people's household income that they use on it.

00:50:04.900 I find it insane. I find it insane. So I'm embarrassed that I haven't, again, I don't want

00:50:10.500 to get sidetracked, but since you said that out loud, I'm, I'm one of the people who's ignored it.

00:50:14.780 And think about how much, think about how much coverage there's, you've ever read in the New York

00:50:18.420 Times about the gaming industry. I learned the other day that it's really common for young men in

00:50:24.920 their twenties, recent college graduates who by definition have no money, most of them, uh, to spend a lot

00:50:30.720 on sports gambling. Yes. It's a huge thing. And, and, and the, and the recruitment

00:50:34.880 of athletes to, you know, to raise the brand identity of the individual companies. It's,

00:50:39.320 it's a massive business and just uncovered. And it's, it's, it's massive. I forget how big it is,

00:50:45.240 but it's huge. It's like bigger than like Hollywood, something, something, something combined.

00:50:49.380 It's just, oh yeah, it's huge. It's huge. So again, I just always, as a journalist have said,

00:50:56.100 people say Trump can't win. Well, I saw him speak at CPAC in 2011, that guy could win.

00:51:01.620 And so just going to question.

00:51:03.920 They did. Am I misremembering this? You were attacked viciously just for observing that,

00:51:08.100 correct? Uh, not in 2011. I was attacked.

00:51:10.580 No, no, in 2016.

00:51:11.700 Oh, in 2016. Yes. Yes. I was attacked viciously, but I'm saying I saw it in 2011 as I started my

00:51:17.820 relationship with Trump. I saw him speak at CPAC where, you know, Mitch Daniels and a bunch of

00:51:23.220 potential presidential candidates spoke. And I went on TV the next morning and, and said,

00:51:27.540 Trump was the best speaker, not just because of the performance, but he got the best reaction.

00:51:33.140 And you may not take him seriously as a presidential candidate, but you need to

00:51:36.480 take what he's running on and talking about seriously. And I say always that Donald Trump

00:51:42.260 is in some ways a complicated man, but in some ways he's simple. If you say nice things about

00:51:46.400 him on television, he likes you. Um, so he called me up and invited me over to Trump tower. And I,

00:51:52.480 and I mean, he wasn't like my best friend, but I talked to him about politics then

00:51:55.620 pretty consistently from 2011 to 2015. And part of why I had some access to him was because

00:52:03.340 when people on the networks were interviewing him and, and talking about him cause he's a good

00:52:08.520 box office, but mocking the notion that he could win, I took him seriously. Incredible.

00:52:14.520 And then took heat for it, obviously, when he actually won.

00:52:17.640 Big, big heat for it.

00:52:18.780 Yeah. So how, just, I keep getting sidetracked and my apologies, but how exactly did it happen

00:52:27.300 that Biden went from telling the world, telling people around him that he was going to stay in,

00:52:35.080 um, with the full support, I think of his wife and son to announcing that he was not running again?

00:52:41.060 Um, the, the, the data was very grim and inarguable. Yeah. Uh, and he was presented with a lot of it,

00:52:49.020 but Nancy Pelosi, who, as I understand it, has not spoken to him since, uh, he got out of the race

00:52:55.540 as we sit here today. Really?

00:52:57.680 That's what she said, I believe in an interview I just read. Um,

00:53:01.020 she knew where the pressure points were. She's extremely skillful, right? She knew

00:53:08.480 what it would take to get him to cry uncle. And I'm not sure exactly what that included, except

00:53:15.180 more and more governors and members of Congress saying he had to step down. Donors saying they

00:53:21.340 would not write a single additional check, right? So if you're the incumbent president and your

00:53:27.660 fundraising dries up pretty completely and cause he wasn't raising small dollars, right? He was

00:53:32.120 reliant on big checks. Could you stay in the race if leading members of your party called for you to

00:53:38.760 resign? Could you stay in the race if, um, you had no money to run a campaign and, and really had to

00:53:48.000 lay off tons of your staff, not be able to afford advertisement, um, not be able to fly around and do

00:53:53.740 big rallies. Could you stay in? He could. But if Nancy Pelosi is saying to you, you will have no

00:54:00.780 money, you will have almost no one supporting your continuing on donors, celebrities, members of

00:54:06.980 Congress, governors, you will lose and you will be blamed in history for having stayed in and lost to

00:54:13.980 Donald Trump. Or we can celebrate you at the convention. We can say you're like George Washington

00:54:19.020 and you can salvage your, your reputation. I think presented with those choices, he didn't have a

00:54:25.900 choice. What was Obama's role? Um, to talk to Pelosi and Schumer and others, Clyburn and others about

00:54:36.880 how you get him out, how you design a process to replace him, to maximize the chances of the party

00:54:44.720 winning and to try not to get his backup. Right. The, the, the, the, the psychodrama between him

00:54:55.180 and Obama is real. I don't think it is between him and Kamala Harris, but between him and Obama,

00:54:59.860 it's real. I remember Hunter Biden, who was my neighbor for many years, telling me more than once

00:55:04.280 when Biden was vice president, how much they despised Barack Obama. He despised Barack Obama.

00:55:09.400 Well, what he did to Joe Biden in 2016, a man who'd run for president twice, who thought it was his

00:55:16.320 birthright to then be the nominee in, in, in 16 to say, we're going with Hillary Clinton.

00:55:23.020 That, that, that in the Biden family, that's, that's as bad as it gets. That's as treacherous as

00:55:27.260 it gets. So, uh, uh, and then in 2020, he didn't really support him until he had to when,

00:55:33.860 you know, when it was just him and Bernie. So, so Obama had to worry. And this is why Pelosi was

00:55:40.540 singular. If it hadn't been for Nancy Pelosi, I don't think this would have happened.

00:55:44.820 He had to not get Biden's backup. Biden had to see this as, as inevitable, but not, um, but not,

00:55:54.440 uh, embarrassed, but minimizing the embarrassment. And so Obama was very careful to not be,

00:56:00.100 and doesn't like to be public anyway at this point, but he was careful to not have Biden think

00:56:05.160 that he was engineering it, but he was, he was, he was strategizing about how do we put the pressure

00:56:12.320 on him publicly and privately, and how do we end up with the strongest possible nominee?

00:56:16.500 Boy, this is not a sentimental group I've noticed. I mean, loyalty, personal affection,

00:56:22.640 long lasting friendship, assuming that even exists in that world, none of them play any role in any of

00:56:28.100 this. Um, I think there's some affection between Bill Clinton and Joe Biden.

00:56:33.160 I'm sure. Um, so there's some there. I mean, this is high stakes politics. I don't think,

00:56:39.300 I don't think that Nancy Pelosi, I don't know this from her. So I'm speculating based on just

00:56:45.080 observing her and knowing her a little bit. I don't think that she took pleasure in this.

00:56:49.700 I think she felt bad for him. So in that sense, I think there was some humanity to it. There was just

00:56:55.540 a problem that had to be solved. They, they, they were, they were trying to switch from zero chance

00:57:00.880 to win to a decent chance to win. And so I don't, I don't, I don't know that there's room for

00:57:06.400 sentimentality that would stand in the way of that. So they call on her to bring the dog to the vet to 1.00

00:57:10.760 put him down. Well, they didn't really call on her. She stepped up because she saw in Clyburn and,

00:57:17.160 and Jeffries and Schumer and Obama and Clinton, both Clintons. She didn't see sufficient effort and the

00:57:24.780 clock was ticking. Did you see, I just, I know I'm fixated on this, but I am fixated on it.

00:57:30.000 Did you see prior to June of this year, any story in any major news outlet saying, Hey, Joe Biden's

00:57:37.260 going to lose? Well, in my own work, yeah. Okay. You've been exiled from that world.

00:57:47.080 I mean, no, but because they, they couldn't, I mean, you saw stories in this before, before they

00:57:54.340 agreed to debate, you saw stories that said his fundraising was a real problem. You saw stories

00:57:59.400 that said, uh, he was having, you know, problems in like New Hampshire and Virginia and New Mexico

00:58:04.820 and Minnesota. You saw stories saying, um, uh, uh, he was having problems with over the Israel war.

00:58:12.960 You even saw the press covering immigration, like they'd never covered it before. Not,

00:58:16.800 not the way they would, if it were on the other foot, you saw the coverage of inflation. Yeah.

00:58:20.960 You saw the coverage, part of why he had to agree to the debate was the coverage was, was they

00:58:28.640 turned on him to a extent, not to the extent they were trying to drive him out of the race,

00:58:31.320 except for a few calmness, but yeah, the coverage of Biden from February or so onward was quite negative.

00:58:37.540 So we just got back from a month on the road, coast to coast and everywhere in between 16 cities in 30

00:58:44.160 days. And I've got to say almost everyone on our team looks suspiciously well-rested every morning

00:58:50.060 as we got back on the plane. It turns out most of them are using a product called Sambrosa, which is

00:58:55.400 one of the sponsors of our tour. Sambrosa blends antihistamine with a syrup of herbs and honey and is

00:59:01.440 designed to help you sleep well, waking up, feeling refreshed and revitalized. And based on the

00:59:06.940 sunny, cheerful faces, the people I work with, it works. It's inexpensive. It's less than 50 cents a

00:59:12.780 night. And we know the people who own the company and they are great people. They are faithful people

00:59:18.160 and they are about the happiest family we've ever run across. The product Sambrosa has a ton of five

00:59:23.580 star reviews. You can check it out on their website, Sambrosa.com.

00:59:42.700 What's the underlying illness that he suffers from?

00:59:45.180 No idea.

00:59:45.900 Why don't, how crazy is that, that a nation on the cusp of nuclear war, which we are to

00:59:50.920 this day, could have a commander in chief suffering from some illness and nobody demands to

00:59:56.980 crazy, find out what it is.

00:59:58.960 It's crazy. And the fact that, the fact that, I mean, again, this goes to the press

01:00:02.840 course, part of the conspiracy, his doctor was never made available to answer questions.

01:00:09.360 That is standard.

01:00:10.320 But they had a Parkinson's specialist come in.

01:00:12.480 Yeah. Although the facts on that are still a bit murky, but.

01:00:15.660 Well, they're totally murky.

01:00:16.640 Yeah. But, but, but how, how they could explain to any White House reporter's satisfaction why

01:00:24.240 they weren't given access to the president's doctor, I can't understand. It just should have

01:00:28.240 been an alarm bell and they should have brought the briefing room to a halt. We demand to talk

01:00:33.120 to the president's doctor as we've talked to past president's doctors. When this president

01:00:36.760 spoke to a dead Congresswoman, we need to access the president's doctor.

01:00:40.680 And just the way the stiff leg walking and everything just, you turn the sound off and

01:00:45.520 you could tell that there was a profound problem.

01:00:47.760 And the American people know it. And that's why, you know, I forget the exact numbers, but

01:00:51.760 like 70% said he shouldn't be running. You know, it's like, there's a reason why the,

01:00:58.240 the, the press had to say the emperor looked fantastic in his new clothes, not, you know,

01:01:04.520 I like the shirt, but I don't like the pants. They had to be all in on the emperor looked

01:01:07.680 fantastic because they couldn't, they couldn't show any weakness.

01:01:11.580 I like this shirt, but not the pants. Exactly.

01:01:14.580 They couldn't show any weakness.

01:01:15.780 Why?

01:01:16.580 Because they couldn't do anything to be accused of helping Trump win.

01:01:23.280 It's not my imagination. This is, the press has always obviously been liberal,

01:01:27.300 always been sympathetic to Democrats, but this posture of like total denial of absolute

01:01:34.900 big lie deception. That's a new thing.

01:01:38.320 It's a new thing. It's, it's covering Trump's hard.

01:01:42.320 And, and, and just as people on the right, I'll say again, have, have, are revolted by

01:01:49.000 the, the, the slanted press coverage, the law fair, um, the unequal treatment.

01:01:54.560 I think people on the left have, uh, have proper grievance about the things Trump has done that

01:02:01.520 are, again, antithetical to a lot of what America stands for. They're, they're right about

01:02:07.760 that. He's hard to cover, but, but they, but the way that most of the press has chosen to deal

01:02:12.640 with it is to just focus on the negative aspects of Trump and disregard the grievances of the other

01:02:18.040 side. But honesty, just, I mean, even leaving aside the ideology or how you think Trump fits into

01:02:24.400 American history, just like, I don't know if it's raining out, you can't say it's sunny out cause

01:02:29.040 that's lying. I agree. But, but, but they, they, they're besides liberal media bias and besides just

01:02:36.460 the emotional Trump derangement syndrome, they've decided that January 11th and Stormy Daniels and

01:02:43.360 the documents at Mar-a-Lago and his comments about immigrants are more important, are, are so important

01:02:52.640 that they have to, uh, cover those, the exclusion of Americans being killed by people in the country

01:02:58.680 illegally. That's just what they've decided. Is there any sense from within those big media

01:03:05.520 organizations that they're, they've committed suicide? No, they're, they're, uh, their cultural,

01:03:13.740 personal, institutional orientation is towards covering the news for half the country.

01:03:19.640 That's what they do. But it, as a business, it's like they've, they've destroyed themselves. That's

01:03:23.920 my read on it anyway. And I worked for all those companies. Yeah. I mean, the New York Times has

01:03:27.680 created Wordle and Recipes, so they haven't destroyed themselves. Um, there's always going to be a

01:03:34.700 demand for news and, you know, they all adapted like, you know, whether you and I discussed,

01:03:41.060 they've adapted way too late, but they're, they're, there's, it's a, it's an industry in crisis,

01:03:47.180 but some of the legacy players are finding their way towards digital survival. So I don't think

01:03:52.900 they're all going to disappear. And I think they'll be replaced. For sure. But they're the weaker ones,

01:03:56.520 CBS, I think, I mean, CBS is like almost done. I think NBC, CNN, I don't think they have bright

01:04:04.140 futures, but you know what, I could be wrong. They'll have to, they'll have to, you know,

01:04:07.460 very late in the game, adapt to digital sales and, and, and different models besides people paying for

01:04:13.660 subscriptions, people paying for advertising or cable systems paying for carriage. They'll have to,

01:04:18.660 they'll have to find different sources of revenue and they'll have to make products that appeal to

01:04:22.000 enough audiences that there's, there's, there's, there's this mass there. But somebody's got to fill

01:04:27.780 the assigned, the intended role of the media, which is to inform the public about things, factual

01:04:35.780 things. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a crisis and not just a crisis in America, obviously other countries

01:04:42.920 have this problem, but, but there is a market for news. People do want news. Well, you have to have it.

01:04:49.340 Yeah. So, so we just need, whether it's legacy places that find their way or new places like what

01:04:55.240 you're doing, what I'm doing that, that, that say we're going to make money off of quality content

01:05:01.220 that some number of people like, and we're going to find business models that work and we're not

01:05:05.520 going to be wedded to the old business models, which is just not going to support journalism.

01:05:10.120 How long were you at ABC?

01:05:10.920 From 87 to 2007.

01:05:16.240 A long time. How many years is that?

01:05:18.620 That's about 20-ish years now. It's, uh, 97, 2007.

01:05:25.200 Um, did you ever think that you would be part of independent media?

01:05:29.660 I never did. I mean, I loved working for a big, powerful, you know, one of the most powerful news

01:05:33.860 organizations in the world. Uh, and I assumed I always would. And, uh, and I still think there's

01:05:39.780 some value in it. I mean, you and I both now do things for ourselves and with our small married

01:05:44.220 bands that before 17 people would have been working on, we never would have had to think

01:05:48.000 about it, but it's a small price to pay to not be freed from the downsides of being, you know,

01:05:54.260 in an institution where you can't do what you think's right, you know, some of the time at least

01:05:58.780 or best, not necessarily right, but best.

01:06:01.680 And like, what, looking back, like, can you give examples of things that you couldn't do

01:06:07.960 that you think you should have been allowed to do?

01:06:10.160 Um, file more Freedom of Information Act requests, uh, even if they were going to annoy people

01:06:15.560 we covered. So if somebody said, well, we're trying to book that person, you know, as a great

01:06:20.340 guest, so please don't file that Freedom of Information Act request. That happened a few

01:06:25.340 times. Yeah. Now there was another equity involved for the organization, right? They wanted a booking

01:06:29.560 more than my fishing expedition on a FOIA. Um, but I, I will say that that's a, that's an example.

01:06:36.980 I could give a few others, but, but I was blessed when I worked for ABC, when I worked for Time

01:06:41.920 Magazine, when I worked for Bloomberg, I was blessed with a fair amount of autonomy. So I was never told

01:06:47.460 by corporate, the corporate side, what to say. I was rarely told don't pursue something because of

01:06:52.760 another equity. I gave you an example, one of the examples, but it's more just, uh, you know,

01:06:58.260 putting on a TV show at a major network, like 200 people are touching the product, right? It's just,

01:07:03.720 it's just a hard bureaucracy to, to, to, to be super creative in, but it also produces, you know,

01:07:09.440 from a production point of view, quality stuff. That's a trade-off.

01:07:14.200 I'm not imagining without getting into it. I, this is my read. You may disagree. I think in the end,

01:07:19.780 you are very severely punished for demanding to think for yourself. Um, that's my view of it,

01:07:25.700 but I don't think you're the only one who was. Yeah. It did seem like a systematic cleansing of

01:07:31.680 anybody in media, not even, it wasn't even a left-right divide. It was like, I felt it was a

01:07:37.560 testosterone divide, but it was to people like, no, no, no, I think this is right. I'm going to pursue

01:07:41.980 it. Those people are all gone. I just have noticed. Well, I mean, it depends on, on the category. I think

01:07:49.040 people, particularly people who challenge the left, I think are, are more susceptible to that.

01:07:54.320 You think? You know, uh, I mean, I, Rachel Maddow says stuff that's out there. She

01:08:00.280 criticizes her own network. Sometimes she pursues stories. She's interesting because she has a lot

01:08:04.820 of power and autonomy. Um, and there are other examples. To her credit. I've always, I disagree

01:08:10.480 with everything Rachel Maddow says, but I have always admired that about her. Yeah. But she's,

01:08:15.960 she's kind of the exception. There are others, but she's one of the exceptions that proves the rule.

01:08:20.160 Most, most people don't want to cross the orthodoxy or, or their corporate bosses.

01:08:26.700 And in that sense, they're not so different than, you know, working for JP Morgan Chase or working for

01:08:31.120 Boeing. Like there's not a lot of, of stepping out of line. The difference is of course,

01:08:35.980 to state the obvious that we're in a journalist or in a business of truth telling and challenging

01:08:40.640 powerful interests and holding powerful interests accountable to the public interest. And sometimes

01:08:44.760 that has to be, you know, either your own employer or sometimes it's liberal Democrats.

01:08:49.300 Well, it's got to be that way though. It's inherent. Like that's why we have first amendment

01:08:53.580 protection. Like the system is set up with a free press at the, really at the center of the

01:08:58.960 enterprise, in my opinion. So where, where are we five years, 10 years from now?

01:09:04.060 I thought there was going to be more joking around in this episode.

01:09:06.300 Yeah. No, I'm just interested.

01:09:07.880 It's like the grimmest episode of your program ever.

01:09:10.940 Let's play paper football or something to shake up the mood. I mean,

01:09:13.660 I'm a big believer in finding consumers who want quality and that, that can happen to,

01:09:20.960 uh, independent of, of ideology. You know, my new platform, you know, we've not started

01:09:26.580 to make a ton of money yet, but, but it explicitly tries to appeal to people, not just centrist,

01:09:31.380 moderates and independents, but people on the left and the right. And I'm hoping that there

01:09:35.520 is a market for that. That is different than the conventional wisdom, which is the only way

01:09:40.540 to make money is to go hard left.

01:09:41.820 Of course. Right. Be the New York times.

01:09:43.660 Yeah. Um, but how does it work?

01:09:46.800 Uh, we bring, uh, people on who are willing to talk about the country in a way that's not,

01:09:54.740 uh, politics of personal destruction. I would say our model is peace, love, and understanding.

01:09:59.440 And then we open it up to citizens from across the country. And so far organically, Democrats,

01:10:05.060 Republicans, Trump supporters, Trump enemies all come on and they all talk and they're supposed to

01:10:10.240 talk in a way that is respectful. And if somebody is disagreeing with you, I say, learn from them

01:10:15.260 rather than say, this platform is too pro-Trump. Well, it's your opportunity to hear from pro-Trump

01:10:20.300 people or this pro-Harris, this platform is too pro-Harris. Listen to them talk. And that is

01:10:27.100 almost, it doesn't exist in America today. No, it doesn't. What's the business model for that?

01:10:31.020 Um, I, well, it's a platform that's not just about politics. It's, it's eventually we're going to

01:10:35.920 expand to sports and music and writing writers. It's called two-way all communication. Almost all

01:10:41.880 communication is one way, right? It's you talking or writing a sub stack or writing a book or cable

01:10:46.940 news. We bring people together with the people they want to hear from. And so if, if you get the

01:10:53.220 best parenting experts in the world or NFL quarterbacks or great musicians that people

01:10:57.700 are super fans of sponsorships, payments, super fan payments to, to, to, that are higher than what

01:11:05.400 they pay for a normal access through live video. And then eventually, uh, the ability to be the place

01:11:11.560 to people come for, for two-way conversations. But in politics, it has the additional element of

01:11:16.800 all voices under one roof. And I have so heartened when people say, liberals will say,

01:11:23.140 I understand why people are for Trump more than I ever have. The other day we had on, uh, just by

01:11:29.380 coincidence, we didn't book them. Two young black men, both live in Manhattan or live in New York

01:11:33.660 City, both of whom explained extraordinarily well why they're for Trump and why they don't like the

01:11:38.800 Democratic Party. And, and they were listened to respectfully and they, liberals could ask them

01:11:44.620 questions. That just doesn't exist anywhere else. No, it doesn't. So I got to say that's consistent

01:11:49.420 with my personal experience of black men specifically. Not that I'm around black men all the time, but

01:11:54.860 actually fairly regularly. Yeah. Don't know that many black men who are Republicans, but I know zero

01:12:01.860 black men who are liberals. Yeah. Not one. Yeah. I can't remember the last time I met one. Yeah. 1.00

01:12:05.900 What is that? That seems like a trend. If the, if the anecdotal is even close to true,

01:12:11.560 Trump will break the record among support from black men. I mean, he'll smash it if the anecdotal 0.99

01:12:16.320 is close to true. It just, it's all over social media. It's all over my platform. It's all over

01:12:21.540 every story I hear. And part of it, you know, I'll give you a couple of elements of this that I think

01:12:27.940 is important. Part of it is Trump has always had appeal with kind of a macho, rich, pretty wife thing. 0.96

01:12:34.500 Yeah. Has that, but it's also, you know, this example of biased coverage, the press says when

01:12:40.160 Trump says some young black men identify with him and their parents because he's been persecuted,

01:12:47.640 the press says that's racist. My experience is just true. They get the fact that, that,

01:12:53.900 that the legal system comes after people unfairly. And if it can happen to Trump,

01:12:57.840 it can happen to them. And it has happened to them and their family and their communities.

01:13:00.680 And then lastly, they, they, the, the failure of liberals to make life in cities for poor kids

01:13:08.440 better is also a massive scandal. Another scandal is that the Republican party hasn't done anything

01:13:14.380 to capitalize on it and create a competition to be mayors of these cities. For sure. But,

01:13:19.340 but when Trump says I'm for criminal justice reform and I'm for fixing schools and I'm for creating more

01:13:25.200 economic opportunity, he did criminal justice reform. The other stuff, you know, his record

01:13:29.860 is spotty, but, but he's saying, as he said in 2016, when people mocked him, what do you have to

01:13:35.860 lose? These young black men say the democratic party offers nothing to me. Trump might offer 1.00

01:13:41.520 something to me and he's done criminal justice reform. I think, I think again, you could be the

01:13:47.160 most partisan Democrat in the world. If you can defend the performance of the democratic party to

01:13:51.540 helping young black men, good luck. But what's, I agree with everything that you've said,

01:13:57.760 but what's interesting is the black voters, including black men are not just like part of

01:14:03.840 the democratic coalition. They're the basis of the party's moral authority. After what, after black 1.00

01:14:07.920 women, they're number two in terms of degree of support. Right. But in terms of the story that 1.00

01:14:13.240 Democrats tell themselves about why they're right and why they're better than their opponents,

01:14:18.300 it's all about black people. We've saved black people. Yeah. And so how do they, like, what's it

01:14:24.180 like if you were a democratic party, if you're Ron Klain and you all of a sudden, all the black guys 1.00

01:14:29.100 are against you. And for Trump, that must be mind blowing. Well, of all the sort of canary in the 0.93

01:14:35.100 coal mine of those who believe it's some of my sources in both parties do that Harris is about to

01:14:40.040 lose and maybe somewhat decisively, she's spending three days, maybe four days at the end of the

01:14:46.820 campaign, spending the majority of her time courting black men. That's, that's mind blowing. 1.00

01:14:54.100 So what do they say? They say they're a little bit in denial about the causes of it, but they,

01:14:59.520 but they're not in denial about how big a problem is. Again, testament to when have you seen a

01:15:03.340 democratic presidential candidate with 20 days to go spending her time day after day courting black 0.99

01:15:09.360 men? But it's just weird because the one thing that everyone on planet earth knew about Donald Trump

01:15:14.180 was that he was a racist. That's the one, I mean, that line was, I mean, that was the summary of

01:15:19.880 Trump. So I had a, I had a black woman who's, who's lives in New York also who came on my platform

01:15:24.960 the other day. And when she was confronted, I connected her to an older black gentleman who's

01:15:30.340 a Harris supporter. And he said, how can you support the man who led the birther movement? How can you

01:15:36.880 support the man who denied knowing who David Duke was? And she said, how about Joe Biden? He's of that

01:15:42.000 generation too. Hanging around with Strom Thurmond, supporting the crime bill. You know, her view

01:15:48.200 was Joe Biden's got a racist past too. I'm not going to, I'm not going to decide who to vote for

01:15:53.200 based on allegations about who's a bigger racist. It's, it's just interesting of all the candidates

01:15:59.800 in the history of American politics for Donald Trump to increase the share of the black vote.

01:16:06.160 And the Hispanic vote.

01:16:07.360 Well, big time in that way.

01:16:09.300 And again, the liberal press would say, how could Hispanics support a guy who's been so

01:16:13.580 racist in his rhetoric about the border? And of course, as you know, we're talking about

01:16:17.000 people who've came here legally and don't like to be lumped in with people who, um, who,

01:16:23.140 who, who support more open border. And of course.

01:16:25.760 Or even people who came here legally and benefit illegally.

01:16:28.160 Correct.

01:16:28.420 Who benefit from the 86 amnesty, for example.

01:16:30.920 Correct. And also people who think bacon costs too much.

01:16:33.400 Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. So why did you, you said at the outset that everyone's telling us this is

01:16:42.880 going to be an extraordinarily close election. You don't believe that.

01:16:45.780 Well, it might be. I just, I just think it's not a foregone conclusion because I think

01:16:48.760 seven battleground states, six or maybe all seven could go to one candidate. They could. In other

01:16:54.860 words, if one of them wins the seven states or six of seven narrowly by our recent standards,

01:16:59.960 that would be an electoral college landslide. And I think that could happen. I think whatever

01:17:04.940 dynamics exist, will be some variation state to state. But if Trump won all seven, I wouldn't

01:17:10.200 be surprised. If she won all seven, I wouldn't be surprised. And if that happens, it's not going to

01:17:14.140 be close.

01:17:16.320 I was talking to a member of Congress, uh, just a few hours ago who said, I'm totally convinced

01:17:24.000 this election will not be called within a week of election day. Will not be. Not be. Yeah. I mean,

01:17:29.120 if it's close, it won't be. There'll be litigation and there'll be, you know, all the normal second

01:17:34.580 guessing. Our elections are decentralized and really messy. And although there were efforts to fix that

01:17:39.580 after 2000, it's just the American way. And in some of these states, like in Pennsylvania,

01:17:45.740 the state gives incredible deference to the counties to figure out how they want to run things.

01:17:49.440 It's a commonwealth.

01:17:50.560 Yeah. And I think, I think there's a real equal protection questions. We saw that in Florida in

01:17:55.140 2000. Like, is it fair to one county compared to another county or the state of Florida compared

01:18:00.880 to the other states that they count differently? It's a, it's a, it's a great, it's got political

01:18:06.680 implications that are messy, but it's a great 10th amendment question.

01:18:10.940 So in what sense do they count differently?

01:18:13.560 You know, when you can start counting different types of ballots and what the rules are for accepting

01:18:18.300 ballots that have errors in them? You know, like if one county says, well, they said 2023,

01:18:25.080 but they meant 2024, we're going to count that because we know who cares what the outside address

01:18:29.960 is like. One county counts that and the other doesn't. Is that fair to the voters? You know,

01:18:35.080 is that equal protection? And, and even if the rules aren't different, just as a matter of course,

01:18:41.640 say, well, in this county, they stopped counting at midnight because the election supervisor said,

01:18:46.820 we have too many votes to count. We're going to go home. And in this county, they kept counting.

01:18:50.900 And so now is there some chain of custody question in the county where the, where the people went home

01:18:56.620 and said, they'll come back in at nine o'clock. We just don't have uniform rules. That's just the

01:19:01.240 way America is. So, I mean, I would say my base case, unlike everybody else's, my base cases will

01:19:07.600 know by the next day, because I think more likely than not, it won't be close. But if your person's

01:19:12.520 right, a week would be delightful if it was only a week, could be significantly longer because once

01:19:19.240 litigation starts, it never stops. And this time the Democrats are, are as lawyered up as the

01:19:25.440 Republicans. In 2020, the Bush campaign said, we're only going to do Florida. I'm sorry, in 2000.

01:19:31.740 They said, we're only going to do Florida. We think there's stuff in New Mexico we could do.

01:19:35.740 There's stuff in a few other states. They said, no, we're just, and the Gore, the Gore people went along

01:19:40.720 with that. That won't happen this time. All seven states will be litigated if, if, if the, if the

01:19:46.140 outcomes are not. And to recap those states are?

01:19:48.460 To recap the states, there's the three Great Lakes states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

01:19:54.000 And then the four Sunbelt states, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and the state where Las Vegas

01:19:59.240 is that I can't pronounce correctly, so I never do. It's Nevada.

01:20:02.660 Like Vlad. And it's Nevada. And in the last, say, 30 years, I grew up going to Nevada.

01:20:08.440 Yeah. And we had a house in Nevada. Yeah. And everyone called it that. And now they will

01:20:12.940 yell at you for calling it. They will. They've renamed it. I have a mental block about it.

01:20:17.560 I say it wrong every time, even though I think I'm saying it right.

01:20:19.980 They're so judgy about it. They are very judgy. That's why I don't even risk saying it. I call it

01:20:23.660 the silver state or the state where Las Vegas is. Harry Reid's old state. Harry Reid's old state.

01:20:28.880 Home of McCarran Airport, Clark County. Exactly. Plenty you can say about it. Reno in the north.

01:20:32.920 So can we just go through those really quick? Yeah. Sure. And love to get your view of where

01:20:37.820 the race is. And let's just start with Nevada. Yeah. It's the hardest one. The Trump people think

01:20:46.200 they're going to win it and the Democrats think they're going to win it. Abortion, unions,

01:20:51.460 the ghost of Harry Reid, which they still cite. So I would say there's consensus amongst my sources

01:20:59.120 that of the seven states, it's, it's, um, it's Harris's best, but I wouldn't be surprised if

01:21:06.660 Trump won it. Economy's horrible. Inflation's been horrible. Housing's horrible. Uh, he's got,

01:21:11.900 of course, a presence in Clark County, a lot of rural vote. So, um, uh, it's her best of the seven.

01:21:19.520 He's taken Elko. We know that. Yes. Elko is his. But the change in, you know, Clark County is very,

01:21:25.100 very heavily Hispanic now. Yeah. And the change in voting patterns of Hispanic voters, or at least 0.51

01:21:31.880 what we think is the change, that's kind of what they're banking on. They are. Um, and, and they're

01:21:37.000 banking on the economy. Um, and she's not, uh, she's, she's a Westerner, right? But people there

01:21:42.360 don't like Californians, you know, typically there's good reason. Yeah. So again, uh, I think it's right

01:21:49.320 that it's his least likely of the seven, but he, there are reasons to think he could

01:21:54.280 win it. And, um, you know, the biggest thing she has going for is, is probably is, is the 0.95

01:21:58.780 unions. Yeah. And, and, and whether that's, that's a union and a location where the gap

01:22:05.260 between the leadership and the rank and file is smaller. There's a reason to believe that

01:22:09.020 she'll, you know, she'll do well. Right. Unite here and the, yeah, the big casino workers 1.00

01:22:15.520 unions. So I would say again, her best state, but, but a state Trump can still win. Okay.

01:22:22.840 Let's move. New Mexico? No, Arizona. New Mexico is blue. Uh, Arizona is probably Trump's best

01:22:29.400 of the seven. Um, if there's a state she'll give up on, and I don't think she will, cause

01:22:35.040 she's got so much money and there's only seven and she's got to fly out. Can I ask you to

01:22:38.140 pause with, just, can you summarize the, where the money stands as of right now? Um, relatively.

01:22:43.020 So originally, uh, uh, her money advantage, uh, the Democrats money advantage early on 0.99

01:22:48.980 when Trump was having trouble raising money was significant. Then they had a money advantage,

01:22:53.180 but not dispositive. It's now potentially dispositive. Um, not so much for the ads,

01:23:00.180 although that matters too, but for organizing, she just, she has, she, she's raised a billion

01:23:05.600 dollars since she got in the race. That's extraordinary. And that doesn't include like the

01:23:09.400 outside money. That's, that's not directly tied to it.

01:23:12.000 She's raised a billion dollars since she got in the race. She's raised more for her campaign 0.88

01:23:17.100 and for the party committees that she controls, uh, than Trump has raised the whole campaign.

01:23:22.260 So it, you know, typically when you're at raise, as Trump said in, in 16, they'll have enough

01:23:29.000 to win. They, they won't have as much money, but they'll have enough to win. It may be he doesn't.

01:23:33.480 I'm not saying for sure, but her financial advantage over the last three weeks is considerable.

01:23:37.780 Where's all that money coming from? Uh, grassroots and rich people. One of the biggest mysteries in

01:23:44.500 politics for the last 20 years has been Democrats capacity to raise big money online compared to

01:23:51.020 Republicans. Jamie Harrison, who's now chair of the democratic party ran against Lindsey Graham in

01:23:56.040 South Carolina. No chance to win. Not a particularly good candidate. Nice guy, but not, you know, not,

01:24:02.560 not some, somebody people thought I'll give money cause I'll be president someday. He raised like

01:24:06.780 $110 million. That's more than Marco Rubio, who should be a good web fundraiser, social media

01:24:13.040 fundraiser raised when he ran for president. They just are great at raising money from small dollar

01:24:18.520 donors. Part of it was they started earlier with the thing act blue, but it doesn't explain it. And

01:24:24.160 I talk to people about it all the time. I can't explain it, but that's a big part of why Trump's being

01:24:27.960 outraged. And if they hadn't kept indicting him, he'd be even more disparate. And then there's people

01:24:32.500 writing big checks. Wait, if they hadn't kept indicting him, he wouldn't have raised as much

01:24:36.480 money. Trump raised, you know, a lot of his online money in the wake of all the legal stuff, like

01:24:42.160 literally on the days of indictments, the days of bookings, court dates. That was a great equalizer

01:24:47.940 for him to raise more money, but, but he's badly outraged. Uh, but again, I don't think it's

01:24:54.500 dispositive. It might be, it might be dispositive, but I don't think it will be. I think Trump has

01:24:59.220 just enough. And the democratic party has rich people. So does the Republican party. The big

01:25:04.160 disparity is not the rich people. The big disparity is the small dollars. There's some disparity,

01:25:10.080 right? There's three kinds of money. There's, there's small dollars, social media and online.

01:25:15.080 There's bundlers, people writing checks of, you know, 3,900 or whatever it is now. And then there's

01:25:21.180 people writing super PAC checks for, you know, 10 million or, you know, less. Um, Trump, Trump is,

01:25:28.600 is, is doing is, is I think being outraised in all three categories is my guess. But I think the

01:25:34.660 biggest discrepancy is the one that's the most valuable, which is the low dollars. Cause it's,

01:25:39.700 it's, it's, it's people can continue to give to you. And for that money, the Harris campaign gets

01:25:45.800 more TV ads, more digital ads, more field organizers, more offices, more get out the vote

01:25:53.100 operations, uh, more of lawn signs. I've noticed more lawn signs, uh, and, and more surrogate

01:26:00.080 travel, you know, just more of all the stuff you can spend money on. And, and again, no one's

01:26:06.460 criticizing, uh, their operation in terms of how they're going about turning people out, voting

01:26:12.420 early, voting by mail, and then on election day, getting people to polls there, their team led by

01:26:16.940 the woman who's running the campaign, Jen O'Malley Dillon, who's an organizer by, by trade. Um,

01:26:22.480 they're there, that's an advantage. So in other words, more money spent wisely. It's a big advantage.

01:26:28.160 So you think Trump probably does have an advantage in Arizona?

01:26:31.860 Yes. It's as bad, just as, as the silver state is her best of the seven. My sources agree that

01:26:37.360 Arizona is the best, his best of the seven.

01:26:39.340 All right, let's move East. Um, Georgia, um, it's a, it's a, it's a tougher one. Um, he's,

01:26:47.820 Trump is ahead. Trump is favored. I think if Georgia will, will, will be, would be the,

01:26:54.660 the fifth or sixth state she won if she's, if she's doing really well. In other words,

01:26:59.680 if she wins Georgia, it means she's going to win, uh, all the great Lake states and, and probably, 0.55

01:27:05.740 um, uh, the silver state as well. Um, so it's, it's probably Trump's third best of them probably.

01:27:15.660 And, um, uh, and I'd make him the favorite there. And my democratic sources today would make him the

01:27:20.200 favorite there as well. Okay. There's, there is a reality of democratic politics in, in Southern

01:27:24.940 states, which is if you can increase the, the percentage of the vote that comes from black vote,

01:27:29.780 which is called the contribution to the vote. So what percentage of the number of people who vote

01:27:34.100 are black and you can, and she can get her numbers back up to where Democrats typically are two big 0.96

01:27:40.260 ifs, she'll win. Um, uh, but Trump is, is doing well with the young black men there. And, you know, 0.85

01:27:47.220 the normal way he wins States running up in exurbs in rural areas. Um, all of the seven States have a

01:27:54.780 pro-choice energy in the two Western States, there's ballot measures that will help there.

01:28:01.100 There aren't in the, in the, in the five others, but Georgia, you know, the Atlanta Metro area is

01:28:05.820 very pro-choice, a lot of suburban women. So some combination of, of her swelling black vote, 1.00

01:28:12.600 holding her own with black vote, uh, and suburban voters, particularly women, she could win it, 0.64

01:28:17.680 but Trump is the favorite there. Okay. So we've named three so far North Carolina. Uh, it's funny,

01:28:24.240 the vice president herself, I'm told, and, and a lot of her aides have been very bullish on North

01:28:28.740 Carolina as the linchpin for replacing Pennsylvania. If, if they lose Pennsylvania, 0.80

01:28:34.620 I have one Republican source who I trust immensely regarding North Carolina who says no way Trump

01:28:41.420 loses it. So the storm is a variable. No, I, no way to know who that helps or hurt. The, the governor's

01:28:47.700 race is a bit of a variable, but my sources now, I trust the ones who say Trump is likely to win

01:28:53.880 North Carolina, but vice presidents put a ton of time in there. And I think she'll continue to 1.00

01:28:57.880 because they need a hedge against losing Pennsylvania. Now, Pennsylvania does has more

01:29:03.460 electoral votes. So if it's just a swap, if Trump wins the three Sunbelt States and Pennsylvania,

01:29:09.240 and she wins North Carolina, Wisconsin, and, and, uh, Michigan, she loses. So she, so if she,

01:29:16.620 if she wins Michigan and Wisconsin and North Carolina, but loses Pennsylvania, she needs one of the

01:29:22.860 other three Sunbelt States. But North Carolina is the largest and, and, and, and, and, and the same

01:29:27.880 as Georgia, same number, but that's the kind of linchpin for them. So that's the biggest mystery.

01:29:32.700 They're very Democrats, very bullish on it. Republicans believe that it'll be Trump's in the

01:29:37.580 end. Interesting. Yeah. What about Wisconsin? Um, was, was considered her best of the seven until

01:29:44.940 she started to slip there in the last couple of weeks. And it's always been a close state. Um,

01:29:51.240 uh, Trump had his convention there, a lot of rural vote there. Um, a lot of the social issues cut for

01:29:57.700 Trump there, less pro-choice state than some of the others. So I would say if you take the

01:30:03.720 combination of my sources, it's a slight favorite to Harris, but if Trump's running, running the rest

01:30:09.820 of the table, he'll win Wisconsin. I thought the whole point of Tim Walz was to shore up support in

01:30:14.760 a place like Wisconsin. Running mates really don't make a difference. Yeah. They just don't. As long as

01:30:18.600 you pick someone who the public says is ready to be president, it's really very marginal.

01:30:24.380 Um, that leaves Michigan. Michigan. Um, so it's a little bit of a cross current there because it's,

01:30:31.440 it's kind of the bluest of this, of the seven states, but she's got problem with labor. She's 0.99

01:30:37.100 got problem with black men. She's got problem with, um, union, uh, with, uh, Arab American and Muslim 0.97

01:30:42.320 American voters. And she's not gone there until recently, just the last couple of days and done

01:30:49.680 the things that the locals, their demand, like the local Democrats say, you have to go to union halls.

01:30:55.080 You have to be doing, you know, black barbershops. You have to be, um, figuring out how to make peace 1.00

01:31:00.660 with the Arab American and Muslim American. So she's done those things the last few days. Um,

01:31:05.960 I would say, um, uh, it's a must win for her. It's not a must win for Trump, but, uh, I'd make it at

01:31:12.960 this point or just like in Wisconsin, a mild favorite. And finally, Pennsylvania. Yeah. So

01:31:19.660 it is said, the winner of Pennsylvania will win. It's said by everyone all the time. Yeah. It's

01:31:24.900 almost certainly true. I'm going to do a two hour show called. It's all about Pennsylvania

01:31:29.180 because it sort of is. Now I say Trump can win without Pennsylvania and she can win with that

01:31:36.280 Pennsylvania. And it's not far fetched. They're both have reasonable paths without it. So people

01:31:40.980 shouldn't say it's all about it, but certainly the winner of Pennsylvania is as a matter of demographics

01:31:46.300 and electoral college math is in the driver's seat. The other person has, has kind of has to, um,

01:31:54.200 circumvent conventional wisdom about where these states are to make up for the loss of Pennsylvania.

01:32:01.420 And Trump is ahead and he's been ahead for a while now ahead within the margin of error.

01:32:06.320 But if you're consistently ahead, even if it's in the margin of error, you know, no one thinks these

01:32:10.660 states are going to be one by seven points. So she's got demographic problems there. Changing her 1.00

01:32:16.380 position on fracking was absolutely essential. Uh, whether people believed it or not, she couldn't

01:32:21.140 have won being against fracking. It's not as big a deal throughout the state as people think,

01:32:26.140 but in the parties of the state, it's a very big deal. So I make Trump the favorite there as do most

01:32:31.580 of my democratic sources, but she's spending an unprecedented amount of money. She'll continue 1.00

01:32:36.440 to work it there. Um, as a democratic governor, it has two democratic senators. It's, it's, it's more

01:32:41.580 of a blue state in terms of statewide office than a red state. Trump won it once and lost it once,

01:32:46.880 but he's showing strength there with white working class voters, with older voters, with black men,

01:32:53.220 uh, with the Hispanics, uh, suburbs, uh, around Philly. So, um, it's, it's, uh, and, and that's,

01:33:00.760 and that's a place because Biden was born in Pennsylvania and so associated with it. That's

01:33:06.020 a place where trading out Biden for Harris was probably a downgrade for them that they're Biden,

01:33:11.520 Biden, you know, at least on paper had a better chance than she does.

01:33:14.620 Well, he's of course a loyal son of Pennsylvania.

01:33:17.860 Yeah. He had his own problems though. They've also not been a super, uh, big state about electing

01:33:22.660 women to statewide office compared to some other states for whatever reason. Um, and she's a 1.00

01:33:28.280 California liberal. You know, one of the things I don't think we've discussed in our brief talks

01:33:33.260 so far is she's really liberal, right? She's really liberal. She's culturally liberal. She's

01:33:39.540 economically liberal and she's not done a sister soldier. She's not fleshed out a portrait of who 0.79

01:33:44.960 she is, except for saying she's a capitalist in a way that, uh, has resonated with a lot of these

01:33:50.760 undecided voters. And you see that in Pennsylvania as much as anywhere else. They just, they see her

01:33:56.360 for what she is. And that's not really what Pennsylvania is. Their governor is a pretty moderate

01:34:02.040 Democrat. And as we did say at the outset, or you said she hasn't really, I mean, if I'm Kamala

01:34:21.880 Harris and I'm from San Francisco by way of Montreal, I'm going to make some effort to convince people

01:34:29.740 I'm not as liberal as they think I am. She doesn't, hasn't done a ton of that. Well, she's, she's done

01:34:36.800 small things on the margins, uh, and not, not put them in sharp relief so that everybody would hear

01:34:42.800 them because again, she's, she's, she's cautious and, and, and indecisive. So she, she really hasn't.

01:34:49.940 And, and it's, it's, you know, time's short. And, and of course, anything she does now will be seen

01:34:55.680 by some voters as Craven. Of course. You know. Um, what's the spread between the publicly available

01:35:02.140 polls and the so-called internal polling of the campaigns? Like how different are those numbers?

01:35:06.360 Um, it depends on which, you know, which apple and which orange you're comparing. But I would say,

01:35:10.840 uh, it just like a back of the envelope, super rough thing. Trump, like, you know, two points

01:35:16.720 stronger in a lot of the private polls, not in every state, but in some of the states than in the public

01:35:20.560 polls. What accounts for that? The public polls are done on the cheap and of all the ways newsrooms

01:35:26.760 have cut back, poll, the polling budgets take a big hit, right? So a poll is only good if likely

01:35:32.240 voters, if you know who a likely voter is, right? And the simplest explanation is if you say, I want

01:35:39.600 my poll to have 40% Democrats, okay? Because that's what I think the electorate's going to be. So I think

01:35:45.160 a poll that's good, that has love likely voters, 40% of my respondents are going to be Democrats.

01:35:50.960 So which Democrats are going to fill the slots? Because you're, you're under pressure to finish

01:35:55.220 the poll as quickly as possible. You want 400 respondents say, uh, the longer it takes,

01:35:59.340 the more money it costs because you're paying for the call center to continue to make calls.

01:36:02.860 So the Democrats are most likely to fill the slot are better educated Democrats who are more likely

01:36:08.080 to pick up a phone or answer an online survey and say, I'm a Democrat and I'm participating.

01:36:13.820 Those wealthier Democrats and better educated Democrats, because those are the particularly better

01:36:19.180 educated are the, are, is the, is the, is the way to, is a single trait by which you can most easily

01:36:26.200 tell if they're a Harris voter or a Trump voter, they're going to fill the slots. So you say, okay,

01:36:31.700 40% are Democrats. So I haven't, I'm not over-representing Democrats. You are representing

01:36:36.980 Democrats who are more likely to vote for Harris than Democrats who are likely to vote for Trump.

01:36:41.240 And that single variable is, is according to my sources, probably the main reason why the private

01:36:47.540 polling, which is more expensively done and wants an, needs an accurate poll. So they know how to make

01:36:54.720 decisions about the campaign compared to the public polls, which just want to get the poll done so they

01:36:59.540 can publish it for publicity. They're not looking to be accurate. They're looking to get it done as

01:37:03.700 cheaply as possible.

01:37:04.540 So it's more expensive to do private polls. Kamala Harris, just, as you said, raised over a billion 1.00

01:37:11.260 dollars. I asked where that money went. I should have pointed out that the consultants, I have

01:37:16.380 noticed just having known consultants for 30 years, are richer than they've ever been. And I'm not sure

01:37:21.480 the public understands just how rich some can.

01:37:24.120 I don't think it's true they're richer than they've ever been.

01:37:26.220 Oh, really?

01:37:26.720 Yeah.

01:37:27.660 Maybe I'm just noticing that some of them are not flying commercial anymore.

01:37:32.280 Yeah. So a lot of, I think a lot of the change, and I don't know, like dollar per dollar,

01:37:37.320 like, are they making 47 cents on the dollar compared to before? But I can tell you the Bush

01:37:41.840 campaign really changed the culture. In one, in one very fundamental way, the people who make the ads

01:37:47.200 used to get what was called a percentage of the box, right? And, and that was ridiculous. 0.87

01:37:52.720 Like 15%. 0.96

01:37:53.340 15%. So Bush negotiated them down to like 1% or something.

01:37:57.360 Yeah.

01:37:57.520 He also said, you know, salaries are going to be controlled. Then when John Podesta was chair

01:38:02.860 of Hillary's campaign in 2016, he said, if you're one of the many people traveling between DC and New

01:38:08.320 York, you're going to take the bus for 12 bucks as opposed to the train or the plane. Again, that was

01:38:14.480 a very big kind of cultural thing of, we're just not going to waste the campaign's money on either

01:38:20.320 spending or salary. So my sense is that consultants don't make what they used to, particularly ad buyers,

01:38:24.940 but my sense is even pollsters don't make what they used to, but they do, they do make a lot and

01:38:29.000 they spend a lot on polls, which is why they're better. They're just, there's a, it's a, it's a

01:38:33.640 quality, it's not a quantitative difference, a qualitative difference to say we need an accurate

01:38:38.520 poll. So we know how to make decisions about this race.

01:38:41.320 So a billion dollars gets dumped into one, just one side of one race in the final months 0.88

01:38:47.400 and no one's getting rich off that?

01:38:49.120 They're getting rich. I don't think the consultants themselves are making as much as they used to.

01:38:53.120 That's my impression. Interesting. The consultants I covered early in my career were like

01:38:57.080 millionaires who had like their own planes and vacation houses. Most of them aren't, a few are,

01:39:02.940 but most of them now, they just don't, they just kind of change the culture of how much consultants

01:39:08.140 get paid. What do you make of, and at, you know, our age, is it bewildering to you to see the,

01:39:14.780 the shuffling of the parties, you know, Dick Cheney and his daughter now campaigning for Harris,

01:39:23.180 endorsed Harris.

01:39:24.200 Yeah.

01:39:24.600 And then you see a bunch of people you thought, you know, Bobby Kennedy.

01:39:28.020 Right.

01:39:29.940 Campaigning for Trump. Like, what do you make of that?

01:39:32.260 Well, I'll probably anger some viewers here by saying, I don't think you can attribute what the

01:39:37.820 Cheney's did to anything but their belief in the unfitness of Donald Trump to be president and,

01:39:44.280 and, and growing somewhat from January 6th. I don't think the Cheney's are going to get rich

01:39:50.500 off of this.

01:39:51.160 Oh no.

01:39:51.500 I don't think they want jobs. I don't think, I don't, I mean, I think it's possible Liz would 0.99

01:39:55.320 take one, but I don't think she's doing it for that at all. I don't think they hate Donald Trump

01:40:00.600 for some past grief, personal grievance. I really do believe that they think what January 6th and,

01:40:07.740 and related things and challenging the election say about Trump's character, make him unfit for

01:40:12.660 the job. And they're willing to support someone who's position on issues they find to be, you know,

01:40:18.460 socialist or worse. So I think that's what explains-

01:40:21.060 But they don't, I mean, I know them and my take is that what they care about is not January 6th.

01:40:25.280 They care about war and the foreign policy stuff.

01:40:29.100 I don't, I disagree. I think, I think that matters to them in terms of, of Ukraine. And

01:40:33.120 we haven't talked about the forever wars. That's something you and I see eye to eye on. And,

01:40:36.960 and I think another huge blind spot of the dominant media is, is, is the, is the America's

01:40:43.160 bipartisan from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump disdain for the forever wars. And I know the Cheney's

01:40:48.400 disagree with that point of view, but I don't think that's what's motivating them here. I think,

01:40:54.140 I think they, they, um, and again, this won't be popular with everyone watching us, but

01:40:58.800 they, they, they, they think that, that Trump makes the planet less safe by not being supportive

01:41:05.060 of Ukraine and, and, and just not, uh, challenging Putin as aggressively as they'd like.

01:41:11.280 They definitely think that.

01:41:12.140 Yeah. But I don't think that's what, I don't think that, I don't think, I don't think the,

01:41:16.200 the, the, um, the characterization of them as warmongers or lovers of the military industrial

01:41:25.800 complex. I just think they have a different point of view about how to keep the planet and

01:41:29.880 the country safe.

01:41:31.960 Well, they certainly, I mean, I think both are true.

01:41:35.460 Yeah.

01:41:36.200 Well, both are true, meaning they care about January 6th and they care about wars?

01:41:40.140 No, I think it's overwhelmingly war.

01:41:42.300 I think that in their minds, they are keeping, you know, an international order that's been

01:41:47.200 very effective intact. And Donald Trump challenges that order. And that challenge is, in their

01:41:53.840 opinion, like a map and a massive threat to the world.

01:41:57.100 Right. Well, I, and I think that's sincere. They think that, well, but I also think they're

01:42:00.640 warmongers.

01:42:02.240 Like, I think they think they have high motives.

01:42:05.160 They may be high motives, but I also think that, you know, the root of their power is,

01:42:11.660 is planning war. Like, that's what makes them feel godlike.

01:42:15.600 So, I just, I agree with you on the substance of their objection. I disagree with you about that

01:42:20.840 being, uh, for Liz at least, uh, uh, uh, uh, whatever, what's the opposite of subordinate,

01:42:27.060 uh, over January 6th. I think January 6th really matters to her a lot. I just do. In terms of

01:42:33.600 characterizing them as warmongers, I, I, I just, I just don't agree if I understand the

01:42:39.320 term. I don't, I don't think they love war. I don't think they, I don't think they profit

01:42:43.580 from the military industrial complex. I don't think they're on the boards of defense contractors

01:42:47.980 or, or they're looking to get rich.

01:42:49.420 Oh, I agree. Oh, it's much deeper than that.

01:42:51.660 Yeah, but they, but they, but they are, they just have a, they have a very different conception

01:42:57.060 than Donald Trump and then a lot of the American people about how to keep us safe. Their view

01:43:02.040 of how to keep us safe is to get us into endless wars.

01:43:04.380 Yeah, I completely, no, no, I completely agree with you. Yeah. Um, and I never thought, I

01:43:09.520 thought all the Halliburton stuff was absurd. I, and also a shallow analysis because I, I

01:43:15.560 think it's, I think it's actually much worse than that. But whatever.

01:43:19.720 Well, I mean, I think it's worse in the sense that, that, um, they take their intellect

01:43:27.000 and their worldview and they lock us into the loss of American lives and great costs and

01:43:32.980 hurt our reputation around the world, exactly the opposite of what they think. But I don't

01:43:37.940 question their, in case of the Cheney's, I don't question their belief. Uh, it's, it's,

01:43:44.840 it's not connected to self-interest.

01:43:46.480 I completely agree. The reason I'm saying it's worse is because it derives not from greed,

01:43:52.100 but from hubris. And I think that's much scarier than greed. Yeah. And in other words, if you think

01:43:58.120 you have powers that no human possesses, for example, the power to foresee the consequences

01:44:03.140 of a big decision that you make, you know, a rational person by rational, I mean, someone

01:44:09.260 informed by humility, which is a realistic understanding of limits of his power. You do

01:44:14.140 something big, like invade a country and an honest person says, I have no freaking idea really

01:44:19.160 what happens next. And the Cheney's, because they are like everyone in DC, bipartisan seized

01:44:23.860 with this crazed hubris. They're like, no, no, I know exactly what's going to happen.

01:44:26.800 Right. This will start a domino effect where democracy takes root in the Middle East. And

01:44:31.260 like, that's insane.

01:44:32.860 Well, the fact is we do know what's going to happen. If we look at history, it'll end badly.

01:44:37.040 Exactly.

01:44:37.780 We do know. The only thing I don't like about when you say warmongers is to me, warmonger

01:44:41.940 means somebody who relishes sending the U S to war and maybe profits from it, or does it

01:44:47.560 because they're insufficiently concerned about the welfare of the country?

01:44:51.760 No, no, no. I'm saying just, I'm, I'm, I'm saying something slightly different than that,

01:44:55.520 which is someone who believes that the most important thing he does. And I think 90% of

01:45:03.340 Republican senators feel this way, for example, um, is sort of manage the world and is convinced

01:45:09.440 that he's doing a good job. And this is like a high calling. And he understands again,

01:45:13.480 consequences, which no human can foresee. So that's deeply offensive to me because I think

01:45:18.480 it's like stupid and corrupt on the most basic level. You don't understand the limits of, 1.00

01:45:23.320 of human foresight. And that's a massive problem.

01:45:25.940 Yeah. And, and again, history makes it pretty clear and, and it furiates me when people say

01:45:30.960 Trump hates NATO. Trump wants to destroy NATO. He doesn't. He wants to reform it so that it's fair

01:45:36.460 to American taxpayers and that its mission matches up with our security needs.

01:45:40.160 I totally agree. I, by contrast, do hate NATO and like to destroy it. So I am the radical.

01:45:45.220 Trump is totally moderate on this stuff.

01:45:47.140 I agree with you. I mean, I, I, I would only want to keep it if it were really reformed,

01:45:52.500 but I think there's a, I think there is still purpose for it.

01:45:55.220 There could be, but man, does it hurt the countries that participate in my opinion? It

01:46:01.120 eliminates their sovereignty and foreign troops on your soil. Like that's a big thing. 1.00

01:46:05.920 Yeah. The problem is they just don't have an, there's, there's, it's the best arrangement

01:46:12.100 for maximizing our safety. Even, even with all the flaws, if it were reformed, it would

01:46:18.180 be, it would be, it would be, it even flawed, it's probably still the best arrangement, but

01:46:23.180 if it were reformed, I think it clearly would be.

01:46:24.900 Well, Europe is, Western Europe is done. Its economy is in, in Shamil's. 0.99

01:46:29.740 No, but it's not going away. It's not being sold to the Martians. I mean, it's still going 0.93

01:46:34.120 to be filled with Finnish and Belgians and Dutch. They're all going to be there.

01:46:39.480 You know, as someone who's part Finnish that it hurts me even to hear the word Finnish because

01:46:44.600 I just think that was a country that had sovereignty, that earned it by beating, you know, one of the

01:46:50.600 world's great powers in an actual battle, the Winter War of 1940. And they just gave it up

01:46:56.220 to NATO and they're going to just really suffer as a result.

01:47:00.120 Yeah. But I mean, would the world be better if they all had their own robust armies?

01:47:05.080 No, I mean, but I, I, you know,

01:47:06.940 Navies and Air Force and, you know, you, you could easily envision like regional cooperation

01:47:13.120 between say the four Nordic countries or Eastern.

01:47:17.180 But why is, but why is that better than a, a, a continent wide, uh, force to deal with the

01:47:23.720 realities, which is Russia and China are going to threaten us for a long time. 0.78

01:47:26.080 But it's not continent wide.

01:47:27.620 Actually, it's, there's just an extension of a far away empire that doesn't have

01:47:32.080 any of their interests in, you know, at heart. And, uh, and, and also it, it degrades the spirit

01:47:39.080 of a country to have foreign troops on its soil.

01:47:41.600 I agree with that.

01:47:42.260 You look at England and it's like, why, why is it collapsing so fast? And I think a lot of

01:47:48.340 that is, and I don't think anyone meant to do this, actually. I think a lot of the worst

01:47:52.840 things that happen to your very wise and true point about the Chinese, I think they think 1.00

01:47:57.660 they're doing the right thing.

01:47:58.960 I think the people who administer the EU think they're doing the right thing. I think your

01:48:03.420 average NATO commander thinks he's doing the right thing, but the effect of having foreign 0.99

01:48:07.540 troops on your soil for 80 years is to eliminate any pride in your country.

01:48:11.920 Yeah, I, I, I agree. And I think you see that Jap, Japan's probably the country I know 1.00

01:48:15.560 best and America's true presence is just deleterious to their feeling like an adult country.

01:48:21.620 Totally. And that's one of the reasons they have such high suicide rate. Same with South 1.00

01:48:24.440 Korea.

01:48:24.760 I agree. But, but again, there are threats in the world that are serious.

01:48:29.720 For sure.

01:48:30.080 That America cannot as easily deal, deal with deterrence and spying and, uh, and, uh, action

01:48:39.980 if necessary, if we don't have North Korea, Australia, South Korea, Australia, Japan, and

01:48:45.800 NATO countries, uh, with some degree of military cooperation.

01:48:48.880 Yeah. I just think it's, it just, it's just the reality of, of real estate and how long

01:48:53.280 it takes to get places. You know, we cannot defend and deter from the continental United

01:48:59.380 States. Just not going to happen to the same degree that's necessary to deal with Middle 1.00

01:49:05.260 East and Russia and China and North Korea.

01:49:07.980 Yeah.

01:49:08.380 You know, it just, it just, it just a requirement geographically to be there, but I agree with

01:49:13.000 you in terms of, but it's hurt. It's really is kind of like Munchausen's by proxy. It's

01:49:16.920 like we were killing the people we claim to love.

01:49:19.580 But if, but, but one, but one of the powers of Trump's idea is if they paid more for it,

01:49:24.080 if more of it was theirs, I think they, it would be less infantilizing and, and it would 0.53

01:49:28.660 be, uh, uh, they'd be more full partners as opposed to being under the American umbrella.

01:49:33.500 Part of the challenge is also the nuclear weapons, right? We don't want these other 0.99

01:49:37.820 countries to have nuclear weapons.

01:49:38.740 No, that's exactly right.

01:49:39.380 And if we're not partnered with the Japanese and the, and the, and the South Koreans and 0.99

01:49:42.960 the Europeans, they're going to want nuclear weapons.

01:49:45.240 Well, and Japan especially, because Japan, I think people, it sounds like you like and

01:49:50.580 go know, know the area, but the one thing I'm not, no expert on Asia, but having spent

01:49:55.080 time there, the one thing I'm always shocked by is how totally freaked out by Japan. 0.98

01:49:59.260 Every other country is, particularly China.

01:50:01.900 Yeah.

01:50:02.000 Yeah. And South Korea too, their ally.

01:50:04.980 For sure.

01:50:05.980 Yeah.

01:50:06.240 You don't think of Japan as a martial power because it's not. 0.65

01:50:08.520 No, but, but 1945 wasn't that long ago for them.

01:50:11.540 That's exactly right.

01:50:12.200 Yeah. And that's, and that's, again, there's downsides to our relationship. People in Okinawa 1.00

01:50:16.900 hate the United States because of our military presence. But the upside is we have, we have

01:50:21.860 effectively restrained them and allowed them to become part of the community of nations

01:50:25.460 and develop a relationship with South Korea that's stronger now. It's one of the things

01:50:29.320 Biden has done successfully in foreign policy. It's stronger now than it's been since the

01:50:32.940 end of the war in part because they do not have a military that's threatening to these

01:50:37.660 other countries.

01:50:38.760 Yeah. The Japanese are so elaborately nice. They're just such wonderful people. It's hard

01:50:44.480 to imagine what they were not that long ago.

01:50:47.780 It's amazing to turn in one generation. And I mean, if anything, they could use a little

01:50:52.000 bit more of the fierceness.

01:50:53.240 I agree.

01:50:53.700 In the current generation, but they've been turned into just completely defamed in a way

01:50:58.880 that I think has hurt the society, but had to be done to some extent because of the specter

01:51:03.980 of the end of the war and the strong feelings, as you said, in China and South Korea is, wow,

01:51:09.200 to this day, really, really jaundiced view of the Japanese.

01:51:13.540 Yeah. It's really noticing.

01:51:14.580 Now you asked me about Bobby Kennedy. Predicting or explaining Bobby Kennedy is like predicting

01:51:20.520 or explaining Kim Jong-un. I mean, he's just a, he's a mercurial man, that Bobby Kennedy.

01:51:25.860 So why is he for Trump? I think he's anti-establishment and he believes that the current

01:51:32.380 military situation, food safety, foreign wars, all of that is, is, it requires profound change.

01:51:45.860 And so I think there's some really strong ideological ties to Trump. I think he also is angry

01:51:50.500 at the Democratic Party for keeping him from being able to run for the nomination fairly

01:51:55.060 and for attacking him personally. So I think that's part of it too. And I think Trump offered

01:52:03.200 him the better deal for what it would mean to endorse him. But, but I think it's a mistake

01:52:08.060 to just say he's a cuckoo who wanted a big role. I think food safety, foreign wars, military

01:52:15.440 industrial complex. Yeah. All that is if he were, if he were 50, 20 years younger, had

01:52:23.040 a normal voice and stayed on message, I think he would have been a formidable.

01:52:28.140 Oh, he'd be the president of the United States.

01:52:30.180 Formidable. His, his announcement speech was one of the best and most important speeches

01:52:34.440 of the last five years by any politician, but he simply doesn't have the discipline to

01:52:38.800 do this. And, and in that sense, he's a great companion for Donald Trump who also lacks the

01:52:45.240 discipline to stay focused on the core issues that have immense appeal across party lines,

01:52:49.740 not just fringe.

01:52:51.100 So he told me, um, I think a lot of them, I think your analysis is fair, but he told

01:52:57.540 me that the democratic party didn't even consider talking to him. Um, and you know, clearly he's

01:53:05.700 got a real constituency. He's an energetic man and he's got a lot going for him despite,

01:53:11.200 you know, the deficits. And so like, why wouldn't you make a good faith effort to bring him over

01:53:15.940 to the party that he grew up in? I don't understand that.

01:53:18.760 I think that, um, you mean, you mean after he, he got out of the,

01:53:22.240 yeah.

01:53:22.980 And he's considering getting out. Obviously he's considering getting out. We knew that was going

01:53:26.440 to happen. So like, why would the Kamala people try for him?

01:53:29.400 They just decided to not elevate him by treating him like a serious person.

01:53:35.820 Um, it's a decision they made to just brand him as a kook. Um, I I'd love to see a parallel 1.00

01:53:43.060 universe if Biden hadn't run and he had run for the democratic nomination, I would have been

01:53:47.160 curious to see how he would have done. Um, but they just decided when he was running for the

01:53:51.660 nomination to destroy him and he made it easy through his past and his present. But, um, having

01:53:58.460 done that, I think they just felt they couldn't suddenly change and decide he was a good guy.

01:54:02.140 It's, it, it, it does seem like, and Bernie Sanders, uh, obviously felt this very personally

01:54:10.480 twice, but it seems like the real sin in the democratic party is trying to bring any kind of

01:54:15.720 change.

01:54:16.580 Yeah. Being anti-establishment, being populist, um, you know, Bernie had, had Bernie played under

01:54:24.040 fair rules. I think he would have been the nominee at least one of the two times, but, um, that's,

01:54:30.000 you know, that's politics. And, and whether you've got an incumbent like Joe Biden or a

01:54:33.720 quasi incumbent like Hillary Clinton, um, you know, the party establishment's going to do 1.00

01:54:39.080 what it does and, and, and pre-Trump, that would have happened as well in the Republican

01:54:42.860 party.

01:54:43.680 So, okay, let's just, I've got two more big questions for you. Um, first I should have

01:54:48.600 asked you earlier, who is running the country right now? Do you know?

01:54:51.660 Um, uh, yeah, Joe Biden and, uh, the White House chief of staff and senior advisors to the president

01:55:00.460 and definitely Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. Yeah. Um, if you manage Joe Biden's time,

01:55:09.200 if you recognize when he's up to it and when he's not, he can still make a lot of decisions and I

01:55:14.400 believe does. So I don't think there's any Barack Obama or all these other things, but the White House

01:55:20.600 chief of staff has to manage that. And then there's a few very close personal aides, the

01:55:25.020 president who aren't famous people, but they, they help figure out when to plug him into this and,

01:55:30.800 and minimize the prospect that a big decision will be needed to be made at a time when he's not

01:55:35.900 equipped to make it. It's not a great situation, but, but it is, it is as evidence of the fact that,

01:55:42.220 that, you know, the number of times he's displayed, uh, abject inability, you know,

01:55:48.720 it's probably 25 times where it's just abject given the circumstances. That's relatively small

01:55:53.700 and it's testament to not just the, the fierceness of the conspiracy, but the, the degree to which

01:55:58.180 it's well managed, you know, have to, have to understand under the circumstances, if there's

01:56:03.320 not going to be an invocation of the 25th amendment, if he's not going to resign, we have to be grateful

01:56:07.920 that it's well managed. Let's say Trump wins, um, three weeks from today. What happens? The

01:56:18.620 Democratic Party is, I mean, as you said, um, a lot of Democrats, maybe the majority believe that

01:56:26.000 Trump becoming president again is the worst thing that ever could happen. So how do they respond to

01:56:29.860 that? I say this not flippantly. I think it will be the cause of the greatest mental health crisis in the

01:56:35.120 history of the country. I don't, I think tens of millions of people will question their connection

01:56:41.120 to the nation, their connection to other human beings, their connection to, uh, their vision of

01:56:48.220 what their future for them and their children could be like. And I think that will be, uh, require an

01:56:54.040 enormous amount of access to mental health professionals. I think it'll lead to, uh, uh, trauma in the

01:57:02.380 workplace. I think there'll be some degree of, uh, a hundred percent serious, a hundred percent

01:57:08.380 serious. I think there'll be alcoholism. There'll be broken marriages. They'll be, yeah, they, they,

01:57:15.680 they think he's the worst person possible to be president and having won by the hand of Jim Comey

01:57:21.480 and fluke in 2016, and then performed in office for four years and denied who won the election last

01:57:28.180 time. And January 6th, the fact that under a fair election, America chose by the rules pre-agreed to

01:57:35.940 Donald Trump again, I think it will cause the biggest mental health crisis in the history of

01:57:40.040 America. And I don't think it will be kind of a passing thing that by the inauguration will be 0.93

01:57:44.980 fine. I think it will be sustained and, and unprecedented and hideous. And I don't think the

01:57:50.420 country's ready for it. So mental health crises often manifest in violence.

01:57:56.400 Yeah. I think there'll be some violence. I think there'll be, there'll be workplace fights. There'll

01:58:02.780 be fights at birthday kids, birthday parties. Uh, I think there'll be protests that will turn violent.

01:58:08.360 I hope they're not, but I think there will be some, but I, I think it will be more, it'll be less

01:58:14.240 anger and more, um, a, a failure to understand, uh, how it could happen. You know, like, like,

01:58:23.680 like the death of a child or your spouse announcing that, that, that, you know, your wife announcing

01:58:29.200 she's a lesbian and she's leaving you for your best friend, like a, like a, like a, something 1.00

01:58:34.180 that's, that's so traumatic that it is impossible for even the most mentally healthy person to truly,

01:58:42.480 uh, process and incorporate into their daily life. I hope I'm wrong, but, but I think that,

01:58:49.440 I think that's, what's going to happen for tens of millions of people because they, they think that,

01:58:54.460 that, that, that their fellow citizens supporting Trump is a sign of fundamental evil at the heart

01:59:03.400 of their fellow citizens and of the nation. That's how they view it.

01:59:09.180 Well, that's very heavy.

01:59:11.100 Yeah. Um, so that's one thing I think will happen. And then I hope that Trump handles it well.

01:59:16.220 I hope that he recognizes his, both his responsibility and his self-interest and that

01:59:22.340 he chooses in his words and in his, uh, cabinet and white house appointments, nominations, and in

01:59:29.140 his initial legislative agenda, I hope he sees a confluence of interest between minimizing that

01:59:35.780 mental health crisis and the success of his presidency. And I think he might, uh, I I'm,

01:59:41.780 I'm bullish on him seeing the alignment of those two things.

01:59:46.220 Wow. Um, and if he loses, what happens?

01:59:52.800 Um, well, it'll depend on how he loses. It'll depend on if it's close and if he and his supporters

01:59:59.060 see, uh, uh, uh, wrongdoing in casting and counting a ballots in the seven states. It's very difficult

02:00:09.640 difficult to, uh, for me to imagine her winning by enough that that doesn't happen.

02:00:15.420 I've been disappointed in the efforts, uh, in the states. Uh, there are some in every one of the

02:00:22.240 seven, but they're not mature enough to prepare to explain to people elections are messy, but this

02:00:30.400 one wasn't stolen. Our electoral votes were awarded correctly to Kamala Harris. I think if that

02:00:36.120 somehow goes well, and if Donald Trump himself doesn't challenge the results, Twitter can do

02:00:41.140 what it wants to do. I think, um, I think that, uh, the, the negative impact of her winning on the

02:00:50.480 psychology, uh, of, of the losers will not be as great, but I don't think it'll be nothing.

02:00:55.920 And I think there'll be all sorts of things, lawfare, um, uh, replacing Biden with her after,

02:01:03.980 you know, Trump had spent millions trying to beat Biden. Um, uh, uh, the, um, the media's

02:01:11.720 completely, uh, you know, full body on the scale. I think all those things will lead to

02:01:18.000 mass skepticism that the election was fair. And I think it'll be up to luck

02:01:24.660 that, um, that the result is clear cut enough that, that people don't feel reflexively. It was

02:01:32.080 unfair. I think it'll be up to what Trump's attitude is. And I think it'll be up to the

02:01:36.040 governors of the States, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, and most of the battle

02:01:39.540 strong battleground state governors are Democrats to, um, to, to be as transparent and, and clear

02:01:47.900 about any irregularity and, and its potential impact on the outcome.

02:01:54.660 If all that happens, uh, and Kamala Harris is, decides to, in the transition and in her

02:02:03.080 inaugural address and in her legislative agenda to, um, to be, uh, gracious. I think, I think

02:02:11.820 that we could be in a decent place. I think there'll probably be a Republican Senate. And I think people

02:02:17.480 have failed to game out if there's a Republican Senate, Democratic House, Democratic president,

02:02:25.900 all of MAGA and, and those unhappy with her winning will put their, um, chips in the Senate and say,

02:02:34.360 it's up to the Senate to keep her from turning this into a far left country. And that goes first 1.00

02:02:39.980 and foremost in the initial instance to nominations. I think it'll be very difficult for her to nominate

02:02:45.100 anyone acceptable to the left who can be confirmed by that Senate.

02:02:48.480 So they'll, they'll just keep people in place.

02:02:51.360 Well, I mean, you can't be acting forever. It's a very limited, what you can do as an acting

02:02:56.340 secretary and she'll want her people. So I worry a lot about that. Uh, you know, we, one of the huge

02:03:04.400 dysfunctions in this country, regardless of party is it, is the, and every president will tell you this

02:03:09.440 and probably has is the difficulty of getting your, your people in place because of the background

02:03:14.800 checks and the confirmation process. You think about her, she started running for president not

02:03:19.480 that long ago. She hasn't had time to start a rigorous transition. I really do worry about her,

02:03:26.380 even if she emerges from this election with the country in love with her, not a whole country,

02:03:30.760 but enough to have a honeymoon. If she rises to the occasion, if she, if, if world leaders don't seem,

02:03:37.240 um, uh, poised to take advantage of her in some way, even if all that happens, I really do worry

02:03:42.740 about her getting a government in place because I don't think a Republican Senate is going to 1.00

02:03:46.880 confirm the kind of people who Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and AOC are going to demand her

02:03:52.520 to nominate. You hear people mutter darkly about some kind of civil conflict, the possibility of

02:03:59.660 that you worried about that less than most, but I don't dismiss it entirely. Again, I'm a big believer

02:04:05.560 in governors, right? Civil conflict will take place in the state of some governor by definition.

02:04:11.460 I hope the governors all have great bipartisan plans for minimizing this and for policing peaceful

02:04:17.020 protests and not allowing them to escalate, but not trampling on the first amendment. Um,

02:04:22.380 I think, I think we could have violence regardless of who wins. I think both sides are capable of that.

02:04:28.900 I think the chances of it are minimized if the losing presidential candidate makes it clear

02:04:33.960 they don't want that to happen. And if the governors are vigilant in devising plans to,

02:04:38.980 to, to balance public safety with the first amendment. Um, if those things happen, I really,

02:04:46.340 I'm not all that concerned about, about violence. If those things don't happen, I'm deeply concerned

02:04:50.720 about it.

02:04:52.140 Mark Halpern, I am grateful. I mean it that you are still a powerful voice in media after all these years.

02:04:58.820 Well, you're very nice. Uh, it's, it's great to be here and, uh, your, uh, your, um, place in the

02:05:06.200 world. As you know, we have lots of mutual friends who say to me and to other people, you know,

02:05:11.600 what's happened to Tucker? What has happened to Tucker? And, uh, and I say, let me go find out.

02:05:18.720 I'll be back. So I'll go report back. You're right. You're right here, right here. Good natured,

02:05:23.640 iconoclastic, interested in the world. And as we say, unafraid to stand up when you agree and

02:05:31.060 disagree.

02:05:31.740 My, my, my cousins all say that.

02:05:34.020 What happened to Tucker?

02:05:34.720 We're worried about him.

02:05:35.920 Yeah. I, you know, I have dinner all the time with people who've known you for longer than I've

02:05:40.260 known you and they just all, what happened to Tucker?

02:05:42.140 What happened to him?

02:05:43.120 What happened to Tucker?

02:05:44.340 Well, I just, it was too corrupt for me. He had to leave.

02:05:47.180 Yeah. But so I'm, I'm glad I can, I can go back to New York and maybe I'll do a zoom.

02:05:53.300 Give them all my best.

02:05:54.840 I will. I'll say, here's, here's what happened to Tucker. It's got a nice desk,

02:05:58.680 nice table with some good microphones, sturdy.

02:06:01.160 Exactly.

02:06:02.080 Eats right. Exercises when possible.

02:06:05.320 When possible.

02:06:05.760 Anyway, you're nice to host me. Thank you.

02:06:07.300 I loved it. Thank you. Good to see you.

02:06:11.020 Thanks for listening to Tucker Carlson show. If you enjoyed it, you can go to

02:06:14.360 tuckercarlson.com to see everything that we have made the complete library,

02:06:19.600 tuckercarlson.com.

The Tucker Carlson Show - October 15, 2024

Mark Halperin on Why He Thinks Trump Will Win and the Left’s Mental Collapse

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript