The Breakfast Club - INTERVIEW: Jon Karl On Trump's Dangerous Return To Power, Loyalty Wars, Political Futures, New Book + More

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

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Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club. Morning everybody, it's DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha Guy. We are The Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building. Yes, indeed. Jonathan Karl. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. How's it going? How you feeling?

I'm feeling great. I'm feeling great. It's great to be here. Tell the people who Jonathan Karl is if they don't know. I'm the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News. I covered the White House for more than a decade as the chief washington correspondent for abc news i covered the white house for more than a decade as the chief white house correspondent uh including all of obama's second term all of donald trump's uh term i've written three books on that guy on on trump and i'm the co-host of uh of this week and how did you get into politics with people that don't know how did your life say you know i want to do politics when i was a kid. You know, how did you get into that?

Describe that story. You know, I got to tell you, I mean, ever since I was like a little kid, I was, you know,

fifth grade, I was like grabbing for the New York Times sports section first, you know, which was pretty lame at the times and then the op-ed page

to read the op-eds. My mom and my stepfather went out to South Dakota at about that time. And we went to Mount Rushmore and they ended up doing a project. And by the way, neither one of them went to college. My stepfather had been a cab driver. He was working, running a factory in Stanford, Connecticut. We went out there, we ended up moving to South Dakota and they went on this project to interview all the people that worked on Mount Rushmore. There were 300 and some people, most of them minors, who built that freaking, you know, sculpture, that mountain.

And that was like journalism. I missed a lot of school. I ended up going to school in a town with 350 people out there for a couple of years. And so I think that was the beginning. I never really looked back. Who was better for business, Obama or Trump? You know, I... We're just talking about the business. Nothing else, just the business of what you do,

who was better for it? Okay. So I'll tell you this, being at that White House for the transition, and by the way, I was in the Oval Office the one and only time that Barack Obama and Donald Trump met. And that was on November 10th of 2016, two days after Trump won, Obama invited him in. And seeing the two of them, I mean, we've never had two more different presidents, of course, in American history together. The one time I saw Donald Trump in a room where he was not in charge because Obama was the president and it was Obama's meeting. Obama invited me and the other press in for the little photo op at the end.

Obama made the first comment, invited Trump to speak, and Trump almost seemed humble for a moment. He even said some nice things about Obama. It lasted for about 36 hours. Still kept on saying some nice things about how well he was welcomed by Mrs. O and the president. But in terms of who's better for business, let me answer it this way. With the advent of that, from that moment on, the interest in what was going on at the White House was completely off the charts. And I'd been in there, I first worked, I was at CNN for eight years before I came to ABC

during the Clinton years. So I did a little bit of White House work in Clinton. I was there for a fair amount of Bush. But you knew that the world was watching what you were doing. And it was reflected in the ratings and the business for sure. But, you know, I've got kids. They were at that point, they were in middle school, high school, and their friends would come home and they would want to ask me questions about what's never happened before. They don't want to ask me about, you know, what was going on in the Obama White House. So is that good? I mean, I guess it's good because the ratings are

high. Is it good for the country uh you know that's a whole entirely different question it's unprecedented right because i mean it was the executive producer celebrity apprentice a notorious 80s 90s celebrity becomes president of the united states of america yeah yeah i mean and and he and it was a show i mean that's why my first book i wrote was front row at the trump show and and this is what it was a show. I mean, that's why my first book I wrote was Front Row at the Trump Show. And this is what it was. And he cared. He tracked the ratings. He beat up on the critics.

You know, he programmed. He was the executive producer. That's why he went through so many communications directors and press secretaries and all that. Because he was the chief of staff. He was the spokesperson. He was the executive producer. He was the director. And every day he was thinking how can

i get more attention you know one thing you know that the twitter thing was obviously something that defined the trump years but he would do this little parlor trick sometimes we'd get people coming to the dining room off the oval office where he spent most of his time had a big tv he said watch this and he would tweet and then count the minutes until the tweet was on the cables. Wow. Really? But that's the other thing, too. He's also probably, yeah, probably the first president

that had the full benefit of social media. Like, social media in its fullest form, as we see it now, he had full advantage of that since 2016. Do you know how many times the Obama campaign tweeted in 2008? No. Once. It was a new thing they tried it out it was like so yeah it was and obama made a lot of use of social media to be sure but trump would do another thing which is he had this guy dan scavino um who was actually he had he had been his caddy uh you know and he met him met him at one of his golf courses and been with

him, the guy that's been with him the longest outside of his family in that White House. And, you know, another thing Trump would do, he'd have somebody, and I witnessed this myself, you know, he'd come into the Oval Office and he'd go, see how we're doing? He'd go, Dan, what's the number? And then Dan would come out from his little office right outside and tell him the number of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram followers he had, the combined number. He was tracking that by the minute. I feel like Donald Trump has changed politics forever.

And I think he's actually, he's changed them in a sort of good way if other politicians are willing to adjust. Meaning that you don't have to be perfect. You know, you can be a flawed elected official. Like I think he shows that the American people, you know, don't need their politicians to be perfect. They just need them to be effective. How come it seems like the Democrats haven't gotten that memo? Well, you know, one thing that he did along those lines is is there was

and and by the way this is for good and for bad and mostly frankly for bad but there were instances where clearly it was beneficial is kind of totally break down the bureaucracy and and the bureaucratic process um you know because presidents you know the old thing is but by the time a decision gets to the president's desk it goes through through, you know, God knows how many. And it's a decision and it's made. But that process can take forever. The Abraham Accords, which was one of, you know, the actual true successes of the Trump White House that brought together, you know, that had between Israel and three Arab countries, happened because they basically bypassed all of the national security process.

I mean, there was no, the State Department didn't really have any input on it. It was basically, you know, Jared had a big role, and so along had no real formal process in that, no role in that, and it got done. I think that would have been caught up under Bush or under Obama.

It just never would have gotten out of the uh out of the starting gates you think biden could beat trump and if you do feel that way what does he have to do to make sure he has the support of the people out there uh i i actually think that biden is probably the front runner even though it doesn't look like that in the polls right now why do you feel that way um Trump has, and I document this in my, I had a book out a few months ago, Tired of Winning. And I kind of go through, Trump does a great job of convincing everybody that he is the biggest, the most powerful, the greatest winner of all time. He's actually been a tremendous loser in politics. He's won one election and that was 2016. And he led the Republicans on a series of losses. And primarily

you can track the losses. Almost all the major defeats can be tracked to something Trump did. Either he was the one that basically chose the candidate, he meddled, inserted himself in a way that was not active. So he doesn't have a good electoral track record at all. Now, he did just run through the Republican nomination in what turned out to be a very weak field. Most of the candidates he was running against didn't even want to, like, criticize him until it was way too late. Except for Chris Christie. Yeah, Chris Christie, who had one fundamental flaw Christie had is he was the guy that basically helped Trump win in 2016. So I think that Trump comes into this election

with far more negatives than he had in 2016 when he won and certainly than in 2020 when he lost. The whole experience of what happened through January 6th and then what he did after he left the White House. And this is what I spent, and I spent a lot of time documenting. I mean, this does not look like a former president of the United States, let alone somebody that has a chance of coming back. He wallowed in these conspiracy theories for more than two years

that he had won the election. And he actually believed, and this is nuts, but he believed that he could be put back into the White House before the next election. He believed that the world would see what had really happened in 2020 and Biden would be basically evicted and they would put him back in. You know, dinner with Kanye and Nick Fu fuentes uh you know white supremacist a week after he announces his campaign um uh selling nfts you know these digital trading he looked like a look like a guy just trying to make some money off the whole thing um so now he's

leading in the polls and he is he's consistently leading in the polls and most importantly in the in the polls of the battleground states um but i truly think that most americans have kind of checked out um and you know for all that intense focus on what i was doing when i was the white house correspondent that i felt at the trump white house who's paying attention to what's going on in the biden white house you know in the public at large. And who is really focused- That's the media's fault though. I say that all the time because, you know, every single thing Donald Trump does, the media amplifies, but you have to search to see what the Biden administration is even doing. What Trump does is front page news, headlines, everywhere. Yeah. A crazy tweet gets like-ates all networks and that's what bugs me out

about the left so much i expect that from the right they should push the narrative of the of the person that they want in the white house but the left why do y'all respond to the right all the time well we're not the left or the right but uh but but i i mean i see you know look i mean so much of it is driven by what people are interested in. I remember, like, I had this, like, kind of righteous position that I was taking when Trump came in. It was like, we're not going to pay attention to the bullshit. We're going to talk about what he's doing, not what he's saying. It's kind of like the way I looked at it. And one day he tweeted about Mika Brzezinski,

this horrible tweet saying that she had blood coming out of her face. Remember this whole thing suggesting that she had had plastic surgery when they came to visit him at Moralago. And I said, you know what? We're not going to cover this. I mean, this doesn't matter. This doesn't matter to anybody's life. And I made that case internally internally and it worked for a little bit and then the next thing you know within a few hours the speaker of the house is making a

statement condemning the republican speaker of the house is making a statement condemning what trump has said and all these other people are coming out and she's responding and you can't and what are you going to do just ignore a story that's like, I mean, in the end, I was covering it too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's, look, Biden, I don't think that he is going to win because suddenly the world is going to look at his accomplishments as president. And there have been considerable accomplishments, some failures too, obviously. I think that the reason that he is slightly favored in my view in this race

is because they will just tear trump down methodically i mean as that there's so much material for them to use when this campaign gets going it's not going to be so much i don't think people cared jonathan i mean because it's been the same he's been the same guy since 2016 there's nothing trump is gonna say or do frankly over the next five six months that's gonna make people all of a sudden be like you know what he's a terrible person the people who support him support well the people that support him support him but what percentage of the country is that i mean it seems like 50 i think you've got 35% to 40% that really, really support him. And you have another, and we'll see if it's 10% or it's more,

who says, you know what? I think that I was better off four years ago. I didn't like all the stuff Trump did and said, but the country was better, inflation was lower. And that's where the battle will be is those people. And part of what, a big part of what the Biden people will do is try to remind those people what Trump is all about. Because I do think there has been a bit of a,

there has been some amnesia. I don't think that people truly remember what he was all about. And my point in this book is it's not what he was about when he was president last time. It's how this time will be different. And I truly believe it would be different. I believe that wholeheartedly. But do you think it's a good strategy to play the decency card, though?

Like, Joe Biden is more decent than Donald Trump. I don't think those people care. Yeah, no, I don't think that's going to get very far. Yeah, but that's all I see them banking on now. It he's he's more of a decent man yeah they don't care about that yeah this man he got elected after he said i'll grab you by the pussy right you don't care about decency when it was right fresh in people's minds i don't understand i don't understand that that that that logic i don't think that's a good strategy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and especially if you watch any Fox News, they'll make it seem like the Biden family is the main crime family in the country.

I mean, so the other side is trying to tear down that sense of decency, and they have been methodically for four years, more than four years. I mean, it's been going on since. And the other thing that Wright does that I think is great is that they will constantly talk about things Trump has done. Whether they say the border was safer under Trump.

They'll talk about the economy under Trump. Cost of checks. Yeah, they'll talk about this. I remember he put his name on it. I remember that was unbelievable. Since when is the president? The treasury? Of course.

They'll talk about the first step back. But I'm saying they'll talk about all the things he's actually done. Meanwhile, on the left, they'll just talk about how terrible of a person he is. Yeah. Yeah. And this is a challenge because I see it. I see what the Biden campaign will be. And it's going to be a very negative campaign.

And frankly, Trump doesn't talk about his accomplishments very much. All he talks about is ripping down. I mean, I mean, it's you know, I mean, it's like this is going to be a not the most uplifting and, you know, inspiring next six months. What do you think about the effects of some of the celebrities, like Stephen A. Smith saying that he's relatable because of his arrest or him sitting down with people like Kanye West and all these other artists that are going for him? Do you think that is a big influence to help him out, or do you think it'll hurt him?

You know, I don't think Kanye particularly helped him. I thought it was, that whole episode was so bizarre. He still sells millions of records. He still sells out shows. He just had a number one record. So I know people hate him. I thought it was, that whole episode was so bizarre. He still sells millions of records. He still sells out shows. He just had a number one record. So I know people hate him. They say they hate him,

but somebody's supporting him. Yeah. And it's interesting because he, you know, that dinner, which, and what did Kanye say afterwards

that he was offering Trump to be his vice president? But he brings Nick Fuentes. This is a guy who is like, you know, most people didn't know him until they saw the stories about this. But this guy is like an actual white supremacist. I mean, that's his brand. And Kanye has a thing for Adolf Hitler, which is really strange. And so Trump gets, you know, everybody condemns this meeting.

Trump to this day has not criticized either of them and hasn't said, like, maybe I shouldn't have done that or if I, you know, or I did it, I'll meet with anybody, but I don't believe in what they believe in. He hasn't done, he hasn't, not a hint of criticism. So he clearly senses that this is good. I think Trump, the other thing that he's done is he is he is afraid of alienating anybody who is he sees as his supporter even if even if

they're totally off the deep end so that's why he david duke he didn't get around to condemning david duke until by the way way, after the Louisiana primary in 2016. But, I mean, only after it really became, I, there's a crazy story that I talk about in front of the Trump show about how, you know, Reince Priebus and Chris Christie and all these people that were around him were basically like just pleading with him and begging him to just disavow the endorsement of David Duke because David Duke had endorsed him. And Trump didn't want to do it. Didn't want to do it. Finally, he got browbeaten into doing it. By the way, that's the stuff that he's not going to get browbeaten into doing anymore. No, that's normalized now.

Yeah. Why did the grand old party come to an end? Well, I think you alluded to it when we started this conversation. I think that the Republican Party is the Trump Party now. I mean, there are elements and there are little bits and pieces of the old party out there. I mean, look at this debate over Ukraine. So they have this big debate on whether or not we're going to, you know,

support Ukraine, continue to support Ukraine in the war against Russia. And it passed overwhelmingly eventually, you know, when the Republicans finally agreed to have the vote, overwhelming in the House, overwhelming in the Senate. But in the House, a majority of Republicans voted against it. I mean, this is the party of Reagan. Not anymore. It's the party of Trump. That good a bet for the future of the Republican Party.

Well, I think the Republican Party has a real challenge once, you know, I mean, when Trump is gone, I think that he's done such a good job of basically decimating what was there before I think that they've got they've got some you know some real definitional problems what do they stand for what what is make America great again mean because if you look do you remember what the Republican platform was in 2020 and 20 make america great again yeah there was no platform except for that's for that's for that statement there was no platform usually like i mean i've been covering conventions right you have all the detailed what we stand for in

domestic policy foreign policy you know the cultural issues nothing it was just like trump's make america great again plan so uh you know what do they stand for, you know, when he's gone? Now, look, there are, the Democrats have huge problems. And you see, I mean, the fact that we see more Hispanic voters than we've seen voting Republican and reflected in the polls supporting more black voters. It's still, you know, Democrats dominate both groups, but the fact that they're losing, the fact that Democrats are losing supports among blacks and Latinos to Donald Trump

is a sign that Democrats have some problems too. Yeah, I think that might be a little overstated though. When I look at the numbers that they're saying for black people. It's like this, it's like, yeah, it's like. Yeah, 23%, I'm like, I don't see that. No, no, but it's like this it's like yeah it's like yeah 23 i'm like i don't see that no no but but it's but it's definitely you know it it's up from near zero when you when you talk about what a trump white house will look like uh if he gets back in the white house can you can you talk to

that can you speak to project 25 yeah so this is this is really important and i don't think people understand this is something that i think people have to understand before they go and vote. When Trump comes back in, if he comes back in, the first test for anybody in a position of authority and power is going to be loyalty to Donald Trump. I spent a lot of time reporting and documenting the work of a guy named Johnny McEntee, who was the guy that carried Trump's bags. He was actually one of the first guys I met on the Trump campaign in 2015.

He had been like a very junior. He was a kid. He was just out of UConn. He'd been a college quarterback. He came to volunteer for the Trump campaign right after Trump announced the first time around and ended up carrying his bags for much of his presidency. He came back in 2020. He'd been briefly thrown out of the White House, by the way,

because he had issues related to his gambling that were flagged by the FBI. So John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff, fired him. After Kelly was gone, McAtee came back and was put in charge of presidential personnel, basically the HR department for the whole, you know, executive branch of the U.S. government. And he went about, in the beginning of 2020, to try to do a series of loyalty tests, interviews. He sent his people out, most of his buddies, like these are kids in their 20s. He was 30 years old at the time, to interview from cabinet secretaries on down, you know,

testing their support of Donald Trump. And the biggest thing he engineered was the firing of the Secretary of Defense right after the election, Esper. Remember, Esper was the one that opposed the use of the Insurrection Act to bring active duty troops into American cities during the George Floyd protests. Fired.

Top four people at the pentagon fired replaced by people devoted to donald trump so now mcentee is part of this thing called project uh 2025 which is to create a list of who can serve in the next trump white house and you're not going to have people uh Trump brought in some people of real stature, General Mattis, General Kelly, his White House counsel, Don McGahn, later White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, you know, later Bill Barr, people that had served in previous administrations or were top military figures who ended up standing up to Trump and refusing his demands to break the law, essentially. Those people and people like them will not be back. It'll be people that

Johnny McEntee and his and his and this group have decided are truly loyal to the king. And what type of threat to democracy do you think that poses? Well, look, I'm sure. Do you think it's overstated when people say that that he's a threat to democracy um i i i don't think it's overstated because he actually tried to bring down a presidential election so he's he has done that um but i think that the underappreciated is you heard the supreme court arguments on this idea of immunity. And by the way, when Trump talks about immunity and he talks about it a lot in his campaign rallies,

he's not talking about acts tied to his official duties. He's talking about immunity. He's talking about shooting on Fifth Avenue kind of immunity. And so you have somebody who is making the case that the president is above the law, who is running to be president again. I think that raises real questions about what does the rule of law mean? You know, there is a theory, the unitary theory of the executive branch, that is put forward by some serious legal, you know, constitutional scholars, that basically says that the president is the law.

So the way Nixonixon put it you remember in his interview with david frost after you know after he had resigned um it's not illegal if the president does it i mean there's a whole theory that goes along with that and that's what essentially uh trump is putting out there so i worry you know there was a big question that I explored after January 6th about what would have happened if Mike Pence had done what Trump wanted. Yeah. And what Trump really wanted, by the way, was Pence to just throw out those electoral votes and declare him president. He didn't have the power to do that, though, right? Well, absolutely not.

Okay. But who had the power to do that though right he well absolutely not okay but who had the power to stop him and this is a very this is like this is somewhat this is a mind-blowing thing and by the way the law has been changed now to be clarified but who had the power to stop him some people say well the supreme court would have stopped him well first of all it's not clear at all that the supreme court has any jurisdiction over the rules of congress in counting electoral votes but so let's say the supreme court the supreme court in what army i mean there was i i talked to you know you know judge luddig who testified in the january 6 committee i talked to him about it and he he said look this would have plunged us into the

greatest constitutional crisis that we have ever seen. Because it is, we didn't, Pence did not have the power to do that. But basically, it's unclear if anybody had the power to stop him. What the hell does that mean, though? So that means that there's no system in place to prevent things like that from happening if somebody just chooses to do it. It means that we have a system of laws that also depends on there being people of honor and responsibility to enforce those laws. Wow. And it's, you know, you can, if you have somebody who is in charge of the entire system who is willing to just say, screw it, it's unclear what you do about it.

Which he did. I mean, well, he at least asked for it. He said we should, you know, get rid of, terminate the Constitution to overthrow the results of an election. I asked John Kelly once way before 2020. So it was like while he was still chief of staff, 2018 or so. What would happen if Trump refused to leave? I mean, that would become the question, but I was just asking a hypothetical. And he's like, oh, no, no, no. He's like, there are people that will make him go.

I was like, what do you mean there are people? He's like, he could chain himself to the resolute and there would be people that would come in and cut the chains and escort him go. I was like, what do you mean there are people? He's like, he could chain himself to the Resolute and there would be people that would come in and cut the chains and escort him out. But I'm not, who?

Yeah, I don't believe that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who? Yeah, especially if they're on his side.

But you know, some people do feel like presidents should be immune from certain crimes. Like there's people that'll point to what's going on in New York and they'll be like,

that's nothing to take a guy, that's nothing to have a president on trial for. My co-host here says he feels like he should be immune to some crimes. No, I didn't say that. I just said I don't think a president will go to jail. That's not what you said.

That's what I said. Yes, I said. You said a president should be immune from some crimes. I don't think he'll go to jail. That's my whole thing. I don't think, and that's what I was going to ask you, do you think he'll go to jail? I don't think Trump will go to jail. Even if he's found guilty on all charges, I don't think he'll go to jail. That's my whole thing. I don't think, and that's what I was going to ask you, do you think he'll go to jail? I don't think Trump will go to jail. Even if he's found guilty on all charges,

I don't think he'll go to jail. Let me take the first part of that. Is there a case for a president being immune from some things? I think there is a serious argument on this, and that's why you had a Supreme Court debate. And it's something that the Supreme Court has never defined, and the Constitution doesn't give you any guidance on. You know, the example of Barack Obama taking out Anwar al-Awlaki in a drone strike, ordering the drone strike. He was an American citizen.

He was also an al-Qaeda terrorist. So you don't want a situation where Obama leaves office and then he's brought up on charges for killing an American with a drone strike. So there is gray area here. By the way, and this is not the Constitution, it's what they call an OLC memo. It's the Justice Department has established policies, going back to Nixon, that you cannot prosecute a sitting president.

They have to wait, which kind of makes sense because you don't want the... And by the way, let's say, just to take your hypothetical a little further, let's leave aside this New York case, which is a little strange, but the Georgia case, which would mean real jail time. This case might not mean jail time,

even if he's guilty. It probably won't in New York. What do you do if a guy is... Because the Georgia trial is going to happen not this year. It's going to be put back a while. But are they going to do it if Trump gets elected and he's president and Georgia sentences him to 15 years in prison? What is the Georgia state police going to go up and uh and handcuff them i mean no no so i think they're i i i don't think we'll ever see donald

trump actually behind bars now he may be convicted and there may be uh you know if if you were trying to imagine what would would be best for the country you can imagine a situation where he's convicted and the president pardons him. He expresses some contrition. And that's what I was saying. I was saying, I can't see a sitting president or a president of the United States going to jail.

House arrest at Mar-a-Lago? Yeah. I just can't see that happening. Not here. Not how it would look to the world. I just can't see that happening. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I, and then what does the Secret Service do? Because the Secret Service is responsible for protecting a former president. Are they in jail? Are they doing time with him? Yeah, so are they sitting in the cell or maybe outside the cell or what?

I mean, it raises some really strange questions. Yeah, America didn't prepare for any of this. No. America never thought they would see, we never thought we would be here with a former president or a potential future president. Yeah. I mean, I've been covering politics for a long time.

And some of the most memorable speeches that I've ever seen, political speeches, were speeches that were given by people who lost. And one of them that is like burned in my brain is, because I covered every minute of the campaign, was Al Gore. After the Supreme Court shut down the Florida case, the election was over, Gore gave the best speech of that campaign. And it was gracious and it was generous. He was bitter. His people were ready to storm the,

you know, maybe not break into the Capitol, but they were, I mean, the anger among Democrats all over the country. And he was angry, and his people were angry, and some of them didn't want to even, you know, wanted to continue to challenge the Supreme Court. And he came out and he said, it's over. And not only is it over, but I offer whatever I can do

to help George Bush be a successful president. And then the other, another, there have been several of these, but another one that really sticks to me was John McCain when he lost to Obama. And he congratulates Obama and the people in that crowd start booing. And he says, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what we do. We not only congratulate him and wish him well,

but we must all work with him to make him a successful president. And then that's what we've come to be used to, you know, is an idea that there are hard-fought campaigns, and then for a minute at least before the next campaign, you know, things are over. But we've never had a situation or even contemplated a situation where somebody would refuse to accept the results of an election. Do you feel if Al Gore would have fought back in 2000, that might have prevented what we're currently seeing now? Because there's plenty

of people who feel like that, that, that election was stolen from Al Gore. Yeah. I mean, I don't think he had a, he had a constitutional or legal avenue to do it, which is why he, he conceded. So I, I think that that, I think that would have backfired. By the way, I was, when, when Bush was inaugurated on January 20th, Gore was of course up on the stage and, you know, as, as they always do, it was a really bitter and cold, you know, winter day in January. And I was on, you know, they, you know they do this thing if you ever watch the presidential inauguration there are a couple of flatbed trucks that go in front of the presidential limo and you usually have um you know network correspondent to network correspondence

on each one and we kind of we follow along we do commentary and we have the cameras that you i was it was like it was a frightening ride actually because there were more protesters on the on the parade route than there were bush supporters and at one point they started to throw eggs um at the presidential limo um and you know you did feel for a moment like the country was a little bit a little bit on edge and gore to his credit i think kept it kept it steady no i i think the thing that would have, I mean, we're getting off, this is a totally different subject, but the thing that would have prevented where we are now was what that president did two years later, which was, you know, invade Iraq.

I mean the, you know, the, the Iraq war, which leads to, I mean, you probably don't have a president Obama and you don't have a president Trump either if that hadn't happened. Oh, you think that Obama was a, what would you call that? Like a, I want like a reaction from people. Like I want an extreme reaction. It wasn't that he was an extreme reaction. The reaction is that he was one of the few Democrats

who were adamantly opposed to that war from the start. Gotcha. And that's how he made his name. If you remember, like, all the, you know, that war was supported by Hillary Clinton, by John Kerry, by, I mean, that vote was a very bipartisan vote in favor of the invasion of Iraq. Ooh, so with that said, you know, in this upcoming election, you see all of these kids on these college campuses.

Yeah. And, you know, in this upcoming election, you see all of these kids on these college campuses. Yeah. And, you know, they're very anti-war. Like they're very against, you know, all of these various wars that are happening. You know, Joe Biden funding Israel's military, you know, funding Ukraine. Like they're just against the war. Well, how do you think that's going to have an impact in November? Because neither one of the presidents are against no no i mean you know that certainly uh donald trump's not going to please these people more than uh more than joe biden um i think it's a real problem um for biden and for the democrats uh for two reasons um one is that he needs he needs a

he needs support um from core Democratic constituencies, and one of those is young voters. And young voters have turned decisively against him almost entirely because of... And he can say, look, we've forgiven student loans. That's not what they're... I mean, they're fired up about this. So if they either stay home or vote you know, vote for a, you know, a Bobby Kennedy or, you know, vote third party, that's a major problem. We was on a Clark Atlanta campus Friday and a lot of those kids said they were voting for RFK Jr.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a real problem. But the other thing is the feeling of it we'll see where these protests go but you know the the wall-to-wall coverage that you're seeing on you know cable news and you get the sense like things are falling apart and it's lawless and and that plays right into trump it's like look this is biden's america look at these people just the images yeah just the images yeah and i wonder, you know, when you rile all of these kids up and then you tell them,

okay, but in November, we're going to need you to turn around and vote for Biden. How are you going to flip that switch so fast? Yeah, yeah. Or even what's going on in Michigan where you're telling people, you know, go right in non-committed or whatever. I can't remember.

How are you going to flip the switch come November? Yeah. After you've gotten them so energized to go against Biden. It's interesting. So you've had all these numbers. You had it in Michigan, but you also had it in Minnesota, in North Carolina, in Virginia,

where Democrats were not voting for Biden in a primary where he had no opposition. Sometimes it was uncommitted. Sometimes they were voting for no-name candidates. And at the same time, you've had trump running without any opposition now and nikki haley is still getting upwards of 20 of the vote yeah she did in pennsylvania and she's not running um so 2020 had massive turnout 2016 had massive turnout trump really turned people out both in terms of for him and people opposed to him. What's this election going to be?

I mean, this could be a very different situation. Whose votes do you think are going to be the determining factor? Like, will it be women? Because they're fired up that Roe v. Wade got overturned. Is it going to be African-Americans? Is it going to be Latinos? Is it going to be youth voters? Like, who do you think?

Look, you've got six, maybe seven battleground states. And if it looks anything like the last two elections, it could be a matter of 100,000 votes spread across those states or maybe even less. So any one of those groups can be decisive. women are a huge uh group of voters they turned pretty decisively against uh donald trump in 2020 and were more agnostic i mean they weren't he didn't win them in 2016 but they turned decisively against them in 2020 i think that's probably the most important you know single group but any i mean you could have i mean georgia i mean mean, Arizona, you had states where it's just a matter of a few thousand votes. Yeah. You went to the White House Correspondents' Dinner this weekend. Yeah. And Joe Biden said he was frustrated with how the media, you know,

covers him, but he just made, he put out a challenge for the media to do better when they're talking about, you know, the threat that Trump is. What'd you think of that? You know, I think there's something to that. I never put too much stock into presidents criticizing the media because they always do it. It's the easiest thing.

You know, if only they were covering what I was doing better, I'd be, you know, I'd have a 75% approval rating. I mean, I don't think that that's the case. But I do think that this is a really difficult election for journalists to cover um because it's not like any other election it's not even like 2020 or 2016 this is different um you know and if we are simply like doing horse race coverage and who's up in the polls and who's down and what the latest side-by-side policy differentiate you're not getting at the point um and the point biden was getting at is that

you know trump is in a real way running on an anti-democratic uh agenda and it's not just what happened on january 6th but it's all this talk of using the power of the federal government for retribution and revenge against anybody who has crossed him. It's a different election. It can't really be covered in the same way. Yeah, none of this is normal, so why do we act like it is? It's not normal. And I worry in some ways that the country seems to be kind of sleepwalking towards, you know, something that nobody's really come to terms with.

Because, you know, this is, and by the way, you made a point when we spoke a few months ago about, you know, the kind of crying wolf notion that we have seen. And for how many cycles have we heard people say this is the most consequential election of our lifetimes you know mitt romney is like and i destroy america if he's elected i mean i mean now you're getting to an election that actually is the most consequential of our lifetimes and people are like okay i've heard this before yeah yeah wow well this book is out right now tired of winning you couldning. You can definitely pick Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Ole Party. Hey, thank you.

Absolutely. We're going to need you back up here when we get closer to November. Anytime. I'm up here a lot, so this is fun. It's good. And you're right up the road from GMA, so it's easy. Jonathan Karl, ladies and gentlemen, it's The Breakfast Club. Good morning.

Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club.