The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol and Christopher Cadelago: Increasingly Unhinged

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Biden's departure from the race has put Trump in a real funk. He's in denial about Kamala's crowds, he's publicly pining the loss of his preferred rival, and he's doubling down on his helicopter story—and conflating two different black CA politicians in the process. Plus, filling in the gaps in Kamala's inner circle. Bill Kristol and Chris Cadelago join Tim Miller. show notes: Cadelago's story on the other black politician who was in a helicopter with Trump that almost crashed Cadelago's story on Kamala's 2020 staffing Cadalago's story on tensions withing Kamala's campaign staff

This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. October is the season for wearing masks and costumes, but some of us feel like we wear a mask and hide more often than we want to, at work, in social settings, around our family. Therapy can help you learn to accept all parts of yourself, so you can stop hiding and take off the mask. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Therapy is a great tool for facing your fears and finding ways to overcome them.

If you're thinking of starting therapy but you're afraid of what you might uncover, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. It's Monday, August 12th. We've got a doubleheader. It's Bill Kristol, of course, on Monday and up after that, Chris Catalago, probably the best reporter on the Kamala beat for a couple of, I mean, a ridiculous story about Donald Trump, and then a little bit more background on Kamala and her team. But first up, Bill, what's going on, man? Everything's fine. How about you? I'm doing very well. Your morning shots this morning was a six-month anniversary. Can you

believe this? Six months. Time flies when you're having fun. Exactly. I was shocked this weekend when I discovered it was exactly six months, February 12th. And that was when I wrote my first morning shot. Andrew and I took over from the great Charlie Sykes. And my first one was calling on Joe Biden first morning shot. Andrew and I took over from the great Charlie Sykes. And my first one was calling on Joe Biden to step aside. And it wasn't the most popular thing I've ever written, I'd say. I do think it's unlike some of the other things I've written. It stands up fairly well.

So therefore, of course, I had to remind people of that in a hopefully not too obtrusive a way, you know. When you have a rare, correct insight, you need to kind of not let it be forgotten by history, you know? Yeah, I got to lean on it. No, it seemed to have turned out okay. And, you know, somebody's unhappy about how right you were about that. And that's Donald Trump, who has seemed to completely lose his shit in Mar-a-Lago over the weekend. So I want to have a couple of highlights about Crazy Donald before we get down to some real business, what's happening with the polls and some policy issues. Here he is on Truth Social.

He bleated this out. And I'm just going to read it, if that's okay with you. Fine. I think it's important just to read it all rather than to characterize. Has anyone noticed that Kamala cheated, all caps, at the airport? That's interesting. I wonder where he's going with that. Cheated at the airport. That's interesting. I wonder where he's going with that. She did at the airport. There was nobody at the plane and she quote, a period, I period, apostrophe D did it.

AI did, I guess, and showed a massive quote crowd of so-called followers, all caps, but they didn't exist. She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror-like finish on the vice presidential plane she's a cheater all caps she had nobody waiting election interference all caps that is the person that is a lunatic like that person should not be anywhere near and that person shouldn't be managing a subway like what is happening i mean he's retweeting kind of the kookiest conspiracy theories in the far fringes of truth social i guess and but i mean that wasn't a retweet those

are his words and he was retweeting someone else that that had like posted busted that's his own words you're right but he's getting it from some kooky thing he read. I'm on the whole pushback a little bit against the Trump is unhinged, Trump is a lunatic line of argument. It tends to lead one not to take him seriously enough and not to be alarmed enough. And he has a kind of lizard-like brain cunning, obviously, which we've seen many times, and he's an effective demagogue. But I have wondered over the last few days whether he really is losing it. I mean, he's old, he's just more unhinged than he ever has been. The things about which he's unhinged don't seem to have any reasonable ground politically. At other times, he's said things that you and I found, you know,

not just distasteful, but abhorrent and kind of crazy. But you could sort of see underneath it, there was a kind of cunning of trying to play the race card or, you know, whatever, drag some opponent down into the mud or whatever. Yeah, I think Biden's departure play the race card or, you know, whatever, drag some opponent down into the mud or whatever. Yeah, I think Biden's departure from the race and Harris's success has unhinged him, and he's getting old. And don't you think it's slowing down and just seems losing it a little bit? Yeah, Axios says Trump advisors are deeply rattled by his meandering mean and often middling public performances. Now, I will say, meandering mean and middlingdling public performances now i will say meandering mean and middling is like donald trump in a nutshell so i don't know why his advisors are rattled by donald trump being donald trump but there's underneath that a sense that they're worried

that even within the kind of frame of of donald trump like within the band of his behavior he's on the low end of you know which is which is a category difference from like every other politician nobody else would be sending out tweets about crowds being faked i mean like weird false flag stuff and that would be a sign for a need for a psychiatric checkup on anybody else but you do expect it from trump but even his advisors say that for him he's behaving not that well there's one some evidence of this from his rally in montana which uh he did on friday it was his only event last week his only event outside of mar-a-lago he went there i guess because ronnie jackson his quack doctor has a bugaboo about john

tester and because john tester called him a pill pusher or something and so ronnie convinced donald to go to montana to act out this vendetta So that shows some lack of judgment on the one hand. But he gave an aside, an off-teleprompter aside, that I thought was quite revealing. Let's listen to that. We're going to get Joe Biden out of the White House. What's he doing now? Greg, what's he doing? You know, he wanted to debate if we didn't have a debate he'd still be there can you imagine if we didn't have a debate why the hell did i debate him

maybe a kinsley gaffe there maybe an accidental reveal of a true thing you know maybe his unhinged behavior is about him like recognizing, recognizing how just, like, how he was on the right path, and that one decision has now totally upended the race and might lead him to jail, and maybe that is deranging him a little bit. Do we think that's possible? Yeah, I think so. It's sort of, I think it's kind of unfair. Biden proposed this debate, he accepted it. He thinks he did well, but let's say he did adequately and Biden did horribly and Biden's out and now he's behind in the race. And this is the gods of being unfair to him. And that's not permissible if you're Donald Trump, I guess, you know. So when I heard that too, I also thought that, you know, we've sort of forgotten. We haven't

forgotten. I had sort of forgotten. Everything would be different if that debate hadn't happened. And that debate was kind of a fluke, right? I mean, the Biden people thought it was clever to have an early debate. It wouldn't, it's never happened that way before. If there hadn't been a June 27th debate, I'd be continuing to write things, I suppose, from Morning Shots about how Biden should try to get out. And I would be continued to be being ignored by the Biden campaign and by most of pro-Biden world, I would say, and pro-Biden pundits. So it is kind of amazing to have the whole campaign turn on this one debate. I will say, not to compare Donald Trump to Anita Dunn, because Anita Dunn is a much more morally upstanding and positive influence on

our political life. Anita was one of Biden's top advisors, but she gave an interview with Ryan Lizzo over at Playbook this weekend about this that reveals the fact that I'm raising my hand, including myself in this, you can get into a bunker mentality, and you can get into a little bubble. And sometimes you can delude yourself and like the levels of self delusion in that, like the contrast between that and Trump, like shows just how much everything, you know, basically fell on this one decision, right? Like she's not there being like, Oh, well, we could have, the dial tests were still showing people thought it was good.

Well, she's attacking Nancy Pelosi who, you know, who saved probably the party from a pretty bad fate. And no, I was very struck by they needed to do the thing. It's one thing to be in the bunker when the war is going on. It's another thing to kind of be holding down the bunker when your side has surrendered three weeks ago and it is like the japanese soldier in 1946 on some island in the pacific you know it is but i think it's like my point is that i just think that this event was so jarring for people yeah and i

think that people that were deep inside of this and it's having a psychological effect i guess that's the point i'm trying to get to and and anita's is you know hopefully she she will turn the corner but the psychological effect that's having on to. And Anita's is, you know, hopefully she will turn the corner. But the psychological effect that it's having on Donald Trump, I think, is very real. I agree with that. And just on the advisor side, Anita, I think, she'll be better at some point pretty soon. But what about the Trump enablers and, you know, the responsible Republican types who've gone along with Trump? All their tweets and pieces, whether they're columnists or the billionaires tweeting, or why can't Trump be running a better campaign? He should be focusing on this issue or that issue.

And I'm really disappointed and shocked. And really, they didn't notice that in 2015-16, he didn't run a responsible campaign. And in 2020, he wasn't too responsible in handling COVID and in fostering the big lie about the election, which led to January 6th. And they're just shocked once again. And there's no self-reflection. This is a point you've made many, many times, but it's so correct. I mean, could they look in the mirror for a minute? How did we get here? Why is Trump the nominee for the third straight time after January 6th? Did all these people being willing to go along have something to do with it? Maybe one of them should say, you know what? It's not too late for him to get out. I mean, he's old like Biden, he's crazy, which Biden isn't, and he's losing it, which Biden was doing a little bit. So, but no, none of them will say that, because of course it wouldn't work with Trump.

But also you think out of just self-respect, one or two would sort of do more than whine about how Trump's not quite doing it the way they would like him to do it, you know? Yeah, there's no self-respect. And there's such deep irresponsibility. You know, we used to at least go through the rig of a role of, are any Republicans going to express concern that the nominee of their party seems so deluded that he thinks that Kamala Harris's crowds are imaginary or that like his insurrection was better

than Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech? Like we would at least have gone through that for a while. Now nobody even does because they've all succumbed to him so much. But I didn't mention this on the show last week. I did this interview and I went to a more conservative podcast called Unheard about why conservatives I think should vote for Kamala. And I was like making the point in this interview that nobody even makes anymore, which is even

if you're not a liberal, like if you are a conservative Republican and you're Mitch McConnell and you care about the interests of the Republican Party, even in that framework, taking aside all the moral, the ethical, everything, the right thing to do would have been to dump Donald Trump four years ago. It would have been better for the Republican Party. It would have been better for conservative policy governance after January 6th. And now, like, despite the fact that any day that they try to dump Trump would be better for them than waiting another day of sticking with them like they've all given up it's just a total towel throw and on this point one other thing to your advisor thing Trump also bleeded this weekend all caps

it will be impossible for America to survive another four years of a Democrat in the White House and that's the exact same rhetoric that all of these Republican advisors and pundit types were condemning three weeks ago and saying like that caused the attack on Trump, you know, this apocalyptic rhetoric. It's just bad faith all the way down. And the billionaires, you think I noticed that they've done pretty well in the Biden Harris economy. And it's Kamala Harris who said a couple of days ago that we shouldn't interfere with the independence of the Fed, we shouldn't threaten to fire the Fed chairman as Trump and Vance have done. And I put this out on Twitter, but as a single center-right,

respectable, Republican-ish type, say, you know what? I give Harris credit. She's done exactly what people like us always say politicians should do, which is keep hands off the Fed. And I criticize Trump and Vance. I haven't seen it. Maybe they have. Maybe there's one, someone, some think tank somewhere, some Wall Street Journal contributor somewhere who's actually got out of his way to point out that in this respect, Vice President Harris is doing the responsible thing. To say nothing of the broader question of the fact that the economy's been pretty good for four years, but they say they want to call balls and strikes. Here's a ball and strike. Oh, no, can't call balls and strikes because, I mean, God, who knows what will happen under four years of Harris and

Wallace? It could just be the end of the world, you know? All right. We get this once a month. You know, we get a pass once a month. We get to just rant about how pathetic the Republican commentator and strategist class is and just how embarrassing and shameful they are. We just get to do this once a month. This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. October is the season for wearing masks and costumes, but some of us feel like we wear a mask and hide more often than we want to. At work, in social settings, around our family. Therapy can help you learn to accept all parts of yourself so you can stop hiding and take off the mask.

Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Therapy is a great tool for facing your fears and finding ways to overcome them. If you're thinking of starting therapy but you're afraid of what you might uncover, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. So another reason why Donald Trump is getting increasingly unhinged, we have the New York Times-Siena poll. It's important to remember that this was maybe the most bearish mainstream poll for the Democrats as recently as like six weeks ago. And it was after the Biden debate where they had nationally Biden down six among likelies and eight among registered. It might have been nine, but he was down six among likely voters. And here we got the swing state polls of the blue wall, upper Midwest states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. We have

Harris at 50 in all three, Trump at 46 in all three among likely voters. And then if you go to registered voters, Trump does, Trump actually leads in Michigan and Harris maintains her lead in Pennsylvania, a little smaller in Pennsylvania, a little larger in Wisconsin. So, I mean, that is just a dramatic turnaround from being down six nationally in five weeks to now being up four among likely voters across all the swing states. And very consistent with the several polls now that have shown Harris up three or four nationally. If she's up three or four nationally, she's presumably up something like that in the swing states. That's why the swing states are swing states. I mean, if Pennsylvania is the tipping point state, she should be around somewhere. So I guess, what does that mean? Harris has made up basically probably about eight points

in three weeks. I mean, don't you think? She was down probably four when she took over, so to speak. I mean, it's probably, Biden was down more like six. Harris took over, maybe started off more like three or four. Yeah. So that's pretty impressive. That's a little more movement among, they're either more swing voters or a much higher percentage of them have moved in one direction than one thought was likely to happen, I think. Yeah. And it's even better than I would have thought for sure. And to me, you just look at the numbers and it's pretty clear, like the main thing that has happened, which is, you know, our friend Sarah Longwell was obsessed with talking about double haters. You know, she was analyzing the double haters, focus grouping the double haters, talking to double haters. And they just aren't any anymore. It's like

this whole campaign, like it was the key group was it was going to be a record number of people who are unhappy with both candidates. You know, there was a Wall Street Journal poll that had 28% as still undecided before the debate. Now it's down to 15% or not undecided, but not fully decided rather. In these times polls, you know, the double haters were up in the high teens, low 20s, you know, over the course of the year, people that had an unfavorable view of both candidates. Now it's down to like four. And now it's down to just basically, you know, Bush-Kerry. Like, again, just like a straight, you know, partisan switch where people that are Democrats like their candidate, people that are Republicans like their candidate,

for the most part, small percentage of Republicans who are Haley people that don't. And the independents prefer one over the other. And so she gobbled up almost all the double haters while Trump has stayed static. And that's like essentially what's happened in these polls. It turns out the double haters hated having to choose between a 78-year-old and an 81-year-old. And as Nikki Haley actually said months ago, whichever party gets rid of its 75-plus-year-old candidate first is going to get a huge benefit.

And in fact, that happened. It's a little unfair. Biden's not like Trump. I would spend a lot of time arguing that this shouldn't be the case, but it's very clear for those who were still undecided between Biden and Trump after all that we knew by spring that the age issue was just, they just did not want that choice. And the Democrats aren't giving them that choice now. And to be fair, they're also giving them sort of an attractive choice, I'd say so far in Harris Walls. And so they've all moved. One potential observation on this, Nate Cohn, who is the sort of wonk nerd at the time that

oversees these polls, said that Harris is running basically as generic Democrat. And like another thing we were saying all year is that Bob Casey was winning in Pennsylvania. Tammy Baldwin was winning in Wisconsin. She's essentially running as generic Democrat. And so maybe it's a little artificially high, maybe as the attack ads come in, and some of those voters are reminded about things they don't like about Harris, that might change. Another thing is maybe, you know, her performance in more unscripted environments is not as good. And that takes me to, this has been the big Republican talking point

over the weekend that Harris hasn't really done any sit down interviews. She's done a couple of gaggles where she's taking questions from the press. Gaggle is kind of an industry term for a small press conference, but she hasn't really done any interviews. And the Republicans have been banging her on this. Bill Kristol over the weekend said, maybe she should keep on avoiding interviews because why mess with the winning formula and if only to further drive MAGA world crazy? Was that tongue in cheek, Bill Kristol, or is that serious advice to the Harris team? I mean, semi-serious advice. I've given advice over these three weeks where I'm worried about defending yourself a little more against some of these possible attacks and there needs to be a

policy agenda. And I believe all that. And I was actually about to write something today on Ukraine, which is an issue that I think is a good issue for Harris. They've done a pretty good job. They split the Republicans. So why not advance it more and make clear that Trump fans is really going to a place on Ukraine that even a lot of Republicans, maybe half Republicans don't want to go. So I had all this stuff in my mind. And I thought, what am I doing? I mean, they seem to be doing fine, you know, and maybe they should just keep doing what they're doing and let all the smart alecks on Twitter say, oh, they're running on vibes. There's no substance and let all the smart Alex on Twitter say, oh, they're running on vibes. There's no substance.

And let the media or Republicans complain that she's not giving interviews. You know what? As long as it works, it's fine. A friend of mine had texted me overnight. You know, it'd be good if Harris just raced the Olympics even more than she has. She's done a little of this, I think. She was in a USA jacket getting off the plane last night. Did she?

Okay. But I didn't say that. But, you know, call them up. I don't know. Have them to the vice president's presence and different ones, you know, whatever. And just bask in that good mood for another week. I mean, I'm basically for whatever works at this point. And if the vibes are working and the good mood is working and the happy warrior stuff is working. And also the interview thing is so tedious, as you know,

the kind of media self-importance plus the Republican disingenuous character of their attack. So. So I agree with 90 of that yes let's go on good vibes keep rolling keep going to what works bask yourself in patriotism and optimism yes the republican attacks are bullshit the journalists are self-important all that i agree with that said are we sure that there's not an issue right like i guess that's my only point i don't really understand why you know she couldn't just do a couple of easy ones. Are we sure that there's not something else happening behind the scenes here? It's just a little nagging bird in the back of my brain.

I'd say just be ready to pivot to do the interviews and also to put out, I think she's going to put out some economic policy stuff. I mean, on that, I think it just needs to be the economic agenda. While she's watching this and listening to us, I mean, it needs to be forward-looking. I did this morning. It's understandable. The convention, you know, putting out that,

well, we're going to be having former President Obama speak and former President Clinton speak and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speak and current President Biden speak, which is all messed up. Can't the Clintons speak together? Yeah, can't they all four speak? Can they all four speak? You know, like one or two afternoons.

And we could actually have current Democratic governors who were wildly successful in swing states and current Democratic members of congress like abigail spanberger and mikey cheryl and stuff can we have some of those people featured a little more and and some republicans like adam kinzinger featured a little more i'm sure they're aware of this and i think they have to of course pay appropriate respect to their predecessors as democratic presidents and big shot and candidates but i'm a little worried that this happens, as you know, in a party, right? They like the former Democratic presidents. They respect them. They don't want to in any way diminish their importance historically and so forth. But actually, for the voters they need to get to, much better to see Abigail Spanberger and

Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer than, with all due respect, the Clintons and even President Obama and President Biden, to be honest. Maybe some West due respect to some of them than to others, but certainly sure, all due respect to Obama. The policy thing, there's one I do, we have to pick a net. All right, you wrote about this in Morning Shots. We have to say something or we're not doing our obligation here. Kamala is in Nevada at the end of her swing and adds one line to the stump speech, stealing from Trump's, I guess, quote unquote, policy, if you want to call it that, that we're going to eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.

This is a ridiculous policy. And it's a gimmick. And Donald Trump already did it. Do they really feel like they have to neutralize that? It's that popular of a thing with tipped workers? Like, is there not another way with a more serious policy proposal to get to them? I hate to be the annoying, you know, person at the party here, but this is kind of silly. Yeah, and on this, I will now modify my earlier phrase that they're doing everything right and they should just keep on doing it. But this I do think is silly. I mean, they can propose

tax reforms. They believe in various tax reforms reforms they have proposed various tax reforms in the biden-harris administration and they can attack god knows trump on tax policy all the tax breaks incredible tax cuts for the wealthy that's a good issue for them taxes and in a way by a living inside the silliness of not taxing one kind of income rather than another because it's tip income instead of you know salary income i suppose but than another because it's tip income instead of salary income, I suppose. But leaving that aside, it's also in a way legitimizing Trump. Yes, yes. Thank you.

Which is bad. His tax proposals are either gimmicks or handouts to the wealthy. Yes. That should be the line. Our tax proposal is a serious attempt to strengthen working class and middle class families, blah, blah. This is a pretty simple thing to do. And she sort of blew it a little bit, I think.

Yeah. Good news, though, for OnlyFans employees. this is a pretty simple thing to do and and she sort of blew it a little bit i think yeah yeah good news though for only fans employees if they want to kind of change their their system if you're kind of if you're into only fans so it's only tipping then uh that might be that might be a way for you to save money i don't know if that's a key demo maybe in maybe in vegas all right we have to uh pick on jd vance a little bit first before i lose you he did the sunday shows i will say he did better than he's been doing. He went and made the rounds and, you know, was on message, at least pivoting back to criticism of the Harris-Walls ticket for the most part. That said, at times he just can't help himself. And he's so personally unappealing. I

just don't know that it matters if he's on his talking points, but let's listen to just one clip that stood out to me. Okay. One last question. Please. And I can't believe I have to ask you this, but I do because Donald Trump has been attacking Kamala Harris's racial identity. He has not been, but ask your question. Well, he questioned her racial identity. He said a number of years ago, she happened to turn black. Her father is Jamaican. Do you believe Kamala Harris is black? I believe that Kamala Harris is whatever she says she is, but I believe importantly that President Trump is right that she's a chameleon. She pretends to be one thing in front of one audience. She pretends to be something different

in front of another audience. Look, Dana, she's not running a political campaign. She's running a movie. She only speaks to voters behind a teleprompter. Everything is scripted. She doesn't have her policy positions out there. She hasn't answered why she wanted to ban fracking, but now she doesn't. She wanted to fund police, but now she doesn't. She wanted to open the border, but now she doesn't. She should have to answer for why she presents

a different set of policies to one audience and a different set of policies to another audience. And I think that's what President Trump is getting at. This is a fundamentally fake person. She's different depending on who she's in front of. I just hate always that this is what Trump is getting at thing. Like we're going to try to sanitize his racist attacks, which is like, how did you live with yourself? And he literally has kids that are mixed race. Like they're going to be able to watch this clip. You know. He does the awkward

laugh thing. The flip-flopping message gets lost when you can't just be like, yeah, Kamala is black and she's Indian. She's both. She's mixed race. Yeah. And then follow with the pretty standard attacks. I generally thought that was, you said that he, I didn't watch much of it, but the clips I saw were adequate, I would say. And given that he has to continue to suck up to Trump, I suppose, you know, maybe as well as he could do. And also with Wallace speaking, I kind of felt like the VP stage of the race is kind of over. We've had our Vance, what's the opposite of a boomlet, you know, downtip or whatever that is, anti-boomlet. And we've had our Wallace boomlet. And I think it did hurt the Republicans a little bit and helped Harris

considerably, actually, I'd say, for that first introductory week. I kind of think now we go back to having Trump v. Harris, don't you think? And I feel like the VP stuff is mostly exhausted kind of itself. Yeah, I think so. Though I do think that the childless cat lady thing is going to continue to be a little bit of an anchor for them with women voters. And, you know, I guess the best spin we can have for J.D. Vance is that he chose to join a guy that, you know, propagates racist bigotry for the ticket so that he's obligated to spin the racist bigotry rather than just being like, hey, no, my kids are mixed race too. They're white and Indian. That's a pretty easy answer and moving forward. But he has to keep doing that.

And that's part of the deal with the devil. I guess that's the best J.D. can do. Bill Kristol, any final thoughts for us? i thought you'd be spending you know 15 20 minutes on jd's drag photo there from what is that thing is it real i guess it's real maybe i'm oversensitive i'm open to the fact that i'm oversensitive but i do not like the liberals on twitter doing the jd vance is wearing eyeliner jd vance wore drag thing it's like is there something wrong with wearing eyeliner i just you know maybe this is just me but it's like it feels like it's liberals doing some of these anti-gay anti-effeminate attacks like it's bad to be effeminate but they get to do it because they're nice to gay people and i don't know some of it just rubs me

the wrong way a little bit jd jd fucking sucks in a lot of ways and you know i thought he looked but he looked nice i thought he looked nicer in drag yeah it's not effective politically to make the point that you know what he was once a more normal if i can put it that way and better human being more tolerant more easygoing less crazed and now he's turned himself into this robotic and creepy version of whatever he is but you want to emphasize the current creepy version of what he is yeah not that he was once a you know whatever he was right i like that yeah if you're framing it in that way i'm i'm with you like he's turned he's turned to the dark side that's fine yeah you can guys you can see it on twitter i thought i thought jd fans look pretty good in drag i guess that's the nicest

thing i'll say about jd on the podcast this week bill crystal thank you so much we'll see you next monday up next chris cadillago let's go Thank you so much. We'll see you next Monday. Up next, Chris Catalago, Politico. All right, we are back with Chris Catalago, California Bureau Chief for Politico, based out of Sacramento. I used to see him out there when I was in Oaktown and maybe the best guy on the Kamala Harris beat, probably the best guy. Chris, how are you doing, man? Good. How are you? Thank you for that. Yeah. We miss you in the Bay. Yeah, I know. It was a chapter of my life. It was one I reflect on fondly, but I don't know,

life's pretty good in New Orleans. So there's two stories I want to talk about. The first one is this crazy Donald Trump story. Let me set the scene for people. There was this insane press conference he did. There was rambling, dissembling at Mar-a- story. Let me set the scene for people. There was this insane press conference he did. There was rambling, dissembling at Mar-a-Lago. There was one where he rolled out the idea that his insurrection was better than the Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. But he made a one-aside comment about how he was in a helicopter with San Francisco, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, and how he was down talking Kamala and the helicopter had a crash landing. And I don't, you know, that flew by me. I was like, I don't, that sounds weird, but you know, there are other weird stuff happening. Then a few hours later, I saw you

on the beach going like this did not happen. He was only ever an helicopter with Jerry Brown. And the story ended up getting weirder from there. So give us the backstory. How did that perk your ears? Yeah, I'll take some blame for the floating the Jerry thing. You know, you throw it out there possibility. I had no idea when we were kind of just almost throwing stuff at the wall that that was going to like take on, you know, that that was going to be like the central piece of actual news stories, which kind of tells you something about where we're at right now. Yeah, Brown's folks almost immediately were like, no, definitely didn't happen on our flight, which was in 2018 with Gavin Newsom, where they were in Marine One, basically, and then some other

aircraft. They were checking out the fires. That was the context of that one. It was like Trump. Yeah. And the funny thing about that, that people mentioned was this was paradise. And Trump kept referring to it as pleasure, which was really the only thing that Newsom and Brown remembered about that flight. The idea that some of these people in private, let alone with Trump, would be trashing Kamala Harris is just, it just kind of strains any kind of reality that you would see. And kind of same thing when I heard the Willie Brown part, it was like, you know, Willie Brown says a lot of things and can kind of riff with the best of them,

but he's not someone who has a history of speaking ill of, or disparaging Kamala Harris. So that part just didn't make sense either. The timelines didn't really add up. People found some clips about Willie Brown who had been in a rough helicopter landing in LA, but there was no sign that Trump had anything to do with that. And then Trump just doubled and tripled down on this. He said he would sue the Times for this, basically said that this had been written about in books,

which, you know, that doesn't make it true. He called Maggie Haverman, apparently, and she said that he was ranting at her in like a little childish voice, like, you're wrong, I'm right, which is, you know, a sign somebody is a mature and stable candidate for president. But anyway, it's always hard to make sense of these things. But it felt like the whole reason for that anecdote was to say that there were Democrats who were who were trashing Harris. And that, I guess, fell through pretty quickly. And then it just guess, fell through pretty quickly. And then it just became a question of like, did this ever happen at all?

Like, did this have anything to do with anything? And a lot of people were calling Willie Brown. He's getting a lot of media, a lot of attention, which anyone who knows Willie Brown knows clearly is something he loves. And from that kind of came this idea of like, well, who else could it be? And there was a lot of kind of chatter on the ground about potentially somebody else. This man who we found out was on a hard landing with Trump, Nate Holden, who's 95 years old

now and was an elected official in LA with Mayor Bradley back then. So this is way back in the day. He was someone who got to know Trump, kind of a classic elected official where Trump is trying to do a big project in their city. And he's trying to show off and show them like, you got to come to the Taj, you got to come see some of this stuff I built. So he was trying to redevelop the Ambassador Hotel, which of course has its own incredible history. That's where RFK Sr. was killed. Yeah. And there was basically these competing proposals back in the day.

Should this be a school? Should this be several schools? Interestingly enough, there were some elected officials in LA at the time to kind of paint a picture here who wanted it to be a school because they opposed busing for desegregation out to other schools outside of kind of Koreatown, where this is, kind of downtown LA. And so Holden was very much behind this Trump project, this redevelopment was going to be, this will not shock you at all, one of if not the tallest buildings in the world, when it was being proposed. And so it was kind of a scramble had just kind of heard through the grapevine, this name Holden

come up as someone who possibly could have been on the helicopter with Trump. And then by chance, we found out in talking to Holden, that he has these kind of regular calls, he's an older guy with Barbara Rez, who's an old Trump executive, who's written books about Trump, obviously, been critical of Trump in these later years. And she was able to confirm this, it actually, there's actually a passage in her book. I think she said the publisher wasn't even crazy about the passage because they were like, who really cares about this? But glad she put it in there because it allowed us to confirm that this hard landing did in fact happen. And even after the story came out, we had Trump spokespeople and folks who continued to send us these statements, send us these true social posts where he's basically quadrupled down on the idea that he was in this helicopter with Willie Brown.

He doesn't want to let it go. So we've got the stubbornness there. But then there's the other side of it, which is, I guess, is it stubbornness and lying? Or is it possible that Trump has just, you know, mixed up his black politicians from California because Nate Olden is also black? It's definitely possible he mixed them up. This is a time where you got to remember when Trump is reaching out to elected officials, trying to kind of sweet talk folks about his projects.

Willie Brown, I don't know if as early as 1990, he was really in the mix, but Willie Brown was someone that he like consulted, someone that he would reach out to as kind of a primary contact to say like, who do I need to hit up about this? Who are some of the local officials who I can meet with? And so there was like, to his credit,

and I know some folks probably don't want to hear this. There was some overlap in these worlds. It's not totally out of the question that Willie Brown would sort of surface, but that's not what he's doing here. He's, he's insisting that this was Willie Brown on this helicopter with him. And that just so far does not seem to be true. Does Holden say that he was critical of Kamala Harris? Is that possible? If that's also so long ago, like that was before she was DA, right? Kamala Harris would really not have been on many people's radars at all in 1990. I mean, she was like, I think, finishing law school and becoming kind of a frontline prosecutor in Alameda County at the

time. And so this idea that anybody would be trashing her for any reason back then just doesn't make any sense. To sum up, Trump is either hallucinating the story, mixing up his black people, or just like creating a pernicious lie because he wants to resurface the kind of Willie Brown-Kamala- Kamala Harris relationship accusation. So an L either way you put it. I do want to, well, I got you. I wanted to have you on for that little, a little enjoyable nugget, but I've been wanting to kind of pick your brain about the Harris campaign.

You had another story over the weekend, but how there's a little bit of tension between some of the new people that have come in, mostly from Obama world, and the Biden people that were sticking around. I'm a little less interested in that, because that's going to be a natural tension and more interested in like whether there's any kind of red flags here about the vice president's management style. I mean, you wrote about the 2020 campaign, which had a pretty enjoyable phrase. It was the multi-headed structure. Harris installed at the top for 2020 campaign was a disaster, chaotic, creating choke points that nearly ground the operations to a halt.

Decisions took forever to make. So that was brought in 2020. But even going back further, she just had a lot of turnover with her team. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but outside of her family, she doesn't really have anybody that's been around since before the AG days or the original Senate campaign that she relies upon, right? I've made this comparison before, and I don't know that people have really thought about this before. So in this time where Biden has picked her as his VP, she was going through kind of another

turnover of staff. There were folks who were around her and had stuck closely by her, both from California in the Senate office, through the 2019 primary, and then into the Veepstake. So there was like somewhat of a kind of core, at least a few people who were around. Like who would make up that core? There was a few people who were close staffers. There's a woman named Rohini, who's a top policy advisor, who stuck with her pretty closely kind of through that period. There weren't a lot of people during the veep stakes, but she was certainly kind of a main

person who had been in that Senate office. And the reason this is kind of critical is when they're doing things on the fly and they have to figure out like, okay, where was she on this thing? What had she said on this particular piece that you kind of need to be able to marshal that institutional memory and just like move really quickly. And so people have mentioned, as you know, probably better than a lot of people on campaigns, that's a key thing. The reason I did bring up Trump is because for all his insecurities, like Mike Pence had a core group of advisors who were able to stay with him, who were close by.

He even was able to have a super PAC open after getting picked as VP, which nobody really remembers because he didn't really do anything with that super PAC. But Kamala, on the other hand, was like her data, all of her stuff was just like thrown into the DNC. It was thrown into the Biden campaign. There was like less of a autonomy that she had.

And she understood that. That was like something we wrote about early in the VP process where she knew that like to win the Biden team's trust, she would need to kind of set aside clearly her own ambition in that moment and set aside these relationships that she had. Some of her advisors who ran the Senate race, who ran her 2019 campaign, did not move out to D.C., did not work with her at that time. And so she's kind of needed to reinvent that inner circle aside from her own family with whether it be chiefs of staff. She had a first chief of staff who did not work out. And then she came and got Lorraine Volz, who was someone from the Gore era, Clinton Gore era, who knew Ron Klain, knew folks in the

White House. And the thought behind that was to really kind of get these two offices in better sync. And that was something that she did and just try to kind of settle the turnover among her staff. There's always going to be turnover in the White House in these high profile offices, no matter who it is. But because of this history, people were looking at it and saying, oh, man, she can't keep the staff. She can't do these things. And fast forward to today, there is like a necessity besides her political chief of staff. I already mentioned Sheila Nix and I already mentioned Lorraine Volz. And of course, she's brought in folks who a lot of these listeners probably know, like Brian Fallon, who's doing high level comms for her. She has a few other people who have been around for a while.

And then of course, you go from an office, I mean, this is what people on the Biden campaign said, is you go from an office of what 20, 25 people, including a handful of those who are close to her. And then you have to like, you know, build out very, very quickly and bring in folks who she can rely on. And I think there's kind of some kitchen cabinet level advice she's getting from her brother-in-law, Tony West, from some others there. But this is kind of a necessity of people talk about like building the plane while they're flying it. There's all these kind of analogies that they're using. But a lot of it traces back to this idea that unlike someone like Biden, who had this like core group of Biden folks who had been with him for decades, she needed to kind of bring new folks in. And so that's the process where we're seeing like right now in real time. There is two sides of that coin, right? Like it's balance in all things. We saw some of the

downsides of Biden relying only on people that he's known for 40 years and maybe were a little less clear eyed than they could have been, to say the least, about the political situation he was in. On the other side, though, you do, I guess it's just a little nagging worry that I have. I mean, there's the institutional knowledge side of things that you mentioned. And on the Jeb campaign, for example, we had Sally Bradshaw around who'd been with him forever. But even still, I was like always trying to interview all the past comms people to just figure out like, where was he on all this stuff? You know, like that, that stuff sometimes can put you behind the eight ball. But less than that is just kind of the the reliable advisor side of it. Like, that's the thing that I just think about. Like you gave a couple of those names. And Brian Fallon, who I've known for a while, who's a top level comms guy, really smart. And he joined her like five months ago. Right.

Like he's just been there for not not long. And so it's like when push is coming to shove on tough questions, who is she talking to? And it's kind of not really clear. Right. Yeah, I think this is, you know, to get outside advice, to get this kind of unvarnished sense of where she's at. I mean, there are some names you could throw out from the past, some advisors. There's some crossover right now, folks helping out. And there's others listeners might know who have given her advice in the past, political professionals.

Aside from all these folks they've mentioned, there's the Jim Bargolises of the world, a well-known ad guy. And of course, you know, we mentioned some of these people coming in. Now their titles might be associated with like, you know, Jen Palmieri is the second gentleman. Yeah, Jen Palmieri is coming in, who I was with on the circus, like longtime good advisor with David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager. Mitch Stewart is a longtime cutter. It's like all these people are great are great but again they came in a week ago you know so there's just like a trust building period you know that maybe could lead to some some issues i know i'm i'm thrilled that she's bringing in a list people but it's i guess it's just something that's notable that there were not any of those kind of people around already here's kind of the thing I heard, which is potentially like a best case scenario is

everybody, including her, and this is people you talk to who have known her for a long time, are very much dialed in and know what the challenge is. They're on a very, very tight timeline. There isn't necessarily, now this doesn't mean this won't happen at times, but there really isn't time for the kind of getting your sea legs, figuring things out, you know, backbiting, back and forth, infighting. And I think this is part of what General Malley Dillon, the campaign chair who was obviously with Biden and before that had gotten brought into the Biden campaign when he was trying to win that primary. I think it was after Nevada. Her point on this was like, each of these people have like a defined portfolio

that they can fall back on. Like the worst thing you hear sometimes from folks on campaigns is this kind of roving senior advisor with no portfolio who's just gonna like, you know, pop in whenever they want and throw out some advice and then go talk to reporters on the side. And so that's very much like what they're trying to avoid. They don't want these folks, you know, without portfolios

wandering around, throwing advice at her when she doesn't take it, you know, going to their favorite reporter and saying, Oh, my God, I can't believe she, you know, didn't listen to me on that thing. They are very much hoping that that does not happen. These people are all very much like plugged in, that they all understand the mission that they get that this is like bigger than them. And so, like you say, you know, we have to see how this works out, how they interact with her, with her chiefs here, how in sync this operation in Wilmington, which is still in Wilmington, is with her core folks who are on the road and who are traveling with her. And can they stay very much in sync, which we know on kind of a quick new cycle they have to do. And so there's a lot of challenges with getting this organization off the ground for

a new candidate. And that's, again, what we're seeing right now. And they're hopeful that everybody knows the assignment. And, you know, we just have to see. It's working so far, but that's just something to continue to monitor, man. I appreciate your reporting. You're doing great work over there. Everybody go follow Chris to keep up to speed on the day-to-day with the Kamala campaign. And, you know, I guess any other future time that Donald Trump mixes up black California politicians, he'd be a good person to go to on that. Chris, thank you so much for the time, brother. Of course.

Anytime. Thank you. All right. We'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the Bullard Podcast. See you all then. Peace. Up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, yeah, it's a plane. All right, we'll be back tomorrow for another edition of the Bullard Podcast. See you all then. Peace. Fear's a good thing, it teaches us humility And it can keep us saving So I'll fly high if I have to

If I could, I'd take the train Living away from home on the road all the time All the time Driving up and down and back and forth No reason, all right Yeah, you guessed right Makes a grown man confront his fears, consider options, get normally declined. I'm gonna buy my ticket to fly. I roll me up more I'm getting on an airplane and I'm flying home Step in, top it down, I'm learning to fly Jump across the country, I'll get too fucking high

Too fucking high, I don't wanna die Too fucking high The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.