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

Transcript

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Speaker 62 Hi, I'm Kate Harmon.

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Speaker 77 So anyone who wants to understand what happened, what didn't happen in the 2024 election, we all know the outcome. But what happened in those 107 days? What happened leading up to the infamous debate?

Speaker 77 What happened leading up to the convention, post-convention, up until election night? My next guest, they understand it better than anyone. They've written a book called Fight.

Speaker 77 This is Gavin Newsom. And this is Amy Parnes and Jonathan Allen.

Speaker 77 Amy, Jonathan, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.

Speaker 77 You've written a hell of a book, and I don't say that lightly. I went through it in a quick hour and a half, almost two hours.

Speaker 77 And trust me, I don't read very fast, but it reads at an unbelievable pace. It's so well written.

Speaker 77 And of course, it's so familiar because I fell a little bit adjacent so much of the subject matter, but it's 18 chapters.

Speaker 77 It's an impressive piece of work, 263 or so pages, two critical sections, sort of before and after. And it begins your book fight on June 27th, 2024.
Set the scene for me.

Speaker 78 So the way we set the scene in the book is uh in nancy pelosi's condo uh not her condo in san francisco not her place in san francisco but in washington dc and she's watching this debate alone um sitting on her her sofa looking at the television set and

Speaker 78 she needed to be alone because she had i don't want to say a premonition but she had kind of a gut feeling normally if you're a politician as you know there's a debate night party and you go out and you talk to donors and activists and you have a good time and you celebrate and you hope your candidate wins and you say they win even if they didn't win.

Speaker 78 And Nancy Pelosi was like, I'm going to watch this at home.

Speaker 78 And we take readers into how she had urged Biden not to debate Trump at all.

Speaker 78 And she had used a nice way of saying it to him, which was, don't lower yourself to Trump. But I think, you know, you get the feeling from the book.

Speaker 78 It's pretty strongly implicit, if not expressed exactly, that she thought this might be a problem.

Speaker 78 And we take readers around among other Democrats that had the same feeling, sitting and watching at home, Jim Clyde Runburn,

Speaker 78 Jack and Diet Pepsi.

Speaker 77 Which just the scene with Jack and Diet Pepsi alone is worth it.

Speaker 78 And Al Sharpton and Doner John Morgan down in California. I mean,

Speaker 78 in Florida.

Speaker 78 And so

Speaker 78 they're all watching this and they all have the same reaction at the same time, which is a complete disaster. And they're all...

Speaker 78 All the Democrats are texting each other and they are calling each other. And I mean, everybody who watched that debate had the same reaction.

Speaker 78 And some of them had it in the first 10 seconds and some of them had it 10 minutes later. But I think it was immediately clear to a lot of people in the Democratic Party that Joe Biden

Speaker 78 just wasn't operable as a candidate anymore.

Speaker 77 So, Amy, you know, you picked that scene why. I mean, in some respects, that scene also picked the book, the determination that you were going to write this book.

Speaker 77 I mean, in some respects, my understanding is you weren't even thinking of writing a book necessarily on the subject matter until that debate sort of marked a moment of consciousness for the world, not just this country and certainly the Democratic Party.

Speaker 79 Yeah, I mean, John and I were out of the campaign book writing until that night.

Speaker 79 Our phones were blowing up

Speaker 79 and our publisher a couple of days later was like, you guys have to do another book. And so here we are.

Speaker 79 And it was. We knew that it was going to be exciting based on what was happening that night, but we had no idea the twists and the turns of that campaign.

Speaker 78 I think it depends on like what your perspective is as to whether it's thrilling and exciting versus reliving some torture. And at the same time,

Speaker 78 it's interesting. It's fascinating.
The behind the scenes of how the maneuvering goes on and like how Pelosi, for example, is trying to push Biden out, but trying to

Speaker 78 leave as few fingerprints on it as possible, give him room to make his own decision.

Speaker 78 Obama's calling for an open convention. I'm sure we'll get to some of this, but I think that

Speaker 78 regardless of how you feel about the outcome of the election, it is impossible to understand where the next election's going, what works for parties, what doesn't work for parties, unless you understand what happens behind the scenes.

Speaker 78 And that's what we worked so hard to get was. What were people actually thinking? What were their motivations? What were the conversations that you couldn't see on television?

Speaker 77 And so I think the critical point, and Amy, this is to me the most fascinating, particularly sitting where I'm sitting on the other side often of some of these discussions from a gubernatorial and electoral perspective.

Speaker 77 But it's the remarkable access you have to hundreds and hundreds of people that are painting this picture and how extraordinarily well sourced you were to even have these scenes, these vignettes, that have been pretty bulletproof.

Speaker 77 There's been few, if any, critics of that scene setting or anyone that suggested this book hasn't been locked down in terms of its fact-checking.

Speaker 77 But this is your, what, the fourth book you guys have read again?

Speaker 79 Our third campaign book.

Speaker 79 Between John and I, I think we pretty much have DC locked down.

Speaker 77 Is that it?

Speaker 79 And people, I think, feel comfortable, which is a compliment to what we've done. They feel comfortable talking to us and sharing.

Speaker 79 I mean, our job as reporters has always been to get as close to the truth as possible.

Speaker 79 And that was sort of our aim here, to bring, as John said, everyone into the room and give you a glimpse of what was happening. We all saw everything play out.

Speaker 79 We didn't know the backroom conversations. And I think that's why this book has, people have been so receptive.
They kind of wanted to know what was going on behind the scenes.

Speaker 79 And we all knew but didn't know.

Speaker 78 I'm going to break a key rule here, which is to ask a question I don't know the answer to.

Speaker 78 You obviously have your own perspectives on this.

Speaker 78 You have your own experiences with what was going on during that time period between the debate and when Biden dropped out and beyond that through the campaign.

Speaker 78 Did you read anything and say to yourself, that doesn't comport with what I know or understand?

Speaker 77 It was extraordinary

Speaker 77 how accurate it was in every way, shape, or form. And of course, I and

Speaker 77 no, but what was for me, I think the most alarming part was trying to go, who's this, who's the source on this? Who did they talk to on this?

Speaker 77 You know, and who's who's omitted, who's sort of overplayed,

Speaker 77 and how everything sort of shapes out. But, you know, look, that experience on the 27th, that night, the debate, I was in a very different place than Nancy Pelosi and Clyborne and others.

Speaker 77 I was there expecting to go out and do the spin to talk about how successful that debate was. And I was out there doing the pre-debate spin on the networks.

Speaker 77 And so everything about what you did sort of painted a picture that I didn't have because I wasn't privy to all of those other scenes and who was missing, who wasn't.

Speaker 79 What were you thinking in that moment?

Speaker 77 No, I mean, I was one of the first 10 seconds birth people. I remember remember standing up.
I looked around and everyone looked and we all went something

Speaker 77 off within seconds. And then we were just

Speaker 77 20, 30 minutes in and the techs were just lighting up. And you could see that with all of us that were supposed to be doing the spin.

Speaker 77 And the campaign was out already caucusing in the corner and the debate had just. begun.
So it was not a gross exaggeration to say

Speaker 77 everything you painted in terms of that picture was deeply accurate.

Speaker 77 And so it's fascinating, again, just having your perspective and then the perspective of others sort of play this kaleidoscope, this sort of sort of aggregated picture and reality.

Speaker 77 And of course, that reality came to the fore, not just that night, but

Speaker 77 the expression of so much of what came out of this book was the internal debates then.

Speaker 77 You started to talk about not just that night and Nancy Pelosi's relationship to that night, Clydeburn's relationship to that night, but the relationship of the Biden campaign and their defiance after that night.

Speaker 77 They were going to stick in.

Speaker 77 They demanded loyalty. They tested that theory.

Speaker 77 Many of us were on the seven end of that.

Speaker 77 Talk to us about those next chapters and how things began to evolve or devolve from your perspective in terms of the post-debate realities.

Speaker 78 So I think that

Speaker 78 you make the right point, right? Biden is, to the extent that he was in a cocoon before, and I think he really was, there were not many people outside the top White House staff that saw him a lot.

Speaker 78 So for years, we would get little anecdotes of, I was with the president. He seemed a little off, whatever, but from a member of Congress or something who sees him once every six months.

Speaker 78 As we report in the book, he didn't recognize Eric Swalwell.

Speaker 78 Congressman from California, who is on television literally half the day every day, and had to be cued in the summer of 2023 as to who Swalwell was when he met him at the congressional picnic.

Speaker 78 So you hear stories like that.

Speaker 78 But, you know, what happens from that moment is the Biden team digs in, totally digs in, and he digs in, and this is somebody who has wanted to be president for his entire life, right?

Speaker 78 He first started thinking about that, if not earlier, when he first got elected to the Senate in 1972, which is, you know, neither of us were born yet, and I have gray hair, and Amy doesn't have gray hair, but

Speaker 78 she may soon, right?

Speaker 77 So, and so

Speaker 78 Biden wanted to be president forever. He got the job.
He believes all the people that doubted him over the years, including Barack Obama and others, were wrong and that they're wrong again.

Speaker 78 And so he's going to fight this out. And the rest of the Democratic Party looks at him and says, like, this guy can't win.
He wasn't going to, he was on track to lose before the debate. Yeah.

Speaker 77 And you paint that picture in terms of where the polls were and things were trending prior to the debate.

Speaker 78 And now it's unrecoverable. And then the question is, how do you ease this guy who has a big ego, who's stubborn, who has had some sort of non-linear decline, right?

Speaker 78 Better days, worse days, better hours, worse hours. How do you convince him that it's time for him to get out?

Speaker 78 Especially if you're Barack Obama and the relationship there is totally tattered because Obama didn't support him at 16, didn't really support him in 20.

Speaker 78 How do you do it if you're Nancy Pelosi and you have a good relationship with him?

Speaker 77 Going back decades and decades.

Speaker 78 Decades and decades. They come from the same place, basically, in the Mid-Atlantic.
They're both Catholic, both big Kennedy fans, FDR Democrats.

Speaker 78 They are close. And she's always respected Biden for getting his hands dirty in politics, for like, you know, trying to get deals done.

Speaker 78 She always looked at Obama and said, this guy wants to float above and have other people do the work. And she respected Biden.
She's like, how do you get rid of him?

Speaker 78 How do you push him out, but make it his idea?

Speaker 78 Make it make him. And so you see, and I think a lot of people are angry at Pelosi.
Democrats are angry at Pelosi voters. who loved Biden and thought she did so much to like push him.

Speaker 78 And the truth was, I think she was the only one that had the courage to get out there and keep moving the ball forward with little things she said on television, you know?

Speaker 78 But I mean, it wasn't like a full-on

Speaker 78 bum rush. Right.
So all of this is super delicate and Biden's just not going to go anywhere. And then finally he gets really bad COVID

Speaker 78 and the numbers are looking terrible and House and Senate members are telling him that they're going to lose because of him.

Speaker 78 And, you know, he finally makes the decision that I think most other Democratic leaders understood was going to have to be made three weeks earlier.

Speaker 78 And the one thing that I think has been difficult for the Democratic Party that hasn't been talked about a lot

Speaker 78 is either Joe Biden was not competent to run for president anymore and therefore should have resigned the presidency too, because I'm not sure you can make the argument that one is true without the other.

Speaker 78 Or the view is that it's not that he wasn't competent to run or serve.

Speaker 78 but just that he was going to lose and Democrats decided to switch horses because they were going to lose midway through a campaign.

Speaker 78 And I think a lot of voters, especially a lot of swing voters, just were not able to reconcile all of that and think to themselves the Democrats are telling me the truth right now.

Speaker 77 Yeah, it's an issue of trust. And I mean, obviously, that's a big part, I think, of the through line in the book.

Speaker 77 But the point you're making about Nancy Pelosi playing an outsized role here is interesting. And just reflecting on my own conversations with former Speaker Pelosi is

Speaker 77 how sensitive she was to the parents

Speaker 77 that she was pushing him out

Speaker 77 and how she went to great lengths. And in the book, you chronicle that, but even in the personal interactions with many of us, she would, even unsolicited, say, just so you know, I'm not pushing.

Speaker 77 She still says it. She still says it to this day.
She's very sensitive about that.

Speaker 77 But you are of the firm opinion that A2, Nancy, I think is one of the chapters in the book,

Speaker 77 that she had a hand, a big hand to play in that.

Speaker 79 I mean, we take you inside the campaign in that moment. She goes on Morning Joe.
Yeah. She's a little kind of disheveled for Nancy Pelosi because she's never disheveled ever.

Speaker 77 She's like, which is like, she's got a bra strap showing.

Speaker 78 But disheveled for Nancy Pelosi is like one hair out of it.

Speaker 77 Yeah. And she's

Speaker 77 disheveled compared to her Pelosi. She's one of the self.

Speaker 79 But I mean, that moment is such a major moment. She goes on Morning Joe.

Speaker 79 He, you know, she says he has a decision to make. He's already made his decision.

Speaker 79 You know, two days earlier, he was already in a letter was saying, I'm running he's telling people i'm running don't count me out um and she's saying no you know he has a decision to make and so we take you inside the campaign and in that moment they're all like f you what are you doing we're finally like back on track and you're you know

Speaker 79 we're regressing now um and and so it's really really um kind of a dramatic moment of like they're finally on track. They feel like they're finally, you know, moving on.
And she pulls him right back.

Speaker 77 I remember that. And I remember being out on the road for Biden.
And I remember being on there with General Mally Dylan.

Speaker 77 We'll talk about her role in all of this and going on with the campaign team after that debate, doing a little Zoom saying, let's all buck up here in Bucks County. I'm bucking up.

Speaker 77 We're going to make the case coming from the debate that they really did try to put everything back together and put a good face on it.

Speaker 77 Obviously, the president went back out on the campaign trail, had a few pretty good speeches, at least relative to some expectation that that held things together.

Speaker 77 And then he pulled us all in, and you chronicle this with the governors. There's a meeting with all the governors, some in person, some virtually.

Speaker 77 And you set the scene where the reception didn't go as well necessarily as some had expected. A few governors basically said, Mr.
President, we may lose the Senate.

Speaker 77 We may lose our congressional seats. Tell me more about that.

Speaker 78 So Michelle Luhan Grisham from New Mexico, who is, I think, literally half your height.

Speaker 77 She wouldn't be proud to acknowledge and twice as tough, by the way.

Speaker 78 Right, but that's the thing.

Speaker 78 She gets in there and she's basically like, we could lose a Senate race here. We could lose House seats that have been safe.

Speaker 78 The whole thing could go away. And nobody's thinking about New Mexico.
That's not like one of the swing states.

Speaker 77 That was

Speaker 77 not on our minds when we walked in that meeting.

Speaker 78 And certainly not the only one who expressed those kinds of

Speaker 77 points.

Speaker 78 And not just in that meeting, but outside of that, expressing the same concern to him, states where the Democrats should not have had a problem, congressional districts where they should not have had a problem, suddenly looking, you know, staring down the barrel of a huge problem.

Speaker 78 And, you know, I mean, maybe you should take it away.

Speaker 77 What was the rest of the day? Did you say anything? Well, yeah, I did. I mean, I was, we all were asked, you know, what's the advice?

Speaker 77 I said, the last thing I'm going to give is the President of the United States advice. I can just tell you what I'm hearing on the campaign trail.

Speaker 77 But it was interesting, the president, after he listened to everybody's advice, and as you chronicl quite accurately, which, by the way, just for the record, there is nothing in private that exists.

Speaker 77 I mean, every single one, we might as well be, you know,

Speaker 77 we're all wired. I don't know how it's, it's something I'm now a little more cautious reading your book,

Speaker 77 that there's not a thing that's uttered in private that ultimately won't become trustworthy.

Speaker 78 Let's save some of the good stuff for our next one.

Speaker 77 For your next one. Yeah, no, but it is a point of consideration.

Speaker 77 But that particular meeting was so, there was so much that was leaked in that meeting. But you, you shockingly, almost down to the adverbs and pronouns,

Speaker 77 nailed aspects of that meeting. But what was, I think, omitted, not intentionally, but was sort of the defiance of the president in that meeting.

Speaker 77 He asserted himself after listening to everybody, said, I am all in.

Speaker 77 And really pushed back. And I remember, and

Speaker 77 I could be accused of a lot of things, but I don't think I was accused of not being a loyalist to Biden. And

Speaker 77 true to that form, there was sort of a pause after he said he's in. And I started, I said, Mr.
President, is it okay that I applaud?

Speaker 77 Just to have his back at that meeting. And

Speaker 77 I just felt, you know, at that moment, there was a vulnerability in that meeting. And there was a vulnerability, obviously, the precarious vulnerability as it relates to his electoral fortunes.

Speaker 77 And, you know, I'm one of those guys. You go home with the one who brought you to the dance.
That's how my father raised me.

Speaker 77 I think it was exact, literally, it's, I mean, indelible in my mind, go home with the one you brought to the dance. And so I felt compelled.

Speaker 77 That's why I went out campaigning for him the next day after doing the spin room and being out there.

Speaker 77 But you painted, I thought, a very accurate picture. So you started to see this thing start to fray a little bit.
You started to see loyalists express themselves.

Speaker 77 A few chapters in, you start talking about Nancy Pelosi, but now through her surrogates, perhaps most importantly, Adam Schiff. And Schiff shifts a little bit and says what?

Speaker 78 It's fascinating.

Speaker 77 You want to go? Yeah, you can go.

Speaker 78 So

Speaker 78 he's at a fundraiser on Long Island. The day that Donald Trump gets shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, basically about the same time, there's a fundraiser that Schiff goes out to do

Speaker 78 for Alyssa Slotkin and Angela Alsobrooks, who are running for the Senate for Michigan and Maryland, respectively. And Schiff gets out there and

Speaker 78 basically says what he hasn't been saying publicly to these donors, which is that Biden needs to go. And to your point, nothing's private.
A transcript of his remarks

Speaker 78 magically makes it into the hands of the New York Times.

Speaker 78 I have no idea who gave that transcript to the New York Times, but if you were Adam Schiff and you made it, wanted to make this point publicly and wanted to, but didn't want to be the first person to stand in front of a microphone and say it, that might be a good way to do it.

Speaker 78 I don't know that that's what happened, but I'm just saying it might have been what happened. The thing that didn't make it out

Speaker 78 from the same event was the transcript of Alyssa Slatkin speaking right after Schiff, who is making kind of the opposite case, which is she thinks that

Speaker 78 Vice President Harris will be problematic

Speaker 78 for candidates on the ballot, particularly for her in Michigan.

Speaker 78 She talks a little bit about why, but she's basically like, she's to the left, and that's going to be harmful to some of our candidates.

Speaker 78 And she says, but she's also like, she understands Biden is also potentially an anchor, but she's much clearer about Harris.

Speaker 78 And she says, we're not going to skip over over a black woman for the vice presidency.

Speaker 78 So if you're thinking about some sort of like deus ex machina, new candidate gets picked out at an open convention, you're crazy.

Speaker 79 A Gavin Newsom.

Speaker 77 Yeah. A Gavin Newsom.
Whitmer, many others. Fill in the blank.

Speaker 78 Jamie Pritzker, anybody.

Speaker 77 Exactly.

Speaker 78 So she's making that case, but she basically says

Speaker 78 Harris is worse. So the opposite of what Schiff says, it never leaks out.

Speaker 77 It never leaks out.

Speaker 78 Until our book. And then she kind of comes to their conclusion, which is whatever we do, we have to do it now because savaging each other within the Democratic Party is going to destroy everyone.

Speaker 78 And she says, so we need to make a decision and quote unquote, suck it up, buttercup.

Speaker 79 And what's fascinating is at the same time, you have Biden people,

Speaker 79 his staff out there privately sending notes to donors saying and undermining his VP and saying, look, if you push him out, you're stuck with her.

Speaker 77 I mean, that was the hardest stuff to read.

Speaker 79 What a bad look.

Speaker 78 I mean, you're her friend for a long time.

Speaker 77 Yeah, I mean, 40 years going back to before we were both into politics, before she ran for district attorney, before I ran for county supervisor, let alone mayor.

Speaker 77 So it's difficult because there's so many aspects.

Speaker 77 And I want to get to how difficult it is because, you know, Nancy Pelosi's relationship with Kamala, and obviously that plays a big role in this book as well, but also Barack Obama's and his lack of support for her candidacy.

Speaker 77 You just referenced Slotkin, referenced some of the internal dynamics as it relates to the Harris-Biden campaign. But

Speaker 77 let's go back a little bit. Let's talk about the COVID, because I think that was a critical point.
Where the president gets COVID, there's a vulnerability that's expressed.

Speaker 77 Obviously, he's doing his best to put a good face on that debate to sort of spin his way out, has a good couple, at least from my perspective, public

Speaker 77 rallies, has an interview, which wasn't as effective, perhaps, and it was, which became an issue. I remember the text messages coming again after that interview.
I think it was with what? Who was

Speaker 77 Stephanopoulos, which was fine, but people just felt like it wasn't, he didn't get out on the other side. And all of a sudden, now he comes down with COVID.

Speaker 78 He couldn't remember whether he had watched the debate or not.

Speaker 77 He was asked that simple question. Did you watch it? And what are your thoughts about it?

Speaker 79 I mean, I think that was sort of the nail in the coffin. And when you talk to people people around him, they admit that.
You know, him walking onto the plane, leaving Nevada, going home.

Speaker 79 And then he is in this very vulnerable spot where he's at home. He's surrounded by close aides.
He's making the biggest political decision of his life. And, you know, when you're not feeling well

Speaker 79 and then you're backed into a corner.

Speaker 79 That's just what happened.

Speaker 78 And I don't think anybody knows just how sick he was. Like he was having real respiratory problems.
People were wearing masks inside his house. I mean,

Speaker 78 he was not in good shape the final weekend before he made that decision.

Speaker 77 And he would make the case and he made it to the governors directly, but made it very public on multiple occasions as well that he obviously didn't feel well into the debate as well. And

Speaker 77 so, look, you get, you paint the picture then of him sort of reflecting in those private moments back at home.

Speaker 77 You also paint a picture of Jill Biden and a Hunter Biden that played an outsized role and saying, Dad, we got this, right?

Speaker 79 Yeah. I mean, it's Jill Biden is his strongest, most ardent supporter, obviously.
And she really wanted him to.

Speaker 79 Hunter Biden, as we reveal in the book, he's playing a big role in saying, you have to do this, you've got this, pushing him to go further. And he is so dug in, you know, and stubborn.

Speaker 79 You know, the president well. I mean, in that moment, he thinks he's the only one who can win.
He still thinks he's the only one.

Speaker 77 He believes that. And by the way, that's very sincere.

Speaker 77 Having proven that he could beat Donald Trump the first time,

Speaker 77 he sort of maintained that. And that was always his argument in private.

Speaker 77 You know, whatever you say about me, you know, and he would try to be a little bit objective and have some situational awareness. I'm the guy.

Speaker 77 And he really firmly believed was the only person that could beat him.

Speaker 79 Yeah, but undermining her at the same time, I think a lot of people in her camp were a little bit pissed off. I mean, I know we're fast-forwarding quite a bit, but saying, what do you mean?

Speaker 79 You're the only one who could have won.

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Speaker 77 And let's talk a little bit about that because I think it does connect to Joe Biden as well.

Speaker 77 You write in the book that

Speaker 77 Joe Biden.

Speaker 77 I told you, I'm not making this up. It was fantastic.

Speaker 77 And people that don't care about politics or think they might or might not be interested, this paints an unbelievably accurate picture of this race, this 107-day race in particular.

Speaker 77 Of course, you go a little bit earlier to the debate on June 27th.

Speaker 77 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.

Speaker 77 And you say that in the book, that she really went to great lengths to be a loyal representative of this administration.

Speaker 77 And that Biden

Speaker 77 primarily had turned the page on any animus from the early election primary, but Jill Biden may not have, you suggest.

Speaker 79 Exactly. 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.

Speaker 77 From a debate.

Speaker 79 In 2019.

Speaker 79 And,

Speaker 79 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.

Speaker 79 That sort of bled, you know, into this process and what was happening.

Speaker 79 But yeah, a really kind of contentious relationship.

Speaker 77 He's still trying.

Speaker 78 Joe Biden is still trying to do cleanup from perhaps before the Trump-Biden debate, the biggest knockout punch I'd ever seen in a debate, which was

Speaker 78 Conway Harris hitting him on busing, which is why Jill Biden hates her, one of the reasons that Joe Biden hates her.

Speaker 78 Last week, Biden did his first interview or did his first speech since he left the presidency.

Speaker 78 He gets an award, and he talks about moving to Wilmington when he's a little kid, and he sees a bus full of black children. go by and he uses the term quote-unquote colored kids.

Speaker 78 He says, well, we used to call colored kids. And like, I mean, we're all roughly the same generation.
Nobody has said that in our lifetimes.

Speaker 78 And so it reminds you how old he is. 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?

Speaker 78 And she says, because black children are not allowed to go to school with white children in Delaware.

Speaker 78 But

Speaker 78 decades later, Joe Biden was trying legislatively to make sure that black kids couldn't go to school with white kids.

Speaker 78 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. And, of course, stumbles all over himself in doing.

Speaker 77 All right. So, we move forward as we stumble forward in figurative sense and we fast forward to the decision to step down.

Speaker 77 And you paint this picture minute by minute, quite literally, minute by minute,

Speaker 77 the inside of the conversations, which is remarkable.

Speaker 77 I still, back to everyone being wired, the conversations between the president and the vice president, the vice president saying, are you sure, Mr. President?

Speaker 77 sort of maintaining that loyalty and firm footing,

Speaker 77 and then immediately organizing independent, it seems, of her in another room, her sort of... In the pool house.

Speaker 77 In her pool house with Tony West, her brother-in-law, and the rest of Kamalot, and we'll talk about that in a moment with a K,

Speaker 77 the team to start organizing immediately a strategy to get people on board. But first, Kamala Harris tries to get the president on board.
Tell me about that.

Speaker 79 So let's start with the pool house because they're meeting ahead of this call.

Speaker 79 And, you know, she's in a very precarious spot coming into that moment. She's basically telling everyone, and she is, she's very loyal to him.

Speaker 79 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.

Speaker 77 Just in case. Just in case.

Speaker 78 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

Speaker 78 next to the pool at the vice president's residence? Like her two chiefs of staff,

Speaker 78 Minyon Moore is like running the convention, is like zoomed in. Tony West is in there.
Brian Fallon, the comms guy. We're like, what are the chances that they're there and she doesn't know what?

Speaker 77 And the person who talked to us said,

Speaker 78 You think there's anybody in the vice president's pool house? The vice president doesn't know exactly what they're doing.

Speaker 79 doing yeah so just no so they're all gathered there when the call comes in yes um and so they're alerted to the call um

Speaker 79 she is on the call with the president essentially saying are you sure are you sure and he says yes and she says okay are you going to endorse me and he says

Speaker 79 you have my support kid you have my support kid yeah and she knows that that's not really an endorsement i mean you know yeah you've been in politics long enough. And so she pushes him.

Speaker 79 And he says, yeah, you know, I'm going to endorse you, but later. Later.
And think about that moment. Think about where the party is in that moment.

Speaker 78 If you don't hear the E word, it's basically the F word, right? If you're in politics and you ask for an endorsement and you don't hear endorsement back.

Speaker 79 Yeah. Even if it's Wednesday and we're on Sunday.

Speaker 77 So they were talking about doing it. Literally not that same day.
No. But you're saying, I'll do it later in the week.

Speaker 79 So quite literally, people are licking their chops, like wondering, is this going to happen? Should I enter? She's trying to get all the support.

Speaker 78 Did you know anybody was thinking about these things or talking about these things?

Speaker 77 No, nothing about it.

Speaker 77 So at that moment, I mean, so she's, she, to her credit, I mean, this is, this is a serious moment.

Speaker 77 I mean, this is, and she's obviously preparing for this moment, to be fair, along the lines of the picture you paint. But quietly.
But quietly.

Speaker 78 She's not doing anything like that undermines him.

Speaker 77 And by the way, that's an important point. And I can only attest to that, too, again, being sort of adjacent to all of this.

Speaker 77 They were were either extraordinarily careful in that respect or they were they were so deeply loyal it could be both and and appears perhaps both and

Speaker 77 but there was never a sense that she was trying on her mind and I could just lay claim to that in terms of personal interactions and everybody around her of which you know I have one degree of separation we'll get to some of those characters in a moment so she gets she presses the president and the president agrees that later in the day, at least one of his advisors, as you paint in the book, decides we'll tweet something out.

Speaker 78 But this requires two phone calls to get to that agreement. I mean, I think this is interesting, right? Like they get off the phone and there's still not an agreement about this.

Speaker 78 He says it's Sunday and he's like, maybe like Wednesday or Thursday. And she's like, you have to endorse me now.
Everyone's going to get out of the gate. They're going to be calling their people.

Speaker 78 They're going to be trying to pick up delegates. If you endorse.

Speaker 78 If you get out of the race and you don't endorse me for four days, that's four days of everyone thinking that you think that I'm not good enough to be president of the United States.

Speaker 78 And you picked me to be your VP, which is her leaning on him, him, right, a little bit saying, like, you can't.

Speaker 77 Your judgment's at stake here, sir.

Speaker 78 Right. And so they get off the phone and she, her people draft up a statement for him to give and send it over.

Speaker 78 And then finally, they get back on the phone and go, you know, it's sort of like, Biden, like, I'll do a statement about me and then I'll do a statement about you later today.

Speaker 78 And she's like, please be like five minutes later.

Speaker 78 But the thing is, even within that, I mean, there's this, this incredible tension where Joe Biden is focused on taking a victory lap as the guy that magnanimously got out of office.

Speaker 78 And I think you, you look, it looks like you can understand. Like, he's been president of the United States.
He's not going to run. He thinks he's the guy that can win.

Speaker 77 Jonathan, I have such deep emotions about this because I remember getting, and first of all, I remember two things, Kurt.

Speaker 77 Why I felt just full disclosure, a little bit of disappointment not getting heads up because all of a sudden just appeared on my feet. I'm like, what?

Speaker 77 I mean, literally, I remember exactly where I was. Where were you? I remember just down the block.
i was just i was on a walk you're governor of the fifth largest country in the world yeah right

Speaker 77 which fine but i also was but i was out there i was hustling i was out there when it was a little lonely after that debate and i was out there doing these small you know fourth of july you know events and you know it's 50 people and i'm just you know i'm trying to do that be a father uh and do my day job as governor of california and look the way it played out actually made me feel better because there were a number of others that didn't get heads up as well.

Speaker 77 I understood it, but I also understood the gap because I remember wanting to put out, we did, we put out a statement. Immediately, everyone starts calling.
I mean, those are text messages.

Speaker 77 I think I might have tried to text you that better.

Speaker 77 But there was a moment where for me, just personally,

Speaker 77 I thought he needs his space so we can talk about him, not talk about who's next.

Speaker 77 And so I understood that gap and I understood his.

Speaker 77 From his perspective, I totally understood it. This wasn't about the next thing.
This was about the end of his presidency and his public service. And he needed that grace and space.

Speaker 77 And I remember we were putting together a statement no sooner than that, but I started to get some phone calls from the same person that was making calls, according to your book, to many other governors and elected officials across the country by the name of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Speaker 78 And what did she say?

Speaker 77 Well, she's

Speaker 77 reporters.

Speaker 78 We have to ask questions.

Speaker 77 Yeah, you already know. So she was making those phone calls, and she had that list ready to go, and she's picking up endorsements at a fevered pace.
Within a couple hours, we had endorsed.

Speaker 77 Once we had sort of reflected on a little space, put out a statement for Biden. We're in.
Other governors are in. You talk about Clyburn.
He's in.

Speaker 77 But someone by the name of Barack Obama is not necessarily in. And there's a phone call, I think, forgive me if I'm off, at 5.30 p.m.
to Clyburn. Former President Obama wants to make it.

Speaker 77 Clyburn knows exactly why he's calling. Clyburn does what?

Speaker 79 He quickly gets behind her because

Speaker 79 he knows Obama's going to call him at 5.30. And he says to himself, I have to get behind her before this Obama call.
And so Obama does call him and he says, I've gotten behind Kamala.

Speaker 79 And the call lasts less than a minute.

Speaker 78 But Obama, at like 5.30 that afternoon, so like five or so hours later, four hours.

Speaker 78 he's still trying to like plan this like you know mini primary conversion let's back up and I didn't did Obama call you

Speaker 77 didn't call me directly but not directly

Speaker 77 but but but this notion of a mini primary plays obviously a big part of the role and it was sort of a big revelatory part of your book that people like whoa interesting didn't know we knew a little maybe about Pelosi's role

Speaker 77 perception reality there, but Obama playing that role, not of immediately endorsing the vice president, as Biden eventually did,

Speaker 77 but wanting a mini primary.

Speaker 77 And then also floating names like Whitmer and Moore as president and vice president, just to sort of tease out what he thought would be a very strong ticket, but not Harris.

Speaker 77 Bring me into understanding the history there, because I recall, wasn't that long ago, that Kamala Harris decided not to support Hillary Clinton, not an indictment, but decided, interestingly, after being very close to the Clintons, we'll get to that in a moment, but going to the kickoff of Obama and his presidential rally, but it didn't seem that relationship was as strong as some of us had understood it to be.

Speaker 78 Yeah, I think that,

Speaker 78 number one,

Speaker 78 I don't think Obama ever saw Kamala Harris's endorsement of him as important as Kamala Harris saw her endorsement of him, which I guess at some level is understandable given where she was in the world where he was running president.

Speaker 78 But I think that she always wanted a closeness to the Obamas, and they never felt it. And

Speaker 78 I think maybe best said as emblematic is the only time you really heard Barack Obama talk about Kamala Harris before she became a vice presidential candidate.

Speaker 77 In your book, when you state he said

Speaker 78 she's the best-looking attorney general in the country, which, by the way, is not a high bar, no offense to attorney general.

Speaker 77 But in your book, you react,

Speaker 77 you reflect on the fact she did not react

Speaker 77 so quickly or as well,

Speaker 77 but she also didn't say anything publicly, which may have created some risk.

Speaker 78 She let him hang there for a while, right? She let him twist.

Speaker 78 And look, I mean, anybody's advisor would advise them to, you know, maybe take a breath,

Speaker 78 let that sit out there for a while, let the news media keep writing about it because it's elevating her.

Speaker 77 It certainly did. And at his expense.

Speaker 78 Right.

Speaker 78 And I am certain without having spoken to Michelle Obama directly about this, but having spoken to other people, Michelle Obama was not a real big fan of that moment.

Speaker 77 You write that in your book. Her husband said that.
I know.

Speaker 78 But I also, you know, the other interesting thing that's going on here is, so there's this sort of background, like she's always wanted more from them. They don't love her.

Speaker 78 They're not showing her the love.

Speaker 78 Election night.

Speaker 79 Election night, for example.

Speaker 79 She goes and wants to get into his, it's 2008. So he wins, and they have a family and friends tent.

Speaker 77 So you paint this picture as well. Tell us more.
And so all the closest members of the Obama team and family members.

Speaker 79 Family and friends are in a tent. She tries to get into the tent and is turned away.

Speaker 79 But has that kind of fascination with Obama World, even as VP wants to invite the pod save guys over, wants to always make sure that the Obama World people are included.

Speaker 79 So she's really hurt in that moment. Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 79 And we're told by

Speaker 77 I was hurt reading this. I mean, honestly, I didn't fully, it's interesting for what I believed was some insight on all this.

Speaker 77 I didn't appreciate that that riff was as real and wrong, particularly with David Pluff. And we'll get to David coming on board the campaign a little bit later, but keep going.
Yeah, but no,

Speaker 79 it needs mending their relationship.

Speaker 79 And this is sourced to people who know exactly what's happening. So it's not like we're just making this up, but she was really hurt.

Speaker 79 And so it needs a couple of calls between her and the former president to kind of come together to kind of understand what had happened. But she really, really was leaning on his support.

Speaker 78 And in that moment where she's making all the phone calls right after Biden says, you know, I'm going to get out,

Speaker 78 she's making all these phone calls. She wraps, so she gets Biden's support and gets him to agree to endorse her on the phone.

Speaker 77 Hugh, that's the way game changer. Right.
That's a game changer. All those delegates are.

Speaker 77 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 78 Right. They all got elected to be delegates.
And you get Clinton.

Speaker 77 Clinburn, you get him. And then all of a sudden, to your point, all the delegates are his.
You get the whole operation. She's now able to sell the operation.
And Bill and his turnkey.

Speaker 78 Bill and Hillary Clinton within an hour or so.

Speaker 77 And then Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 78 Right. I mean, so which is, you know.
Now you've got two of the four living presidents. There you go.
And Jimmy Carter's endorsement, you know,

Speaker 78 God rests Jimmy Carter's soul, but his endorsement is no longer, you know, something you're negotiating on day one.

Speaker 78 And

Speaker 78 then she gets Obama on the phone.

Speaker 77 And she wants his endorsement.

Speaker 78 And he says, I'm not going to put my thumb on the scale, which is, of course, is exactly putting his thumb on the other side of the scale.

Speaker 77 Yeah.

Speaker 79 Yeah.

Speaker 79 Especially later in the week, too. It takes him several days to get there.

Speaker 78 Yeah. And then they do this kind of cringy video.

Speaker 77 Very awkward call. Which you said was set up and she had to act like it was a surprise.
And there's some discrepancy you describe who really set it up, who didn't set it up.

Speaker 77 What do you make of all that? What do you make of your own discrepancy?

Speaker 77 Well, we were,

Speaker 78 sources told us, sources, that,

Speaker 78 I mean, basically, I think Jeno Mally Dylan, who was running the campaign, thought that there was an opportunity to get a viral video, make some money.

Speaker 78 And not for her personally, but for the fundraising campaign, because remember, the donors had choked off Biden. Like the donors to his super PAC,

Speaker 78 you know, future forward, had choked off the money. Nobody was setting up fundraisers for him.

Speaker 77 Another pressure point on one of the reasons he decided to drop.

Speaker 78 He didn't have the money. They thought it might come back if he stayed in, but they weren't sure when.
They're looking at red ink.

Speaker 78 They're worried about potentially making payroll, even though there's a campaign that is likely to raise a billion plus, ends up raising about $2 billion.

Speaker 78 But in that moment, they're short on cash. And it's like, well, if we can get these two to do something that's kind of viral, we can do it.

Speaker 78 But Michelle Obama doesn't want to go on camera.

Speaker 78 Barack Obama doesn't want to go on camera. So it ends up being their voices talking to her, taking a phone call.
She's smiling.

Speaker 78 It's so phony looking. And I think the irony of that is that for the most part, we actually see what, like, get what we see with Vice President Harris, like good, bad, and different.

Speaker 78 Like, she seems to me to be one of the more authentic people at that level of national politics in that there's not,

Speaker 78 I don't know, I just don't, like, it seemed so packaged and so phony. for someone who, like, you see when she's not, like, when she's struggling to do things.

Speaker 78 You can see when she's not comfortable in something.

Speaker 79 She wasn't happy in that moment.

Speaker 77 No,

Speaker 79 yeah, her aides kind of told us as much, that she's, she thinks she knows you have to be authentic in politics, and she knows that it's a very staged call. She's not happy about how it's going to be.

Speaker 77 Yeah, just the whole idea of it. I get it.
And it's particularly after, as

Speaker 77 you've written, and now we've learned what didn't happen the days prior leading up to that.

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Speaker 77 Let's fast forward a little bit. That's basically the first half of your book.

Speaker 77 You lay out sort of this moment, and then we pivot into the second half of the book.

Speaker 77 And you pull in Mar-a-Lago versus Kamalat, as you describe it in one chapter, what's going on in the Trump campaign at this moment.

Speaker 77 They seem a bit surprised that it was that quick, right, to shift and transfer overwhelming support pretty quickly with a few exceptions.

Speaker 77 And you chronicle one governor in particular, not even consequential in the context of the overall support she was getting. The momentum was there, it was real, and it was enthusiastic.

Speaker 77 And the folks out in Florida were feeling slightly anxious, curious.

Speaker 77 Give us a little bit of insight into how

Speaker 77 the campaign of Donald Trump, Las Evidas, Wiles, were feeling Trump himself at this moment.

Speaker 79 It's a low moment for them.

Speaker 79 You know, they are sitting there looking at the vibe, if you will. They see that Democrats are actually excited for once.
You know, they weren't getting that from them at any point.

Speaker 79 And here they are, huge convention, a lot of momentum. She's raising a lot of money.
She is attracting big crowds. Biden isn't getting those crowds, wasn't getting them before.

Speaker 79 So he's wondering, what do I need to do differently? Do I need to shake things up? Do I need to bring back the people from my past?

Speaker 77 And there's one particular character you reference in the book by the name of Cory. Lewandowski.
Lewandowski. And he appears again.
And he appears

Speaker 77 as an irritant of sorts to the two folks, the loyal soldiers, Las Cevitas and Wiles, who had been running this campaign in a way that a lot of folks were pretty impressed by, particularly by Trump's standards.

Speaker 77 I don't know if we're grading on a curve or not, but it seemed to be a well-managed campaign, a little different than the campaign four year prior.

Speaker 78 And Trump is Trump, and there are different shades of Trump, but like you pretty much know where you're going to get, which is something different every time you see him, definitely, you know, attracting news and sometimes undercutting himself and whatever.

Speaker 78 But the question is, like, what does the campaign do beneath him? Right.

Speaker 78 Are they able to react to him in ways that support him winning or do they devolve into chaos because they can't figure out what he's doing?

Speaker 78 And we've seen option B a lot, like in his first presidency, even a little bit in the second presidency and in his previous campaigns.

Speaker 78 This time, Wiles and La Cevita, who didn't really know each other before this election, but are both seasoned campaign professionals.

Speaker 77 Just so paint the picture, because people know who the heck Las Cevitas, this is the guy who did Swift Boat against the Kerry campaign many, many years ago.

Speaker 77 I mean, in political terms, I mean, this guy is as tough as it gets.

Speaker 77 Brass knuckles.

Speaker 78 Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, if you're in a trench somewhere, you know,

Speaker 78 first of all, he's a veteran, but like, if you're in a trench somewhere in politics, like you want that guy, like he's, he's going to to fight.

Speaker 77 And meanwhile, Wiles is a well-respected operative in Florida that's managed a lot of campaigns, including former governor or current governor, but formerly for Governor Ron DeSantis.

Speaker 78 Yeah, the daughter of Pat Sommerall. Pat Summerall.
Former football broadcaster. Pat Somerall.
Yeah, legendary Pat Sommerall,

Speaker 78 who I am sure called many. San Francisco 49ers games.

Speaker 77 Mr. Madden, thank you, sir.
Yes.

Speaker 78 But Susie is somebody who has been involved in politics for her entire career, and she is in her mid-60s now.

Speaker 78 And she got her first job in the White House, in the Reagan White House,

Speaker 78 kind of early in life, worked at the Labor Department for him, and then went to Florida and worked for mayors in Jacksonville. And really sort of got to understand politics from the ground up too.

Speaker 78 Ran some high-profile Florida statewide campaigns, DeSantis.

Speaker 78 And

Speaker 78 she manages well. She's just a good manager.

Speaker 77 I mean, well-respected. You hear that across party lines.
People do not underestimate her. And one should not.
She's current chief of staff of President Trump.

Speaker 78 Yeah. 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.

Speaker 78 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 the polls and Trump's falling back a little bit.

Speaker 78 And it's at this moment in like September, even into early October, it's basically a dead heat.

Speaker 78 And Trump is furious about this because he beaten Biden. Yep.

Speaker 77 He felt it was over, collabored him in the debate.

Speaker 77 In fact, you even paint a picture in the debate. He kind of even was a little more empathetic.
He decided not to go in for the kill. And he backed off.

Speaker 77 And even backed off, even Trump, during the debate you describe.

Speaker 78 Some kind of combination of

Speaker 78 him recognizing that, you know, in this moment that like Biden is wounded and there's no need to kick him and also understanding the political backlash of, as he puts it, looking, you know, he doesn't want to look like an, as he's thinking.

Speaker 77 So this guy's, I mean, he's feeling everything's going in his direction. This thing's a walk.

Speaker 77 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 it's going to look under the tires because one of the vulnerabilities and one of the things Trump doesn't like, you describe in your book, is wasteful spending, profligacy.

Speaker 77 And it appeared, at least, to Lewandowski and some of the critics out there that Las Civitas had banked a little too much, 20 plus million or something.

Speaker 78 Well, I mean, that's just like, that's an absurd amount. I mean, just think about like the idea that some campaign staffers got $22 million coming.
I mean, it's just like on its face, absurd. But

Speaker 78 this is the stuff Corey Lewandowski is

Speaker 78 using against La Cevita and against Suzy to some extent.

Speaker 78 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 or falling is that these guys are mismanaging your campaign.

Speaker 78 And this, and Trump wants, that's the kind of thing that usually gets Trump to act.

Speaker 78 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.

Speaker 78 And I think they lay out a little bit of who Corey is. And they all get on Trump Force One.
And Trump calls Corey over and just,

Speaker 78 I mean, like a schoolboy, he's like, at one point, like kind of kneeling at the table.

Speaker 77 I mean, you literally describe him kneeling at the table.

Speaker 78 And Trump, you know, looks at Lewandowski and he points to Susie and Chris and he goes, they're in charge. And you're going to New Hampshire, which is not.

Speaker 77 Do what you're supposed to be doing. Right.

Speaker 78 Corey's going to New Hampshire, at least, right?

Speaker 78 But I mean, basically, yeah, like, like, stop.

Speaker 78 Go away. Go away.
Like, love you, Corey. Great guy.
Glad you support me.

Speaker 79 Go somewhere else. But for anyone who thinks that we just focus on the Democratic train wreck.

Speaker 77 No, no. So, I mean, this is it as sort of we pivot now into section two of your book.
Now, all of a sudden, we start to pull Trump into this narrative. And, of course, that anxiety.

Speaker 77 But he sticks with his team. And he shows, as you suggest in the book, a maturity in terms of a discipline of the campaign that may not have been as present.

Speaker 78 I think 2020 had an effect on him. I think he learned some lessons from it.
In this moment and in others, he chooses stability over over chaos for the purpose of winning the presidency.

Speaker 78 We do not always see that now, now that he's in his second term, and we often see the opposite of that. But for that moment, he's got to win this race.
And he lost in 2020 and it burns him.

Speaker 78 And he's trying to stick with the things that he think, dance with the one that brought you.

Speaker 78 He's doing that with these campaign folks. And you even see it in the policies that he chooses where his aides are giving him

Speaker 78 strong advice on, say, a national abortion ban, where they say, don't, they have to do a slideshow for him?

Speaker 78 And they're like, here's what the abortion laws are in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, these swing states.

Speaker 78 And if you do a national abortion ban, you're taking abortion, but abortion rights away from women in those states. But if you don't support it, their rights stay the same.

Speaker 78 And therefore, that's, you're taking it off the table as an issue in those states, or at least for a lot of the voters, right? So

Speaker 78 you see him kind of learning from the last time. 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.

Speaker 77 But he is told you get to bank the vote.

Speaker 78 So again, this money thing, it's like if you, once you have a vote in early, you don't have to spend money to convince that voter anymore.

Speaker 77 So you describe, and as we move further into the book, we have this dialectic between the Harris campaign and the Biden campaign and this notion

Speaker 77 around change. Obviously, every election is about change or allegedly every election's about change, but it's difficult.
You have a sitting vice president. It's been endorsed by President Biden.

Speaker 77 deep pride in the work that President Biden's done in his legacy. He wants that legacy maintained.

Speaker 77 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.

Speaker 77 But Harris had a more difficult time in that space. You describe a moment in time that was indelible for many many people, and that was her appearance on the view.

Speaker 77 Take us through.

Speaker 79 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. She's asked, what would you change about, you know, Biden's presidency?

Speaker 79 And she says, not a thing, essentially.

Speaker 77 But she was prepped for that question.

Speaker 79 She was prepped for that question.

Speaker 77 Was that the answer?

Speaker 79 It was not the answer.

Speaker 79 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.

Speaker 79 And so when she says it, her aides are all like, what? What just happened? We just, we prepped for this moment.

Speaker 79 And they can't believe, but in that moment,

Speaker 79 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.

Speaker 79 And here she is saying it.

Speaker 79 And they put out an ad a few days later. I'm surprised it even took that long, but they put out an ad essentially saying, no,

Speaker 79 it's going to be exactly a rubber stamp of more of the same.

Speaker 77 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,

Speaker 77 well, I mean, across the spectrum,

Speaker 77 people really were looking for fundamental change.

Speaker 79 And what a weird spot for her to be in because, you know, she was always trying to prove that she was a loyalist. And here she is.
She is a loyalist. She's very loyal to him.

Speaker 77 She was very loyal publicly, not just privately in that respect. And express that.
And you paint a picture. And I think the outcome of the election

Speaker 77 may suggest that she did that in her own peril, own electoral peril.

Speaker 78 And with Joe Biden, pardon me, governor, with President Biden breathing down her neck.

Speaker 78 over and over and over again, saying, no daylight, kid. He says it to her on the end of the day.

Speaker 77 And that's an exact quote. Another exact quote.

Speaker 78 The day of her debate with Trump. And this is the thing he's been telling her for years.
There should be no daylight between us. Meaning, you don't undermine me.
You're my vice president.

Speaker 78 You don't undermine me. You don't show me that.

Speaker 77 I mean, you know what?

Speaker 77 I'm not a political pundit. I'm not an advisor.
I don't even play a good one as a governor trying to be objective. But what the hell are you supposed to do? The minute.
She deviates from them.

Speaker 77 They'll pounce and they'll show all the videos of her shaking her head, standing behind him at the podium when President Biden makes an announcement. It's a very difficult position.

Speaker 77 And presumably they thought, and I say they, because David Plough now appears in the picture. An old hand, obviously one of Obama's principal

Speaker 77 consultants and campaign strategists. They merged with Jen O'Malley Dillon, who was running the Biden campaign.
They try to integrate the two.

Speaker 77 They have a long-standing relationship, Plough and O'Malley. And so they're sort of, they're dancing this dance, but they see the crowds.
They see Kamala Harris up there, a woman, African-American.

Speaker 77 She is change. She seems to be the personification of change.

Speaker 77 They can make that case maybe without even making the case.

Speaker 78 But that's what they did with Obama in 2008, right? 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.

Speaker 78 And

Speaker 78 they couldn't have known that when they started with Obama as change, but they knew Barack Obama represents physical change. You can see the change.
You don't have to say it.

Speaker 78 They don't ever have to talk about his skin color, right? They don't have to talk about his name, like whatever. They know he.

Speaker 78 That was their 2008 campaign.

Speaker 78 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. Like, it's just

Speaker 78 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

Speaker 78 this crazy like sort of data analysis as your strategy and the the thing that i always come back to as emblematic not not necessarily causal is the trans ad that was run against harris

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Speaker 77 So let's talk about that

Speaker 77 because you just brought up the issue of data, and it plays a big role in your book. You really analyze that, I mean,

Speaker 77 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.

Speaker 77 And it was a data, to your point, data-driven campaign, and decisions were made or not made on that basis. And you just referenced an ad.

Speaker 77 And interesting, I had an interesting Oval Office conversation, or at least with the chief of staff, while I was waiting to see President Trump in the Oval Office with Las Civitas.

Speaker 77 And we talked about this ad.

Speaker 78 I think you should tell that story now.

Speaker 77 No, yeah.

Speaker 77 And

Speaker 77 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?

Speaker 77 And in your book, you answer that question. You pose it and answer it by saying, well, the data bared out.
We didn't need to answer it.

Speaker 79 Bill Clinton calls. He's watching, he's in California.
He's watching the ads play out. And he picks up the phone and he's trying to reach anyone who will.

Speaker 77 But he finally gets in touch with.

Speaker 79 Jenna Mally Dylan. And he says, you know, what's going on? Every time I'm at a rope line, I keep hearing from people, are they going to respond to this? He's watching it.

Speaker 77 And the ad is they, them,

Speaker 77 so it's a, it's an ad, a video.

Speaker 77 Yeah. So she's in a candidate interview during the primary for the original election or the old election.
And, and she's asked a question around trans surgeries.

Speaker 77 And so there's a video of her expressing her policy point of view. So it's not assertion.
It's an actual video.

Speaker 77 And the Trump campaign decides to play this up. And it's on every sports program.
They're targeting young men.

Speaker 77 We'll get to that issue of gender in a second and it seems to be very effective and based upon what i heard directly from the source they said it was not just effective it was off the charts effective but the data wasn't bearing that out that's what in the harris campaign that's what shellin tells bill clinton when he calls up and he's like what's going on but the data the data the data says says the the trans ad is not effective against harris and even more than that they're they test their responses with focus groups and decide that none of the responses are effective.

Speaker 78 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, and your jaw dropped and you're like, wow,

Speaker 78 you tell me if you felt differently, but like.

Speaker 77 Oh, I was with the Clinton camp at the time. Oh, and we not only was I at the Clinton camp, full disclosure, we started doing our own research.
This, of course, happened.

Speaker 77 And the research was self-evident. There were already articles coming out that this was a policy that existed when Trump was president of the United States.
So there you have a vulnerability.

Speaker 77 He's attacking the vice president for a position that he was allowed to advance as president. So you had an opportunity to push back there.

Speaker 77 But also, we started doing our own research because this was at CDCR in the state of California. What's the origin story of this policy? Was there a settlement? It was court-imposed settlement.

Speaker 77 She was AG. She was compelled to advance that settlement based upon a judge's decision.

Speaker 77 And so all of these areas of opportunity to push back. And I think we all expressed strong opinion.
I'll leave it at that

Speaker 77 in hope and expectation. But they chose not to.

Speaker 79 Did you get a similar response?

Speaker 77 We just, you know, well, I got a not how about this? Not dissimilar. response.
Is that a political politician trying to answer a question?

Speaker 78 It's fair.

Speaker 77 I think we got it.

Speaker 77 But it was interesting.

Speaker 77 But it played a,

Speaker 77 it goes to some of these key moments because

Speaker 77 you mark this as a key moment and you mark that David Pluff came in saying this is election all about key moments. It's about debates.
It's about the convention.

Speaker 77 It's about these sort of magical moments that move in your direction or in the opposite direction.

Speaker 77 But that seemed to play an outside because they put, what, $30 plus million dollars into that one ad alone.

Speaker 78 Correct? That's right. I don't remember the exact amount, but it was a ton because it was playing everywhere and it was playing nationally, right?

Speaker 78 It's playing, again, the World Series, NFL again, like Monday Night Football, right? I mean, it is hitting a ton of viewers and hitting them over and over and over again.

Speaker 78 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. I mean, look,

Speaker 78 you're watching football, they tell you to go on fourth and two because the data tells you to go. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, right?

Speaker 78 But if you're the coach, you should know my offensive line is actually kind of, they're huffing and puffing right now. And the quarterback's got a bad ankle.

Speaker 78 And maybe even though the data says I should do it, I'm watching reality. Yeah.
So you see the trans ad and it's like her own words. It's like four or five different positions, right? State funded

Speaker 78 trans surgery for undocumented immigrants who are in prison.

Speaker 77 Yeah.

Speaker 78 And the they, them versus he's for you.

Speaker 77 He's for you.

Speaker 77 What a tagline. What a tagline.

Speaker 79 I mean, probably the most potent political ad of the last several cycles.

Speaker 77 You'd be hard pressed to disagree.

Speaker 78 So I go back at this data stuff and I'm like, so where does this come from? And I think it's this myth that grew out of 2008 that Barack Obama's campaign team made Barack Obama president.

Speaker 78 And there was a whole lot written. There were magazine articles and books and about how the brilliant people around Barack Obama made him president.

Speaker 78 And none of it stopped to say maybe Barack Obama was A, a unique political talent.

Speaker 78 B, maybe he was running in an election where there was a super weakened. incumbent party, right? I mean, it was all like, oh, we had this great data team.
That must be why he won. Interesting.

Speaker 78 And I'm like, I don't know. Is that really your conclusion for why Barack Obama was president of the United States? It's not mine.

Speaker 77 You're talking about my friends here, Jonathan.

Speaker 77 David's a good friend.

Speaker 77 I'm not knocking. And they're incredibly talented, but I appreciate your point.
I'm not knocking. For the broader point about, you know, what lessons we learn and, you know, and who is.

Speaker 77 I mean, it is a great point. I mean, is it the candidate or is it the campaign?

Speaker 78 Well, and I would go back to David and I would say, I'm not knocking David. David was the campaign manager on that 2008 campaign.
They ran a really good campaign.

Speaker 78 It's the people that like come out of that learning like, oh, it must have been this.

Speaker 78 I don't think if you talked to David Pluff, he would tell you Barack Obama was president of the United States because David Pluff's a genius. And I'm not saying David Pluffy.

Speaker 77 He would never acknowledge that. No.
Right.

Speaker 78 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 lines.

Speaker 77 I'd be one of them, right? I mean, I would revere that insight they would have. And as a candidate, I would look to the, I would, and you would be remarkably deferential.

Speaker 77 I mean, and look, she had 107 days. This thing, and by the way, I thought in, I humbly submit, I thought she won, ran under the circumstances, a pretty remarkable campaign.

Speaker 77 But you paint a few circumstances that test that theory. 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.

Speaker 77 All things Texas. This notion that, all right, he's playing these ads.
He's going after young men. Trump's also sort of playing into an archetype and a cultural thing.

Speaker 77 He's got Hulk Hogan there, he's got him ripping off his shirt. He's got Dana White, he's at UFC events.
He's going because Baron, at least Trump claims, Barron says, hey, there's this thing podcast.

Speaker 77 You should go on him, Dad. And he starts going on

Speaker 77 all these folks. And then there's this guy by the name of Joe Rogan.
Rogan. plays a seemingly outsized role, not just in the campaign, but also in your book.
Yeah. Texas Hold'em.

Speaker 79 Yeah.

Speaker 79 So this rally happens in Texas and everyone's questioning, why is she going to Texas?

Speaker 77 Where the fuck? On a Friday night. On a Friday night.
Come on, we're going to, we are eventually, Democrats will take back Texas. Over Friday night, Friday night.
Come on, I'm with you.

Speaker 77 It's near the end of the campaign. There's high school football.

Speaker 77 There's some tonal issues there.

Speaker 79 Yeah, but she goes there and everyone's like, why? Why not Pennsylvania? Why not anywhere else? She's in Texas. We find out in this book, we do reporting.

Speaker 79 They move the, they create this entire rally to be in Texas on Friday night

Speaker 79 because they want to be within striking distance of Joe Rogan's podcast. He doesn't go anywhere.

Speaker 77 He's in Austin, Texas. In Austin, you have to come.
He doesn't anywhere. Trump had to go visit him.
You, Madam Vice President, will visit him.

Speaker 79 Yeah. And so they are in this back and forth with his people.
When do we go? When a huge back and forth.

Speaker 79 They finally say

Speaker 79 they're trying to

Speaker 79 arrange one date.

Speaker 79 And finally, this is at the end of like a huge back and forth. And they finally come to the conclusion that, you know, he is taking a personal day.

Speaker 77 So Rogan tells the Harris campaign,

Speaker 77 according to your sources, in your book,

Speaker 77 he's not available that Friday because he has a

Speaker 77 personal

Speaker 79 It turns out President Trump is there on that day.

Speaker 77 So he had

Speaker 77 presumably that personal day was already filled. Locked in.
Locked in with former President Donald Trump in person for a three-hour sit-down with Joe Rogan.

Speaker 77 Meanwhile, Harris is there on a Friday night, expecting Beyonce to come out to sing.

Speaker 77 And Beyonce comes out and

Speaker 78 does not sing.

Speaker 78 And

Speaker 78 we ended up, you know, there's.

Speaker 77 But you rightfully make the case. Beyonce is not a bad person.
It's not a bad segue. No, it's about as good as it gets.
Even you acknowledge in your book.

Speaker 78 No, please, like, you know, come. When my wife and I renew our vows, hopefully Beyonce will come singing

Speaker 77 at the ceremony. But there was some expectation, worst case, but she's going to come in and sing.
She ends up just giving a speech.

Speaker 78 She just gives a speech.

Speaker 78 Which is wonderful, nonetheless. I'm sure she would love to have had Beyoncé give a speech anywhere, anytime.
Not a lot of swing voters in swing states at the Texas rally watching Beyonce, right?

Speaker 77 But that's it, but explain, by the way, for those that I never knew this. I was wondering, so you paint this, there's, there's a, for those who are wondering, why didn't she go on Joe Rogan?

Speaker 77 There was a lot of effort, the Harris campaign made to try to go on. There was sort of negotiation, there were logistics,

Speaker 77 and there was this sort of anchor event that would lead to conclude that she sincerely wanted to go on the Rogan.

Speaker 78 I think she sincerely wanted to go. There was internal debate within the campaign about whether to try for that or not.

Speaker 78 And the people who wanted to won out in that debate. But it was not like a 95-5 decision.
It was like a 51-49. But once they committed to it, they committed to it.

Speaker 78 So much so that they literally put her in Texas in October in the stretch run of the campaign for a rally

Speaker 78 and said that it had to do something with abortion rights.

Speaker 78 Like, oh, well, we can do an abortion rights rally anywhere. Texas is a big state, matters for that.

Speaker 78 Whatever the cover story was.

Speaker 78 I actually think that what happened here is that there was some interest on both sides. They had a negotiation and it fell through.

Speaker 78 And then, you know, there's some finger pointing on both sides because

Speaker 78 I think both sides legitimately had some interest in doing it. And sometimes things fall apart.

Speaker 77 But

Speaker 78 the fact that they made this entire rally

Speaker 78 and, you know, to try to get this done when it wasn't already like signed-sealed and delivered is

Speaker 78 it's kind of jaw-dropping.

Speaker 77 So the Rogan thing plays an outsize and the idea and the people can go to what happened? Why did she lose?

Speaker 77 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 uh was it the nature of incumbency and there's an incumbency penalty of sorts and you saw that globally though not exclusively globally but you saw it in a lot of other countries was it inflation was it immigration which obviously played a role in this campaign uh was it interest rates which people often forget about car loans and home loans mortgage rates and the like but all this time she wasn't thinking about that she was confident she was going to win.

Speaker 79 She goes into election night thinking she's going to win. Same with Tim Waltz.
So much so that when they're told, they can't believe it. They can't find the words.

Speaker 77 And so you describe those two scenes

Speaker 77 of Tim Waltz

Speaker 77 getting alerted that they've lost, but also Kamala Harris being told that she's not going to win. They had prepared in every way, shape, or form, confident.
You got that Iowa poll you highlight.

Speaker 77 And we all felt it. I felt it.

Speaker 79 Did you think this was a winnable race?

Speaker 77 Yes. You did.
I think it absolutely was a winnable race.

Speaker 79 Even with all those factors.

Speaker 77 With all the factors, the five eyes I would add Israel into.

Speaker 77 I mean, all those things were, I mean, huge headwinds, unquestionably. But I mean,

Speaker 77 there was energy. There, you know, I was, you were out on the campaign trail.
You felt it. There was, there was something different happening.

Speaker 77 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. But going into election night,

Speaker 77 I was 60-40. She was going to pull it off.
I felt the same way they felt.

Speaker 77 And again, everyone, you know, people on the right watching, just rolling their eyes, laughing, that I'm saying that I'm just being transparent and honest. And,

Speaker 77 you know, was going to be close. But she was really confident that sort of marked to 270.

Speaker 77 And Trump, meanwhile, was reasonably confident, cautiously, I think was the, you quoted people saying, cautiously, sir.

Speaker 79 He He was nervous.

Speaker 77 He was nervous that night.

Speaker 78 He kept well he thought he was going to win in 2020.

Speaker 77 Yeah.

Speaker 78 Right.

Speaker 78 His team had told him if you hit a certain threshold nationally, right? If you get whatever the number was, 65 million votes nationally, you're president. And he hit that number and he lost.

Speaker 78 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%. It was, I mean, the participation rate in 2020 was insane.

Speaker 78 Everybody's home. They had nothing else to do.
They could vote early. You know, states states made accommodations for people to vote.
And so Trump was,

Speaker 78 I think this is the part of the reason that he kept going out there and saying that people were cheating. And obviously it benefits him to say that and has continued to benefit him.

Speaker 78 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.

Speaker 78 And in this book, readers will, I think, be interested in spending those last few minutes with Kamala Harris.

Speaker 78 We take you inside her sort of personal quarters in the vice president's residence yeah and what she's kind of concluding that night and i think i think it's very powerful and i don't want to wholly give that away the big bombshell i think is that

Speaker 77 she was gaslit by her own campaign meaning they they they gave her no indication otherwise that she was going to get there correct even though their final tally their final projection of the race had her losing

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Speaker 77 And so that leads to our conclusion, the epilogue.

Speaker 77 And what's remarkable about 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.

Speaker 77 The lessons learned, the word gaslighting came up in this book over and over and over again,

Speaker 77 and how the American people may have felt. And I know there's other books being written in this space and how people feel like, you know,

Speaker 77 I imagine I'm among them, that people were not expressive enough about where Joe Biden was in terms of what was perceived or real as it relates to his physical health or cognitive decline.

Speaker 77 I, of course, never experienced any of that quite literally.

Speaker 77 So I would have been lying if I played to that, except one event, which you reference in the book, and that's the fundraiser, the infamous George Clooney fundraiser, where it was clear, and that for me, jet lag was as easy a way to describe that as anything else, but it was clear that something was a little bit off or different.

Speaker 77 But this notion of gaslighting the campaign from an analytics perspective and

Speaker 77 in the sense that, and having conversations, particularly, you know, we had the vice president or vice presidential nominee, Governor Waltz, on this podcast. I mean, you're right.

Speaker 77 They really, he was absolutely confident

Speaker 77 that they were going to pull this thing off.

Speaker 79 Yeah. He can't find the words.

Speaker 79 I mean, we take you inside his hotel room at the Mayflower in Washington 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.

Speaker 79 Can't believe it. But I think there is a bigger discussion happening right now about.

Speaker 77 So there, yeah, that's the epilogue. You talk about that.
What are the lessons learned?

Speaker 77 And what do you I mean as is independent you know look you have insight that's next level I mean I feel like a like I'm you're two psychologists or something you know more about us than we know about ourselves you certainly know everyone's opinion about ourselves which I can't even handle that's a minute and actually have to go to therapy for all of that

Speaker 77 and you know that's why you every you know it's a good thing we cut the newsom chapter yeah no I'm glad I'm glad my name's barely mentioned so it's a thank you by the way for that otherwise I wouldn't have you on

Speaker 77 But what are the lessons learned? I mean, honestly, when you look at this, I mean, the Democratic Party,

Speaker 77 right now, I've had strong opinions about where I think our party is right now in terms of just truth and trust, this sense that we weren't being truthful.

Speaker 77 That's a perception that we were gaslighting the American people. They don't trust us on issues and policies and the ability to deliver.

Speaker 77 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.

Speaker 77 But what do you think this moment represents? And do you think it's important for folks like me that are current public servants that represent

Speaker 77 portions of the Democratic Party to really take this book and read it and reread it and take what lessons from it?

Speaker 79 Yeah, I mean, we write these books for people to gain knowledge about what happened, but it's also a playbook about going forward and what Democrats and Republicans can learn.

Speaker 79 And one of the things I think they think is that, I mean, first of all, there needs to be some accountability, right?

Speaker 79 Like someone, either President Biden or someone close to him, has to come out and say, look, this is what happened.

Speaker 79 Because the Democratic Party can't move forward until people address what has actually happened. And voters, to your point, don't trust the Democratic Party right now.

Speaker 79 I mean, I think a lot of people think that the Republican Party obviously is gaslighting the American people right now too. But let's have a discussion about what happened in this past election.

Speaker 79 And then there needs to be some accountability on where the party goes from here and speaking to voters and actually connecting to voters.

Speaker 79 So many of these people who've supported Trump used to be traditional Democrats.

Speaker 77 I know.

Speaker 79 And yet they lost their way.

Speaker 77 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, including, by the way, just the anomaly that was a COVID COVID election.

Speaker 77 It's one thing to take away the wrong lessons in a midterm.

Speaker 77 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.

Speaker 78 So that's episode two of this podcast. We'll talk about our 2020 book, Lucky, that was largely ignored, that did not sell as well as this one has.

Speaker 77 Which is the point you were making, that it was a lucky outcome.

Speaker 78 Right.

Speaker 78 There was a pandemic in the middle of that election, and the president of the United States went out,

Speaker 78 President Trump, to a podium and said things that were untrue, that were wild, that underestimated

Speaker 78 the psychological and physical toll of the disease and undermined himself a lot while Joe Biden was, the way Republicans would say, is hiding in his basement, but largely was off the campaign trail.

Speaker 78 Right. And then he wins that election by a very narrow margin.
And I think the Democratic response to it was, we crushed Trump, he's gone.

Speaker 78 And the Trump response was, they barely beat me and I'm coming back.

Speaker 78 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.

Speaker 78 If you look at the polling, they've lost the trust of a lot of Democrats, too.

Speaker 78 And the first thing for any party is to kind of rebuild its trust among its own and then sort of branch out.

Speaker 78 And I mean, I'm curious to see what the 2028 candidates do, and maybe you will shed some light on this or know some people who might, what they're going to do to modernize the Democratic democratic argument for what the country should look like five years from now, 10 years from now.

Speaker 78 What are you doing with entitlement programs? What are you doing with taxation? What are the new technologies and how do they affect us?

Speaker 78 We haven't seen that yet. No, we haven't.

Speaker 77 And

Speaker 77 I think what Ezra Klein did,

Speaker 77 his book Abundance, interesting, sort of, you know, it was

Speaker 77 very self-it's a very not self-critical, but it is a very critical look at sort of progressive governance and accountability that also needs to be,

Speaker 77 you know, well, 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.

Speaker 77 Look, this book is timely, a remarkably efficient use of 263 plus pages.

Speaker 77 It is a great read.

Speaker 77 And I encourage anyone, whether you like politics, don't like politics, but you're just interested or you want to know what world we're living in in the context of the political life and leanings, this is a must-read fight.

Speaker 77 Amy? Governor Lewis. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 79 Wait, we have one question for you.

Speaker 77 I refuse to answer.

Speaker 77 What is it?

Speaker 79 What lesson would you take away from this election?

Speaker 77 No, I mean, I think the lesson is we need to have frank and honest conversations, and there's no space for that. And so I have a tactical point.
This is a space to say.

Speaker 77 But, you know, look,

Speaker 77 one of the things that, you know, just

Speaker 77 are we done?

Speaker 77 We're not done. We're not done.
People want to hear from you on this. But

Speaker 77 I thought I hosted the Democratic Governors Association for our winter event in Los Angeles. Not an indictment.
These are amazing governors.

Speaker 77 It's a great organization, and it's played an outside role saving me in my recall campaign.

Speaker 77 I was so eager to have this conversation, what the hell just happened. The entire three days was fundraising.

Speaker 77 And all of us as governors, sort of desperate to find time to start to have an honest, reflective conversation. And you have some of those 28 candidates in that mix.

Speaker 77 You had Bashir there. You had Pritzker there.
You have Whitmer there. You, by the way, there's five or six others likely to run.

Speaker 77 And all of them had their own unique experience on the road and stress-tested messages, heard that feedback. We have not had that conversation.
I was so pleased to have Tim here.

Speaker 77 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 loved too, that he loved being out there.

Speaker 77 That was absorbing, I think, to all of us. There's a joy, and he felt that joy and that energy.
And I think that was the disconnect.

Speaker 77 And so, understanding that and mining 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?

Speaker 77 Who are our leaders? You describe Obama, Clinton. Is it Pelosi? Is it schumer uh is it jeffreys who is there a party is it the dnc is it martin um all of that we need to work our way through thank you

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Speaker 39 Loece gets it.

Speaker 76 That's mysmelltest.org slash getstarted.

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