This is Gavin Newsom - And, This is How The 2024 Election Was Won with Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen

00:00:00.000 I want you to ask yourself right now, how am I actually doing?

00:00:04.840 Because it's a question that we rarely ask ourselves.

00:00:08.020 All of May is actually Mental Health Awareness Month, and on the psychology of your 20s,

00:00:11.820 we are taking a vulnerable look at why mental health is so hard to talk about.

00:00:16.760 Prepare for our conversations to go deep.

00:00:18.720 I spent the majority of my teenage years and my 20s just feeling absolutely terrified.

00:00:24.420 I had a panic attack on a conference call.

00:00:26.760 Knowing that she had six months to live, I was no longer pretending that this was my best friend.

00:00:30.380 So this Mental Health Awareness Month, take that extra bit of care of your well-being.

00:00:34.120 Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:00:41.260 It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos.

00:00:48.360 Wilmer's friend and former That's 70s Show castmate Topher Grace stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview

00:00:54.120 to discuss his career and reminisce about old times.

00:00:57.160 We were still in that place of, like, what will this experience become?

00:00:59.660 And you go, you're having the best time.

00:01:01.000 But it was, like, such a perfect golden time.

00:01:05.240 Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:10.160 Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, and my latest interview is with Michelle Obama.

00:01:15.200 To whom much is given, much is expected.

00:01:17.600 The guilt comes from, am I doing enough?

00:01:20.000 Me, Michelle Obama, to say that to a therapist.

00:01:23.400 So let's unpack that.

00:01:24.720 Having been the first lady of the entire country and representing the country in the world,

00:01:30.200 I couldn't afford to have that kind of disdain.

00:01:33.080 Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:40.920 I'm Michael Kasson, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures, and your guide on good company,

00:01:45.340 the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next.

00:01:49.900 In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Su, CEO of Tubi.

00:01:53.500 We dive into the competitive world of streaming.

00:01:56.220 What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core.

00:01:58.860 There are so many stories out there, and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person

00:02:05.440 discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen.

00:02:11.480 Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:02:23.100 I'm ready to fight.

00:02:24.220 Oh, this is fighting worse.

00:02:25.560 Okay, I'll put the hammer back.

00:02:26.860 Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a best-selling author with the second most banned book in America.

00:02:33.020 Now more than ever, we need to use our voices to fight back.

00:02:36.520 Part of the power of Black queer creativity is the fact that we got us, you know?

00:02:42.140 We are the greatest culture makers in world history.

00:02:46.800 Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:02:56.860 So anyone who wants to understand what happened, what didn't happen in the 2024 election, we

00:03:02.580 all know the outcome.

00:03:04.140 But what happened in those 107 days?

00:03:07.380 What happened leading up to the infamous debate?

00:03:10.500 What happened leading up to the convention, post-convention, up until election night?

00:03:16.560 My next guests, they understand it better than anyone.

00:03:19.360 They've written a book called Fight.

00:03:20.720 But this is Gavin Newsom, and this is Amy Parnes and Jonathan Allen.

00:03:28.300 Amy, Jonathan, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.

00:03:31.820 You've written a hell of a book, and I don't say that lightly.

00:03:34.660 I went through it in a quick hour and a half, almost two hours.

00:03:39.840 And trust me, I don't read very fast.

00:03:42.140 But it reads at an unbelievable pace.

00:03:45.060 It's so well written.

00:03:46.240 And of course, it's so familiar, because I fell a little bit adjacent to so much of the

00:03:50.700 subject matter.

00:03:51.500 But it's 18 chapters.

00:03:53.660 It's an impressive piece of work.

00:03:57.220 263 or so pages, two critical sections, sort of before and after.

00:04:01.680 And it begins your book, Fight, on June 27, 2024.

00:04:08.360 Set the scene for me.

00:04:09.260 So the way we set the scene in the book is in Nancy Pelosi's condo.

00:04:16.800 Not her condo in San Francisco, not her place in San Francisco, but in Washington, D.C.

00:04:20.300 And she's watching this debate alone, sitting on her sofa, looking at the television set.

00:04:27.340 And she needed to be alone, because she had, I don't want to say a premonition, but she had

00:04:33.280 kind of a gut feeling.

00:04:34.240 Normally, if you're a politician, as you know, there's a debate night party, and you go out,

00:04:38.760 and you talk to donors and activists, and you have a good time, and you celebrate, and

00:04:42.860 you hope your candidate wins, and you say they win, even if they didn't win.

00:04:46.480 And Nancy Pelosi was like, I'm going to watch this at home.

00:04:49.480 And we take readers into how she had urged Biden not to debate Trump at all.

00:04:55.060 And she had used a nice way of saying it to him, which was, don't lower yourself to

00:05:00.760 Trump.

00:05:01.000 But I think, you know, you get the feeling from the book, it's pretty strongly implicit,

00:05:05.940 if not expressed exactly, that she thought this might be a problem.

00:05:09.120 And we take readers around, among other Democrats that had the same feeling, sitting and watching

00:05:14.640 at home, Jim Clyburn, drinking Jack and Diet Pepsi.

00:05:18.860 Which, just the scene with Jack and Diet Pepsi alone is worth it.

00:05:21.600 And Al Sharpton and a donor, John Morgan, down in California.

00:05:25.200 I mean, in Florida.

00:05:26.800 And so, they're all watching this, and they all have the same reaction at the same time,

00:05:31.800 which is a complete disaster.

00:05:33.580 And they're all, all the Democrats are texting each other, and they are calling each other.

00:05:38.140 And, I mean, everybody who watched that debate had the same reaction.

00:05:42.140 And some of them had it in the first 10 seconds, and some of them had it 10 minutes later.

00:05:46.000 But I think it was immediately clear to a lot of people in the Democratic Party that Joe Biden

00:05:50.040 just wasn't operable as a candidate anymore.

00:05:54.820 So, Amy, you know, you picked that scene, why?

00:05:57.280 I mean, in some respects, that scene also picked the book, the determination that you were going

00:06:03.320 to write this book.

00:06:04.200 I mean, in some respects, my understanding is you weren't even thinking of writing a book,

00:06:07.780 necessarily, on the subject matter.

00:06:10.060 Until that debate, it sort of marked a moment of consciousness for the world, not just this

00:06:14.720 country, and certainly the Democratic Party.

00:06:16.440 Yeah.

00:06:16.700 I mean, John and I were out of the campaign book writing until that night.

00:06:22.860 Our phones were blowing up.

00:06:25.360 Yeah.

00:06:25.620 And our publisher, a couple days later, was like, you guys have to do another book.

00:06:30.580 And so, here we are.

00:06:31.660 And it was, we knew that it was going to be exciting based on what was happening that

00:06:36.880 night, but we had no idea the twists and the turns of that campaign.

00:06:42.620 I think it depends on, like, what your perspective is as to whether it's, you know, thrilling and

00:06:47.700 exciting versus reliving some torture.

00:06:51.260 And at the same time, it's interesting.

00:06:55.060 It's fascinating.

00:06:55.760 The behind the scenes of how the maneuvering goes on and, like, how Pelosi, for example,

00:07:01.340 is trying to push Biden out, but trying to leave, you know, leave as few fingerprints

00:07:06.980 on it as possible, give him room to make his own decision.

00:07:10.480 You know, Obama's calling for an open convention.

00:07:12.520 I'm sure we'll get to some of this.

00:07:13.560 But I think that regardless of how you feel about the outcome of the election, it is impossible

00:07:19.180 to understand where the next election's going, what works for parties, what doesn't work

00:07:24.140 for parties unless you understand what happens behind the scenes.

00:07:27.060 And that's what we worked so hard to get was, what were people actually thinking?

00:07:31.060 What were their motivations?

00:07:32.060 What were the conversations that you couldn't see on television?

00:07:34.360 And so I think the critical point, and Amy, this is, to me, the most fascinating, particularly

00:07:38.480 sitting where I'm sitting on the other side, often, of some of these discussions from a

00:07:43.940 gubernatorial and electoral perspective.

00:07:46.120 But it's the remarkable access you have to hundreds and hundreds of people that are painting

00:07:52.000 this picture and how extraordinarily well-sourced you were to even have these scenes, these

00:07:57.360 vignettes that have been pretty bulletproof.

00:08:00.200 There's been few, if any, critics of that scene setting or anyone that suggested this

00:08:06.740 book hasn't been locked down in terms of its fact-checking.

00:08:09.760 But this is your, what, the fourth book you guys have written to go?

00:08:12.120 Our fourth book, our third campaign book.

00:08:14.140 Between John and I, I think we pretty much have DC locked down.

00:08:18.740 Is that it?

00:08:19.220 And people, I think, feel comfortable, which is a compliment to what we've done.

00:08:24.620 They feel comfortable talking to us and sharing.

00:08:27.700 I mean, our job as reporters has always been to get as close to the truth as possible.

00:08:33.240 And that was sort of our aim here, to bring, as John said, everyone into the room and give

00:08:37.640 you a glimpse of what was happening.

00:08:39.400 We all saw everything play out.

00:08:41.360 We didn't know the backroom conversations.

00:08:43.720 And I think that's why this book has, people have been so receptive.

00:08:47.580 They kind of wanted to know what was going on behind the scenes.

00:08:51.060 And we all knew, but didn't know.

00:08:53.240 I'm going to break a key rule here, which is to ask a question I don't know the answer

00:08:56.620 to.

00:08:57.400 You obviously have your own perspectives on this.

00:08:59.940 You have your own experiences with what was going on during that time period between the

00:09:03.800 debate and when Biden dropped out and beyond that through the campaign.

00:09:07.440 Did you read anything and say to yourself, that doesn't comport with what I know or understand?

00:09:12.920 It was extraordinary how accurate it was in every way, shape, or form.

00:09:18.620 And of course, for me, I think the most alarming part was trying to go, who's the source on

00:09:26.280 this?

00:09:26.740 Who did they talk to on this?

00:09:28.120 You know, and who's omitted, who's sort of overplayed, and how everything sort of shapes

00:09:36.000 out.

00:09:37.080 But, you know, look, that experience on the 27th, that night, the debate, I was in a very

00:09:41.720 different place than Nancy Pelosi and Clyburn and others.

00:09:44.160 I was there expecting to go out and do the spin to talk about how successful that debate

00:09:49.700 was.

00:09:50.040 And I was out there doing the pre-debate spin on the networks.

00:09:53.980 And so everything about what you did sort of painted a picture that I didn't have because

00:09:58.920 I wasn't privy to all of those other scenes and who was missing, who wasn't.

00:10:03.980 What were you thinking in that moment?

00:10:05.840 No, I mean, I was one of the first 10 seconds for people.

00:10:09.700 I remember standing up, I looked around, and everyone looked, and we all went, something's

00:10:16.940 off within seconds.

00:10:19.460 And then we were just 20, 30 minutes in, and the techs were just lighting up.

00:10:26.080 And you could see that with all of us that were supposed to be doing the spin.

00:10:29.940 And the campaign was out already caucusing in the corner, and the debate had just begun.

00:10:35.940 So it was not a gross exaggeration to say everything you painted in terms of that picture

00:10:41.800 was deeply accurate.

00:10:43.680 And so it's fascinating, again, just having your perspective and then the perspective of

00:10:47.720 others sort of plate this kaleidoscope, this sort of aggregated picture of reality.

00:10:52.660 And of course, that reality came to the fore, not just that night, but the expression of

00:10:59.000 so much of what came out of this book was the internal debates then.

00:11:02.600 You started to talk about not just that night and Nancy Pelosi's relationship to that night,

00:11:07.700 Clyburn's relationship that night, but the relationship of the Biden campaign and their defiance

00:11:12.580 after that night.

00:11:14.220 They were going to stick in.

00:11:16.540 They demanded loyalty.

00:11:18.780 They tested that theory.

00:11:20.860 Many of us were on the seething end of that.

00:11:23.400 Talk to us about those next chapters and how things began to evolve or devolve from your

00:11:29.100 perspective in terms of the post-debate realities.

00:11:32.200 So I think you make the right point, right?

00:11:36.880 Biden is, to the extent that he was in a cocoon before, and I think he really was, there were

00:11:41.300 not many people outside the top White House staff that saw him a lot.

00:11:44.660 So for years, we would get little anecdotes of, I was with the president, it seemed a little

00:11:48.640 off, whatever, but from a member of Congress or something who sees him once every six months.

00:11:53.080 As we report in the book, he didn't recognize Eric Swalwell, congressman from California who

00:11:57.400 was on television literally half the day every day, and had to be cued in the summer of 2023

00:12:03.540 as to who Swalwell was when he met him at the congressional picnic.

00:12:06.920 So you hear stories like that, but what happens from that moment is the Biden team digs in,

00:12:12.840 totally digs in, and he digs in, and this is somebody who has wanted to be president for his

00:12:17.220 entire life, right?

00:12:18.160 He first started thinking about that, if not earlier, when he first got elected to the Senate in 1972,

00:12:23.980 which is, you know, neither of us were born yet, and I have gray hair, and Amy doesn't

00:12:29.100 have gray hair, but she may soon, right?

00:12:31.940 So Biden wanted to be president forever, he got the job, he believes all the people that

00:12:38.380 doubted him over the years, including Barack Obama and others, were wrong, and that they're

00:12:43.480 wrong again.

00:12:44.620 And so he's going to fight this out.

00:12:46.820 And the rest of the Democratic Party looks at him and says, like, this guy can't win.

00:12:50.460 He wasn't going to, he was on track to lose before the debate.

00:12:53.120 Yeah, and you paint that picture in terms of where the polls were and things were trending

00:12:57.180 prior to the debate.

00:12:58.760 And now it's unrecoverable.

00:13:00.320 And then the question is, how do you ease this guy who has a big ego, who's stubborn,

00:13:05.420 who has had, you know, some sort of non-linear decline, right?

00:13:09.260 Better days, worse days, better hours, worse hours.

00:13:11.600 How do you convince him that it's time for him to get out, especially if you're Barack Obama

00:13:16.620 and the relationship there is totally tattered because Obama didn't support him in 16,

00:13:20.720 didn't really support him in 20?

00:13:23.620 How do you do it if you're Nancy Pelosi and you have a good relationship with him?

00:13:27.260 Like-

00:13:27.520 Going back decades and decades.

00:13:28.940 Decades and decades.

00:13:29.920 They have, they come from the same place, basically, in the, you know, the Mid-Atlantic.

00:13:33.420 They're both Catholic, both big Kennedy fans, FDR Democrats.

00:13:37.960 They are close.

00:13:38.920 And she's always respected Biden for getting his hands dirty in politics, for like, you know,

00:13:43.020 trying to get deals done.

00:13:44.180 And she always looked at Obama and said, this guy wants to float above and have other

00:13:49.000 people do the work.

00:13:49.740 And she respected Biden.

00:13:50.900 She's like, how do you get rid of him?

00:13:52.080 How do you, how do you push him out, but make it his idea?

00:13:55.720 Make it, make him.

00:13:57.080 And, and so you see, and I think a lot of people are angry at Pelosi.

00:14:01.040 Democrats are angry at Pelosi voters who love Biden and thought she did so much to like

00:14:05.580 push him.

00:14:06.060 And the truth was, I think she was the only one that had the courage to get out there

00:14:11.500 and keep moving the ball forward with little things she said on television, you know, but

00:14:15.280 I mean, it wasn't like a full on, um, bum rush.

00:14:19.580 Right.

00:14:19.760 So the, all of this is super delicate and Biden's just not going to go anywhere.

00:14:22.500 And then finally he gets really bad COVID, uh, and the numbers are looking terrible and

00:14:28.960 house and Senate members are telling him that they're going to lose because of him.

00:14:32.420 Um, and you know, he finally makes the decision that I think most other democratic leaders

00:14:39.020 understood was going to have to be made three weeks earlier.

00:14:41.860 And the one thing that I think has been difficult for the democratic party that hasn't been talked

00:14:45.500 about a lot is either Joe Biden was not competent to run for president anymore and therefore

00:14:54.140 should have resigned the presidency too, because I'm not sure you can make the argument that

00:14:57.760 one is true with that.

00:14:58.480 Or the view is that it's not that he wasn't competent to run or serve, but just that he

00:15:05.320 was going to lose.

00:15:06.460 And Democrats decided to switch horses because they were going to lose midway through a campaign.

00:15:10.920 And I, I think a lot of voters, especially a lot of swing voters just were not, not able

00:15:15.220 to reconcile all of that and think to themselves, the Democrats are telling me the truth right

00:15:19.600 now.

00:15:20.080 Yeah.

00:15:20.560 It's a issue of trust.

00:15:21.420 And I, I mean, obviously that's a big part, I think of the through line in the book, but

00:15:25.920 the point of you're making about Nancy Pelosi playing an outsized role here is interesting.

00:15:30.140 And then just reflecting on my own conversations with former Speaker Pelosi is how, how sensitive

00:15:36.920 she was to the parents that she was pushing him out and how she went to great lengths.

00:15:44.160 And in the book, you, you chronicle that.

00:15:46.480 But even in a personal interactions with many of us, she would even unsolicited say, just

00:15:51.480 so you know, I'm not pushing.

00:15:53.040 She still says that.

00:15:54.140 Still says it to this day.

00:15:55.300 She's very sensitive about that.

00:15:56.900 But you, but you are, you're the firm opinion that a two Nancy, I think is one of the chapters

00:16:02.600 in the book that she, she had a hand, a big hand to play in there.

00:16:07.040 I mean, we take you inside the campaign in that moment.

00:16:10.200 She goes on mourning Joe.

00:16:11.560 So yeah, she's a little kind of disheveled for Nancy Pelosi because she's, she's never

00:16:15.980 disheveled ever.

00:16:17.520 Which is like, she's got a bra strap showing, but disheveled for Nancy Pelosi is like one

00:16:22.500 hair out of that.

00:16:24.260 You're disheveled compared to her.

00:16:26.880 But I mean, that moment is such a major moment.

00:16:30.760 She goes on mourning Joe.

00:16:32.300 Yeah.

00:16:32.420 He, you know, she says he has a decision to make.

00:16:35.720 He's already made his decision.

00:16:37.400 You know, two days earlier, he was already in a letter was saying, I'm running, he's telling

00:16:41.260 people I'm running, don't count me out.

00:16:43.680 And she's saying, no, you know, he has a decision to make.

00:16:46.820 And so we take you inside the campaign.

00:16:48.880 And in that moment, they're all like, F you, what are you doing?

00:16:52.580 We're finally like back on track and you're, you know, we're regressing now.

00:16:58.160 Um, and, and so it's really, really, um, kind of a dramatic moment of like, they're

00:17:03.880 finally on track.

00:17:05.160 They feel like they're finally, you know, moving on and she pulls him right back.

00:17:09.920 I remember that.

00:17:10.560 And I remember being out on the road for Biden.

00:17:12.420 And I remember being on there with, with Jen O'Malley Dillon.

00:17:15.400 We'll talk about her role in all of this and going on with the campaign team after that

00:17:19.800 debate, doing a little zoom saying, let's all buck up here in Bucks County.

00:17:24.520 I'm bucking up.

00:17:25.480 If we're going to make the case, uh, coming from the debate that they really did try to

00:17:28.980 put everything back together and, and put a good face on it.

00:17:32.320 Obviously the president went back out on the campaign trail, had a, a few, uh, pretty good

00:17:37.060 speeches, at least relative to some expectation that held things together.

00:17:41.120 And then he pulled us all in and you chronicle this with the governors.

00:17:44.640 There's a meeting with all the governors, some in person, uh, some virtually, uh, and, uh,

00:17:50.620 you set the scene where, uh, the reception didn't go as well necessarily as some had expected.

00:17:56.440 A few governors, uh, basically said, Mr. President, uh, we may lose the Senate.

00:18:02.400 We may lose our congressional seats.

00:18:04.640 Tell me more about that.

00:18:05.960 So, uh, Michelle Lujan Grisham from, uh, from New Mexico, who was, I think, literally half

00:18:11.060 your height.

00:18:11.520 She wouldn't be proud to acknowledge and twice as tough, by the way.

00:18:17.040 Right.

00:18:17.480 But that's the thing she's, you know, she gets in there and she's basically like, we

00:18:21.260 could lose a Senate race here.

00:18:22.300 We could lose house seats that have been safe.

00:18:23.920 We could, you know, the whole thing could go away and nobody's thinking about New Mexico,

00:18:27.340 right?

00:18:27.860 That's not like one of the swing States.

00:18:29.440 That was, uh, not, not one, not on our minds when we walked in that meeting.

00:18:32.960 And certainly not the, the only one who expressed those kinds of constraints and points.

00:18:37.060 Yep.

00:18:37.300 Um, and not just in that meeting, but outside of that, expressing the same concern to him

00:18:41.940 states where the Democrats should not have had a problem.

00:18:44.760 Congressional districts where they should not have had a problem suddenly looking, you

00:18:48.320 know, staring down the barrel of a huge problem.

00:18:50.780 Um, and you know, I mean, maybe you should take it away.

00:18:53.400 What was the rest of that meeting?

00:18:55.140 Well, yeah, I did.

00:18:55.940 I mean, I was, we all were asked, you know, what's the advice.

00:18:58.440 I said, the last thing I'm going to give is the president of the United States advice.

00:19:00.980 I can just tell you what I'm hearing on the campaign trail, but it was interesting.

00:19:04.160 I mean, the president, after he listened to everybody's advice and, and as you chronic

00:19:08.360 quite accurately, what's by the way, just for the record, there is nothing in private

00:19:12.960 that exists.

00:19:13.600 I mean, I, every single, we might as well be, you know, we we're all wired.

00:19:18.800 I don't know how it's, it's something I'm now a little more cautious reading your book,

00:19:23.180 uh, that there's not a thing that's uttered in private that ultimately won't become public.

00:19:28.320 Just save some of the good stuff for our next one.

00:19:30.380 For your next book.

00:19:31.120 Yeah, no, but it is a point of consideration, but that particular meeting was so, there was

00:19:36.180 so much that was leaked in that meeting.

00:19:38.220 Uh, but you, I, you were shockingly almost down to the adverbs and pronouns, uh, nailed

00:19:45.580 aspects of that meeting.

00:19:47.000 But what was, I think omitted, not intentionally, but was sort of the defiance of the president

00:19:52.440 in that meeting.

00:19:53.040 And he, he asserted himself after listed, everybody said, I am all in and really pushed

00:19:58.740 back.

00:19:59.180 And I remember, and you know, I, I could be accused of a lot of things, but I don't think

00:20:03.400 I was accused of not being a loyalist to Biden.

00:20:06.380 And, um, uh, true to that form, um, there was sort of a pause after he said, he's in and

00:20:11.980 I started, I said, Mr. President, is it okay that I applaud, um, just to have his back at

00:20:18.040 that meeting.

00:20:19.020 And, um, and, and I, I just felt, you know, at that moment, there was a vulnerability in

00:20:23.840 that meeting and there was a vulnerability, uh, obviously the precarious vulnerability

00:20:27.900 as relates to, uh, his electoral, uh, fortunes.

00:20:31.440 And, uh, you know, I'm one of those guys, you go home with the one who brought you to

00:20:35.140 the dance.

00:20:35.660 That's how my father raised me.

00:20:37.080 Yeah.

00:20:37.280 I think it was exact, literally, it's, I mean, indelible in my mind, go home with the one

00:20:41.960 you brought to the dance.

00:20:43.440 And so I felt compelled.

00:20:44.980 That's why I went out campaigning for him the next day after doing the spin room and,

00:20:49.120 uh, and being out there.

00:20:50.680 But, but you painted, I thought, a very accurate picture.

00:20:53.460 So you started to see this thing start to fray a little bit.

00:20:56.020 You started to see loyalists express themselves, um, you know, a few chapters in you

00:21:01.260 start talking about Nancy Pelosi, but now through her surrogates, perhaps most importantly,

00:21:06.440 Adam Schiff and Schiff shifts a little bit and says, what?

00:21:11.120 It's fascinating.

00:21:12.420 Do you want to?

00:21:13.220 Yeah, you can go.

00:21:13.780 So he's at a, um, he's at a fundraiser on Long Island.

00:21:17.800 The day that Donald Trump gets shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, basically about the same time,

00:21:22.100 there's a fundraiser that Schiff goes out to do, um, for Alyssa Slotkin and Angela Alsobrooks

00:21:28.540 who are running for the Senate for Michigan and Maryland respectively.

00:21:32.600 And Schiff gets out there and basically says what he hasn't been saying publicly to these

00:21:38.100 donors, which is that Biden needs to go.

00:21:40.820 And to your point, nothing's private, a transcript of his remarks magically makes it into the hands

00:21:46.320 of the New York times.

00:21:47.120 I have no idea who gave that transcript to the New York times, but if you were Adam Schiff

00:21:51.160 and you made it, wanted to make this point publicly and wanted to, but didn't want to

00:21:55.400 be the first person to stand in front of a microphone and say it, that might be a good

00:21:58.540 way to do it.

00:21:59.060 I don't know that that's what happened, but I'm just saying it might've been what happened.

00:22:02.120 The thing that didn't make it out, um, from the same event was the transcript of Alyssa

00:22:07.860 Slotkin speaking right after Schiff, who is making kind of the opposite case, which is

00:22:13.820 she thinks that, um, that vice president Harris will be problematic, uh, for candidates on

00:22:22.460 the ballot, particularly for her in Michigan.

00:22:25.460 Um, she talks a little bit about why, but she's basically like, she's to the left and

00:22:29.460 that's going to be harmful to some of our candidates.

00:22:31.460 Yeah.

00:22:32.040 And she says, but she's also like, she understands Biden is also potentially an anchor, but she's

00:22:37.100 much clearer about Harris that she says, we're not going to skip over a black woman for 1.00

00:22:41.940 the vice presidency.

00:22:42.720 So if you're thinking about some sort of like deus ex machina, new candidate gets picked 0.98

00:22:47.760 out at a open convention, you're crazy. 0.87

00:22:50.600 A Gavin Newsom. 0.99

00:22:51.440 Yeah.

00:22:51.740 A Gavin Newsom.

00:22:52.700 A Whitmer. 1.00

00:22:53.240 A many other fill in the blank.

00:22:55.280 Jamie Pritzker.

00:22:56.200 Anybody.

00:22:57.820 Exactly.

00:22:59.000 Um, so she's making that case, but she basically says Harris is worse.

00:23:05.080 So the opposite of what Schiff says, it never leaks out.

00:23:07.280 It never leaks out.

00:23:08.140 Until our book.

00:23:08.680 And then, and then she kind of comes to the conclusion, which is whatever we do, we have

00:23:13.340 to do it now because savaging each other, uh, within the democratic party is going to

00:23:19.700 destroy everyone.

00:23:20.600 And she says, so we need to make a decision and quote unquote, suck it up buttercup.

00:23:24.520 And what's fascinating is at the same time you have Biden people, his, his staff out

00:23:30.880 there privately sending notes to donors saying, and undermining his VP and saying, look, if

00:23:38.520 you push him out, you're stuck with her.

00:23:42.200 Um, and that was the hardest stuff to read.

00:23:44.640 I mean, bad luck.

00:23:45.460 I mean, you're her friend for a long time.

00:23:47.300 I mean, 40 years going back to before we were both into politics, before she ran for

00:23:51.260 district attorney, before I ran for county supervisor, let alone mayor.

00:23:55.780 So it's, it's difficult because there's so many aspects and I want to get to how difficult

00:24:00.940 it is because, you know, Nancy Pelosi's relationship with Kamala.

00:24:04.960 And obviously that plays a big role in this book as well, but also Barack Obama's and,

00:24:09.500 and his lack of support for her candidacy.

00:24:11.800 You just referenced Slotkin, uh, referenced some of the internal dynamics as it relates

00:24:16.180 to the Harris Biden, uh, campaign.

00:24:18.020 But let's, let's, let's, let's go back a little bit.

00:24:21.540 Uh, let's talk about the COVID because I think that was a critical point where the president

00:24:26.020 gets COVID, uh, there's a vulnerability that's expressed.

00:24:29.540 Obviously he's doing his best to put a good face on that debate, to sort of spin his way

00:24:33.940 out, has a good couple, at least from my perspective, public, um, uh, uh, rallies.

00:24:39.740 It has an interview, which wasn't as effective perhaps than it was, which became an issue.

00:24:45.340 I remember the text messages coming again after that interview.

00:24:48.440 I think it was with what, who was Stephanopoulos, which was fine, but people just felt like it

00:24:54.840 wasn't, he didn't get out on the other side.

00:24:57.180 And all of a sudden now he comes down with COVID.

00:24:59.580 Yeah.

00:24:59.900 He couldn't remember whether he had watched the debate or not.

00:25:02.280 Which was really a bad moment.

00:25:02.740 It was asked that simple question.

00:25:04.040 Yeah.

00:25:04.260 Did you watch it?

00:25:05.360 And what are your thoughts about it?

00:25:06.480 I mean, I think that was sort of the nail in the coffin.

00:25:08.840 And when you talk to people around him, they admit that, you know, him walking onto the

00:25:13.540 plane, leaving Nevada, going home.

00:25:16.820 Um, and then he is in this very vulnerable spot where he's at home.

00:25:21.020 He's surrounded by close aides.

00:25:23.180 He's making the biggest political decision of his life.

00:25:26.480 And you know, when you're not feeling well and then you're backed into a corner, um, that's

00:25:32.820 just what happened.

00:25:33.640 And I don't think anybody knows just how sick he was.

00:25:35.940 Like he was having real respiratory problems.

00:25:37.980 People were wearing masks inside his house.

00:25:40.200 I mean, he was not in good shape the final weekend before he made that decision.

00:25:44.440 And, and he would make the case and he made it to the governors directly, but made it very

00:25:47.920 public on multiple occasions as well, that he obviously didn't feel well, uh, into the

00:25:52.080 debate as well.

00:25:53.040 And, and, and so look, you get the, you paint the picture then of him.

00:25:57.480 They're sort of reflecting in those private moments back at home.

00:25:59.920 Uh, you also paint a picture of a Jill Biden, uh, and a Hunter Biden that played an outsized

00:26:05.680 role in saying, dad, we got this, right?

00:26:08.580 Yeah.

00:26:09.280 I mean, it's Jill Biden is his strongest, most ardent supporter, obviously.

00:26:14.640 And she really wanted him to Hunter Biden.

00:26:16.840 As we reveal in the book, he's playing a big role in saying, you have to do this.

00:26:20.860 You've got this pushing him to go further.

00:26:23.060 And he is so dug in, you know, and stubborn, you know, the president well, I mean, in that

00:26:28.360 moment, he thinks he's the only one who can win.

00:26:31.700 He still thinks he's the only one.

00:26:33.240 He believes that.

00:26:33.620 And by the way, that's very sincere.

00:26:36.080 Having proven that he could beat Donald Trump the first time, uh, he sort of maintained that.

00:26:41.860 And that was always his argument in private.

00:26:44.060 Yeah.

00:26:44.240 Uh, you know, you know, what other you say about me, you know, and he would try to be

00:26:47.680 a little bit objective and have some situational awareness.

00:26:50.420 I'm the guy.

00:26:51.160 And he really firmly believed was the only person that could beat him.

00:26:53.820 Yeah.

00:26:54.160 But undermining her at the same time, I think a lot of people in her camp were a little

00:26:58.180 bit pissed off.

00:26:58.980 I mean, we're, I know we're fast forwarding quite a bit, but saying, what do you mean?

00:27:02.020 You're the only one who could have won.

00:27:06.460 Hey, my name's Jay Shetty and I'm the host of On Purpose.

00:27:10.140 I just had a great conversation with Michelle Obama.

00:27:13.440 To whom much is given, much is expected.

00:27:16.260 The guilt comes from, am I doing enough?

00:27:18.640 Me, Michelle Obama, to say that to a therapist.

00:27:22.100 So let's unpack that.

00:27:23.380 Former first lady, Michelle Obama.

00:27:25.120 And someone who knows her best, her big brother, Craig.

00:27:28.720 Will be hosting a podcast called IMO.

00:27:31.260 What have been your personal journeys with therapy?

00:27:34.360 We need to be coached throughout our lives.

00:27:37.120 My mom wanted us to be independent children.

00:27:40.740 And she would always tell me, stop worrying about your sister.

00:27:46.300 Having been the first lady of the entire country and representing the country and the world,

00:27:51.800 I couldn't afford to have that kind of disdain.

00:27:54.900 What would you say has been the most hardest recent test of fear?

00:27:59.800 Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

00:28:04.960 you get your podcasts.

00:28:34.960 I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

00:28:39.300 I don't feel emotions correctly.

00:28:41.220 I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not.

00:28:45.780 Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

00:28:50.080 It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world

00:28:54.920 as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives.

00:29:01.240 I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot.

00:29:05.960 Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show.

00:29:11.380 I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment.

00:29:16.200 I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails.

00:29:18.780 I have very overbearing parents.

00:29:21.240 Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house.

00:29:24.340 So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head,

00:29:29.440 search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:29:36.620 It's the one with the green guy on it.

00:29:38.280 And the dream season is now complete.

00:29:41.860 The Golden State Warriors are the 2015 NBA champions.

00:29:45.400 On the new limited podcast series, Dub Dynasty, it's been 10 years since their shocking run to a championship.

00:29:51.380 We examined the controversial move that made it possible.

00:29:54.420 It's never a great conversation as a player when you hear that you're being benched.

00:29:58.240 For the entire behind-the-scenes story of Golden State's incredible 10-year run,

00:30:02.900 listen to Dub Dynasty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:30:08.280 I'm Clayton English.

00:30:12.860 I'm Greg Glott.

00:30:13.560 And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.

00:30:16.180 Yes, sir.

00:30:16.620 We are back.

00:30:17.240 In a big way.

00:30:18.020 In a very big way.

00:30:19.300 Real people, real perspectives.

00:30:21.460 This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

00:30:23.620 We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

00:30:26.900 It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

00:30:32.980 Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.

00:30:36.700 We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug vans.

00:30:42.540 Benny the Butcher.

00:30:43.640 Brent Smith from Shinedown.

00:30:44.980 We got Be Real from Cypress Hill.

00:30:46.980 NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

00:30:49.040 Marine Corvette.

00:30:50.300 MMA fighter.

00:30:51.380 Liz Karamush.

00:30:52.400 What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.

00:30:55.400 Stories matter and it brings a face to it.

00:30:57.560 It makes it real.

00:30:58.380 It really does.

00:30:59.400 It makes it real.

00:31:00.240 Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:31:08.620 And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

00:31:16.280 And let's talk a little bit about that because I think it does connect to Jill Biden as well.

00:31:28.880 You write in the book that-

00:31:32.860 You can tell you've read it.

00:31:33.740 Jill Biden, I told you, I'm not making this up.

00:31:37.380 It was fantastic.

00:31:39.040 And people that don't care about politics or think they, you know, might or might not be interested, this paints an unbelievably accurate picture of this race, this 107-day race in particular.

00:31:51.360 Of course, you go a little bit earlier to the debate on June 27th.

00:31:55.660 But as it relates to the issue of some of the animus that you express, as it relates to what is perceived and or is accurate about undermining Kamala Harris, who was a very loyal vice president.

00:32:07.720 And you say that in the book, that she really went to great lengths to be a loyal representative of this administration.

00:32:16.200 And that Biden primarily turned the page on any animus from the early election primary, but Jill Biden may not have, you suggest.

00:32:25.820 Exactly.

00:32:26.560 She always, and this is according to sources we talked to, she always held a little bit of that sort of animosity, never really let it go.

00:32:33.280 From a debate.

00:32:34.500 In 2019.

00:32:36.800 And, you know, a lot of people, close aides said that they didn't have a very warm relationship throughout her time at the White House.

00:32:44.680 That sort of bled, you know, into this process and what was happening.

00:32:50.680 But yeah, a really kind of contentious relationship.

00:32:53.460 He's still trying, Joe Biden is still trying to do cleanup from perhaps the, before the Trump-Biden debate, the biggest knockout punch I'd ever seen in a debate, which was Kamala Harris hitting him on busing, which is why Jill Biden hates her.

00:33:07.860 One of the reasons that Jill Biden hates her. 1.00

00:33:09.540 Last week, Biden did his first interview, or did his first speech since he left the presidency, gets an award.

00:33:18.140 And he talks about moving to Wilmington when he's a little kid.

00:33:21.820 And he sees a bus full of black children go by, and he uses the term, quote-unquote, colored kids. 0.96

00:33:28.900 He says what we used to call colored kids.

00:33:31.080 And, like, I mean, we're all roughly the same generation.

00:33:33.720 Nobody has said that in our lifetimes.

00:33:36.300 And so it reminds you how old he is.

00:33:37.740 But when you listen to the rest of the story that he's telling, he's saying, I asked my mom, why aren't these kids going to school with me?

00:33:43.800 And she says, because black children are not allowed to go to school with white children in Delaware.

00:33:50.280 But decades later, Joe Biden was trying legislatively to make sure that black kids couldn't go to school with white kids.

00:33:58.680 So, I mean, it's like he's still trying to do cleanup duty from what happened on a debate stage with her in 2019.

00:34:04.480 And, of course, stumbles all over himself in doing it.

00:34:07.540 All right, so we move forward as we stumble forward in figurative sense, and we fast-forward the decision to step down.

00:34:15.240 And you paint this picture minute by minute, quite literally, minute by minute, the inside of the conversations, which is remarkable.

00:34:23.960 I still, back to everyone being wired, the conversations between the president and the vice president.

00:34:28.840 The vice president saying, are you sure, Mr. President, sort of maintaining that loyalty and firm footing.

00:34:34.600 And then immediately organizing, independent, it seems, of her in another room, her sort of-

00:34:43.080 In the pool house.

00:34:43.700 In her pool house with Tony West, her brother-in-law, and the rest of Kamala.

00:34:49.120 And we'll talk about that in a moment with a K. 1.00

00:34:51.760 The team to start organizing immediately a strategy to get people on board.

00:34:59.540 But first, Kamala Harris tries to get the president on board. 1.00

00:35:03.780 Tell me about that.

00:35:05.200 So let's start with the pool house, because they're meeting ahead of this call.

00:35:10.280 And, you know, she's in a very precarious spot coming into that moment.

00:35:15.040 She's basically telling everyone, and she is, she's very loyal to him.

00:35:18.440 But at the same time, she has her closest advisors meeting in her pool house at the Naval Observatory, trying to plan what to do in case.

00:35:27.540 In case, just in case.

00:35:28.480 And let me just interrupt you there for one second, which is, we asked one of our sources, we said, what are the odds that all of these people are meeting in the pool house, next to the pool, at the vice president's residence?

00:35:40.360 Like, her two chiefs of staff.

00:35:43.240 Mignon Moore is, like, running the convention.

00:35:45.660 He's, like, zoomed in.

00:35:47.060 Tony West is in there.

00:35:48.680 Brian Fallon, the comms guy.

00:35:49.920 Like, we're, like, what are the chances that they're there and she doesn't know what, and the person who talked to us said, you think there's anybody in the vice president's pool house?

00:35:59.720 The vice president doesn't know exactly what they're doing.

00:36:02.680 Yeah.

00:36:03.060 So just.

00:36:04.060 No.

00:36:04.540 So they're all gathered there when the call comes in.

00:36:07.440 Yes.

00:36:07.680 And so they're alerted to the call.

00:36:12.000 She is on the call with the president, essentially saying, are you sure?

00:36:16.440 Are you sure?

00:36:17.120 And he says, yes.

00:36:18.500 And she says, okay, are you going to endorse me?

00:36:21.400 And he says.

00:36:23.140 You have my support, kid.

00:36:25.240 You have my support, kid.

00:36:26.720 Yeah.

00:36:27.200 And she knows that that's not really an endorsement.

00:36:30.240 I mean, you know.

00:36:31.060 Yeah.

00:36:31.420 You've been in politics long enough.

00:36:33.160 Yeah.

00:36:33.320 So she pushes him, and he says, yeah, you know, I'm going to endorse you, but later.

00:36:38.680 And think about that moment.

00:36:40.340 Think about where the party is in that moment.

00:36:42.560 If you don't hear the E word, it's basically the F word, right?

00:36:45.320 Yeah.

00:36:45.600 If you're in politics and you ask for an endorsement and you don't hear endorsement back.

00:36:49.380 Yeah.

00:36:49.840 Even if it's Wednesday and we're on Sunday.

00:36:52.200 So they were talking about doing it literally not that same day.

00:36:55.780 No.

00:36:56.220 Later in the week.

00:36:56.520 But they were saying, I'll do it later in the week.

00:36:58.220 Yeah.

00:36:58.340 So quite literally.

00:36:59.040 And people are licking their chops, like wondering, is this going to happen?

00:37:02.560 Yeah.

00:37:02.680 Should I enter?

00:37:03.680 She's trying to get all the support. 0.96

00:37:05.580 You don't know anybody who was thinking about these things or talking about these things.

00:37:08.240 No, nothing about it.

00:37:10.020 So at that moment, I mean, so she's, to her credit.

00:37:13.540 Yeah.

00:37:13.720 I mean, this is a serious moment.

00:37:16.100 Yeah.

00:37:16.180 I mean, this is, and she's obviously preparing for this moment, to be fair, along the lines

00:37:20.540 of the picture you paint.

00:37:21.980 But quietly.

00:37:22.840 But quietly.

00:37:23.440 She's not doing anything like, that undermines him.

00:37:26.180 And by the way, that's an important point.

00:37:27.940 And I can only attest to that too, again, being sort of adjacent to all of this.

00:37:31.380 Yeah.

00:37:31.760 They were either extraordinarily careful in that respect, or they were so deeply loyal.

00:37:37.980 It could be both and, and it appears perhaps both and.

00:37:41.220 Both.

00:37:41.240 Both.

00:37:41.740 But there was never a sense that she was trying on her mind.

00:37:44.680 And I could just lay claim to that in terms of personal interactions and everybody around

00:37:49.720 her, of which, you know, at one degree of separation, we'll get to some of those characters in a

00:37:54.060 moment.

00:37:54.280 So she gets, she presses the president, and the president agrees that later in the day,

00:37:58.860 at least one of his visors, as you paint in the book, decides, we'll tweet something out.

00:38:03.480 But this requires two phone calls to get to that agreement.

00:38:06.440 I mean, I think this is interesting, right?

00:38:07.780 Like, they get off the phone, and there's still not an agreement about this.

00:38:11.400 He says, it's Sunday, and he's like, maybe like Wednesday or Thursday.

00:38:14.680 Yeah.

00:38:14.900 And she's like, you have to endorse me now.

00:38:16.580 Everyone's going to get out of the gate.

00:38:17.780 They're going to be calling their people.

00:38:18.940 They're going to be trying to pick up delegates.

00:38:20.520 If you endorse, if you get out of the race and you don't endorse me for four days, that's

00:38:24.800 four days of everyone thinking that you think that I'm not good enough to be president

00:38:28.520 of the United States.

00:38:29.240 And you picked me to be your VP, which is her leaning on him, right?

00:38:32.540 A little bit saying like, you can't-

00:38:34.320 There's all the judgments at stake here, sir.

00:38:36.160 Right.

00:38:36.480 And so they get off the phone, and her people draft up a statement for him to give and send

00:38:42.560 it over.

00:38:42.920 And then finally, they get back on the phone and go, you know, it's sort of like, Biden,

00:38:46.400 like, I'll do a statement about me, and then I'll do a statement about you later today.

00:38:50.280 And she's like, please be like five minutes later.

00:38:52.680 But the thing is, even within that, I mean, there's this incredible tension where Joe Biden

00:38:58.980 is focused on taking a victory lap as the guy that magnanimously got out of office.

00:39:05.600 And I think it looks like you can understand, like, he's been president of the United States.

00:39:10.440 He's not going to run.

00:39:12.100 He thinks he's the guy that can win.

00:39:13.520 Jonathan, I have such deep emotions about this, because I remember getting, first of

00:39:18.960 all, I remember two things, Kurt.

00:39:20.780 Why?

00:39:21.440 I felt, just full disclosure, a little bit of disappointment, not getting heads up, because

00:39:25.440 all of a sudden just appeared on my feed.

00:39:26.900 I'm like, what?

00:39:27.540 I mean, literally, I remember exactly where I was.

00:39:30.200 Where were you?

00:39:30.600 I remember it was just down the block.

00:39:32.280 I was just, I was on a walk.

00:39:34.000 You're governor of the fifth largest country in the world.

00:39:36.260 Yeah.

00:39:37.600 But I also was, I was out there.

00:39:39.540 I was hustling.

00:39:40.320 I was out there when I was a little lonely after that debate.

00:39:42.400 And I was out there doing these small, you know, for the delay, you know, events.

00:39:46.960 And, you know, it's 50 people.

00:39:48.420 And I'm just, you know, I'm trying to do that, be a father and do my day job as governor

00:39:53.140 at California.

00:39:53.780 And look, the way it played out actually made me feel better because there were a number

00:39:58.080 of others that didn't get heads up as well.

00:40:00.440 I understood it.

00:40:01.160 But I also understood the gap because I remember wanting to put out, we did, we put out a statement.

00:40:05.520 Immediately, everyone starts calling.

00:40:07.540 You could, I mean, those are message, text messages.

00:40:10.240 I think I might've tried to text you that day.

00:40:11.880 And, but I, there was a moment where for me, just personally, there was, I thought he needs

00:40:18.520 his space so we can talk about him, not talk about who's next.

00:40:23.580 And so I understood that gap and I understood his, for it, from his perspective, I totally

00:40:28.560 understood it.

00:40:29.660 This wasn't about the next thing.

00:40:31.620 This was about the end of his presidency and his public service.

00:40:35.080 And he needed that grace and space.

00:40:37.300 And I remember we were putting together a statement, you know, sooner than that, that

00:40:41.400 I started to get some phone calls from the same person that was making calls, according

00:40:46.360 to your book, to many other governors and elected officials across the country by the

00:40:50.900 name of Vice President Kamala Harris.

00:40:52.940 And what did she say?

00:40:54.820 Well, she was, we're reporters.

00:40:58.320 We have to ask questions.

00:40:59.160 So she, she was making those phone calls and she had that list ready to go.

00:41:06.300 And she's picking up endorsements at a fevered space.

00:41:10.200 But hey, within a couple hours, we had endorsed, I was, once we had sort of reflected on a little

00:41:14.840 space, put out a statement for Biden, we're in.

00:41:17.720 Other governors in, you talk about Clyburn, he's in, but someone by the name of Barack Obama

00:41:22.980 is not necessarily in.

00:41:25.760 And there's a phone call, I think, forgive me if I'm off, at 5.30 p.m. to Clyburn.

00:41:31.980 Former President Obama wants to make it.

00:41:34.940 Clyburn knows exactly why he's calling.

00:41:37.200 Clyburn does what?

00:41:38.360 He quickly gets behind her because he knows.

00:41:41.520 Before Obama calls.

00:41:42.200 Before he knows Obama's going to call him at 5.30 and he says to himself, I have to get

00:41:47.700 behind her before this Obama call.

00:41:50.700 And so Obama does call him and he says, I've gotten behind Kamala.

00:41:54.700 Obama and the call lasts less than a minute.

00:41:57.660 But Obama at like 5.30 that afternoon, so like five or so hours later, four hours later.

00:42:02.060 Yeah, it's about five hours, yeah.

00:42:02.940 He's still trying to like plan this like, you know, mini primary with an open convention.

00:42:06.900 So let's back up and I didn't do justice to this.

00:42:08.740 Did Obama call you?

00:42:09.640 I'm curious.

00:42:09.880 He didn't call me directly.

00:42:11.420 Not directly.

00:42:12.140 No, no.

00:42:13.440 But this notion of a mini primary plays obviously a big part of the world.

00:42:17.660 And it was sort of a big revelatory part of your book that people are like, whoa,

00:42:20.520 interesting, didn't know.

00:42:22.480 We knew a little maybe about Pelosi's role, perception, reality there.

00:42:27.580 But Obama playing that role, not of immediately endorsing the vice president as Biden eventually

00:42:34.200 did, but wanting a mini primary.

00:42:37.020 And then also floating names like Whitmer and Moore as president and vice president, just

00:42:42.700 to sort of tease out what he thought would be a very strong ticket.

00:42:46.400 But not Harris.

00:42:48.840 Bring me into understanding the history there, because I recall, wasn't that long ago, that

00:42:55.020 Kamala Harris decided not to support Hillary Clinton, not an indictment, but decided, interestingly,

00:43:01.620 after being very close to the Clintons, we'll get to that in a moment, but going to the kickoff

00:43:06.660 of Obama and his presidential rally.

00:43:09.300 But it didn't seem that relationship was as strong as some of us had understood it to

00:43:14.200 be.

00:43:14.340 I think that, number one, I don't think Obama ever saw Kamala Harris's endorsement of him

00:43:21.000 as important as Kamala Harris saw her endorsement of him, which I guess at some level is understandable

00:43:25.860 given where she was in the world where he was.

00:43:27.760 He's running president.

00:43:28.580 Right.

00:43:28.960 But I think that she always wanted a closeness to the Obamas, and they never felt it.

00:43:35.180 You know, I think maybe best said as emblematic is the only time you really heard Barack Obama

00:43:42.280 talk about Kamala Harris before she became a vice presidential candidate. 1.00

00:43:45.560 In your book, when you state, he said?

00:43:48.560 She's the best looking attorney general in the country, which, by the way, is not a high

00:43:51.980 bar.

00:43:52.760 No offense to attorney general.

00:43:53.920 But in your book, you reflect on the fact she did not react as quickly or as well, but

00:44:04.020 she also didn't say anything publicly, which may have created some rifts, right?

00:44:07.040 She let him hang there for a while, right?

00:44:09.360 She let him twist. 0.88

00:44:11.960 And I mean, anybody's advisor would advise them to maybe take a breath, let that sit out

00:44:18.520 there for a while, let the news media keep writing about it, because it's elevating her.

00:44:22.340 It certainly did.

00:44:23.520 And his expense.

00:44:24.360 A lot of attention.

00:44:25.060 Right?

00:44:25.520 And I am certain, without having spoken to Michelle Obama directly about this, but having

00:44:29.860 spoken to other people, Michelle Obama was not a real big fan of that moment where-

00:44:33.080 And you write that in your book.

00:44:35.080 Her husband said that.

00:44:36.040 I know.

00:44:36.800 But I also, you know, the other interesting thing that's going on here is, so there's this

00:44:41.000 sort of background, like she's always wanted more from them.

00:44:43.860 They don't love her.

00:44:44.680 They're not showing her the love.

00:44:45.800 Election night, for example, she goes and wants to get into his, it's 2008, so he wins

00:44:53.880 and they have a family and friends tent.

00:44:55.940 So you paint this picture as well.

00:44:57.380 Tell us more.

00:44:58.200 And so all the closest members of the Obama team and family members.

00:45:02.160 Family and friends are in a tent.

00:45:04.360 She tries to get into the tent and is turned away, but has a kind of fascination with Obama

00:45:10.760 world, even as VP wants to invite the pod, save guys over, wants to always make sure

00:45:16.540 that the Obama world people are included.

00:45:19.060 Yeah.

00:45:19.360 So she's really hurt in that moment.

00:45:21.220 I get it.

00:45:22.560 And we're told by-

00:45:24.800 I was hurt reading this.

00:45:25.940 I mean, honestly, I didn't fully, it's interesting for what I believed was some insight on all

00:45:30.820 this, I didn't appreciate that that riff was as real and raw, particularly with David Plouffe.

00:45:35.680 And we'll get to David coming on board the campaign a little bit later, but keep going.

00:45:39.440 Yeah, but no, it needs mending, the relationship.

00:45:44.160 And this is sourced to people who know exactly what's happening.

00:45:47.720 So it's not like we're just making this up, but she was really hurt.

00:45:51.860 And so it needs a couple of calls between her and the former president to kind of come

00:45:57.600 together to kind of understand what had happened.

00:46:00.780 But she really, really was leaning on his support.

00:46:04.460 And yeah.

00:46:05.440 And in that moment where she's making all the phone calls right after Biden says, you

00:46:08.920 know, I'm going to get out, she's making all these phone calls. 0.62

00:46:12.420 She wraps, so she gets Biden's support and gets him to agree to endorse her on the phone.

00:46:17.020 Yeah, huge.

00:46:17.580 By the way, game changer.

00:46:18.980 Right.

00:46:19.280 That's a game changer.

00:46:20.080 All those delegates are his.

00:46:21.260 Game changer.

00:46:21.640 Yes.

00:46:21.960 Yeah.

00:46:22.400 Right.

00:46:22.640 They all got elected to be delegates.

00:46:24.480 And you get Clyburn, you get him.

00:46:26.320 And then all of a sudden, to your point, all the delegates are his.

00:46:29.400 You get the whole operation.

00:46:31.160 She's now able to sell the operation.

00:46:33.020 And Bill and Hillary Clinton within an hour or so.

00:46:35.840 And then Bill and Hillary Clinton.

00:46:37.740 Right.

00:46:38.180 I mean, so.

00:46:38.760 Which is, yeah.

00:46:40.060 Now you've got two of the four living presidents.

00:46:42.080 There you go.

00:46:42.520 And Jimmy Carter's endorsement, you know, God rest Jimmy Carter's soul.

00:46:46.340 But his endorsement is no longer, you know, something you're negotiating on day one.

00:46:50.720 Yeah.

00:46:51.460 And then she gets Obama on the phone.

00:46:55.200 And she wants his endorsement.

00:46:57.280 And he says, I'm not going to put my thumb on the scale.

00:47:00.020 Which is, of course, is exactly putting his thumb on the other side of the scale.

00:47:03.780 Yeah.

00:47:04.420 Yeah.

00:47:05.320 Especially later in the week, too.

00:47:07.160 It takes him several days to get there.

00:47:09.680 Yeah.

00:47:09.880 And then they do this kind of cringy video.

00:47:11.780 Very awkward call.

00:47:13.020 Which you said was set up and she had to act like it was a surprise.

00:47:16.500 And there's some discrepancy you describe.

00:47:19.140 Who really set it up?

00:47:20.600 Who didn't set it up?

00:47:22.620 What do you make of all that?

00:47:23.860 What do you make of your own discrepancy?

00:47:25.840 Well, we were, sources told us.

00:47:29.180 Sources.

00:47:29.580 That, I mean, basically, I think Jen O'Malley Dillon, who was running the campaign, thought 0.98

00:47:35.340 that there was an opportunity to get a viral video, make some money.

00:47:38.820 And not for her personally, but for the campaign.

00:47:40.940 No, fundraising.

00:47:41.380 For the campaign.

00:47:41.880 Because, remember, the donors had choked off Biden.

00:47:45.080 Like, the donors to his super PAC, you know, Future Forward, had choked off the money.

00:47:51.260 Nobody was setting up fundraisers for him.

00:47:54.160 Jen O'Malley Dillon.

00:47:54.580 Another pressure point on one of the reasons he decided to drop.

00:47:57.420 Right.

00:47:57.780 Yeah.

00:47:57.880 He didn't have the money.

00:47:58.820 They thought it might come back if he stayed in, but they weren't sure when.

00:48:01.540 They're looking at red ink.

00:48:03.300 They're worried about potentially making payroll, even though there's a campaign that is likely

00:48:06.960 to raise, you know, a billion plus.

00:48:09.140 Yep.

00:48:09.460 Ends up raising about two billion.

00:48:11.820 But in that moment, they're short on cash.

00:48:14.320 And it's like, well, if we can get these two to do something that's kind of viral, we

00:48:18.120 can do it.

00:48:18.720 Yep.

00:48:19.040 But Michelle Obama doesn't want to go on camera. 1.00

00:48:21.480 You know, Barack Obama doesn't want to go on camera.

00:48:23.540 So it ends up being their voices talking to her, taking a phone call.

00:48:26.680 She's smiling.

00:48:27.520 It's so phony looking.

00:48:29.640 And I think the irony of that is that for the most part, we actually see what, like,

00:48:35.180 get what we see with Vice President Harris, like good, bad, indifferent.

00:48:39.080 Like, she seems to me to be one of the more authentic people at that level of national

00:48:44.860 politics in that there's not, I don't know.

00:48:48.240 I just don't, like, it seems so packaged and so phony for someone who, like, you see when

00:48:54.040 she's not, like, when she's struggling to do things.

00:48:56.520 You can see when she's not comfortable in something.

00:48:59.240 She wasn't happy in that moment.

00:49:00.600 Yeah, her aides kind of told us as much that she's, she thinks, she knows you have to be

00:49:07.000 authentic in politics.

00:49:07.980 And she knows that it's a very staged call.

00:49:11.400 She's not happy about how it's playing out.

00:49:13.060 Yeah, just the whole idea of it.

00:49:14.160 I get it.

00:49:14.840 And it's been particularly after, as you've written, and now we've learned what didn't

00:49:21.100 happen the days prior, leading up to that.

00:49:26.920 Hey, my name's Jay Shetty, and I'm the host of On Purpose.

00:49:31.080 I just had a great conversation with Michelle Obama.

00:49:34.000 To whom much is given, much is expected.

00:49:36.800 The guilt comes from, am I doing enough?

00:49:39.200 Me, Michelle Obama, to say that to a therapist.

00:49:42.660 So let's unpack that.

00:49:43.940 Former First Lady Michelle Obama and someone who knows her best, her big brother, Craig,

00:49:49.160 will be hosting a podcast called IMO.

00:49:51.780 What have been your personal journeys with therapy?

00:49:54.920 We need to be coached throughout our lives.

00:49:57.520 My mom wanted us to be independent children.

00:50:01.860 And she would always tell me, stop worrying about your sister.

00:50:06.860 Having been the First Lady of the entire country and representing the country and the world,

00:50:12.360 I couldn't afford to have that kind of disdain.

00:50:15.440 What would you say has been the most hardest recent test?

00:50:19.160 Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:50:25.160 or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:50:27.680 It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo

00:50:32.700 to their podcast, Dos Amigos.

00:50:35.000 Wilmer's friend and former That's 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy

00:50:39.420 for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times.

00:50:43.620 We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become?

00:50:46.080 And you go, you're having the best time.

00:50:48.080 But it was like, such a perfect golden time.

00:50:51.720 Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:50:56.640 Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

00:51:10.640 It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world

00:51:15.480 as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives.

00:51:21.800 I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot.

00:51:26.520 Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show.

00:51:31.960 I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment.

00:51:36.780 I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails.

00:51:39.560 I have very overbearing parents.

00:51:41.800 Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house.

00:51:44.680 So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head,

00:51:50.000 search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:51:57.180 It's the one with the green guy on it.

00:51:59.720 And the dream season is now complete.

00:52:02.400 The Golden State Warriors are the 2015 NBA champions.

00:52:05.940 On the new limited podcast series, Dub Dynasty,

00:52:08.460 it's been 10 years since their shocking run to a championship.

00:52:11.480 We examine the controversial move that made it possible.

00:52:15.020 It's never a great conversation as a player when you hear that you're being benched.

00:52:18.880 For the entire behind-the-scenes story of Golden State's incredible 10-year run,

00:52:23.440 listen to Dub Dynasty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:52:32.120 I'm Clayton English.

00:52:33.420 I'm Greg Glod.

00:52:34.100 And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.

00:52:36.720 Yes, sir. We are back.

00:52:37.760 In a big way.

00:52:38.560 In a very big way.

00:52:39.600 Like, real people, real perspectives.

00:52:42.020 This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

00:52:44.200 We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

00:52:47.720 It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

00:52:53.520 Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.

00:52:57.460 We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug fan is.

00:53:03.040 Benny the Butcher.

00:53:04.180 Brent Smith from Shinedown.

00:53:05.540 We got Be Real from Cypress Hill.

00:53:07.340 NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

00:53:09.580 Marine Corvette.

00:53:10.860 MMA fighter.

00:53:11.920 Liz Karamouche.

00:53:12.960 What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things.

00:53:15.940 Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.

00:53:18.120 It makes it real.

00:53:18.900 It really does.

00:53:19.940 It makes it real.

00:53:21.300 Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app,

00:53:26.420 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:53:29.180 And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content,

00:53:33.480 subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

00:53:36.340 Let's fast forward a little bit.

00:53:46.860 That's basically the first half of your book.

00:53:49.140 You lay out sort of this moment, and then we pivot into the second half of the book.

00:53:53.300 And you pull in Mar-a-Lago versus Kamalot, as you describe it in one chapter,

00:53:58.080 what's going on in the Trump campaign at this moment.

00:54:00.580 They seem a bit surprised that it was that quick, right, to shift and transfer overwhelming

00:54:06.840 support pretty quickly, with a few exceptions.

00:54:09.020 And you chronicle one governor in particular, not even consequential in the context of the

00:54:14.780 overall support she was getting.

00:54:17.320 The momentum was there.

00:54:18.360 It was real.

00:54:18.920 And it was enthusiastic.

00:54:21.460 And the folks out in Florida were feeling slightly anxious, curious.

00:54:27.980 Give us a little bit of insight into how the campaign of Donald Trump, Las Avidas, Wiles,

00:54:35.620 were feeling Trump himself at this moment.

00:54:37.860 It's a low moment for them.

00:54:39.440 Yeah.

00:54:39.760 You know, they are sitting there looking at the vibe, if you will.

00:54:43.440 They see that Democrats are actually excited for once.

00:54:47.040 You know, they weren't getting that from them at any point.

00:54:49.780 And here they are.

00:54:50.940 Huge convention, a lot of momentum.

00:54:53.660 She's raising a lot of money. 0.52

00:54:55.660 She is attracting big crowds.

00:54:58.680 Biden isn't getting those crowds, wasn't getting them before.

00:55:01.720 So he's wondering, what do I need to do differently?

00:55:04.920 Do I need to shake things up?

00:55:06.240 Do I need to bring back the people from my past?

00:55:09.200 And there's one particular character you referenced in the book by the name of Corey Lewandowski.

00:55:17.940 And he appears again.

00:55:19.560 And he appears as an irritant of sorts to the two folks, the loyal soldiers, Las Avidas and Wiles,

00:55:27.960 who had been running this campaign in a way that a lot of folks were pretty impressed by,

00:55:32.660 particularly by Trump's standards.

00:55:33.920 I don't know if we're grading on a curve or not, but it seemed to be a well-managed campaign,

00:55:38.720 a little different than the campaign four-year prior.

00:55:41.040 And Trump is Trump.

00:55:42.880 And there are different shades of Trump.

00:55:44.560 But, like, you pretty much know where you're going to get, which is something different every time you see him,

00:55:48.320 definitely, you know, attracting news and sometimes undercutting himself and whatever.

00:55:51.980 But the question is, like, what does the campaign do beneath him, right?

00:55:55.220 Are they able to react to him in ways that support him winning?

00:55:58.540 Or do they devolve into chaos because they can't figure out what he's doing?

00:56:01.400 And we've seen option B a lot, like in his first presidency, even a little bit in the second presidency,

00:56:06.560 and in his previous campaigns.

00:56:07.960 This time, Wiles and Las Avidas, who didn't really know each other before this election,

00:56:12.400 but are both seasoned campaign professionals.

00:56:15.000 And just to paint the picture, because people know who the heck, Las Avidas.

00:56:18.360 This is the guy who did Swift Boat against the Kerry campaign many, many years ago.

00:56:22.840 I mean, in political terms, I mean, this guy is as tough as it gets.

00:56:27.320 Brass Knuckles.

00:56:28.540 Smart guy.

00:56:29.200 Yeah, if you're in a trench somewhere, you know, first of all, he's a veteran.

00:56:33.120 But, like, if you're in a trench somewhere in politics, like, you want that guy.

00:56:36.140 Like, he's going to fight.

00:56:37.300 And meanwhile, Wiles is a well-respected operative in Florida that's managed a lot of campaigns,

00:56:44.360 including former governor or current governor, but formerly for Governor Ron DeSantis.

00:56:49.460 Yeah, the daughter of Pat Sumrall.

00:56:51.720 Pat Sumrall.

00:56:52.260 The former football broadcaster.

00:56:53.660 The legendary Pat Sumrall.

00:56:54.260 Yeah, legendary Pat Sumrall.

00:56:55.300 Yes.

00:56:56.300 Who I am sure called many San Francisco 49ers games over the years.

00:57:01.080 With Mr. Madden.

00:57:01.380 Thank you, sir.

00:57:02.020 Yes.

00:57:02.760 But Susie is somebody who has been involved in politics for her entire career, and she is in her, like, mid-60s now.

00:57:10.820 And she, like, got her first job in the White House, in the Reagan White House, like, you know, kind of early in life, worked at the Labor Department for him, and then went to Florida and worked for mayors in, you know, Jacksonville, right?

00:57:23.280 And, like, really sort of got to understand politics from the ground up, too.

00:57:27.320 Yeah.

00:57:27.780 Ran some high-profile Florida statewide campaigns, DeSantis.

00:57:31.220 And she manages well.

00:57:35.360 She's just a good manager. 1.00

00:57:37.520 I mean, well-respected.

00:57:38.600 You hear that across party lines.

00:57:40.440 People do not underestimate her, and one should not.

00:57:42.840 She's the current chief of staff of President Trump.

00:57:45.740 Yeah.

00:57:45.940 And so Lewandowski comes in, and he ran the 16 campaign for Trump until he got booted from that, you know, sort of toward the end of the primary.

00:57:54.420 And he comes in, and he does what everyone does in Trump world, which is when they sense a little blood in the water, and Harris is rising in the polls, and Trump's falling back a little bit.

00:58:04.320 And it's—at this moment in, like, September, even into early October, it's basically a dead heat.

00:58:11.980 Yeah.

00:58:12.240 And Trump is furious about this because he had beaten Biden.

00:58:15.560 Yep.

00:58:16.000 Right?

00:58:16.480 He felt it was over, clobbered him in the debate.

00:58:19.660 In fact, you even paint a picture in the debate.

00:58:22.060 He kind of even was a little more empathetic.

00:58:23.720 He decided not to go in for the kill.

00:58:25.280 Yeah, he backed off.

00:58:25.640 He even backed off.

00:58:27.220 Even Trump during the debate you described.

00:58:29.580 Some kind of combination of him recognizing that, you know, in this moment that, like, Biden is wounded and there's no need to kick him.

00:58:39.600 And also understanding the political backlash of, as he puts it, looking—you know, he doesn't want to look like—as he's thinking.

00:58:46.300 So this guy's—I mean, he's feeling everything's going in his direction.

00:58:49.240 This thing's a walk.

00:58:50.140 And now, all of a sudden, he brings in the old pro to sort of stress test his old buddy Lewandowski that's going to come in and he's going to look under the tires.

00:58:59.760 Because one of the vulnerabilities and one of the things Trump doesn't like you describe in your book is wasteful spending, profligacy.

00:59:06.780 And it appeared, at least, to Lewandowski and some of the critics out there, that Lasavidas had banked a little too much.

00:59:15.420 Yeah.

00:59:15.520 20-plus million or something?

00:59:16.820 Yeah.

00:59:17.000 Well, I mean, that's just—like, that's an absurd amount.

00:59:19.000 Let me just think about, like, the idea that some campaign staffers got $22 million coming in them.

00:59:23.920 It's just, like, on its face absurd.

00:59:26.320 But this is the stuff Corey Lewandowski is, you know, using against Lasavidas and against Susie, to some extent.

00:59:33.600 Like, the argument that Lewandowski is making to Trump is the reason that you are having trouble right now politically, the reason that Kamala Harris is rising, you're falling, is that these guys are mismanaging your campaign.

00:59:43.520 And this—and Trump wants—that's the kind of thing that usually gets Trump to act.

00:59:47.820 And Susie and Chris go to Trump in Mar-a-Lago, unbeknownst to Corey, and they sit down with him, and they lay out what all the campaign spending is.

00:59:55.560 And I think they lay out a little bit of who Corey is.

00:59:57.980 And they all get on Trump Force One, and Trump calls Corey over, and just—I mean, like a schoolboy, he's, like, at one point, like, kind of kneeling at the table.

01:00:08.060 I mean, you literally describe him kneeling at the table.

01:00:10.980 And Trump, you know, looks at Lewandowski, and he points to Susie and Chris, and he goes, they're in charge.

01:00:19.020 And you're going—

01:00:20.520 To New Hampshire.

01:00:22.020 Which is not—

01:00:23.100 And do what you're supposed to be doing.

01:00:24.280 Right.

01:00:24.700 Corey's from New Hampshire, at least, right?

01:00:27.060 But, I mean, basically, yeah.

01:00:28.940 Like, stop.

01:00:30.060 Like, go away.

01:00:31.220 Go away.

01:00:31.740 Like, love you, Corey.

01:00:33.440 Great guy.

01:00:34.460 Glad you support me.

01:00:35.920 Go somewhere else.

01:00:36.380 But for anyone who thinks that we just focus on the Democratic train wreck—

01:00:40.080 No.

01:00:40.680 No, so, I mean, this is it.

01:00:41.820 It's sort of, we pivot now into Section 2 of your book.

01:00:44.580 Now, all of a sudden, we start to pull Trump into this narrative.

01:00:48.240 And, of course, that anxiety.

01:00:49.760 But he sticks with his team.

01:00:51.040 And he shows, as you suggest in the book, a maturity in terms of the discipline of the campaign that may not have been as present in his first campaign.

01:00:59.380 I think 2020 had an effect on him.

01:01:01.260 I think he learned some lessons from it.

01:01:02.780 And in this moment and in others, he chooses stability over chaos for the purpose of winning the presidency.

01:01:09.600 We do not always see that now, now that he's in his second term.

01:01:12.860 And we often see the opposite of that.

01:01:14.440 But for that moment, he's got to win this race.

01:01:17.160 And he lost in 2020, and it burns him.

01:01:19.540 And he's trying to stick with the things that he thinks, dance with the one that brought you.

01:01:23.560 Yep.

01:01:23.780 He's doing that with these campaign folks.

01:01:25.980 And you even see it in the policies that he chooses, where his aides are giving him strong advice on, say, a national abortion ban, where they say, they have to do a slideshow for him.

01:01:37.640 And they're like, here's what the abortion laws are in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and these swing states.

01:01:43.240 And if you do a national abortion ban, you're taking abortion rights away from women in those states. 1.00

01:01:48.240 But if you don't support it, their rights stay the same.

01:01:52.040 And therefore, you're taking it off the table as an issue in those states, or at least for a lot of the voters, right?

01:01:56.960 So you see him kind of learning from the last time.

01:02:00.120 He supports early voting in this election, which he doesn't believe in, which he's going to try to take away now that he's president.

01:02:07.080 But he is told you get to bank the vote.

01:02:10.700 So again, this money thing, it's like once you have a vote in early, you don't have to spend money to convince that voter anymore.

01:02:17.220 So you describe, and as we move further into the book, we have this dialectic between the Harris campaign and the Biden campaign.

01:02:25.260 And this notion around change, obviously, every election is about change or allegedly every election is about change.

01:02:32.480 But it's difficult.

01:02:33.180 You have a city vice president.

01:02:34.740 It's been endorsed by President Biden, deep pride in the work that President Biden's done in his legacy.

01:02:41.240 He wants that legacy maintained.

01:02:42.640 You describe Trump showing a little bit, I'm not going as far as sister shoulder moment, but shows some dexterity, a willingness to sort of shift in terms of policy principles on the national abortion brand, kind of break with some of the mainstream of his party, more of the conservative elements of his party.

01:02:59.060 But Harris had a more difficult time in that space.

01:03:02.720 You describe a moment in time that was indelible for many people.

01:03:07.100 And that was her appearance on The View.

01:03:11.040 Take us through.

01:03:12.700 So we should start by saying that her aides had prepped her for this moment, that she's about to be asked on The View.

01:03:20.380 She's asked, what would you change about Biden's presidency?

01:03:26.560 And she says, not a thing, essentially.

01:03:29.800 But she was prepped for that question.

01:03:31.820 She was prepped for that question.

01:03:33.180 Was that the answer?

01:03:34.500 It was not the answer.

01:03:35.560 She was supposed to say that, but, and I know you know this more than anyone, she was supposed to pivot forward and say, but, you know, the future is going to look a lot different.

01:03:45.400 And so when she says it, her aides are all like, what?

01:03:48.720 What just happened?

01:03:49.720 We just, we prepped for this moment.

01:03:52.160 And they can't believe.

01:03:53.640 But in that moment, the Trump campaign was looking for something, in her words, to kind of make that point, to say, in a change election, she is exactly what we just had.

01:04:07.240 And here she is saying it.

01:04:10.140 Right.

01:04:10.400 And they put out an ad a few days later.

01:04:13.340 I'm surprised it even took that long.

01:04:15.140 But they put out an ad essentially saying, no, it's going to be exactly a rubber stamp of more of the same.

01:04:21.920 And this is at a time when the right track, wrong track of the country was way off and all the inflation scars and including, well, I mean, across the spectrum, people really were looking for fundamental change.

01:04:34.440 And what a weird spot for her to be in because, you know, she was always trying to prove that she was a loyalist. 0.99

01:04:39.860 And here she is.

01:04:41.100 She is a loyalist.

01:04:42.180 She's very loyal to him.

01:04:43.160 She was very loyal publicly, not just privately in that respect, and express that.

01:04:47.400 And you paint a picture.

01:04:48.700 And I think the outcome of the election may suggest that she did that in her own peril, own electoral peril.

01:04:54.920 And with Joe Biden, pardon me, Governor, with President Biden breathing down her neck over and over and over again, saying, no daylight, kid.

01:05:04.940 He says it to her.

01:05:05.900 And that's an exact quote.

01:05:07.140 No daylight, kid.

01:05:08.360 The day of her debate with Trump.

01:05:10.500 And this is the thing he's been telling her for years.

01:05:12.400 There should be no daylight between us, meaning you don't undermine me.

01:05:15.680 You're my vice president.

01:05:17.060 You don't undermine me.

01:05:17.960 You don't show any distance.

01:05:19.160 I mean, you know what?

01:05:20.040 I'm not a political pundit.

01:05:21.840 I'm not an advisor.

01:05:22.820 I don't even play a good one as a governor trying to be objective.

01:05:25.940 But what the hell are you supposed to do?

01:05:27.640 The minute she deviates from him, they'll pounce and they'll show all the videos of her shaking her head, standing behind them at the podium when President Biden makes an announcement.

01:05:36.640 It's a very difficult position.

01:05:37.900 And presumably they thought, and I say they, because David Plouffe now appears in the picture, an old hand, obviously one of Obama's principal consultants and campaign strategists.

01:05:50.400 They merged with Jen O'Malley Dillon, who was running the Biden campaign. 1.00

01:05:54.460 They try to integrate the two.

01:05:55.900 They have a longstanding relationship, Plouffe and O'Malley.

01:05:59.640 And so they're sort of, they're dancing this dance, but they see the crowds.

01:06:03.920 They see Kamala Harris up there, a woman, African-American.

01:06:07.180 She has changed.

01:06:08.440 She seems to be the personification of change.

01:06:10.900 They can make that case maybe without even making the case that it's imbued.

01:06:14.780 But that's what they did with Obama in 2008, right?

01:06:17.860 In 2008, which was also a change election, and George W. Bush was deeply unpopular, and there was a financial crisis in the middle of that campaign.

01:06:27.260 And they couldn't have known that when they started with Obama as change.

01:06:31.080 But they knew Barack Obama represents physical change.

01:06:34.660 You can see the change.

01:06:35.720 You don't have to say it.

01:06:36.500 They don't ever have to talk about his skin color, right?

01:06:38.880 They don't have to talk about his name.

01:06:40.700 They know he, that was their 2008 campaign.

01:06:43.680 This is 2024, and you have the same people running a campaign with the same concept here that people are going to look at her and say, well, that's the change I'm looking for. 0.94

01:06:54.980 Like, it's just, it's as if they didn't watch the last 16 years of politics or so, and they're running cookie-cutter campaigns that rely on, like, sort of this crazy, like, sort of data analysis as your strategy.

01:07:10.300 And the thing that I always come back to as emblematic, not necessarily causal, is the trans ad that was run against Harris.

01:07:17.600 So let's talk about that, because you just brought up the issue of data, and it plays a big role in your book.

01:07:29.240 You really analyze that.

01:07:31.320 I mean, you sort of lay out how analytical this campaign was and the utilization of this billion and a half dollars, the $2 billion that was the overall spend in this campaign, and how those resources were put to work.

01:07:44.760 And it was a data, to your point, data-driven campaign, and decisions were made or not made on that basis.

01:07:50.860 And you just referenced an ad.

01:07:53.200 And interesting, I had an interesting Oval Office conversation, at least with the chief of staff, while I was waiting to see President Trump in the Oval Office with Las Avidas, and we talked about this ad.

01:08:04.600 I think you should tell that story now.

01:08:05.920 And they lay out what they perceived as a weakness, and they asked me, as someone from California, intimately familiar with some of the ongoing of the campaign, why didn't she respond more forcefully?

01:08:25.900 And in your book, you answer that question.

01:08:29.860 You pose it and answer it by saying, well, the data bared out.

01:08:33.020 We didn't need to answer it.

01:08:34.260 Bill Clinton calls.

01:08:35.580 He's watching.

01:08:36.240 He's in California.

01:08:37.540 He's watching the ads play out.

01:08:39.620 And he picks up the phone, and he's trying to reach anyone who will be receptive.

01:08:45.020 But he finally gets in touch with.

01:08:46.120 Jenna O'Malley Dillon.

01:08:47.180 And he says, you know, what's going on?

01:08:49.720 Every time I'm at a rope line, I keep hearing from people.

01:08:52.140 Are they going to respond to this?

01:08:53.280 He's watching it.

01:08:54.240 And the ad is they, them.

01:08:56.600 So it's an ad, a video.

01:08:58.380 It's the most potent ad.

01:08:59.300 Yeah.

01:08:59.560 So she's in a candidate interview during the primary for the original election or the old election.

01:09:05.380 And she's asked a question around trans surgeries.

01:09:09.760 Right.

01:09:09.920 And so there's a video of her expressing her policy point of view.

01:09:14.480 So it's not assertion.

01:09:15.920 It's an actual video.

01:09:17.560 And the Trump campaign decides to play this up.

01:09:21.480 And it's on every sports program.

01:09:23.240 They're targeting young men.

01:09:24.880 We'll get to that issue of gender in a second.

01:09:26.900 And it seems to be very effective.

01:09:29.440 And based upon what I heard directly from the source, they said it was not just effective.

01:09:33.840 It was off the charts effective.

01:09:35.600 But the data wasn't bearing that out in the Harris campaign.

01:09:39.880 That's what Jenna O'Malley Dillon tells Bill Clinton when he calls up.

01:09:43.520 And he's like, what's going on?

01:09:44.700 But the data, the data, the data says, says the trans ad is not effective against Harris.

01:09:51.480 And even more than that, they're, they test their responses with focus groups and decide that none of the responses are effective.

01:09:59.460 And like, I don't think you have to be a political genius to, I mean, I'm sure you watched that ad the first time watching the World Series or a football game or whatever.

01:10:08.060 And your jaw dropped and you were like, wow.

01:10:10.280 What did you think?

01:10:10.820 You tell me if you felt differently, but like.

01:10:12.160 Oh, I, I was with the Clinton camp at the time.

01:10:17.220 Oh, and we not only was I at the Clinton camp, full disclosure, we started doing our own research.

01:10:22.380 This, of course, happened in it and the research was self-evident.

01:10:25.420 There was already articles coming out that this was a policy that was that existed when Trump was president of the United States.

01:10:31.080 So there you have a vulnerability.

01:10:32.600 He's attacking the vice president for a position that he was allowed to advance as president.

01:10:38.000 So you had an opportunity to push back there, but also we started doing our own research because this was at CDCR in the state of California.

01:10:44.900 What's the origin story of this policy?

01:10:47.180 Was there a settlement?

01:10:48.120 It was court and post settlement.

01:10:49.820 She was AG.

01:10:50.720 She was compelled to advance that settlement based upon a judge's decision.

01:10:56.260 And so all of these areas of opportunity to push back.

01:11:00.400 And I think we all expressed strong opinion.

01:11:03.100 I'll leave it at that in hope and expectation, but they, they chose not to.

01:11:07.420 Did you get a similar response?

01:11:08.980 We just, you know, well, I got to say, not, how about this?

01:11:12.940 Not dissimilar response.

01:11:14.860 Is that a political politician trying to answer a question?

01:11:17.640 It's fair.

01:11:18.440 I think, I think, I think we got it.

01:11:20.180 But it's, but it was interesting.

01:11:21.360 But it, but it played, it goes, it goes to some of these key moments.

01:11:25.500 Cause you, you, you mark this as a key moment and you mark that David Plouffe came in saying this is election all about key moments.

01:11:34.160 It's about debates.

01:11:35.320 It's about the convention.

01:11:36.460 It's about these sort of magical moments that move in your direction or in the opposite direction.

01:11:41.920 But that seemed to play an outside because they put what, 30 plus million dollars into that one ad alone.

01:11:47.820 Correct.

01:11:48.140 Yeah.

01:11:48.280 I don't remember the exact amount, but it was a ton because it was playing everywhere and it was playing nationally.

01:11:52.780 Right.

01:11:53.060 It's playing again, the world series NFL game, like Monday night football.

01:11:56.640 Right.

01:11:56.940 I mean, it is hitting a ton of viewers and hitting them over and over and over again.

01:12:00.240 And I think one of the things that's sort of interesting about this, I would just take a, you know, this sort of data thing.

01:12:06.020 I mean, look, you're watching football.

01:12:08.740 They tell you to go on fourth and two because the data tells you to go.

01:12:11.700 And sometimes it works.

01:12:12.380 Sometimes it doesn't.

01:12:13.120 Right.

01:12:13.300 But if you're the coach, you should know my offensive line is actually kind of, they're huffing and puffing right now.

01:12:19.460 And the quarterback's got a bad ankle.

01:12:20.940 And maybe even though the data says I should do it, I'm watching reality.

01:12:25.180 Yeah.

01:12:25.580 So you see the trans ad and it's like her own words.

01:12:28.180 It's like four or five different positions, right?

01:12:30.680 State funded trans surgery for undocumented immigrants who are in prison.

01:12:36.920 Yeah.

01:12:37.560 And the they, them versus he's for you. 0.85

01:12:40.140 He's for you.

01:12:41.340 What a tagline.

01:12:42.420 What a tagline.

01:12:43.080 I mean, probably the most potent political ad of the last several cycles.

01:12:48.920 You'd be hard pressed to disagree.

01:12:50.660 So I go back at this data stuff and I'm like, so where does this come from?

01:12:53.380 And I think it's this, this myth that grew out of 2008 that Barack Obama's campaign team made Barack Obama president.

01:13:02.140 And there was a whole lot written.

01:13:03.820 There were magazine articles and books and about how the brilliant people around Barack Obama made him president.

01:13:08.940 And none of it stopped to say maybe Barack Obama was A, a unique political talent.

01:13:14.780 B, maybe he was running an election where there was a super weakened incumbent party, right?

01:13:20.440 I mean, it was all like, oh, we had this great data team.

01:13:23.720 That must be why he won.

01:13:25.280 Interesting.

01:13:25.860 And I'm like, I don't know.

01:13:27.160 Is that really your conclusion for why Barack Obama was president of the United States?

01:13:30.200 It's not mine.

01:13:30.940 You're talking about my friends here, Jonathan.

01:13:33.720 David's a good friend.

01:13:35.280 By the way, I'm not knocking.

01:13:36.280 And they're incredibly talented.

01:13:37.820 But I appreciate your point.

01:13:38.900 I'm not knocking.

01:13:39.340 The broader point about, you know, what lessons we learn.

01:13:43.080 And, you know, and who is, I mean, it is a great point.

01:13:45.260 I mean, is it the candidate or is it the campaign?

01:13:47.320 Well, and I would go back to David and I would say, I'm not knocking David.

01:13:49.620 David was the campaign manager on that 2008 campaign.

01:13:52.300 They ran a really good campaign.

01:13:55.520 It's the people that, like, come out of that learning, like, oh, it must have been this.

01:13:59.160 I don't think if you talked to David Plouffe, he would tell you Barack Obama was president of the United States because David Plouffe's a genius.

01:14:04.800 And I'm not saying David Plouffe is a genius.

01:14:06.400 No, he would never acknowledge that.

01:14:07.440 No.

01:14:07.560 Right.

01:14:07.860 So, like, I mean, but I do think that you come down a generation or two and the people that worked on that campaign or around it kind of draw some of the wrong lessons.

01:14:14.360 And things evolve.

01:14:15.680 I'd be one of them, right?

01:14:16.820 I mean, I would revere, though, that insight they would have.

01:14:19.880 And as a candidate, I would look to the, I would, and you would be remarkably deferential.

01:14:24.180 I mean, and look, she had 107 days, this thing.

01:14:27.080 And by the way, I thought, and I humbly submit, I thought she won or ran under the circumstances, a pretty remarkable campaign.

01:14:35.120 But you paint a few circumstances that test that theory.

01:14:38.720 And one of them, as we move towards 270 and getting near page 268, the conclusion of your book, 270 electoral votes I'm referring to, is Texas.

01:14:50.180 All things Texas.

01:14:51.760 This notion that, all right, he's playing these ads.

01:14:55.020 He's going after young men.

01:14:56.780 Trump's also sort of playing into an archetype and a cultural thing.

01:15:00.140 He's got Hulk Hogan there.

01:15:01.500 He's got him ripping off his shirt.

01:15:03.000 He's got Dana White.

01:15:04.020 He's at UFC events.

01:15:06.520 He's going because Barron, at least Trump claims, Barron says, hey, there's this thing's podcast.

01:15:11.940 You should go on him, Dad.

01:15:13.240 And he starts going on, you know, on all these folks.

01:15:15.700 And then there's this guy by the name of Joe Rogan.

01:15:19.260 Rogan plays a seemingly outsized role, not just in the campaign, but also in your book, Texas Hold'em.

01:15:26.400 Yeah.

01:15:26.560 So this rally happens in Texas, and everyone's questioning, why is she going to Texas when we're in the finals?

01:15:34.240 On a Friday night.

01:15:35.220 On a Friday night.

01:15:35.840 Come on, don't. 0.99

01:15:36.540 We're going to, we are eventually, Democrats will take back Texas. 0.95

01:15:40.180 No, but Friday night.

01:15:41.260 Friday night.

01:15:41.740 Come on, I'm with you.

01:15:42.520 It's near the end of the campaign.

01:15:43.960 There's high school football.

01:15:46.000 There's some tonal issues there.

01:15:48.580 God bless.

01:15:49.280 But she goes there, and everyone's like, why?

01:15:51.680 Why not Pennsylvania?

01:15:52.800 Why not anywhere else?

01:15:53.860 She's in Texas.

01:15:54.720 We find out in this book, we do reporting, they move the, they create this entire rally to be in Texas on Friday night because they want to be within striking distance of Joe Rogan's podcast.

01:16:09.560 He doesn't go anywhere.

01:16:10.800 He's in Austin, Texas.

01:16:12.180 He's in Austin.

01:16:12.640 He is not flying anywhere.

01:16:14.360 Trump had to go visit him.

01:16:15.920 You, Madam Vice President, will visit him.

01:16:17.740 Yeah.

01:16:18.080 And so they are in this back and forth with his people.

01:16:21.580 When do we go when a huge back and forth, they finally say they're, they're trying to, to arrange one date.

01:16:32.420 And finally, this is at the end of like a huge back and forth.

01:16:37.020 And they finally come to the conclusion that, you know, he is taking a personal day.

01:16:44.180 So Rogan tells the Harris campaign, or his folks, according to your sources, in your book, he's not available that Friday because he has a personal day.

01:16:56.620 What happened?

01:16:57.100 It turns out.

01:16:58.080 President Trump is there on that day.

01:17:00.680 So he had, and presumably that personal day was already filled.

01:17:06.080 Locked in.

01:17:06.420 Locked in with former President Donald Trump in person for a three-hour sit-down with Joe Rogan.

01:17:13.360 Meanwhile, Harris is there on a Friday night expecting Beyonce to come out to sing.

01:17:19.520 And Beyonce comes out and? 1.00

01:17:21.940 Does not sing.

01:17:23.920 And we ended up, you know.

01:17:27.160 But you rightfully make the case.

01:17:28.780 Beyonce is not a bad.

01:17:30.500 It's not a bad.

01:17:31.460 No, it's about as good as it gets.

01:17:33.260 Even you acknowledge in your book.

01:17:34.820 No, please.

01:17:35.460 Like, you know, when my wife and I renew our vows, hopefully Beyonce will come sing. 0.83

01:17:39.120 Well said.

01:17:39.940 At the ceremony.

01:17:40.800 But there was some expectation.

01:17:42.280 Worst case, because she's going to come in and sing. 0.63

01:17:44.300 She ends up just giving a speech. 0.60

01:17:45.880 She just gives a speech. 0.98

01:17:47.040 Which is wonderful, nonetheless.

01:17:48.500 I'm sure she would love to have had Beyonce give a speech anywhere, anytime. 1.00

01:17:52.080 Not a lot of swing voters in swing states at the Texas rally watching Beyonce, right?

01:17:56.800 But explain, by the way, for those that, I never knew this.

01:18:00.340 I was wondering, so you paint this.

01:18:02.300 For those that are wondering, why didn't she go on Joe Rogan?

01:18:04.900 There was a lot of effort the Harris campaign made to try to go on.

01:18:08.200 There was sort of negotiation.

01:18:09.340 There were logistics.

01:18:10.780 And there was this sort of anchor event that would lead to conclude that she sincerely wanted to go on the Rogan show.

01:18:17.960 I think she sincerely wanted to go.

01:18:19.240 There was internal debate within the campaign about whether to try for that or not.

01:18:22.500 Yeah.

01:18:22.960 And the people who wanted to won out in that debate.

01:18:25.360 But it was not like a 95-5 decision.

01:18:28.700 It was like a 51-49.

01:18:30.160 But once they committed to it, they committed to it.

01:18:32.080 So much so that they literally put her in Texas in October in the stretch run of the campaign for a rally, you know, and said that it had to do something with abortion rights.

01:18:41.460 You know, like, oh, well, we can do an abortion rights rally anywhere.

01:18:44.000 Texas is a big state.

01:18:45.060 Matters for that.

01:18:45.920 Yeah.

01:18:46.080 Whatever the cover story was.

01:18:48.520 I actually think that what happened here is that there was some interest on both sides.

01:18:53.000 They had a negotiation and it fell through.

01:18:55.760 And then, you know, there's some finger pointing on both sides because I think both sides legitimately had some interest in doing it.

01:19:02.660 And sometimes things fall apart.

01:19:03.920 But the fact that they made this entire rally, you know, to try to get this done when it wasn't already, like, signed, sealed, and delivered is, it's kind of jaw-dropping.

01:19:15.220 So the Rogan thing plays an outsize.

01:19:18.020 And, you know, the idea and the people can go to what happened, why did she lose?

01:19:22.020 Was it the view, the unwillingness to separate from someone that was difficult to separate from because he didn't want her to separate and she wanted to express loyalty?

01:19:30.240 Was it the nature of incumbency?

01:19:33.400 And there's an incumbency penalty of sorts.

01:19:35.520 And you saw that globally, though not exclusively globally, but you saw it in a lot of other countries.

01:19:40.120 Was it inflation?

01:19:41.080 Was it immigration?

01:19:42.240 Which obviously played a role in this campaign.

01:19:45.180 Was it interest rates?

01:19:46.280 Which people often forget about car loans and home loans, mortgage rates, and the like.

01:19:50.780 But all this time, she wasn't thinking about that.

01:19:54.800 She was confident she was going to win.

01:19:56.700 She goes into election night thinking she's going to win.

01:19:59.560 Same with Tim Walz.

01:20:00.740 So much so that when they're told, they can't believe it.

01:20:04.700 They can't find the words.

01:20:05.980 And so you describe those two scenes of Tim Walz getting alerted that they've lost, but also Kamala Harris being told that she's not going to win.

01:20:18.640 They had prepared in every way, shape, or form, confident.

01:20:22.680 You got that Iowa poll you highlight.

01:20:25.420 And we all felt it.

01:20:26.860 I felt it.

01:20:27.580 Did you think this was a winnable race?

01:20:29.480 Yes.

01:20:30.120 You did.

01:20:30.660 I think it absolutely was a winnable race.

01:20:32.440 Even with all those factors.

01:20:33.420 With all the factors, the five I's, I would add, Israel. 0.99

01:20:35.860 I'll end too.

01:20:36.760 I mean, all those things were, I mean, huge headwinds, unquestionably.

01:20:40.440 But I mean, she, there was energy there.

01:20:43.940 You know, I was, you were out on the campaign trail.

01:20:45.580 You felt it.

01:20:46.600 There was, there was something different happening.

01:20:49.060 That said, I mean, in hindsight, we can look back and we can make a different argument because we're all experts and geniuses in hindsight.

01:20:55.600 But going into election night, that was 60-40.

01:20:59.600 She was going to pull it off.

01:21:00.620 I felt the same way they felt.

01:21:02.200 And again, everyone, you know, people on the right watching, just rolling their eyes, laughing.

01:21:05.860 That, that I, I'm saying that I'm just being transparent and honest and, and, and, you know, was going to be close.

01:21:13.020 But she was really confident that, that sort of marked to 270.

01:21:17.320 And Trump, meanwhile, was reasonably confident.

01:21:21.400 Cautiously, I think, was the, you quoted people saying, cautiously, sir.

01:21:25.260 He was nervous.

01:21:25.920 He was nervous that night.

01:21:27.440 He kept.

01:21:28.160 Well, he thought he was going to win in 2020.

01:21:29.920 Yeah.

01:21:30.740 Right.

01:21:31.100 His, his team had told him, if you hit a certain threshold nationally, right, you get whatever the number was, 65 million votes nationally, you're president.

01:21:39.620 And he hit that number and he lost.

01:21:41.600 And the reason he hit that number and lost is because the increase in the Democratic number of votes in 2020 from 2016 was like 21%.

01:21:48.060 It was, I mean, the participation rate in 2020 was insane.

01:21:52.400 Everybody's home.

01:21:53.040 They had nothing else to do.

01:21:54.040 They could vote early.

01:21:55.000 You know, states made accommodations for people to vote.

01:21:56.860 So, and so Trump was, I think this is the part of the reason that he kept going out there and saying that people were cheating.

01:22:04.620 And obviously it benefits him to say that and has continued to benefit him.

01:22:07.800 But I think part of the reason is he was looking to explain what didn't make sense to him because he had lost in 2020 and been so shocked.

01:22:15.660 And in this book, readers will, I think, be interested in spending those last few minutes with Kamala Harris.

01:22:22.840 Um, we take you inside her sort of personal quarters in the vice president's residence and what she's kind of concluding that night.

01:22:31.120 And I think, I think it's very powerful and I don't want to wholly give that away.

01:22:35.140 The big bombshell, I think, is that she was gaslit by her own campaign. 1.00

01:22:41.680 Meaning they, they, they gave her no indication otherwise that she was going to get there.

01:22:47.500 Correct.

01:22:48.100 Even though their final tally, their final projection of the race had her losing.

01:22:52.840 And so that leads to our conclusion, the epilogue.

01:23:02.840 And what's remarkable, the epilogue is how contemporary it is to this moment we're actually sitting in, which suggests this thing either keeps writing itself or you just quite literally finished this book.

01:23:14.260 Um, the lessons learned, the word gaslighting came up in this book over and over and over again, um, and how the American people may have felt.

01:23:22.500 And I know there's other books being written in this space and, uh, how people feel like, you know, I'm, I'm among, I imagine I'm among them.

01:23:29.980 That people were not expressive enough about where, uh, Joe Biden was in terms of what was perceived or real as it relates to his physical health or cognitive decline.

01:23:40.420 And I, of course, never experienced any of that quite literally.

01:23:43.480 So I would have been lying if I played to that, except one event, which you reference in the book.

01:23:48.100 And that's the fundraiser, uh, the infamous George Clooney fundraiser, where it was clear, uh, and that for me, jet lag was as easy a way to describe that as anything else.

01:23:57.580 But it was clear that something was a little bit off or different, but this notion of gaslighting the campaign from an analytics perspective and, and, and, and the sense that, and having conversations, particularly, you know, we had the vice president, uh, or vice president nominee, governor Walsh on this podcast.

01:24:12.900 I mean, you're right.

01:24:13.980 They really, he was absolutely confident that they were going to pull this thing off.

01:24:20.500 Yeah.

01:24:21.000 He can't find the words.

01:24:22.200 I mean, we take you inside his hotel room at the Mayflower in Washington.

01:24:25.500 And his wife has to say something because he just, he went in so confident about their ability and their fact that they were going to win.

01:24:34.360 Um, can't believe it, but I think there is a bigger discussion happening right now about.

01:24:40.000 So there, yeah, that's the epilogue.

01:24:41.420 You talk about that.

01:24:42.220 What are the lessons learned and what do you, I mean, as it is independent, you know, look, uh, you have insight that's next level.

01:24:49.280 I mean, I feel like, uh, like I'm, you're two psychologists or something, you know, more about us than we know about ourselves.

01:24:55.500 You certainly know everyone's opinion about ourselves, which I can't even handle.

01:24:59.220 That's a minute.

01:24:59.860 I actually have to go to therapy for all of that.

01:25:03.440 Uh, and, uh, and I, you know, that's why you, every, you know.

01:25:05.740 It's a good thing we cut the Newsome chapter out.

01:25:07.440 Yeah, no, I'm glad, I'm glad my name's barely mentioned.

01:25:10.420 So it's a thank you, by the way, for that.

01:25:12.760 Otherwise I wouldn't have you on.

01:25:14.160 I couldn't handle it.

01:25:14.620 Uh, but, but what are the lessons learned?

01:25:17.700 I mean, honestly, when you look at this, do you, I mean, the Democratic Party, um, right now I've had strong opinions about where I think our party is right now in terms of just truth and trust.

01:25:27.120 This sense that we weren't being truthful, that that's a perception that we were, that we were gaslighting the American people.

01:25:32.280 They don't trust us on issues and policies and the ability to deliver.

01:25:35.940 Um, and if you're not winning on truth and trust, that's a brand that, as I've said, and I've gotten a lot of blowback for it, is a bit toxic at the moment, at the moment.

01:25:43.760 Uh, but what do you think this moment represents and, and do you think it's important for folks like me that are current public servants that represent, uh, portions of the Democratic Party to really take this book and read it and reread it and take what lessons from it?

01:26:00.780 Yeah, I mean, we write these books for people to gain knowledge about what happened.

01:26:05.180 But it's also a playbook about going forward and what Democrats and Republicans can learn.

01:26:10.380 And one of the things I think they think is that, I mean, first of all, there needs to be some accountability, right?

01:26:17.060 Like someone, either President Biden or someone close to him has to come out and say, look, this is what happened.

01:26:23.500 Because the Democratic Party can't move forward until people address what has actually happened.

01:26:30.240 And voters, to your point, don't trust the Democratic Party right now.

01:26:34.160 I mean, I think a lot of people think that the Republican Party obviously is, is gaslighting the American people right now, too.

01:26:40.740 But let's have a discussion about what happened in this past election.

01:26:44.740 And then there needs to be some accountability on where the party goes from here and speaking to voters and actually connecting to voters.

01:26:53.140 So many of these people who've supported Trump used to be traditional Democrats.

01:26:58.460 I know.

01:26:59.220 And yet they lost their way.

01:27:01.220 Look, I think it's fundamentally one of the reasons I'm doing this podcast is that I'm concerned that we're taking the wrong lessons or not even absorbing any lesson from these elections.

01:27:11.020 Including, by the way, just the anomaly that was a COVID election.

01:27:15.400 It's one thing to take away the wrong lessons in a midterm.

01:27:17.640 It's another to look at these general elections and not necessarily absorb a deeper understanding of what played an outsized role and what didn't structurally and organizationally.

01:27:28.020 So that's episode two of this podcast.

01:27:30.200 We'll talk about our 2020 book, Lucky, that was largely ignored.

01:27:35.080 It did not sell as well as this one has.

01:27:37.340 Which is the point you were making that it was a lucky outcome.

01:27:39.640 There was a pandemic in the middle of that election and the president of the United States went out, President Trump, to a podium and said things that were untrue, that were wild, that underestimated the physical, you know, the psychological and physical toll of the disease and undermined himself a lot.

01:27:57.700 While Joe Biden was, the way Republicans would say, is hiding in his basement, but largely was off the campaign trail, right?

01:28:04.440 And then he wins that election by a very narrow margin.

01:28:08.440 And I think the Democratic response to it was, we crushed Trump, he's gone.

01:28:12.440 And the Trump response was, they barely beat me and I'm coming back.

01:28:16.840 And so, you know, I think that when you say that Democrats have lost trust, it's not just that they've lost the trust of Republicans and independents.

01:28:24.740 If you look at the polling, they've lost the trust of a lot of Democrats, too.

01:28:28.500 And the first thing for any party is to kind of rebuild its trust among its own and then sort of branch out.

01:28:35.140 And I mean, I'm curious to see what the 2028 candidates do.

01:28:38.640 And maybe you will shed some light on this or know some people who might.

01:28:42.160 What they're going to do to modernize the Democratic argument for what the country should look like five years from now, 10 years from now.

01:28:48.300 What are you doing with entitlement programs?

01:28:50.000 What are you doing with taxation?

01:28:51.320 What are the new technologies and how do they affect us?

01:28:53.740 You know, we haven't seen that yet.

01:28:55.340 No, we haven't. And I think what Ezra Klein did, you know, his book Abundance, interesting, sort of, you know, it's very self-critical, but it is a very critical look at sort of progressive governance and accountability that also needs to be, you know, laid at the hands of all of us in these, quote unquote, blue states and the ability to deliver big things in a way that's timely and efficient.

01:29:22.180 Look, this book is timely, a remarkably efficient use of 263 plus pages.

01:29:29.780 It is a great read.

01:29:31.520 And I encourage anyone, whether you like politics, don't like politics, but you're just interested or want to know what world we're living in in the context of the political life and leanings, this is a must-read fight.

01:29:44.120 Amy, Jonathan, thank you for being here.

01:29:46.560 Wait, we have one question for you.

01:29:47.960 I refuse to answer.

01:29:49.720 What is it?

01:29:50.420 What lesson would you take away from this election?

01:29:53.900 No, I mean, I think the lesson is we need to have frank and honest conversations, and there's no space for that.

01:30:00.660 And so I have a tactical point.

01:30:01.900 This space is so frank.

01:30:03.000 But, you know, look, one of the things that, you know, just...

01:30:07.320 Are we done?

01:30:10.680 We're not done.

01:30:11.840 We're not done.

01:30:12.600 People want to hear from you on this.

01:30:13.980 But I thought I hosted the Democratic Governors Association for our winter event in Los Angeles, not an indictment.

01:30:22.580 These are amazing governors.

01:30:23.940 It's a great organization, and it's played an outside role saving me in my recall campaign.

01:30:28.220 I was so eager to have this conversation.

01:30:31.700 What the hell just happened?

01:30:33.300 The entire three days was fundraising.

01:30:38.280 And all of us as governors sort of desperate to find time to start to have an honest, reflective conversation.

01:30:45.220 And you have some of those 28 candidates in that mix.

01:30:50.380 You had Bashir there.

01:30:52.000 You had Pritzker there.

01:30:53.200 You have Whitmer there.

01:30:54.560 By the way, there's five or six others likely to run.

01:30:57.640 And all of them had their own unique experience on the road and stress-tested messages, heard that feedback.

01:31:03.080 We have not had that conversation.

01:31:05.100 I was so pleased to have Tim here, and he was the only exception, unsurprisingly, because he could regale us to a little bit of the insight of being out on the campaign trail and what it was like and how exhilarating it was for him, which I also love, too, that he loved being out there.

01:31:20.340 That was absorbing, I think, to all of us.

01:31:22.820 There's a joy, and he felt that joy and that energy, and I think that was the disconnect.

01:31:26.600 And so understanding that and minding that gap between performance and perception, where we are and where we're going, where the American people are, and where we are as a party, what is our party, who are our leaders?

01:31:40.060 You describe Obama, Clinton.

01:31:42.540 Is it Pelosi?

01:31:43.680 Is it Schumer?

01:31:44.740 Is it Jeffries?

01:31:46.220 Is there a party?

01:31:47.160 Is it the DNC?

01:31:48.060 Is it Martin?

01:31:49.300 All of that we need to work our way through.

01:31:52.200 Thank you.

01:31:56.600 All of that we need to work our way through.

01:31:57.600 Thank you.

01:31:58.600 Thank you.

01:31:59.600 Thank you.

This is Gavin Newsom - April 30, 2025

And, This is How The 2024 Election Was Won with Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen

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