On with Kara Swisher - CNN's Dana Bash On Debate Drama, the Harris Interview & America’s Deadliest Election

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash has been having one hell of a summer. She co-moderated the June debate that led to President Biden’s historic decision to step out of the race; she landed the first sit-down interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz; and now she’s out with a book (co-written with David Fisher) called America’s Deadliest Election: The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History. It’s a deep dive into the Louisiana gubernatorial race of 1872 that surprisingly has had ripple effects until today.  Kara and Dana sat down at Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., to discuss the book, the huge shifts of the current election cycle, and the upcoming debate between former President Trump and Vice President Harris. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find Kara on Threads/Instagram @karaswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees, and it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer.

Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Do you feel like your leads never lead anywhere? And you're making content that no one sees and it takes forever to build a campaign? Well, that's why we built HubSpot. It's an AI-powered customer platform that builds campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting

on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. It's on. It is on. Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash, host of Inside Politics and co-anchor of State of the Union. She's been reporting on presidential elections for over 20 years, and I've got to say, Dana has been having quite a summer. Back in June, she and her State of the Union co-anchor, Jake Tapper, moderated the first

presidential debate, which we all know led to President Biden's historic decision to drop out of the race. Then just recently, she landed the first sit-down interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz since they started the campaign. That was a hot ticket. And now, Dan is out with a new book co-written with David Fisher. It's called America's Deadliest Election, the Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History. It kind of sounds like it might be about the January 6th riots at the Capitol, but it actually is about Louisiana, specifically the 1872 Louisiana gubernatorial election. And while that might not seem terribly relevant now, the truth is that election not only has parallels to our current election cycle, but it also still has an impact today. I spoke with Dana about the book,

History's Implications, and the rest of her very eventful summer at a live event at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C. last week. And we talked about what this week's Harris-Trump debate could look like and the upcoming vice presidential debate and whether either of them matter for the outcome of the election. Let's go to the interview. Dana, we're here at Politics and Pros to talk about your new book, America's Deadliest Election. We're also recording a live episode of On with Kara Swisher tonight. So first, I do want to talk about the current election. Absolutely. I think we discussed what we go first.

It's hard not to. You are CNN's chief correspondent. You've been on the campaign trail. And you recently, you had the first sit-down interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz just before Labor Day in Savannah. Harris had been avoiding a one-on-one. She's given a lot. But since she got, she's become the candidate. And there was a lot of pressure on the

campaign. And she had walls with her, as many other candidates have had, just to be clear. A lot of other presidential candidates have done those. Talk about how you got this interview. I certainly asked her for one, but, and I don't find her reticent necessarily, but talk a little bit about how that happened. Absolutely. I was pushing for an interview, just like everybody, every journalist in the free world, I think. And I'm not sure why she said yes. I'm glad that she said yes. I do believe that over the years since I, I know you've known her since she was in California. A district attorney. A district attorney.

Yes, yeah. I only got to know her when she became senator. Mm-hmm. And, uh-oh. That's okay. And I covered her for whatever, the two minutes that she was a senator before she became the presidential candidate. I think actually on the campaign trail is when I really got to know her. Mm-hmm. She didn't run very long. Yeah. presidential candidate, I think actually on the campaign trail is when I really got to know her.

She didn't run very long, but I was always kind of there in the spin room after the debates that she was doing. And then I have interviewed her multiple times since she became vice president. I spent an hour with her husband, Doug Emhoff, and did a special on him. So my sense, and you tell me because you've known her longer, is that she wanted tough questions. She wanted fair questions. And I think that after a lot of years, I've developed a reputation for that. But my sense is she wanted somebody that she knows knows her and her history, which is understandable since she's been the understudy for almost four years. Right, not as well-known. Even if she ran a race and she was well-known in California, she certainly is not as well-known nationally.

And even though she was maybe well-known in California, that was a long time ago in political years, in political terms. And she has changed her position, especially in the past four years since she ran in the Democratic primary. And so she understood, her team understood that she needs to explain that, not to the converted, not to the people who are already supporting her, or to the people who will probably never vote for her, but to those persuadable voters,

particularly in places like Pennsylvania where fracking is like table stakes there, even though people outside of Pennsylvania are going, why are you asking about this? It matters because it's jobs to people there. Harris didn't get rave reviews for this interview that you did. Brett Stevens called Harris vague to the point of vacuous.

She didn't really answer the day one question when you asked her point blank why she changed her position, for example, on fracking. Although people, Trump flip-flops in a half an hour, usually, within something. She did head. She said she had the same values. It's sort of normal for politicians. How do you assess her performance? Because so much weight is upon it. Talk about the difficulty of doing an interview where it's a political interview in a partisan time. And at the same time, she can't really say much. It's actually good for her to say very little. Yes, maybe if I'm one of her political advisors, I would say, I would think, you're doing great.

Don't rock the boat. But the people who aren't yet sure about her, they want to hear more. And they want to see that she's impressed on some important issues to them. So I think that, look, I mean, other people can assess the way that she answered questions. I thought she answered some. She didn't answer others. She was prepared for the question, the overarching question, which is, why did you make some changes in your position?

And what was the reason behind it? And what does that say about what you will do if you're elected for four years? Can people feel confident that what they elect you to do, you will do if you're elected for four years, can people feel confident that what they elect you to do, you will do? So one of the big moments was when Harris talked about a historic phone call with President Biden when she told him he was going to end the campaign. She started off personal, pancakes, bacon, the whole thing. And then she actually didn't say a lot when she talked about the actual endorsement. She kept closing and opening up. What did you think of that response? She understood that she wanted, that she...

It was a moment that people would listen to and remember, because it's history, it's big history. Um, but you're exactly right, as usual, Cara. She was very careful in the actual substance of the political part of the conversation. She wanted to talk about the human part, about how she felt for him, about how she, are you sure that she said it wasn't about me in that moment, it was about him. And, you know, in many ways, you respect the idea that she was truly loyal. I mean, you've heard Trump and other people saying, well, they say that there was a coup against Biden, which that's a whole different conversation.

J.D. Banz, he said, you know, Harris threw him overboard. That is just not factually correct. So she was being careful. What do you think about her? She is not letting any light shine between her and Biden's terms of policies, even though she's saying words like a new way forward. She threaded the needle in support, and she had him in Pittsburgh recently. How do you—she was quite supportive of him, much more so than she needed to be, because she's shown her loyalty already. How did you she has started to yes and since the interview she has started to move away i mean in the slightest slightest

bit like he supports a higher capital gains tax than she does it's not huge it's like quite literally a measure of degree but it's something and it's like she's taking baby steps to try to find her way and what she can do, because there are a lot of Democratic voters who are genuinely loyal to Joe Biden and what she wants to do, because she's not just loyal to Joe Biden. My understanding and my sense is that having been in the room and been a part of the administration, she genuinely supports much of the agenda that he's pushing. So she has to move away from him now, from your perspective. And in that interview, she couldn't. I don't know that she has to move away from him now.

I think she's taking, so far it's just basically been taxes. So she's taking little percentages of issues and she's kind of making her own way. She might do more, but she hasn't so far. And I don't care. I don't know that she really feels like she has to. Right, right, that she has to do that. Actually, his approval rating has risen since he... Yeah, and I think some of it, and frankly, even most of it, is beyond policy. It's about communicating. One of the big reasons, not only because a lot of people thought he just

was too old to be president again, was that he couldn't communicate what he would do to make their lives better. There's an affordability crisis in this country, and she is talking more about the things she would do in the next, in going forward, but not moving away from the things that they have done in the past. Right. Right. So, Governor Walz didn't say much. He smiled a lot.

He talked about his misspeaks and his bad grammar. Why was he there? The Harris campaign, that's what they offered? Did you say no thank you? No. No. Would you? Yes.

Well, you're a better man than I. No, no, no, actually, that's not fair. That's not true. I mean, I'm happy to do a separate interview. That's not true. No, I, of course, the answer was yes. And the reason that they gave, which I actually understand and agree with, is that because we are in such a truncated election cycle with her, that traditionally what would have happened is that she, as a candidate on her own, would have given umpteen interviews on her own. She would have picked her running mate. They would have done a traditional first sit-down interview just like-

Together. Together, just like every other ticket, including- Yeah, Romney and Ryan. The only one actually- Trump and- Trump and Vance. Trump and Vance, yeah. But Trump and Pence definitely did. Yeah, that's a lot of weird in one place. And she did with Biden. So they just decided to kind of do it all together. And I was fine with it. It was actually interesting to be on the road because it wasn't just an interview.

I spent the day before with them at various stops and to kind of watch them together. It wasn't interesting. Do you think he was additive to the interview? Because he did look like a little bit of a bump on a log in that interview. Very pleasant bump. Very pleasant bump I would love to be friends with. If I would have had more time, but we were limited in the amount of time, her time, their time that they gave me, I would have loved to have asked him more questions. More questions.

So one last thing about the interview, and then I want to get to the debate and then your book. These kind of exclusives aren't just high stakes for politicians. Your performance was also reviewed. The New York Times said you navigated a tough night adeptly. The Daily Beast said you recycled limp GOP critiques. I heard that a lot. The Wall Street Journal said your questions were equal parts empty and exultant, which I'm not sure what that means. I think the one I heard the most was that you were recycling GOP talking points. Yeah. Including about her being turning black. Oh, yeah.

See, that wasn't, to me, that's not a talking point. That is a strategy that Donald Trump is using overtly and openly to challenge her racial identity. And so I wasn't throwing a talking point from my perspective at her. I wanted to know, what do you think about it? Because she hadn't done any interviews yet. She obliquely talked about it on the stump once or maybe twice. But this is an issue because Donald Trump is making it an issue. Right. And I actually think her very quick non-answer answer spoke volumes. Right.

Because she's giving him the back of the hand. I'm not dealing with you. Did you think about pursuing right after that? I think I might have. I get it, but you need to answer the question. I did think about that, but I was actually in the moment so taken aback by the brevity of it, and I quickly thought, wow, that's actually a very interesting answer and an interesting tactic to not engage. And because we have seen other times and other people who call her a DEI hire and all the ridiculous things that Republicans did right away, that she has chosen

to not amplify it and not engage in order to talk about what she wants to talk about, not what they want to talk about. It was interesting. Now, I will say, who knows what's going to happen in this debate. But the other thing that I was wondering, Cara, is if she was saving her ammo for the debate stage. We'll be back in a minute. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see?

For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore. That's Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter. These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates than individual con artists. And they're making bank. Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion. It's mind-blowing to see the kind of infrastructure that's been built to facilitate scamming at scale. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of scam centers all around the world. These are very savvy business people. These are organized criminal rings.

And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem, we can protect people better. One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed to discuss what happened to them. But Ian says one of our best defenses is simple. We need to talk to each other. We need to have those awkward conversations around what do you do if you have text messages you don't recognize? What do you do if you start getting asked to send information that's more sensitive? Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness, a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim. And we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash

Zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. day, the personnel, and the finances, marketing is the last thing on your mind. But if customers don't know about you, the rest of it doesn't really matter. Luckily, there's Constant Contact. Constant Contact's award-winning marketing platform can help your businesses stand out, stay top of mind, and see big results. Sell more, raise more, and build more genuine relationships with your audience through a suite of digital marketing tools made to fast track your growth. With Constant Contact, you can get email marketing that helps you create and send the perfect email to every customer and create, promote, and manage your events with ease all in one place. Get all the automation, integration, and reporting tools that get your marketing running seamlessly, all backed by Constant Contact's expert live

customer support. Ready, set, grow. Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca You'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea? Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. You moderated the last debate, the June 27th debate between President Biden and former President Trump. You and Jake Tapper co-moderated. Political pundits said the debates don't make a difference.

This one absolutely did. When you were in the room with Biden during that debate, and then I'd like you to think about the upcoming debate, what are your thoughts on it two months later? And what are your thoughts for the next one that's about to happen? Well, we didn't see him until he walked in, just like you did, the viewers did. And so we saw what you guys saw. I think it's possible that viewers saw kind of an exaggerated version of it because you had the camera right on him, and you saw, like, up close, and we were at a distance.

But we experienced what you did and what the millions and millions of people who experienced it did. I will say that when we prepare for debates, we do so many different versions, not just of our questions and of our approach and of our order and everything, and it takes hundreds of hours of prep.

And it's based on a million different factors. But part of it is also kind of how the candidates are going to perform. We do mock debates. Sure. And that was maybe the one thing that we didn't practice, the way it actually unfolded. Right. Should you have pushed back more? Because the way debates are done, they answered, and you all didn't fact check Trump in real time, for example, which was criticized. At the same

time, this is how debates have been done. Should they be done this way anymore? Because we have one coming up. I mean, we'll see how they do it. The decision was made in this debate to have the debate in the format that it has been done pretty much since Kennedy-Nixon. That's correct, right. So it was up to Biden to fact check. It's up to Biden. We are facilitators. The way I go into, this is the first general election debate I've done. This is the first general election debate I've done.

But the way I have gone into the multiple primary debates that I do and my colleagues as well at CNN is we define success as not being the story. We don't want to be a participant in the debate any more than asking the questions. And once we start to fact check like you do in an interview or I do in an interview, then it's an interview and it's not a debate between two people. And so that is the way we approached it, that you get the time and then it's up to you, President Biden, to say, hold on a second. Bing, bing, bing. What he just said is not true. And then let me tell you what is true. Which he's incapable of doing.

Which didn't happen. And now imagine a world in which we got in there when he wasn't doing it. Right. Then what would we have been criticized for? You were his handlers. Exactly. You were his enablers. You were helping him. Yeah. Did you think about it when it was clearly unfolding that he was unable to respond?

No, because we had made a decision beforehand. Right. But we tried to get— So the bigger worry for you was looking like you were supporting him. Or, I mean, there were some things that Biden said that were not true. Not to the degree that Trump didn't tell true things. Yeah. Didn't tell the truth. Yeah. But there were a couple of things. And that's, and if you notice, he also, he, President Biden, didn't always use all of his time.

So we would say you have 47 seconds left if you would like to say more. I mean, like, you have time to say the thing you want to say. Right. And it didn't. Do you think it damages the credibility if journalists don't do the fact checking? You have someone who lies. You know, it's kind of a hello, he lies situation. Listen, it's...

I am not here to say that this is easy. Mm-hmm. And it is perhaps something that needs to be, especially after this debate, and needs to be and maybe will be, we'll see what happens on Tuesday, rethought in the era that we're in with the candidate that we have. But the last cycle, Kristen Welker did the last debate,

which I thought went off really well. And she didn't fact check, because Biden did. Right. It's very difficult in these environments not to participate, though. It is. It seems like it is. So going forward on this next debate, the rules are the same. No live audience, muted mics, which Trump's team wanted. Trump kept saying he didn't mind them. No notes. It was the Biden's team who had signed off on these rules. Harris's team wanted the mics to be on because largely I think she's hoping he'll call her a name in some fashion that he can't resist. How does she go into this? The last one she did, the famous thing with Mike Pence was Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking, during the vice presidential debate.

A really great moment and even better done by Maya Rudolph. Everything is done better by Maya Rudolph. But what does each of them have to do in the debate and what can't they do? What is the mistake they'll make that they can't make? So start with Trump. What should he do and what shouldn't he do? I want to be careful. I'm not in the political advisor business. Right. So I don't really want to. I'm going to dodge that question because it's not my job. But what I will say, I just want to go, and we can talk more about this, but I just want to.

I'm happy to answer it. Okay, I'll put it back on you. He shouldn't get more women to hate him, and you shouldn't call her a name. to hate him and you shouldn't call her a name. But what's interesting about the mics being off is, as you said, the Biden campaign, they came at us with, or not at us, that sounds really aggressive. They came to us with this idea that we really want the mic to be off because it's very distracting when he talks all over the moderator. It's difficult for Biden, right. But what happened was the mic being off gave Trump guardrails. It gave him, it forced discipline on him that he didn't have when he knew that the microphone was on,

which is why his campaign didn't want to change that. And as soon as everybody saw, especially, and even the Biden people and now the Harris people, how it helped Trump not to have that microphone on, they said, oh, no, no, we don't want to do that. But this is what it's going to be. This is what it's going to be. So you will not say what has to accomplish here?

No, what do you think? I think he has to get, I think she's got to get men to like her, and he's got to get so many women not to hate him. The gender gap is huge. It's enormous. So I think probably if he's offensive in any way to her as a woman, I think it'll be a real problem. And I think if she seems angry or righteous,

even if he says terrible things about her she will suffer not him which is why just going back to the interview that i did i i was so struck by that short answer because it's it's and again maybe i'm totally wrong and she's got this this whole arsenal how dare he not call me black like then she then she looks angry. Well, no, but she could say something like, this is proof he doesn't get it. Like, he doesn't understand. Yeah, but then she looks like a, well, women then look like a... Well, that's the problem.

Yeah, I think not answering it is best. What a strange man he is. I think I shall say something. So when you, do you think there'll be another debate after this? I don't know. Yeah. If I were to guess, I would say no, because we have this and then the vice presidential debate. Largely depends how it goes.

By the way, do you think it matters coming up, the vice presidential debate at all? Matters in terms of how people will vote? Probably not, but it'll be interesting to watch. It'll be interesting to watch. It'll be interesting. I have another dream about that debate in which Governor Walz turns, J.D. Vance clearly has a daddy problem from his book, if you read it, and you can buy it here, by the way, I'm sure. And if Governor Walz starts saying,

it's not your fault, it's not your fault, and then hugs J.D. Vance, like in Woodland. So I call it good red pill hunting. See? And then he'll go, he is America's Hitler. I meant it when I said it the first time. Something he actually said to me, by the way.

JD Vance shifted rather dramatically. Wait, that was to you? No, no. He said it to a lot of people all the time. Oh. Just so you know. He was quite anti-Trump when I encountered him. When I told him he said that, he's like, well, that's not exactly what I said.

He was anti-Trump. No. So much so that this San Francisco lesbian was like, I think you're a little mean to him. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. Thank you. Anthropic may be the answer. Claude is a next-generation AI assistant, built to help you work more efficiently without sacrificing safety or reliability. Anthropic's latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, can help you organize thoughts, solve tricky problems, analyze data, and more, whether you're brainstorming alone or working on a team with thousands of people,

all at a price that works for just about any use case. If you're trying to crack a problem involving advanced reasoning, need to distill the essence of complex images or graphs, or generate heaps of secure code, Claude is a great way to save time and money. Plus, you can rest assured knowing that Anthropic built Claude with an emphasis on safety. The leadership team founded the company with a commitment to an ethical approach that puts humanity first.

To learn more, visit anthropic.com slash Claude. That's anthropic.com slash Claude. Grammarly. 88% of the work week is spent communicating, typing, talking, and going back and forth on topics until everyone is on the same page. It's time for a change. It's time for Grammarly. Grammarly's AI ensures your team gets their points across the first time, eliminating misunderstandings and streamlining collaboration. It goes beyond basic grammar to help tailor writing to specific audiences, whether that means adding an executive summary, fine-tuning tone, or cutting out jargon in just one click. Plus it surfaces relevant information as employees type, so they don't waste time digging through documents.

Four out of five professionals say Grammarly's AI boosts buy-in and moves work forward. It integrates seamlessly with over 500,000 apps and websites. It's implemented in just days and it's IT approved. Join the 70,000 teams and 30 million people who trust Grammarly to elevate their communication. Visit grammarly.com slash enterprise to learn more. Grammarly. Enterprise ready AI. Support for this podcast comes from Klaviyo. You know that feeling when your favorite brand really gets you. Deliver that feeling to your customers every time. Klaviyo turns your customer data into real-time connections across AI-powered email, SMS, and more, making every moment count. Over 100,000 brands trust Klaviyo's unified data and marketing platform to build smarter digital relationships with their customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond.

Make every moment count with Klaviyo. and beyond. Make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo.com slash BFCM. So enough of 2024 politics. Let's talk about your new book, American's Deadliest Election, which was, well, so far, which you co-authored. Oh, it's all fun and games until the bombs start dropping. When you co-authored with David Fisher, it's a fascinating read about the long-term impact of an election that took place more than 150 years ago. The story isn't well known, and neither are most of the players, for those who haven't read it.

Give us a brief synopsis and how you decided to do this. There are a lot of broadcasters. I was texting with Rachel Maddow. for those who haven't read it, give us a brief synopsis and how you decided to do this. There are a lot of broadcasters. I was texting with Rachel Maddow. I was like, Dana Bash did a Rachel Maddow book. That's the nicest thing you ever said to me. I know, it's true. But Bill O'Reilly's doing them. Dan Abrams, where you got this. Explain how you got to this particular part of U.S. history, which is not well-known, although critically important? Well, there's a through line between the Bill O'Reilly, which I didn't realize until recently, I should, well, actually, maybe I did in the back of my mind, and Dan Abrams, especially,

and how I got to this, it's because Dan Abrams writes books with my co-author, David Fisher. Right. And I think, actually, it was originally Dan Abrams' idea, or somebody came to Dan Abrams with the idea, and he thought, you know, this is like maybe more of a political reporter kind of person who should do this, and brought the two of us together. Right. So that's the answer to how I got this. I didn't have a clue about this point in history, and I feel embarrassed about it. Right.

So why did you want to do this kind of book, a historical, it's become a very popular genre. Which I now realize it has. I love history. I obviously don't love it enough to have known about this part of history, but the idea of being part of something where I, I mean now I've talked to a lot of people about this book, especially over the past few days, and even people who were like from Louisiana where this took place, from, who were educated there, really, or people who were really steeped in politics, electoral politics,

may have like sort of heard about it, but didn't know about it. And there's a reason for that. And that is because a lot of the history during this period, Reconstruction in particular, has been like totally suppressed. Right. And it's time that it is not suppressed. So this is about a race in, explain very, do the sort of cliff notes version for people.

There's a race in Louisiana for governor. Yeah. Let me just go back a little bit. So the Civil War ends, all of the Southern states are reconstituting quite literally. And Louisiana wrote their new constitution. The first election, carpetbaggers come down from the North. They were like actual carpetbaggers with their carpetbag. One of whom was one of the main characters in this book, Governor Henry Wormuth, who ran for governor appealing to the freedmen, and saying...

These are black men who were given the right to vote. Black men given the right to vote. Men, not women yet. And he was a Republican, a true Lincoln Republican. He knew Lincoln. He was at his funeral. And he said, I'm going to help you, and I'm here for you and I'll help you with civil rights. And so he got a big vote and he won. And then he was like 25 years old. He was

very young, not even. And then he decided that in order to stay in power, he needed to do a lot of things that were totally corrupt, totally full of fraud. And he changed the way that the very young institutions at that time in Louisiana were set up so that he knew that he was going to be able to have control of all the levers of government. So then when the next election came, 1872, when what this is about, he, at that point, the U.S. senators were appointed by the states. They weren't elected. He decided he wanted to be senator. So he made it so that a person who was going to make him senator, he wanted him to be governor. And he kind of switched teams. The other part of the story is that his character, the traits of his character are so familiar. People, he was, you know,

charming. Well, let me read, let me actually read from it. In office, he was loud and divisive, although he claimed to support the best men in the state, the most representative and capable to official positions. In fact, as the New York Times reported, it is difficult to exaggerate the evils he brought on the state. Other newspapers called him a despot, a demagogue, a tyrant. The more they attacked him, the stronger his support grew, especially among carpetbaggers and black voters. He built and retained an almost cult-like following. He made himself a very wealthy man who does that sound exactly right so so but then he shifted correct shifted because there was a split in the party the republican party and they didn't want him anymore so he's like okay well i'll go with the with the segregationists

and i'll help them so this is akin to donald trump suddenly saying okay let's get like micro right donald trump saying his entire life I'm pro-choice and then being pro-life and electing and putting people in the Supreme Court to overturn Roe. That's like a version of this big picture. He was fine with shifting if it meant he could stay in power. Right. And so this 1872 election in Louisiana is a farce. The polls are corrupted. Warmoth controls those returning boards that count the ballots. At the end, the two parties both claim they've won. They swear in two different governors.

There are riots, attacks on the state congress. Multiple massacres take place, largely of people, men of color. Almost entirely men of color. Right. And talk about the chaos and the flashbacks. Because you also covered the January 6th riots on the Capitol. Yeah, I just want to make clear that what happened then, the violence then, was part of a very real corruption and real fraud, intimidation, disenfranchisement of people who had the right to vote, black men. And because they weren't allowed to vote

in many, many, many places in Louisiana, because the segregationists realized, wow, we need to stop this, because our way of life is changing, and we can do that at the ballot box, the entire election was a disaster. They couldn't, they genuinely couldn't figure out who won because the votes just weren't counted

or weren't actually cast properly, nevermind counted. That's why there were these two governors, as you said, inaugurated two legislatures and so forth. And because they were fighting for the right to be the absolute duly elected government, they were also inciting violence. In a very, very robust way. And what happened, the worst example of what happened

was the Colfax Massacre. And it was in Grant Parish, named for Ulysses S. Grant. 150 black men were murdered in cold blood, slaughtered, horrible, horrible, horrible scene. And in order to find justice for them, they knew that they couldn't have a state or local trial because the people would not be prosecuted or convicted. They put it in federal court to test the new constitutional amendments to give people- This is the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendment. 13th, 14th, 15th Amendment to give them civil rights and freedoms that everybody should have.

Went all the way up to the Supreme Court and what the Supreme Court said was, it is not the federal government's role to be involved in civil rights, it's the state's role. And so the southern states said, thank you Supreme Court, we're going to enact Jim Crow laws, which stayed in place for a century. It's a double law, almost, that you have the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and then the Supreme Court saying, you can have rules that are sort of against that at the same time. Yeah, exactly. Right. Because they didn't, there were lots of reasons why it was, this is going to sound familiar, it's the way that the Supreme Court was set up at the time, but that was one of the reasons

why Reconstruction completely dissolved. Dissolved at that point. There was another one four years later. But this was, it was called U.S. versus, is it Cruikshank? Cruikshank. Cruikshank. The decision was a fundamental building block of the state's rights agenda. Correct.

That we're still seeing today. And Trump is pushing around abortion, for example. Talk more about Chief Justice Morrison-Waite's decision here. about trying to thread the needle between a country that was still so wounded over, obviously physically, but communally wounded over the Civil War, that they wanted to be together and stay together. But they also understood that in the South, in order to kind of keep them in the fold, they needed to let them do some of the things that they used to do. Meaning they lost the war, but they couldn't make them really lose, right? Again, I'm doing air quotes for your podcast audience, their way of life, which is disgusting. audience, their way of life, which is disgusting. I mean, the people who were pushing for the state's rights agenda did not believe that the people who were their slaves just a few years

earlier should have the rights that they have. They didn't want to be represented by somebody of color in elected office, and they did whatever they could to stop it. I mean, this was the time that the Ku Klux Klan was born, the White League, others, which were just offshoots of the Confederacy. Right, right. So Dunn, this person who won, and another black politician, PBS, Pinchback, both ended up serving as governor of Louisiana. It would take more than 100 years for the next black governor to be elected. And so it sort of ended protections that they had just won in the Civil War in a very short amount of time in the southern states. Yep. And then that was the biggie that ended protections. And then if you fast forward to 1876, where there are even more parallels between,

because it was a federal problem, it was a presidential election, where Louisiana had the same problems. They didn't learn from them. It was ugly, it was violent, and it wasn't just in Louisiana. It was in South Carolina and a few other states where they could not figure out who won the presidential election, so they sent two slates of electors to Washington. Wow. We've been here before, people. And get this, get this. They had a debate about what the role of the vice president was. Was the vice president allowed to decide which slate of electors to choose?

Or was the vice president a ceremonial position in that particular event? And they decided it was ceremonial. They decided that he didn't have the power, just like Mike Pence did 150 years later. So they just threw out those states' votes. They couldn't count them. So then they ended up having a tie in the electoral college.

Exactly. And they did what Washington does. They came up with a commission, and they appointed a commission, which was bipartisan, some nonpartisan people, but it's Washington. Yeah. So been here before is your point in this book. It's interesting. You wrote about how when the country was founded, the right to vote was restricted to white male property owners. And Ben Franklin had one of the best quotes about if you own a jackass, your jackass dies, then you don't get to vote. Then who's the jackass? I love that quote. It's interesting. The idea of people have a stake in society would be harder to influence. That was the idea. We're seeing that argument

made today. Interesting, Elon Musk just reposted this tweet that only high T alpha males should vote because they are less malleable to brute force manufactured consensus. There's also the J.D. Vance cat lady thing, which I think we've had enough of. Talk about this as any guy, this idea of who is free to vote, who makes decisions. This was on the ballot then of who could try to prevent people from voting and who was able to vote and who should run society. And you can go look at this, Elon just tweeted, he does believe this. Although interestingly, someone was defending him and said, men need to protect women in society. And someone responded, who do you think's attacking us? So talk about that idea

of who can vote and how it responds to you today. Yeah, I mean, like you were saying, it was the fundamental question. Obviously, they were talking about white men back then. And fast forward to what we're talking about in the 1870s, it was all men. And what happened, I just want to just explain just because it's related to what happened at the end of 1876, that commission, it came down to one man, a Republican who decided, was the deciding vote on that commission. And he decided that President Rutherford B. Hayes would be president. Came down to, he didn't win the popular vote, too. He did not win the popular vote.

Yeah. Thank you. Which now is kind of what tends to happen, but it was very unusual back then. And as part, because nothing is free in a deal, as part of that deal, remember the Republicans were the party of Lincoln. I'm going to say that over and over again. They wanted to help the South. They wanted to make things right. And he agreed to pull federal troops out of the South. So not only do you have the Supreme Court saying it's not our job to protect you legally, this decision, this deal to get Hayes as president said it's not the federal government's job to protect you militarily, physically with your security. And so all bets were off. And that's,

that is the basis for not just who could vote on paper, but who could vote realistically. And, you know, and I write this at the beginning of the book. away, telling me the story, as he told thousands of times, about marching just to get the right to vote, having his head bashed in, he almost died. And they were still trying to write these two major decisions and moments in history that we've all not learned about. Right. And that lasted for 100 years.

Right, the removal of the federal forces and the removal of federal laws. And he and his father and his father's father had to guess the number of jelly beans in the jar, the number of bubbles in the bar of soap, and these ridiculous things because it was a way to suppress the vote. Way to suppress the vote. So just a few more questions, and we'll get to the questions from the audience and finish up. Should we just get rid of the electoral college then? I mean,

it seems like it's how long has this been an issue? I think realistically in this environment to get a constitutional amendment to change that, you're going to have to have red states vote against themselves and just vote to just give it to the highly populous states like California and New York. And I just don't see that happening. Right. Whether or not it's right or wrong, realistically, it's hard to imagine a world in which that actually happens. What about from a right or wrong position? I'm not going to answer that. Okay. Last two questions. You don't actually write about Trump or MAGA in this book. There are similar dynamics at play. Populist politicians that are rabble-rousing, accusations of an actual voter fraud, attempts to overturn multiple

elections by brute force, the rise of an armed militia. Last week, historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her newsletter, former President Trump is approaching election of 2024 the way Southern white supremacists approach elections from 1876 to 1964. He has made it clear he was not trying to win the votes of majority of Americans. He and his loyalists are trying to intimidate his opponents to keep them from voting while egging on his supporters to commit violence. They're bringing the tactics of the reactionary Southern Democrats after the Civil War forward to the present day in an attempt to impose the same sort of minority rule as a nation as a whole, since that's what you've written about here. Thoughts on that? I mean, we talked about the parallels, and that's, I have said several times that I wish I was as well versed with this, or at least knew much about it at all before the 2020 election, particularly the beginning of 2021.

And this is why we need to know our history, because we need to know where we see mirrors. And when we see similarities, we need to go back and say, well, how did that end? How did those tactics have an impact on our government and our society and the people who live in it? And we need to be watching for that in a big way. I mean, we've already done reporting on post-2020 states like Georgia, which changed, and Arizona, changed their laws, like just like uh, Wormuth did, but he did it just on his own without the legislature,

in order to make it easier to manipulate who actually, stay in power for themselves, but manipulate who actually gets the um, the electoral slate sent to Washington. Right. Okay, in the foreword of the book, you wrote, democracy has often been referred to as an experiment. This is a story of what happened and what can happen again when the experiment fails. Besides the cautionary tale, what are the lessons to put into play then? You know, you're talking about we should know about it. What concerns do you have on the impact of the Supreme Court,

a militarized, divided nation for our political system going forward? Does it scare you still? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, anybody who witnessed January 6th should be scared. And I think that's the thing is that you were saying that you look at this book cover and you think, oh, it's about 2020, 2021, and it's not. And it was horrible what happened on January 6th, but that is nothing compared to what happened in 1876. And we just need to make sure that that wasn't a dress rehearsal, as one of the January 6th panelists said, for what could happen going forward and not forget. I mean, we have a very, very short memory. Nevermind, not enough knowledge of history, but a short memory,

short, short memory. And we need to be starting to focus on this now because it's only a couple months away. Yeah. The move along character of the American character. Yeah. I had a relative go, we should move along from that. I'm like, I won't. I'll just stay there for quite a while. You need to. Right. So last question for that.

As a CNN chief political correspondent, what are you keeping your eye on over the next eight weeks, especially having written this book? I mean, this is the kind of, in fact, I just— Violence. I literally just, we do a meeting, look-ah ahead meeting, futures meeting on Inside Politics every week. And I said, okay, this is like the first meeting we're having after Labor Day. This is the final sprint. We need to do regular aggressive segments on what is happening in these states with election workers. Are they being intimidated?

What's happening with the way that the groups are maneuvering? We got to stay on it. That's the main thing you're looking at. I'm obviously looking at the arguments that the candidates are making and how swing voters are feeling. But if swing voters vote, that's fine. But if people who want to vote aren't able to vote, or their votes aren't counted for whatever reason, then that's a huge problem. It's a huge problem. So, some questions from the audience.

Okay. Do you think Trump threats around the rigged election today, the same political violence we saw in 2020, or is there something different in 2024? Does it have the same, does it get worse, or is it the same old story and doesn't take fire the same way? I don't know. I mean, I hope it doesn't take fire.

One thing that I've been listening to, and I don't know about you, Kara, is he keeps talking about the coup to, and I mentioned this before, the coup to overthrow Biden. And, you know, at the beginning, they were like, oh, this is not even legal. It's not even constitutional. Well, there's no mention of political parties in the constitution. So that's not a thing. But I am thinking, I'm like, now that we had the experience of the last election, you're watching him just kind of like try out arguments real time. And I'm listening for it and like, oh, is that what he's going to use? Oh, wait, is that what he's going to use to get people riled up?

And so I try to just be hyper aware of that kind of language. Any of them working? I don't know. I mean. What's his latest? Even today, he said there was a coup against Biden and this is not even fair. And maybe it won't be argued as not legal, but even if he says it's not fair, he can get his people rather. Right. So that's the thing he's trying out. Yeah. But let's see what happens when the ballots start to go out.

He's done with sharks and batteries, correct? I don't think so. He'll never be done with that. All right. What can the average American do now besides vote to prevent election conflict, the one described in the book? Also, how would you design the I voted sticker? You don't have to do that. That's a good question. That is a good question.

I just do whatever you can to be a, and this is, Kara, more your territory than mine, but just to be an aware citizen of this country with regard to information and what information you're looking at. So, very last question. When you look at this election compared to this one, which one is more unprecedented? The one that we're in now, you mean 2024? Yeah. That one, because that was right after the Civil War. And it was the first time that blacks had the right to vote. And that was a remarkable thing

in the United States of America, where they were enslaved for hundreds of years before that. And so that was definitely the most unprecedented. All right. Do you want to guess who's going to win this election? Nope. Do you? I don't know.

I suspect Harris's because I think there's a quiet. There was a quiet Trump supporters back into i thought trump was going to win 2016 in this case there's i i know a lot of trump voters who are my family and everything else and half of them are quietly saying they're going to vote especially the women they're all like i'm not voting for him again kind of thing and so i think there's a lot of quietness around it so i don't know he's a very strong like And so I think there's a lot of quietness around it. So I don't know. He's a very strong, like as this governor was, he's a very strong and interesting candidate to a lot of people.

I do think the Republican Party would be better once he's gone and they can form. They have a lot of very strong candidates that could move ahead in ways, and he's suppressing them. So in that way, it's probably better for everybody. I don't think the Republican Party is ever going to be the same though. Oh, really? I do. You do?

Well, hello. Okay. Okay. I heard it here. Things change. Thanks everybody for your patience. Thank you. Thank you, audience.

Thank you so much. Thanks for your question. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Kateri Yoakum, Jolie Myers, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Kate Gallagher, Kate Furby, Kaylin Lynch, and Claire Hyman. Our engineers are Rick Kwan, Fernando Arruda, and Aaliyah Jackson. And our theme music is by Trackademics.

If you're already following the show, you get to go fishing with Tim Walls. If not, you have to have donuts with J.D. Vance. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.

Support for this podcast comes from Stripe. Stay with more. Make progress on their missions and reach more customers globally. The platform offers a suite of specialized features and tools to fast track growth, like Stripe billing, which makes it easy to handle subscription based charges, invoicing and all recurring revenue management needs. You can learn how Stripe helps companies of all sizes make progress at Stripe.com. That's Stripe.com to learn more. Stripe. Make progress. campaigns for you, tells you which leads are worth knowing, and makes writing blogs, creating videos, and posting on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers.