Mallory McMorrow and Bill Kristol: Imagining a World Where Trump Is Irrelevant

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Hey, everybody. So much going on.
I just want to tell you about our schedule and make sure you know where you can find all of the amazing content here as we reach the last two weeks of the campaign. Today on this podcast, it's Monday, so I'll have Bill Kristol.
I'm back in New Orleans right now. That is in segment two.
Segment one was live from Detroit on Saturday with State Senator Mallory McMorrow. She is just an uplifting shot of energy, which I think maybe I needed.
So if you need that too, that's segment one. If you just want Bill, go ahead and fast forward through and we're doing our usual Monday jig in segment two.
All right.

By the time you listen to this, my colleague Sarah Long will already have moderated an event in Pennsylvania with Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney. That happens Monday around lunchtime.
We live stream that on the Bulwark YouTube. So if you haven't seen it yet and you want to watch it, you can go to the bulwark youtube me and jvl provide some analysis sarah does a town hall style interview with the vice president and liz cheney super exciting we're super proud of sarah so go check that out other stuff we had multiple live events as you know in philly pittsburgh and detroit there was a kind of dark next level, the opposite of the Mallory interview in Pittsburgh.
I'm sorry for the people that came out in Pittsburgh, but they seemed to enjoy it. I apologize for taking you down to the ninth circle of hell before Sarah built everybody back up, but you can get that on the next level feed, and hopefully then we'll be back to our normal schedule here coming tomorrow.
So there you go. That's the plan.
Up next, Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast.
I'm your host, Tim Miller. and I'm here today with Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow.
Hi, Tim. All right.
So I want to start here. I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I'm feeling a little uptight on Saturday night in Detroit Rock City, and I'm hoping that you can chill me out a little bit.
How are you

feeling? Y'all, I feel so good right now. Do you feel good? No, but thank God you do.
So good. Do

you want to hear why? Please. Okay.
So I am supporting 13 state house candidates across

the state in some of our most marginal districts. And some of you may not know,

I flipped a Republican district to get elected in 2018. What's happening to that guy now? What's that? What's happening to that guy now? The district you took? You know, he's hanging out.
Retired. He's good.
I represent him well. Okay.
Yes, you do. That's true.
That's a good point. But I got to tell you,

so we have been out down river. We've been out in Macomb County and we are talking to

independents, Republican, Republican leaning. People are excited.
And when people shut off

the conversation, it's not in a rude way. It's not like, please get off my doorstep.
It's,

hey, guess what? I already voted and I voted for Kamala Harris and for Democrats all the

way down the ticket because I'm sick of this shit. Let's move on.
Okay. So you're saying we're going to win? We're going to win if we keep working our asses off for the next 17 days.
Okay, that's a good place to start. Now we can get into the details.
So, you know, I've never been to Detroit. Can you believe that? Welcome.

I've never been to Detroit before.

I was here all afternoon.

I was walking around by the Shinola Hotel,

and, you know, we had a coffee at Madcap,

and it was great.

There was no Venezuelan migrant mobs.

Didn't see anyone stealing any pets or anything.

If the whole country turned out like Detroit, I think'd be fun It would be pretty good I've been to a lot worse places We drove past Toledo on the way here, for example I can do it I'm sorry, are you ever in Toledo? Sorry I usually pick on Dayton, but that's a college thing.

You flipped the Republican district.

You talked about that.

You know, Sarah was just up here talking about the RVAT folks.

Like, let's talk about that demo.

Like, it's an important demo

for, I think, Kamala this year,

like getting to people

that maybe had voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.

Yeah.

Boo.

Or John McCain, Les Boo.

How did that work for you?

Talk about your experience

and how you talked to those kind of voters Thank you. for Mitt Romney in 2012.
Yeah. Boo.
Or Jai McCain, less boo.

How did that work for you?

Talk about your experience and how you talked to those kind of voters successfully.

So look, I ran for the first time in 2018

in an Oakland county district

that included places like Bloomfield Hills,

Mitt Romney's hometown,

Rochester, Rochester Hills.

I talked to a lot of people

who had never voted for a Democrat and also weren't sure they had ever met a Democrat before. But in a place like Oakland County, and I think like a lot of Michigan, you know, when I was knocking doors for the first time, I had a backpack on and a baseball hat, and I looked like a 12-year-old knocking on their door.
But a lot of people said, why did you come back to Michigan? And what can we do to bring my daughter back? And this is going to sound controversial, so bear with me. But if you are a sane, rational, normal person with a personality, and you can convince people that you are going to act in the best interest of most people, it's a pretty compelling argument.
Really? Yeah, really. It was mostly that they were just kind of like living vicariously through you.
They were hoping that their daughter was going to be like Valerie. No, there was a woman on the phone with her daughter who moved to Chicago, and she paused the conversation and handed me the cell phone and said, can you please get her to move back? I hope she did.
It's great. I think that part of what you're talking about is just being basically effective and competent.
How do you balance this question of maintaining your values with reaching out to people that come from a different side? You hear sometimes on the internet, you shouldn't be on the internet, but when you are there, you hear sometimes from lefty folks like, why is Kamala having Liz Cheney around so much? You know, it's like, does that mean that the warmongers, see this, she's worried about that. Why does that mean the warmongers are going to be in charge? How do you balance that? How do you say that the Liz Cheneys are welcome, but we're still maintaining our values? Like, how do you deal with that? So here's the thing.
I think if you don't do that, if you don't reach out to as many people as possible, you're not true to American values. We are not, thank you.
We are not Democrats versus Republicans. I mean, one of the biggest challenges that I have every time I'm on TV and I'm talking about something, and it irks me, is that it says Mallory McMorrow D.
And I feel like you see that visual and you're immediately making judgments. When at the end of the day, and I knocked on one door in Rochester, and I will never forget this, I had a high school volunteer with me, and we didn't have any data.
And the data said that these were probably lean Dem voters, and I knocked on the door, and that was very clear. Almost immediately, they were not.
She came to the door, and she told me her son worked for the Border Patrol Agency, not the Canadian one, by the way, the other southern border, that she had a bunch of guns in her pickup truck, that she and her husband used to be union members, but that Democrats had looked down on them for so long. There was a long conversation, and it sounded especially to this high schooler, this poor girl.
She was looking at me like, Mallory, I think we have to leave. This is not going well.
But eventually, I sat there long enough where this woman said, my daughter-in-law is a teacher, and her job is so hard. There are too many kids in her classroom.
She doesn't have enough resources. She spends $500 a year on supplies for her classroom.
And I said to this woman, there are probably a lot of issues that we disagree on. I'm going to be honest with you.
But I care a lot about education and I care a lot about making your daughter-in-law's life easier. And this woman said to me, and I tell people all the time, she said, you sat here for 45 minutes, which my team was angry about because I was not knocking enough doors.
But she said, you listened to us, and you didn't judge us. And if you had just come here with your literature that said Democrat on it in big letters, I would have just put it in the garbage.
But she said, I trust

you. And you can count on two votes from our house and you can put a yard sign in our front yard, which made that yard the most confusing yard in Rochester.
It was like Bill Schutte, John James, and me. It didn't make sense.
But this touched on something that I think is universal is people want to feel heard. They want to feel understood.
And most people understand we are not going to agree on everything, and that's okay. Because we are Americans, and we are Michiganders, and we agree on that much.
Which is why Kamala Harris, reaching out to Liz Cheney, doing events together, reaching out to most people to say,

in the future, that Kamala Harris is laying out

in this vision, you belong here.

And think about that contrast

versus what Donald Trump is laying out.

Yeah.

I would rather that one.

Yeah, it's hard to think about somebody

looking at Donald Trump and thinking,

he cares about me.

I don't.

He's really thinking about me and my concerns. I don't think he cares about any of us.
Yeah, he's mostly thinking about himself and Arnold Palmer's penis these days. And Hannibal Lecter.
And Hannibal Lecter. Yeah, I don't think he's thinking about that lady's daughter-in-law.
Have you called her back about this cycle? Do we know? Have we found that house again? Can you start driving around the neighborhood and be like, I think it was that house. Yeah, I should.
You should. That's a homework assignment for you.
I want to talk about one thing I think, and we talk about it some, but I feel a little remiss in the Borg podcast. It's probably because of my background and views, but like the just critical nature of abortion here in this state and how the Democrats have really across the so-called blue wall states like in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and here since Dobbs had such success.
So talk about the issue broadly and why it's been so important but also how you're kind of communicating to the kind of me's like the I'm not Catholic anymore but the Catholics in Michigan who are like I'm pro--ish, but I don't know about this crazy shit that's happening. How do you communicate to them about the importance of this issue right now? Yeah, so I was raised Catholic, proud graduate of the University of Notre Dame.
And what was interesting, hell yeah, go Irish. Okay, rank your top three favorite saints.
This is a football school. Marcus Freeman, we're in the football era.
It's not coach time. Catholic saints.
I got mad at Kamala because she did the... This Al Smith dinner was so stupid.
It's like all these rich people in their white ties sitting around laughing at Donald Trump's terrible jokes. It's sick.
There's a lot about the Catholic Church that needs to evolve. She sent a funny video, though, in funny video though in Conlo with Mary Catherine from SNL, but then she quoted the Bible and I was like, we don't do that.
We do rosaries, we do Mary, we do saints. Yep.
And then we complain. And then we complain and we drink.
And we drink. Yeah.
Okay. So there's a little bit, a little bit of a miss on that, but otherwise it was good.
Nine out of 10. Anyway, I'm sorry.
Continue. Okay.
So what's interesting about the Dobbs decision is I think for the longest time as somebody who was raised Catholic and heard the worst versions, I remember going to CCD and I came home one day, I had to be like eight. And I told my mom, mom, did you know that they kill babies with coat hangers? And my mom was like, oh no, that's not okay.
We need to actually have a conversation about this. But before the Dobbs decision, I feel like both Democrats and Republicans could run on rhetoric.
You could either be baby killers or abortion on demand. And there was no middle ground because there was always a backstop.
And then Dobbs happened and there was no longer a backstop. So you could no longer run in rhetoric.
And then we finally, all across the state, talked to people who said, I may not personally believe in this, but I had an ectopic pregnancy or I had a miscarriage that didn't fully pass or my daughter did or I know somebody did. And we were finally having the real nuanced, frankly, heartbreaking conversations about how hard it is to get pregnant, stay pregnant safely, and the desire to know that if it goes wrong, which happens far more often than anybody talks about, that you have access to that care.
I shared on the Senate floor, my daughter is now three and a half. I had an IUD placed after I gave birth, and that punctured through my uterus.
One in five million chance, by the way, so I don't know if I should play the lottery or what, but I had to have that surgically removed. And my OB told me, if we hadn't been trained on common abortion procedures, we might not be able to know how to remove this, and you could have died.
Sharing that type of story with people opens their eyes to say, yeah, no, I don't want that to be illegal. And that is why you saw in this state, Prop 3, which was the proposition to guarantee abortion access, it collected more signatures than any other ballot initiative in state history.
That's a big message. It is a big message.
And there just is no message to that middle from the other side. Can you explain to me how the Republicans got so crazy here? I mean, you had John Engler and Spence Abraham, and I'm sure people in here had some problems with some of them, but even Peter Meiser, though, he's got some issues.
I mispronounced his name on purpose. And it's all freaks now.
What is happening? How is that? What is happening? I think it's the dog that caught the car, and it's really hard to come back from that. We had, in one of my first years in office, there was legislation from the Republican side when Republicans were still in the majority to ban D&Es, which is the most common procedure for later terminations.
And I took constituents of mine who, they had gotten married, they got pregnant, they had a healthy pregnancy. At the 20-week scan, they found out the collagen wasn't developing, so no bones were developing.
So their doctor advised them to consider a termination, because if it survived to birth, would very likely only live a day or two, and those few days on earth would be nothing but pain. Like a sneeze could break a rib.
So this couple decided to pursue a termination, and then all of a sudden found themselves having a really hard time getting a doctor who would schedule the procedures, because the doctors were afraid of getting sued and getting put in jail. So I took them to Lansing, they met with some of our Republican colleagues, and I remember one of my colleagues pulling me aside on the floor and saying, how frequently do you think this happens? And I said, well, that's kind of the point that we don't know.
So you're legislating something arbitrary that is going to put this couple in a position where she might no longer be able to conceive ever. And that shouldn't be our job.
And then she voted for the legislation anyway. So it's this very hard, like you hear them grappling with it and you're almost there.
And then you're just like, well, Donald Trump and God told me to save babies. So that's what I'm doing.
I don't know. Like it's this very extremist, very black and white view.
And I don't know how we break out of that, except that this version, and I'm very intentional to say, this version of the Republican Party has to lose. Crushed.
Crushed. Not just lose.
To shake it back to a place where we can be normal again. Yeah.
Strong agree. Strong agree.
Well, while we're doing this, just really quick, on other local races for people to pay attention to in Michigan, I get this question a lot from listeners, like, you know, who could I donate to, or what are the very close races? What are you monitoring, either at the state or congressional level? So, I am somebody, I believe that state-level races are the most important level of government that nobody ever invests in. A good example is when there was a campaign to take out Mitch McConnell.
Amy McGrath was running. Everybody remembers this.
Many of you may have donated to that race. Donors donated $96 million to Amy McGrath to try to defeat Mitch McConnell.
Nice person. Yeah, yeah, totally great.
Same result with $900,000 though. The budget for the DLCC, which is the state legislative version of like the DCCC and the DSCC, their budget for the entire country for that entire cycle was $50 million.
That's every state, every single state legislative race combined. $50 million versus $96 million for one race.
So I am focused on the state house here in Michigan. I have a PAC called the More Perfect Michigan.
We're supporting 13 state house candidates statewide. These are races that are won with thousands of dollars, not millions.
And I have been out on doors all over the state for them. And they're super important.
There was one really terrible Republican running for Congress you were telling me about. Who is that? Oh my goodness.
So my friend Curtis Hertel is running, all right, is running to replace Alyssa Slotkin in her congressional seat. He is running against Tom Barrett.
Tom Barrett positions himself as a normal Republican because he was a veteran. You may see some billboards if you drive down 96.
I worked with Tom Barrett for four years. I'm going to share one story.
During COVID, there were some pretty aggressive shutdowns in the state and Tom Barrett came to the microphone and he said that there was one restaurant owner in his district that was arrested because all he was doing was trying to stay open to provide meals for the homeless. Sounds nice.
The entire story was made up. There was video of it.
This person was arrested because the police showed up and he fought them. He was drunk.
He punched a cop.

Well, I'm sorry.

This is the back the blue party.

I don't believe that that story could be possible.

They've never attacked any police before.

No, never. Definitely not on sometime in early January.

In the Capitol.

It's interesting.

There's another thing we're talking about that

goes against my nature.

But, you know, you've won more races than me. So we might maybe listen to your advice on this.
We were having a beer earlier, and you're like, I think as a closing message we should talk about Trump less. That's true.
Now that's challenging for me. I know.
I know. Because I fucking, ugh, I've got a lot to say about him.
I have a lot to say about him. But I want to hear your pitch for how Kamala can close by bringing back a little bit of joy and positivity to the campaign.
Okay, so my closing pitch is that Michiganders, we're all Michiganders in this room, we have been through some stuff the past few years. We have been through a pandemic.
We have been through the trial run insurrection when armed gunmen came into our state capitol and were above my head, by the way. And then January 6th was taken out.
And there was a glorious few weeks when Kamala became the candidate and then the nominee where we did not talk about Donald Trump. And he weirdly decided not to campaign.
I remember he gave an interview and he was like, well, I'm just waiting until they have their convention.

I was like, oh, that's nice.

He's tired.

My closing pitch is, wasn't that a nice place to live?

God, that would be nice.

Let's just imagine that.

And I think the more we talk about him,

we know who Donald Trump is.

He's defined.

We know he's going to do all kinds of crazy stuff.

Now it's like the gloves are off and he's just doing rage baiting things like this rally at Madison Square Garden. Is it just like a Nazi rally in 1939? Maybe, but that's what he wants you to talk about.
He did a rally in Detroit. Is it where they sent a bunch of protesters to try to throw out the votes of one of the largest majority black cities in the country? Maybe, but that's what he wants you to talk about.
Let's not talk about it. What should we talk about instead? The world that we can live in where Donald Trump is irrelevant.
I'm just thinking about it. Just imagine it.
It's so nice. That would be really nice.
It's so nice.

What would we talk about then, though?

Football.

Football.

Tacos.

Tacos.

I love tacos.

I don't know.

Remember when he promised us a taco truck on every corner?

I'm still waiting.

If only.

If only we could have that taco truck on every corner.

Okay.

Got one more thing to talk to you about. I'm in Detroit now, and I'm going to see all of the key areas.
I went to the chapel where Eminem had his rap battle with Papa Doc. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Iconic.
And I'm just wondering, do we feel like we're doing well in that demo? Is everybody at the rap battle? Are we going to be getting the votes that we need, do you think? Yeah, look, I mean, if the rap battle, and this isn't even a rap battle, but if it's the white boy from Detroit battle and it's Eminem versus Kid Rock, we're winning. I agree with that.
I agree with that. What about the rappers that went to Cranbrook? Oh, that's a private school.
Oh, right, that's a private school. Is that in your district? Do we have any Cranbrook people here? Oh.
Sad. Mallory McMorrow, final call to arms to people.
Give us a final rallying cry. Final call.
We got 17 days. None of this happens without action.
So sign up for one voter contact shift. Just one.
Find a local party. Find a candidate you like.
Talk to five people

in your life. I know these are conversations you don't want to have because we are tired of having

these conversations at Thanksgiving. You know you have these people in their life.
They need to vote

and get off the sidelines and get it done. Thank you so much.
This is so delightful.

All right, and we're back with Bill Crystal Monday. That was my Saturday night in Detroit

with Mallory McMorrow. I was feeling a little uptight, but she is a spitfire.
We needed that. We need a little positive energy.
I'm sorry to miss you there, Bill, but I think maybe Mallory was a little bit more yin to your yang, which was needed, I think, for our crew. I'm sure she was both yin and yang or whatever that means.
I've never been quite clear on what that was. But actually i had to i had to leave yes i had to leave the excellent bulwark swing states tour after thursday night in philadelphia where i thought it was terrific so i missed pittsburgh and detroit so how were those yeah uh pittsburgh was kind of email pittsburgh was a little email and it was maybe my fault but i'm pissed i mean it's the same thing you know it's just like it's hard for me get past.
It's not so much pessimism about Kamala's chances, though. I wish we were in better shape as it is just despair over the fact that like, we have to sweat this out after everything.
And so I maybe got a little bit too into the despair side of things. We rebalanced it in Detroit, you know, towards, you know, the creed of core, the call to action but it was great uh you know i that my family came to both of those people got to meet everybody the art the crowd was great and i love detroit by the way donald trump says it's a bad thing that america is becoming detroit if only america became detroit detroit's awesome you know i tell susan when i got back from that we're at a family wedding this weekend so when when I got back from Philly on Friday, that it was really inspiring.
It's not quite invigorating, I guess is the word I'm looking for. I mean, people were really excited to be there, excited to see people like themselves, an awful lot of ex-Republicans, some normal Democrats, I would say, who like the bulwark too.
And a nice mix of people, people feeling self-consciously that they're a part of something bigger than any one campaign for one person. I thought that was interesting how much people really have sort of have that sense.
Maybe everyone has that sense this year because so much is at stake, but certainly if you're not a traditional down the line Democrat, you more likely have that sense, right? And so, yeah, sorry to miss Pittsburgh and Detroit both. No, it was wonderful.
I totally agree with that sense of invigoration.

Is that a word?

Of being invigorated.

Yeah, invigorated.

Yeah, yeah.

We also have other news today, other Bulwark news.

Our colleague, our publisher, our leader, Sarah Longwell, is in Pennsylvania.

So by the time this is out, Sarah will already have hosted a town hall with Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney,

trying to reach these remaining, you know, hangers on Nikki Haley type voters. Our old colleague, Charlie Sykes, is doing a similar conversation with Kamala in Wisconsin.
So I think it speaks to how focused the campaign is on all that. I want to get into that a little bit at the end of the pod.
But it's also is just, it's pretty great for Sarah. And it's pretty great that they're doing this, I think.
And that I think that their eye is on the ball of one of essentially two key groups of people they got to speak to the last few weeks. Yeah, I was advocating within the bulwark in Slack that we put up giant billboards.
Sarah Longwell, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Also, you, Kamala Harris, Liz Cheney.
Perry County, I think. I think she was Perry County.
Is it Perry County? Wherever it is. My colleagues didn't go along with that.
So Kamala and Liz are getting equal billing with Sarah, which I think is fine. I mean, give them a little bump up in recognition.
Yeah, for now, I think it's fair. All right, let's get down to business.
Somebody else

had less kind things to say about Liz Cheney. I think Judge Liz Cheney a little more,

maybe harshly than Sarah Longwell and we have at the Bulwark. I want to listen to

the Republican vice presidential nominee for some reason ranting about Liz Cheney over the weekend.

And what they will tell you to a person is that Liz Cheney is motivated by an obsessive hatred of the people who cost her her Wyoming congressional seat. She is not motivated by a love of this country.
She's a resentful, petty, small person. And if Kamala Harris wants to parade her around, she's welcome to.
Projection much? Resentful? Petty?

Small? That describes JD about as well as I think any three adjectives could. I don't know what what say you how can you psychoanalyze JD Vance there for me? Too unpleasant to do so at any great length but I I could briefly but the first point it's not obviously it's not worth even rebutting, but just to be simple about it, Liz Cheney broke with Trump, obviously, before January 6th, but let's just say over January 6th.
She broke with him what she saw, definitively with him what she saw what he was trying to do after the election. So that was January 6th, 2021.
She knew very well it could cost her her congressional seat, and it did in 2022. The idea that she's motivated by resentment and losing the congressional seat is just, I mean, it's leaving everything else aside that's unfair and stupid about it.
It's literally incoherent. I mean, she was fighting Trump for a year and a half before she lost her congressional seat.
And by the way, she spent most of her time in the J6 committee versus the primary. If she had actually cared about her congressional seat that much, she would have had a very different approach, I guess.

Let's put it that way. I guess it's revealing, if you want to get in the psychoanalytic business, that J.D.
Vance can't imagine, on the other hand, anyone being willing to sacrifice the number three spot in the House Republicans, a very bright future, the congressional seat. She still has a bright future, in my view, but let's say a more straightforwardly bright future in the Republican Party.
J.D. Vance can't imagine anyone being

willing to sacrifice that for a matter of principle or honor or the good of the country. The other point, I think I make this point in warning shots this morning, that J.D.
Vance, of course, was a never-Trumper sort of in 2016, 2017. And I do think the ex-never-Trumpers have a particular bile and, you know, sort of resentment and envy, maybe even, of the people who just were Never-Trumpers and stayed with it.
I mean, the two people who were most vitriolic over the weekend about, in J.D. Vance's case, Liz Cheney, the other one was Lindsey Graham about any Republican who's supporting Harris.
And they kind of pretend they can't even imagine how it could be the case, whereas they were examples of this case, you know, seven or eight years ago. It does.
It's like this, you have to do this performative anger, right? To like overcompensate for your failings, right? Like it's that you can't just be like, they're wrong, right? Like, you have to convince yourself that they are morally bad, right? That we are morally bad to compensate for your own kind of deep down gnawing sense that you've made a moral sacrifice, right, that they have to even the score in their head. I felt this way about my exchange with Lindsay.
I was going to do it later. But now that you mentioned it, let's actually just listen to Lindsay on Meet the Press and really get our hackles up this morning.
Terrorists residing in our backyard. It was their decision to stop energy production, making us more energy independent.
It was their decision to abandon Israel at their time of need when it came to weapons. Senator, the U.S.
is making more energy than at any point. But they worked for Donald Trump.
They worked for former President Trump. To every Republican supporting her, what the hell are you doing? You're supporting the most radical nominee in the history of American politics, the Green New Deal, Medicare for All.
I mean, I want to play a little longer clip than just the what the hell are you doing so you can just see how shallow this argument is, right? That it's like to demonstrate that she's radical, it has to be. She's for the Green New Deal and Medicareare for all which she's not campaigning on and has no chance to pass even in the rosiest possible outcome of the for the democrats in the senate this year you know that that you have to argue that she abandoned they abandoned israel in the time of need right at a moment where the new york times is reporting about all of the all the intelligence support we've been providing israel i like the the argument is so shallow that they have to convince themselves of that to make this just like fake anger, over-the-top, you know, kind of judgmental argument to offset the fact that, like, they obviously know better because they told us that they know better.
They told us in J.D. Vance's case that God wants better of us, you know, so they know better.
So this is how they lash out. Yeah, totally.
Kamala Harris was part of an administration that rejected the Green New Deal, that rejected Medicare for all, and that stood by Israel. One or two things I might have done a little differently, but, you know, 95% stood by Israel.
So this is the Lisa Lindsey Graham's examples of how radical Kamala Harris is. And incidentally, if you really wanted to say someone was the most radical candidate in modern American history, that would be Donald Trump.
If you take radical in the sense of not left or right, but just challenging the constitutional order, the norms and the institutions, the consensus that's guided American politics, more or less for 70, 80 years in foreign policy, certainly, but I'd say at home too in the last 50, 60 years, that's Trump. I mean, they're proud of being radical, incidentally.
Trump and Heritage Foundation and J.D. Vance, they're not interested in just tweaking the system or improving it a bit or continuing some reforms or correcting some previous reforms.
They want to overthrow it all. What was the book, the Heritage Guys book that Vance wrote the preface for? Then they pulled it back because it was too controversial.
Burn it all down. Trump is the radical.
I'm just empirically trump is the radical and now lindsey graham is pretending that oh kamala harris unbelievable radical prosecutor in california and vice president to joe biden yeah yeah give me a break the other thing just that's maybe only matters to you and me bill but it's just worth sitting on for a second because we get this like oh you've changed so much you've gone so far you know to the left like these issues that he's talking about if anyone has changed not just their character and their moral outlook but their actual policy views and what they think are radical it's lindsey graham i mean lindsey graham and john mccain were were at the hip in that 2008 campaign which included among policy planks, a belief that we should have some kind of cap and trade deal to deal with climate, a belief that climate change was a problem, a belief that we need immigration reform, we need legalization for DREAMers. And yeah, we need to secure the border too, but some kind of comprehensive immigration reform.
A belief that America needs to be strong in the world stage

and counter Russia and counter dictators. If you just think about that McCain campaign in 2008,

like those are kind of the core issue, at least the most defining issues. They might not have

been the issues that were at the top of his list because, you know, they were the ways he was kind

of distinguishing himself from the other Republicans in the primary. And so he's abandoned all that.
He's for a candidate now that wants mass deportation, so we've never seen before, and that doesn't believe climate change is real and wants to hand over Eastern Europe to Putin. And he doesn't seem to have any reflection on that at all.
Yeah, you have to pretend that just doesn't exist. Trump's not going to do all the things he and J.D.
Vance have said they're going to do. No, I'm angry.
We've worked that out. I would say Vance is, I don't know which is more contemptible.
Vance is an opportunist who saw his chance as a young man. It's the way he saw his chance years ago, and now he continues to be opportunistic.
I think it's a more simple case in a certain way. Lindsey Graham is a pretty interesting and complicated case because I worked very closely with him, and quite with him.
I should, in the 2000s, we were both for the Iraq war. We did a lot on the foreign policy front together.
I was close to McCain. Lindsey was really McCain's top kind of deputy, you might say, in the Senate and a very good tactician on a lot of this stuff.
And then as late as 2016, he was not just like J.D. Vance, you know, had written a book and was on a couple of talk shows saying, I don't like Trump.
He was running against Trump and denouncing Trump in the most, as strongly as Jeb Bush and everyone else. And calling me to try to strategize on how we can defeat Trump and talking where he was sounding like deranged.
The degree of flipping here and then lashing out, that is, yeah, that needs a psychoanalyst. Yeah, it does.
We'll find one last thing then on psychoanal psychoanalysis, because we were at our Philly event, we were at the same hotel where I encountered Lindsay a couple of weeks ago during the debate. I was just reflecting back on it.
It was interesting. When he first sees me and I first go up to him, I said something first, I forget.
I said something kind of teasing, joking, about how Trump's performance was so bad. He's always welcome back on side or something like that.
And he immediately like blows his top and goes straight to how do you sleep at night to me. And there's something to be said for that.
I'm like, how do I sleep at night? What do you mean? But like the fact that you feel like you have to go to that place, right? To me, tells me that you might be having some problems sleeping at night. over the weekend you know I don't even know what to do with him and he's totally off the handle at his rallies we discussed at the Detroit event the you know kind of 12 minute excursion uh conversations about uh about Arnold Palmer's oversized three wood and you know he he I can't help talking about how he's not having cognitive decline

and he's not actually almost 80.

He said that at one point.

In addition to that, he's been lashing out at Kamala Harris

in more overt ways.

I just want to play one clip from his rally over the weekend.

And this one, Kamala is further left than them.

So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you've had enough

Thank you. You're a shit vice president.
The worst. You're the worst vice president.
Kamala, you're fired. Get the hell out of here.
You're fired. I mean, I don't mind cussing.
We do some cussing on this podcast. But, you know, it's totally deranged behavior for a presidential candidate two weeks out.
And, of course, what's distressing is the cheering that greets the vulgarity, the bullying. the more vehemently bullying the vulgarity is as opposed to just maybe cavalier kind of more like the arnold palmer thing which whatever it's like not what a presidential candidate should be saying but that is locker room talk if you you know to use the phrase that he used about the excess hollywood tape they like the bullying they like the pseudo strong man that's depressing yeah and it's it's the asymmetry of it you know what i mean like i just kind of look back on the deplorables comment and like all of the fake like the histrionics and the you know fainting couch you know hours upon hours of fox news coverage of all this and it just like, there's no even attempt, right, to try to treat this as if, you know, like it's fair play.
Like if we're calling a fair game here, right? Like Donald Trump gets an excuse to do whatever he wants. He can just curse and demean and lie and do conspiracy theories.
And if like Kamala Harris says like one thing that's a little bit harsh, it's like, what happened to the Joy campaign? And the whole thing is preposterous. He did something smart.
We can just say it. The McDonald's thing was smart.
It was fake. It was totally fake.
There was a practice procession with the cars that were in the drive-thru. We did a practice run going through the drive-thru before he got in there.
And then on the video, they all come up and they're not professional actors. Their acting is very poor where they pretend to be surprised to see him.
So it was fake, but it was a good photo op. So I think we can acknowledge that though.
I don't know, you might've won the day with a very viral tweet discussing how it's a great sign for the biden economy that felons are now getting hired at mcdonald's yeah yeah the fakeness of it is more than the normal normally these things are sort of fake of course right the advanced team is there and they kind of say look the vice president or or former president will come here and buy a donut and you can give them one of the you know they can stock a few people in there but this was totally fake this was not not an open McDonald's, right, if I'm not mistaken? No, it was a closed McDonald's. Yeah, so when I would bring Jeb to a place, for example, just to give people context, we'd go to a coffee shop and we'd tell 10 of our supporters, like, will you go to this coffee shop, Jeb's going to be there.
But, like, strangers could also be there. You know what I mean? So it was quasi-fake, right? A quasi-fake photo op versus like a literal studio set, McDonald's.
I think the McDonald's thing is interesting, though. I mean, this does fit with Arnold Palmer, leaving aside the vulgarity at the end, which is he is a salesman.
He is a con man. He's marketed himself to middle America forever, 40 or 50 years.
And so he's not stupid in that way, right? Who does he want to be associated with in people's mind? Arnold Palmer, golfer who if you're a little older than i am if you're trump's age actually but certainly even my age you know the greatest kind of iconic golfer and also a real gentleman actually and kind of had a very good post-golving career is my sense you know and of course he invented the his daughter actually put out a statement about how he's a gentleman and would have hated donald yeah and, and he invented this drink or whatever. It's iced tea.

What is it?

Lemonade and iced tea.

So Palmer and then McDonald's, right?

The kind of iconic American fast food institution.

So in that respect, Trump does have a certain kind of weird,

not weird, it's just that's what he's been doing for 50 years,

instinct to kind of, you know,

I'm in touch with you guys in middle America.

You watch Donald Palmer on TV.

You watch ads with him later on.

You've been to McDonald's a million times. I'm kind of a McDonald's type guy.
He's so much smarter than a DeSantis type, right? Trump is. He's a more effective Democrat.
I mean, they're out of date, as your point. They're out of date cultural touchstones, but they are kind of whatever, middle American cultural touchstones from 30 years ago.
That's true. He does have a good instinct for that.
The only other thing I think is worth saying about the mcdonald's again is just this is all like projection like what is underlined all this was that like there's this conspiracy that kamala never actually worked at mcdonald's right it's like that is what they're doing i so literally it's like we're accusing kamala of being fake and saying that she worked at mcdonald's and she. And in order to do so, we're going to do a fake McDonald's stop.
And like the, that is very kind of upside down element, but right on, on brand for, you know, the Trump university guy. I want to get now into the nitty gritty of where, of where we're at.
We've, we've had our fun. It's a super close race.
I had sent you this morning. There was a good conversation with my friend, John Heilman, formerly of the circus, now at Puck, who had a lengthy discussion with David Plouffe, who's come in to become his advisor.
And he is the even keeled, measured, zen-like, whatever word you want to use, not me, not rain, cloudy, bed bed wetty person inside the harris campaign i'll put a link in the uh show notes uh and it's kind of worth reading all of this if you want to dork out to see what the harris team's pov is on the campaign but the most interesting takeaway i think of the top level and we can dig in is that they have seen the race as being basically static for a little over a month which is something axelrod said on this podcast about a week ago too and that the movement in the public polls towards harris after the debate and then towards trump in the last week like they don't see like they think that's kind of like a phantom movement based on crappy public polls. And what they've seen is a very, very tight race that's close in all seven swing states and their premise as they think about the strategy and who they need to turn out for the last two weeks.
So what did you think about the top level? And then we'll kind of get down at each element. I think, plus telling the truth here, I mean, there could have been a tiny movement, half a point one way after the debate, a point, a half point back the other, even though that's such a tiny movement, it's basically a phantom movement.
And it's, well, it takes a couple of polls being slightly off one way or the other, and every poll is going to be off a little to create that sort of illusion of movement. We've all seen this so many times in campaigns, right? It's not a real movement.
A real movement would be, you know, from zero. The real movement was the movement from when she took over to when she established a tiny, small lead in the national popular vote.

And more to the point, since that's what Plough's totally focused on in the swing states, pulled even in the swing states.

And so she was down, he said, six or seven. I was struck by that.

Biden was down when he got out in the swing states and she made an even race in the swing states.

That's the real movement. Then there's been noise for the last month and a lot of you know tidy little tidy oscillations and here we are with two weeks left yeah the other thing that jumped out to me because people always ask this right like who are the voters that we're talking about are they even real etc and this is how plough assesses it there's four percent of the electorate which on the one hand is really small but it's like kind of a lot of people you know i mean that's a hundred and fifty million people seven six seven million yeah yeah quite a lot of voters four percent who are still trying to decide between the two candidates and then there's another group of people that are different like they're different for campaign, who haven't firmly decided yet whether or not they're going to vote.
And those are the people that you got to get off the couch. For Trump, obviously, that's going to be mostly white, non-college, working class voters.
And for Harris, a lot of younger voters, voters of color, et cetera. So those are essentially the groups.
and Plough based on based on the event today with Liz Cheney and Sarah Longwell, and just kind of based on their ads and based on their behavior and based on what he said, there's no reason to think he's lying, thinks that a big portion of that 4% are college-educated, Nikki Haley-type Republicans to use that as a shorthand. I think you and I have had versions of this division, too, that people talk about the swing voters or the undecided voters, but it's pretty obvious when you just think about it for a minute.
There's the sort of swingish engaged voters who are traditional Republicans, hard time voting for a Democrat, don't want to vote for Trump. Plough says that's 4%.
He knows better than I, that sounds about right. 1% might not vote.
So if you can get two out of the three remaining percent to be for you, you pick up your net a percent. That's pretty good in Pennsylvania.
That's the ballgame. That's a winner, winner, chicken dinner.
So that's important. And that is very much the Liz Cheney, Sarah Longwell, Charlie Sykes, people who know who they are and respect them.
Now, I do think the Republicans for Harris events, including the one on Thursday, also can have an effect on that second group of less engaged voters who are weakly for Harris or weakly for Trump. Because if you're a weak, I don't know, Trump voter, you haven't followed things very closely, but a whole bunch of Republicans suddenly are coming out against him and maybe it does give you pause, right? And if you're a weak Harris voter, you're reassured, even though you're not a Republican, perhaps, oh yeah, well, look, they're even there for her.
The groups are different. I'm not sure the strategies for getting to the groups are entirely different.
I mean, they're different in terms of turnout and targeting, and you have to make calls into Bucks County instead of into Philadelphia and so forth. It's the city itself.
But I think that the messages aren't that different. And for me, the core message has to be now, never Trump.
Both of these sets of voters, they like Harris well enough. That was the accomplishment of the Harris campaign in the first, what, six, seven, eight weeks.
Now they just need to really be alarmed at the idea of four more years for Trump. And that is the closing Kamala message, I think, unhinged, unbalanced, unchecked.
And then the different examples you can give of that. I think that's a good message.
I hope she really hammers it hard. I hope all the outside groups hammer it hard too.
Any of the outside, in my opinion, Democratic

super PACs are still running slightly gauzy as I guess it's okay on healthcare at all. I just can't

believe they're moving that many voters at this point. But I think that's very important.
And

then I'd say Dobbs. I mean, I do think the actual one issue that some chunk of these less, well,

both categories, again, of voters could really be engaged on is the Dobbs decision. And it's

Thank you. One issue that some chunk of these less engaged, well, both categories, again, of voters could really be engaged on is the Dobbs decision and its implications and what four more years of Trump would mean for personal freedoms, especially for women.
Yeah. Let's actually put in that unhinged, unchecked ad that you referenced for people who aren't in swing states.
I want to hear what Kamala's up to. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message.
Donald Trump makes a lot of promises, but we can be sure of one thing. If he wins, he'll ignore all checks that rein in a president's power.
It's all in Trump's Project 2025 agenda. What does that mean for you? Higher cost on groceries, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, more tax breaks for billionaires, and a national abortion ban putting women's health at risk a second trump term more unhinged unstable and unchecked i agree i think that alarming people about trump i think that's a good ad alarming people about trump is right for both of that for for that four percent group but also for the on the couch group think about younger voters right like i right? Like I think about, you know, there's a good New York Times story this morning, good and also maddening, you know, where they're talking to like a 22 year old in Arizona.
It's like, I don't know if the mail-in ballot shows up at my house, I guess I'll vote. In the time that you talk to talk to this New York Times reporter, you could have voted, but okay but i just think that particularly for that younger demo i do think there's a category of people that to use the word i hate trump has been normalized because he's been around their whole life and like a little bit of a kick in the ass about scaring them which also could be about dobs also could be about the authoritarian it could be about any you know whole suite of issues just be like just go do it.
Go do it. Go vote against it.
Risk is too high. I think that that is a key message that works for both groups and should be what she's focused on.
I do think, just to be completist, there is one other group of persuadables, which is kind of the young that we've talked about, like young men of color that I think are in that 4% too, along with the college, you know, Wall Street Journal, Nikki Haley voter. And so I think maybe the strategy for them is a little bit different.
And I do think the Trump campaign, like Trump himself has gone insane and his performance is like a sign that we should be deeply concerned, even more concerned we than we would be baseline if he gets back in but the campaign team itself has been laser focused on reaching those voters and i do think that the harris campaign could you know in addition to meeting with sarah longwell and liz cheney that that should be another part of their agenda item is like is getting into venues to speak to those young voters i know tim walls did did a Rich Eisen interview over the weekend, like more is more on that front, I think as well. So that basically sums up the, the playing field at this point.
Anything else from you on that, Bill? No, I agree with that. Can we close with some good news? When, anytime the Russians lose, that's a win for me.
It's a little country called Moldova. Have you been to Moldova? I have not.
You've not been. Okay.
I've met this wonderful woman who's prime minister. I mean, it's a tiny, what is it, three, four million people, something like that? Bordering on Russia.
It's very small, yeah. Small country bordering on Russia.
Free and democratic and pro-Western. Yes, and there was a kind of a join the EU referendum.
And the Russians were deeply involved in it. There was a rich oligarch type that was leading the campaign to oppose it.
People were getting, there was a lot of walking around money. I guess we can tie this back to American politics, as there was a lot of Elon Musk-style tactics happening in the final days there, where they're handing out cash to Moldovans, telling them to vote down the referendum to join the EU.
But narrowly, might be another parallel with what's happening here narrowly the moldovans decided to become aligned with the eu and maintain their status the free and democratic country not within the the reach of of the russian influence and so good on you moldova i don't know bill if you have any any thoughts on that. I am no expert on Moldova, but I just would emphasize this is not risk-free for the 55% or everybody voted that way in the government, which is Russia is sitting right in their border.
And they are a tiny little country, really without a military almost, or the police force kind of. And Russia can already do a huge amount, as they have been doing in the kind of more Elon Musk way but they can also just do a lot by pure you know invasion and brute force as they did to you know Georgia and Ukraine so this is a pretty courageous I mean that's one reason I think the referendum was so close I think people just are scared about their future if they go this way but to their credit they they chose to go this way.
May we have the Moldovan courage here in America over the final two weeks.

Thank you to Bill Kristol.

Make sure to check out the Longwell, Cheney, Harris town hall

on our YouTube feed when you get the chance.

And we'll be back here for another edition

of the Bulldog Podcast tomorrow.

See you all then.

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