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

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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?

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.

This is Gavin Newsom.

And this is Amy Parnes and Jonathan Allen.

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

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.

And trust me, I don't read very fast, but it reads at an unbelievable pace.

It's so well written.

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

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.

So the way we set the scene in the book is in Nancy Pelosi's condo.

Not her condo in San Francisco, not her place in San Francisco, but in Washington, D.C.

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

And 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.

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

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

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.

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

And we take readers around

among other Democrats that had the same feeling, sitting and watching at home, Jim Clyburn,

Jack and Diet Pepsi.

It's just the scene with Jack and Diet Pepsi alone is worth it.

And Al Sharpton and Doner John Morgan down in California.

I mean,

in Florida.

And so

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, 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.

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

just wasn't operable as a candidate anymore.

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.

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.

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

our phones were blowing up

and our publisher a couple days later was like, you guys have to do another book.

And so here we are.

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.

I think it depends on like what your perspective is as to whether it's, you know, thrilling and exciting versus reliving some torture.

And at the same time,

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

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

Obama's calling for an open convention.

I'm sure we'll get to some of this, but I think that

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

But this is your, what, the fourth book you guys were in again?

Our third campaign book.

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

Is that it?

Yeah.

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

They feel comfortable talking to us and sharing.

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

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.

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 and we we all knew but didn't know i'm going to break a key rule here which is to ask a question i don't know the answer to you obviously have your own perspectives on this you have your own experiences with what was going on during that time period between the debate and when biden dropped out and and beyond that through the campaign did you read anything and say to yourself that doesn't comport with what i know or understand it was extraordinary uh how accurate it was in every way shape or form and and of course, I and

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?

You know, and

who's omitted, who's sort of overplayed,

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.

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.

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.

What were you thinking in that moment?

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

I remember standing up.

I looked around and everyone looked and we all went something

off within seconds.

And then we were just 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 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

everything you painted.

in terms of that picture was deeply accurate.

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.

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

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

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

They were going to stick in.

They demanded loyalty.

They they tested that theory we were many of us were on the seething end of that uh talk to talk to us about those next chapters and how things began to evolve or devolve from your perspective uh in terms of the post-debate realities so i think that um

you make the right point right biden is um 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 so for years we would get little anecdotes of i was with the president it seemed a little off whatever, but from a member of Congress or something who sees him once every six months.

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

So you hear stories like that.

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?

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

she may soon, right?

So

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.

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.

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

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?

Better days, worse days, better hours, worse hours.

How do you convince him?

that it's time for him to get out, 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.

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

Going back decades and decades.

Decades and decades.

They come from the same place basically in the Mid-Atlantic.

They're both Catholic, both big Kennedy fans, FDR Democrats.

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.

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?

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

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.

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, but I mean, it wasn't like a full-on

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

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

And he finally makes the decision that I think most other Democratic leaders understood was going to have to be made.

three weeks earlier.

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

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.

Or the view is that it's not that he wasn't competent to run or serve, but just that he was going to lose and Democrats decided to switch horses because they were going to lose midway through a campaign.

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.

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.

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

how sensitive she was to the appearance

that she was pushing him out

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.

She still says that.

She still says it to this day.

She's very sensitive about that.

But you are of the firm opinion that A2, Nancy, I think is one of the chapters in the book, that she had a hand, a big hand to play in this.

I mean, we take you inside the campaign in that moment.

She goes on Mourning Joe.

She's a little kind of disheveled for Nancy Pelosi because she's never disheveled ever.

She's not a bad person.

Which is like, she's got a bra strap showing.

But disheveled for Nancy Pelosi is like one hair out.

Yeah.

And she's

disheveled compared to.

I mean, that moment is such a major moment.

She goes on Morning Joe.

Yeah.

He, you know, she says he has a decision to make.

He's already made his decision.

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.

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,

we're regressing now.

And so it's really, really 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.

I remember that.

And I remember being out on the road for Biden.

And I remember being on there with General Mally Dylan.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

We may lose our congressional seats.

Tell me more about that.

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

She would be proud to acknowledge and twice as tough, by the way.

Right, but that's the thing.

you know 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 we could you know the whole thing could go away and nobody's thinking about new mexico right that's not like one of the swing states that was uh not not one not on our minds when we walked in that meeting and certainly not the the only one who expressed those kinds of concerns and points yep um 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.

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

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?

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.

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

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

we're all wired.

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

that there's not a thing that's uttered in private that ultimately won't become true.

Just save some of the good stuff for our next one.

For your next one.

Yeah, no, but it is a point of consideration.

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,

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.

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

and really pushed back.

And I remember, and, you know, 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

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?

Just to have his back at that meeting.

And

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.

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.

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.

That's why I went out campaigning for him the next day after doing the spin room and uh and being out there but 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 um you know a few chapters in you start talking about nancy pelosi but now through her surrogates perhaps most importantly adam schiff and shiff shifts a little bit and says what It's fascinating.

You want to go?

Yeah, you can go.

So

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

for Alyssa Slotkin and Angela Alsobrooks, who are running for the Senate for Michigan and Maryland, respectively.

And Schiff gets out there and 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

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

I have no idea who gave that transcript to the New York Times, but if you were Adam Schiff and you wanted to make this point publicly

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.

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

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

Vice President Harris will be be problematic

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

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.

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

And she says, we're not going to skip over a black woman.

for the vice presidency.

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 a gavin newsom yeah a gavin newsom whitmer many others who win the blank jampskers anybody so

exactly um so she's making that case but she basically says

harris is worse so the opposite of what shift says it never leaks out it never leaks out until our book and then and then she kind of comes to the 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.

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

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

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.

I mean, that was the hardest stuff to read.

Bad look.

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

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.

So

it's difficult because there's so many aspects.

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.

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

But

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.

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

rallies.

Has an interview, which wasn't.

as effective perhaps than it was, which became an issue.

I remember the text messages coming again after that interview.

I think it was with what?

Who was

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.

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

Which was asked that simple question.

Did you watch it?

And what are your thoughts about it?

I mean, I think that was sort of the nail in the coffin.

And when you talk to people around him, they admit that.

You know, him walking onto the plane, leaving Nevada, going home.

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

and then you're backed into a corner,

that's just what happens.

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,

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

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 so, look,

you paint the picture then of him sort of reflecting in those private moments back at home.

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

Yeah.

I mean, it's Jill Biden is his strongest.

most ardent supporter, obviously, and she really wanted him to.

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.

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.

He believes that.

And by the way, that's very sincere.

Having proven that he could beat Donald Trump the first time, he sort of maintained that.

And that was always his argument in private.

Yeah.

You know, 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.

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

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?

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

You write in the book that

Joe Biden.

I told you, I'm not making this up.

It was fantastic.

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.

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

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

And that Biden

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

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.

From a debate.

In 2019.

And,

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

That sort of

led, you know, into this process and what was happening.

But but yeah a really kind of contentious really he's still trying Joe Biden is still trying to do cleanup from perhaps the before the Trump Biden debate the biggest knockout punch I'd ever seen in a debate which was

Conway Harris hitting him on busing which is why Joe Biden hates her one of the reasons that Joe Biden hates her

last week Biden did his first interview or did his first speech since he left the presidency 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 he says what we used to call colored kids and like I mean we're all roughly the same generation nobody has said that in our lifetimes

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 and she says because black children are not allowed to go to school with white children in Delaware

but

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

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 it.

All right.

So we move forward as we stumble forward in figurative sense and we fast forward to the decision to step down.

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

the inside of the conversations, which is remarkable, 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?

Sort of maintaining that loyalty and firm footing

and then immediately organizing independent, it seems of her in another room,

her sort of

house with Tony West, her brother-in-law, and the rest of Camelot, and we'll talk about that in a moment with a K.

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.

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

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.

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 just in case

just in case 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 the that all of these people are meeting in the pool house at the out next to the pool at the vice president's residence like her two chiefs of staff um Minyan 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 and the person who talked to us said you think there's anybody in the vice president's pool house the vice president doesn't know exactly what they're doing yeah so just no so they're all gathered there when the call comes in yes

and so they're alerted to the call

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,

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, you've been in politics long enough.

And so she pushes him.

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.

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.

Yeah.

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

So they were talking about doing it literally not that same day.

No.

Biden saying, I'll do it later in the week.

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.

She doesn't know anybody was thinking about these things or talking about these things.

No, nothing about it.

So at that moment, I mean, so she's, to her credit, I mean, this is

a serious moment.

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.

She's not doing anything like that undermines him.

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.

They were either extraordinarily careful in that respect, or they were so deeply loyal.

It could be both and, and it appears perhaps both and.

But there was never a sense that she was trying to undermine.

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, we'll tweet something out.

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.

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.

They're going to be trying to pick up delegates.

If you endorse, 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.

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

A little bit saying like, you can't.

Your judgment's at stake here, sir.

Right.

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

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.

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

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

And I think

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.

Jonathan and I have such deep.

emotions about this because I remember getting, and first of all, I remember two things, Kurt.

Why I felt just full disclosure, a little bit of disappointment not getting heads up because all of a sudden just appeared on my feed.

I'm like, what?

I mean, literally, I remember exactly where I was.

Where were you?

I remember it was 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.

Which mine, 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, 4th of July, you know, events.

And, you know, it was 50 people.

And I'm just, you know, I'm trying to do that, be a father 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.

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.

You can, I mean, those are message, text messages.

I might have tried to text you better.

And, but I, there was a moment where for me, just personally, there was, I thought he needs his space so we can talk about him, not talk about who's next.

And so I understood that gap and I understood his for it 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.

And I remember we were putting together a statement no sooner than that that 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.

And what did she say?

Well, she wrote.

We're journalists.

We're reporters.

We have to ask questions.

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.

And within a couple of hours, we had endorsed.

Once we had sort of reflected on a little space, put out a statement for Biden.

We're in.

Other governors in.

You talk about Clyburn.

He's in.

but somebody 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.

Clyburn knows exactly why he's calling.

Clyburn does what?

He quickly gets behind her because

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.

And the call lasts less than a minute.

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

He's still trying to like plan this like, you know, mini primary with open convention.

Did Obama call you?

Yeah, he didn't call me directly.

Not directly.

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 are like, whoa, interesting.

Didn't know.

We knew a little maybe about Pelosi's role,

perception, reality there.

But Obama playing that role, not of immediately endorsing the vice president, as Biden eventually did,

but wanting a mini primary.

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.

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.

I think that,

number one, 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.

He was running president.

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

And, you know,

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.

In your book, when you state he said.

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

But in your book, you react,

you reflect on the fact she did not react

quickly or as well,

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

She let him hang there for a while, right?

She let him twist.

And look, I mean, anybody's advisor would advise them to...

you know, maybe take a breath,

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

It certainly did.

And at his expense.

Right.

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.

You write that in your book.

Her husband said that.

I know.

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.

They're not showing her the love.

Election night.

Election night, for example.

She goes and wants to get into his, it's 2008.

So he wins.

And they have a family and friends tent.

So you paint this picture as well.

Tell us more.

And so all the closest members of the Obama team and family members.

Family and friends are in a tent.

She tries to get into the tent and is turned away.

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.

So she's really hurt in that moment.

Yeah, I get it.

And we're told by 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.

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, she, it needs mending their relationship.

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.

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.

And yeah.

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

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.

Huge.

That's the way.

Game changer.

Right.

That's a game changer.

All those delegates are

Yes.

Yeah.

Right.

They all got elected to be delegates.

And you get Kleinburn, 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.

Bill and Hillary Clinton within an hour or so.

And then Bill and Hillary Clinton.

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,

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

Yeah.

And then she gets Obama on the phone and she wants his endorsement.

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.

Especially later in the week, too.

It takes him several days to get there.

And then they do this kind of cringy video.

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 uh what do you make of all that what do you make of your own discrepancy

well we were

sources told us sources that um that i mean basically i think uh jenna mally dylan who was running the campaign thought that there was an opportunity to get a viral video make some money and and and not for her personally but

the campaign because remember the donors had choked off biden Like the donors to his super PAC,

you know,

Future Forward had choked off the money.

Nobody was setting up fundraisers for him.

That's another pressure point on one of the reasons he decided to drop.

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.

They're worried about potentially making payroll, even though this is a campaign that is likely to raise, you know, a billion plus, ends up raising about $2 billion.

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.

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

camera you know 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 it's yeah 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 like she seems to me to be one of the more authentic people at that level of national politics in that there's not

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 you can see when she's not comfortable in something right she wasn't happy in that moment no her aides yeah her aids 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 yeah just the whole idea of it i i get it and it's been particularly after uh as you've you've written and now we've learned uh what what didn't happen the days prior leading up to that.

Let's fast forward a little bit.

That's basically the first half of your book.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Give us a little bit of insight into how the campaign of Donald Trump, Las Evidas, Wiles, were feeling Trump himself at this moment.

It's a low moment for them.

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.

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.

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?

And there's one particular character you referenced in the book by the name of Cory.

Lewandowski.

Lewandowski.

And he appears again.

And he appears

as an irritant of sorts to the two folks, the loyal soldiers, Las Civitas 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.

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.

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 attracting news and sometimes undercutting himself and whatever.

But the question is, what does the campaign do beneath him?

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?

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.

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

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.

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

Brass knuckles.

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

you know,

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 going to fight.

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.

Yeah, the daughter of Pat Summerall.

Pat Summerall.

Former football broadcaster.

Pat Summerall.

Yeah, legendary Pat Summerall,

who I am sure called many.

San Francisco 49ers campaigns.

Mr.

Madden, thank you, sir.

Yes.

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

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

kind of early in life, worked at the Labor Department for him, and then went to Florida and worked for mayors in Jacksonville.

Right.

And really sort of got to understand politics from the ground up too.

Ran some high-profile Florida statewide campaigns, DeSantis.

And she

manages well.

She's just a good manager.

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.

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.

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.

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

And Trump is furious about this because he beaten Biden.

Yep.

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

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.

He backed off.

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

Some kind of...

combination of

him recognizing that, you know, in this moment that like Biden is wounded and there's no need to kick him 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.

So this guy's, I mean, he's feeling everything's going in his direction.

This thing's a walk.

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.

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.

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

this is the stuff Corey Lewandowski is

using against.

La Cevita and against Suzy to some extent.

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.

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

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.

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,

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

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

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.

Do what you're supposed to be doing.

Right.

Corey's from New Hampshire, at least, right?

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

go away.

Go away.

Like, love you, Corey.

Great guy.

Glad you support me.

Go somewhere else.

But for anyone who thinks that we just focus on the Democratic train wreck.

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.

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.

I think 2020 had an effect on him.

I think he learned some lessons from it.

And in this moment and in others, he chooses stability over chaos for the purpose of winning the presidency.

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.

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

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

strong advice on say a national abortion ban where they say don't they have to do a slideshow for him.

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

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.

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

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.

But he is told you get to bank the vote.

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.

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

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.

Deep pride in the work that President Biden has done in his legacy.

He wants that legacy maintained.

You describe Trump showing a little bit, not 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.

But Harris had a more difficult time in that space.

You describe a moment in time that was indelible for many people, people, and that was her appearance on The View.

Take us through.

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?

And she says, not a thing, essentially.

But she was prepped for that question.

She was prepped for that question.

Was that the answer?

It was not the answer.

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.

And so when she says it, her aides are all like, what?

What just happened?

We just, we prepped for this moment.

And they can't believe.

But in that moment, the Trump campaign was looking for something in her words to kind of make that point, to say, in a change election, she is exactly what we just had.

And here she is saying it.

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,

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

And this is at a time when the right track, wrong track of the country was way off and all the inflation scars and including,

well, I mean, across the spectrum,

people really were looking for fundamental change.

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.

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

may suggest that she did that at her own peril, own electoral peril.

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

over and over and over again, saying, no daylight, kid.

He says it to her.

And that's an exact quote.

An exact quote.

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.

Yeah.

You don't undermine me.

Well, she's standing.

I mean, you know what?

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, 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.

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

consultants and campaign strategists.

They merged with Jen O'Malley Dillon, who was running the Biden campaign.

They try to integrate the two.

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.

She is change.

She seems to be the personification of change.

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

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.

And

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.

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.

That was their 2008 campaign.

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.

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

this crazy like sort of data analysis as your strategy.

And the thing that I always come back to as emblematic, not necessarily causal is the trans ad that was run against Harris.

So let's talk about that

because you just brought up the issue of data and it plays a big role in your book.

You really analyze that, I mean,

you sort of lay out how analytical this campaign was and the utilization of this billion and a half dollars, the $2 billion that was the overall spend in this campaign,

and how those resources were put to work.

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.

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

And we talked about this ad.

I think you should tell that story now.

No, yeah.

And

they lay out what they perceived as a weakness.

And they asked me as someone from California, intimately familiar with some of the ongoing of the campaign, why didn't she respond more forcefully?

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.

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.

But he finally gets in touch with.

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.

And the ad is they, them.

So it's an ad, a video.

Yeah.

So she's in a candidate interview during the primary for the original election or the old election.

And she's asked a question around trans surgeries.

And so there's a video of her expressing her policy point of view.

So it's not assertion.

It's an actual video.

And the Trump campaign decides to play this up.

And it's on every sports program.

They're targeting young men.

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 she did.

In the Harris campaign.

That's what Jennifer Mali Dylan 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 trans ad is not effective against Harris.

And even more than that,

they test their responses with focus groups and decide that none of the responses are effective.

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 were like, wow.

I,

you tell me if you felt differently, but like.

Oh, I

was with the Clinton camp at the time.

Oh, and we not only was out at the Clinton camp, full disclosure, we started doing our own research.

This, of course, happened.

And

the research was self-evident.

There was already articles coming out that this was a policy that was, that existed when Trump was president of the United States.

So there you have a vulnerability.

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.

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 and post settlement.

She was AG.

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

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

in hope and expectation.

But they chose not to.

Did you get a similar response?

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?

That's fair.

I think we got it.

But it was interesting.

But it played a, it goes, it goes to some of these key moments because

you mark this as a key moment.

And you mark that David Plough came in saying this is election all about key moments.

It's about debates.

It's about the convention.

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

But that seemed to play on outside because they put, what, $30 plus million dollars into that one ad alone, 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?

It's playing, again, the World Series, NFL, like Monday Night Football, right?

I mean, it is hitting a ton of viewers and hitting them over and over and over again.

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,

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?

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.

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

trans surgery

for undocumented immigrants who are in prison.

Yeah.

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

He's for you.

What a tagline.

What a tagline.

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

You'd be hard pressed to disagree.

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.

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.

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

Oh, he is.

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.

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.

You're talking about my friends here, Jonathan.

David's a good friend.

I'm not not.

And they're incredibly talented, but I appreciate your point.

I'm not knocking.

The broader point about

what lessons we learn and

who is.

I mean, it is a great point.

I mean, is it the candidate or is it the campaign?

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.

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

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 Pluff is a genius.

He would never acknowledge that.

No.

Right.

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 were around it kind of draw some of the wrong lines.

Things evolve.

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.

I mean, and look, she had 107 days.

This thing, and by the way, I thought, and I humbly submit, I thought she won, ran under the circumstances, a pretty remarkable campaign.

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.

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.

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's podcast.

You should go on him, Dad.

And he starts going on, you know, on 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.

Yeah.

So

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

Where the fuck is it?

On a Friday night.

On a Friday night.

Come on, Don.

We're going to, we are eventually, Democrats will take back Texas.

I know a Friday night.

Come on, I'm with you.

It's near the end of the campaign.

There's high school football.

There's some tonal issues there.

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.

They create this entire rally to be in Texas on Friday night

because they want to be within striking distance of Joe Rogan's podcast.

He doesn't go anywhere.

He's in Austin, Texas.

You have to climb anywhere.

Trump had to go visit him.

You, Madam Vice President, will visit him.

Yeah, and so they are in this back and forth with his people.

When do we go?

When a huge back and forth.

They finally say

they're trying to

to arrange one date.

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.

So Rogan tells the Harris campaign

according to your sources, in your book,

he's not available that Friday because he has a

personal day.

It turns out.

President Trump is there on that day.

So he had,

and 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.

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

And Beyonce comes out and

does not sing.

And

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

So you rightfully make the case.

Beyonce is not a bad person.

It's about as good as it gets.

Even you acknowledge in your book.

When my wife and I renew our vows hopefully beyonce will come singing well said 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 she just gives a speech and so which is wonderful nonetheless i'm sure she would love to have had beyonce give a speech anywhere anytime uh not a lot of swing voters in swing states at the texas rally yeah watching beyonce right but that's it but explain by the way for those

i never knew this i was wondering you so you painted this there's there's a for those who are wondering why didn't she go on joe rogan there was a lot of effort the harris campaign made to try to go on there was sort of negotiation there were logistics uh and there was this sort of anchor event uh that would lead to conclude that she sincerely wanted to go on the rogan i think she sincerely wanted to go there was internal debate within the campaign about whether to try for that or not yeah and the people who wanted to one won out in that debate but it was it was not like a like a 95-5 decision it was like a 51-49 but once they committed to it they committed to it so much so that they literally put her in texas in october in the stretch run of the campaign uh for a rally

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

Like, oh, well, we can do an abortion rights rally anywhere.

Texas is a big state, matters for that.

Whatever the cover story was.

I actually think that what happened here is that there was some interest on both sides.

They had a negotiation and it fell through.

And then, you know, there's some finger pointing on both sides because I think both...

I think both sides legitimately had some interest in doing it.

And sometimes things fall apart.

But the fact that they made this entire rally

to try to get this done when it wasn't already signed-sealed and delivered is

it's kind of jaw-dropping.

So the Rogan thing plays an outsize.

And the idea and the people can go to what happened?

Why did she lose?

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?

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?

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.

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.

And so you describe those two scenes of Tim Waltz

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.

And we all felt it.

I felt it.

Did you think this was a winnable race?

Yes.

You did.

I think it absolutely was a winnable race.

Even with all those factors.

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

I mean, all those things were, I mean, huge headwinds, unquestionably.

But I mean,

there was energy.

You know, you were out on the campaign trail.

You felt it.

There was, there was something different happening.

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,

I was 60-40.

She was going to pull it off.

I felt the same way they felt.

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

you know, was going to be close.

But she was really confident that sort of marked to 270.

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

He was nervous.

He was nervous that night.

He kept.

Well, he thought he was going to win in 2020.

Yeah.

Right.

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.

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.

Everybody's home.

They had nothing else to do.

They could vote early.

You know, states made accommodations for people to vote.

And so Trump was.

I think this is 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.

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.

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

We take you inside her sort of personal quarters in the vice president's residence and what she's kind of concluding that night.

And I think it's very powerful.

And I don't want to wholly give that away.

The big bombshell, I think, is that

she was gaslit by her own campaign.

Meaning

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.

And so that leads to our conclusion.

the epilogue.

And what's remarkable, the epilogue is how contemporary it is to this moment we're actually sitting in, which is just this thing either keeps writing itself or you just quite literally finished this book.

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

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,

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.

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

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.

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

They really, he was absolutely confident

that they were going to pull this thing off.

Yeah.

He can't find the words.

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.

Can't believe it.

But I think there is a bigger discussion happening right now about so there.

Yeah, that's the epilogue.

You talk about that.

What are the lessons learned?

And what do you, I mean, as

independent, you know, look, you have insight that's next level.

I mean, I feel like

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.

And, you know, that's why you, every time, it's a good thing we cut the Newsom chapter.

Yeah, no, I'm glad my name's barely mentioned.

So it's thank you, by the way, for that.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have you on.

But what are the lessons learned?

I mean, honestly, when you look at this, I mean, the Democratic Party,

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

I know.

And yet they lost their way.

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 election.

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

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.

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.

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

Right.

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

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

the 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 argument for what the country should look like five years from now, 10 years from now.

What are you doing with entitlement programs?

What are you doing with taxation?

What are the new technologies and how do they affect us?

You know, we haven't seen that yet.

No, we haven't.

And we, I think what Ezra Klein did, we, you know, his book, Abundance, interesting.

Sort of, you know, it was, it's 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,

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.

Look, this book is timely, a remarkably efficient.

use of 263 plus pages.

It is a great read.

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.

Amy?

Governor Lewis.

Thank you for being here.

Wait, we have one question for you.

I refuse to answer.

What is it?

What lesson would you take away from this election?

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 space.

But I, you know, look, I, one of the things that, you know, just and i don't are we done

we're not done we're not done people want to hear from you on this but but

i thought i hosted the the democratic governors association for our winter event in los angeles not an indictment these are amazing governors it's a great organization and it's played an outside role saving me in my recall campaign um i was so eager to have this conversation what the hell just happened the entire three days was fundraising

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.

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.

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 Tim here, and he was the only exception, unsurprisingly, because he could regale us to a little bit of the insight of being out on the campaign trail and what it was like and how exhilarating it was for him, which I also love too, that he loved being out there.

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.

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?

Who are our leaders?

You describe Obama, Clinton.

Is it Pelosi?

Is it Schumer?

Is it Jeffreys?

Who is there a party?

Is it the DNC?

Is it Martin?

All of that we need to work our way through.

Thank you.

This is an iHeart podcast.