The Bulwark Podcast - Dan Pfeiffer: A Scared and Seething Trump

Episode Date: August 1, 2024

We are witnessing a man who thought he was cruising to a landslide who's now afraid he doesn't know how to talk about Kamala—or how to beat her. Plus, he's also worried about that prison issue.  At the same time, the election has quickly shifted from a referendum on Joe Biden to one about the future vs. the past. Dan Pfeiffer joins Tim Miller today. show notes: Dan's Message Box newsletter

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and senior advisor to Barack Obama. And most importantly, I just found out this morning, 2008 communications director for Evan Bayh's presidential run, Dan Pfeiffer. Welcome to the board podcast. That role lasted 10 days between the announcement of the exploratory committee and then him dropping out 10 days later. You did a nice rollout, I bet. And I just wanted to welcome you. I didn't realize how centered you are. Between my John Huntsman for president experience and your Evan Bayh experience this is practically a no labels podcast exactly welcome aboard happy to have you much to discuss

i want to read to you a headline i know you're a big fan of the work that our friends at politico do the day is july 18th 2024 so 13 days ago politicoico. A change Trump question mark. Some allies detect an existential shift after the shooting. Here's the change Trump yesterday in an interview with three black journalists at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference in Chicago. Let's take a quick listen. How do you define DEI? Go ahead. How do you define it?

Diversity, equity, inclusion. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead. Is that what your definition? That is literally the words. Give me a definition then. Would you give me a definition?

Give me a definition. Sir, I'm asking you a question, a very direct question. Define it for me, if you will. I just defined it, sir. Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the ticket because she is a black woman? Well, I can say, no, I think it's maybe a little bit different. So I've known her a long time indirectly not directly very much and she was always of indian heritage and she was only promoting indian

heritage i didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black so i don't know is she indian or is she black she is all hmm hmm focus like a laser beam message there dan what was your takeaway from from that performance yesterday i mean first like in fairness of the folks at politico and all the other people who wrote these very credulous stories about how trump was put aside even the more disciplined trump campaign part of it just that he was this changed man since the assassination attempt. Look, there have been no other previous examples

of press writing that Trump had changed and had blowing up in their face spectacularly like it did here. So, I mean, everyone gets one, right? Exactly. We've only been doing it for 10 years. Who could have seen it coming? I mean, this is by far Trump's worst public performance

of the 2024 campaign, hands down. I mean, he's by far Trump's worst public performance of the 2024 campaign, hands down. I mean, he's had plenty of bad moments, right? He was convicted of multiple felonies. He has promoted political violence, bloodbath, etc. But this is the one where it was a just reminder on a huge stage of just what a terrible and very beatable candidate that Donald Trump is, right? And you've watched Donald Trump as closely as anyone over these 10 years. So apologies to you. But like my takeaway was, this is scared Trump. This is when he feels backed into a corner. He doesn't really know what's going on. It doesn't feel in control. And he is clearly dealing with the fact that 13 days ago, he thought he was cruising for a landslide against Joe Biden. And now he has no idea what this race is, how to beat Kamala Harris,

how to talk about her. And it was actually, frankly, quite gratifying. Yeah, your newsletter this morning is on that about how it shows that he's afraid, maybe the word I use maybe is seething. I think he's seething at Kamala Harris, and he was seething on stage and maybe afraid of losing, starting to be afraid of losing. I do, there is a psychological, you know, there is another podcast that puts Trump on the couch full time. So, you know, I defer to the expertise of losing i do there is a psychological you know there is another podcast that puts trump on the couch full time so you know i defer to the expertise of them but uh the actual psychologist but there is like this element of he is somewhat scared you have to think about going to jail yeah and he lets that slip the mask slip on that sometimes he loses this he may very well go to jail and there was a period of time where that risk started to seem

low right and he seemed a little bit you know more lighter in both his speeches and his energies and he hasn't done a lot of hostile interviews like this i regardless of what the motivation what the actual psychology is like dude is acting shook yeah exactly my question is so if we grant that he shook i do wonder also like there's a strategic element to this when i was watching it live i thought this was him just blurting this out but in the intervening 24 hours now they had a image at the event on the big screen in harrisburg last night about how kamala harris is indian. He put out a multiple bleats on his social media feed, one in an interview with Mindy Kaling and Kamala, where they talked about being Indian, one this morning with a picture of her in a bindi with the Indian side of her family.

So like, do you think that was like them panicking and the staff panicking and backfilling? Or do you think they're like, no, we're doing this? I probably a little bit of both. Like I sort of always view Trump's brain, like sort of like, as you see Homer Simpson thinking, right? It's sort of, it's like from A to B to C, where it's in his head, he's like, I was doing well with black voters, right? Relatively, but I was doing, I was doing well, black voters, they already targeted the campaign. Joe Biden was white, Kamala Harris is black. She's now doing, according to the polls we've seen, better than Joe Biden was doing with black voters. So my strategy would be to tell people she's not black. This is how his brain works. I don't think it's not a very

effective strategy. I think there is a, and I use this term very loosely, subtle strategy of trying to make her seem like a phony that they want to do. But subtlety is not something that he has capacity for. And now they're doing a little bit of we saw you know we saw this all the time and he was the white house where he was like would tweet out some sort of policy and then they would try to create they would you know they would above it used to call these intellectual zambonis who would go along afterwards trying to explain it and i think there's a little bit of this where they're like oh this wasn't a complete disaster he didn't like melt out on stage this is part of a plan and here's the plan.

So I think there's like probably an element of strategy buried in there, but not to the degree Trump did it. And some of the stuff they're doing afterwards is to try to make what Trump did look more strategic than it was. Yeah. I mean, the phony part of it, J.D. Vance was asked about this last night. You would think that given that J.D.

Vance's children are both white and Indian, he would understand the concept of how somebody could be both Indian and black or both Indian and white. But he did not choose to educate his new boss on that point. Instead, he did the phony attack on Kamala, which I think is conceivably more effective where he does the, you know, kamala grew up in canada she lived in canada with her academic parents and she's doing this fake southern black accent in georgia how effective is that really again normal people understand that you know when you sometimes go in the south this happens to me occasionally my draws comes out but still like maybe that phoniness attack is better than you ain't black yeah i mean maybe this is also sort of when you exist entirely in the right-wing mega bubble is you know tens of millions of

americans identify as biracial right that is that is their identity if you everyone knows mixed-race families right and particularly younger people right that's even more prominent so this idea that this is somehow some foreign concept that you could be both black and Indian or Indian and white in J.D. Vance's kids' case, that isn't mysterious to the vast majority of people, and certainly not the people in the persuadable voter universe. So it's just, if you want to do the phony thing, maybe you could.

I sort of agree that's not where I would have gone with it. But this is not the way to do it. This is just leaning in on your worst possible instincts. And it does give some credence to the view that people have that Trump running against a black woman, an Indian woman would sort of cause him to lash out in some of his most damaging ways. And that clearly is what happened on the stage. To me, it's not, it's obvious that this backfires. I just think that all of the evidence is that there's a category of swing voter of my people, like college educated, former Republican voting, suburban people that are not

interested in Donald Trump's racism and that that turns them off. And maybe some of those folks were particularly soft on Biden for various various reasons this could thrust them back in the commons like to me i think it's an obvious loser but just to like challenge our priors and the two pushbacks i've seen on this is one from people on the left saying that like raising the salience of race in this campaign is bad for kamala and you know two you know maybe there is some line here that could appeal to some segment of younger black men and, you know, in Atlanta or in Detroit or whatever, who are like, yeah, who are like, yeah, she's not one of us. Like, do you think there's any merit to either of those arguments? I think, look, we navigated throughout both Obama campaigns, the question of the salience of race.

And is he black enough? Mixed race guy. There's two questions, right? Just whenever the conversation was race, it became messy, right? But there's also this thing is you're kind of overthinking it because Kamala Harris is black. Barack Obama was black.

No one's gonna be surprised by that fact. And so you can sort of, like there's this big sort of infamous debate around the 2008 convention speech, which was happening around the anniversary of the March on Washington. And there was this debate among some on our consulting team who are not podcasters that Obama should not mention it because that would be raising the significance of race. And Obama and Favreau and a bunch of other people were like, that's absurd, right? Everyone

knows he's black, right? It's like, it's not, no one's gonna be surprised by that. Hot streak for the podcasters, for the self-important podcasters being correct. They were right in 2008. They were right in July of this year. Man, I don't know. Do you guys have any misses? Do you have any misses that you'd like to reflect on?

2016 was probably a miss. Yes, I will own that miss. But how you respond when they try to bring up race, how you respond to it matters. I thought Kamala Harris's response about going at him for division and chaos was the right way to do that yeah actually we have this audio let's listen to it here's how kamala responded last night we all here remember what those four years were like and today we were given yet another reminder this afternoon Today we were given yet another reminder. This afternoon, Donald Trump spoke at the annual meeting of the National Association And it was the same old show. The divisiveness and the disrespect.

And let me just say, the American people deserve better. The American people deserve better. The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth, a leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength. I thought she was going to say we're tired of the same old shit. I could have used that instead of the same old show when she started to say shh. Besides that, I thought that was effective. What was your take on how she responded to it?

Yeah, I thought that was very good. I thought it was where you are driving the story and keeping it in the news for another couple hours there. You propel the news cycle forward without really trying to, Donald Trump wants to pull you into a debate here. And she avoids that. And she pivots back to her message that he's division, he's chaos, he's the past, right? And I think that's actually one of the more damaging parts of how Trump talked about this. He really seems like an old guy who doesn't get it. You can get away with that running against Joe Biden. You can't really get away with that running against Kamala Harris. I thought it was a good response. Yeah, we talked to Palmieri on Friday's pod about

this. And just from her Hillary context, I'm interested in your kind of view from the Obama context. And she thought that maybe I'm putting words in her mouth, maybe at times there's a little bit too much of an instinct to say, oh, that's misogyny, oh, that's sexism, rather than just kind of letting the obvious racism or sexism be there and going back on offense, maybe subliminally hitting on that while sticking on the message. And that seems to be what she was doing last night. And I assume you have the same view. Yeah, I think that's right. I think the thing you have to do, the way you propel this forward and where she did it and how she did it last night was appropriate. But I think propelling it forward is two things. One is, because he's going to continue going after her. I think the way she pivoted to say, like, this is not about me,

right? It's about everyone else, right? And make it about the people in the country. And then also, when this is the thing that Democrats make the mistake with Trump a lot is we don't explain why he's doing certain things. So he's dividing people. Why is he dividing people, right? It's just sort of you lean into the, you know, what we call the race class narrative about he's dividing us so you can put in place this MAGA agenda that would do X, Y, and Z. People are pretty comfortable Trump is a giant asshole. And they're pretty comfortable with him as a racist, misogynistic asshole.

But you have to explain to a lot of people why that matters to them and their lives. They proved in 2016, they're okay with having an asshole president. But it is like if you can explain as I think Biden did to a successful degree in 2020, why that affects people's lives and hurts them. I think that's the next sort of turn of the wheel here. One more sign that it was good. And then I kind of want to talk about Kamala's broader message. The Republicans last night, this is playbook this morning, they spent the evening calling Republicans to find out what they thought, what happened to the plan of attacking Harris as the border czar wants to end private health insurance, decriminalize border crossings, etc. And he said, they said that virtually every Republican they spoke with was flat out distraught. Indeed, the entire line of

attack reeks of desperation. One said they pointed out that the Trump camp is now launching ads in North Carolina. It's always in these situations. I'm like, if I have doubts about my instincts, it's probably a good sign that the Republicans are also panicking about this new line of attack. I just think as a general rule, if Tommy Tuberville thinks your attack was too racist, you've gone too far. Tu's like tupperville is in there going i'm not going to touch that i'm not going to i have a free line i'm trying to give out to mitt romney which is that you know that trump should understand that somebody that is part oompa loompa and also part white that you can be both at the same time you can be both orange and white just like you

can be both black and brown all right let's talk about connor's message alex thompson at axios this morning has this out you since you're the message box guru i want your take he wrote president biden wanted to make his campaign about democracy in january 6th but vice president harris wants it to be about freedom and the future and her first two campaign rallies is likely nominee and in her first ads harris and her campaign have not used the word democracy. And I'm going to add onto that, they barely use the word Biden. I mean, this is kind of a crazy thing to say, because I do believe that democracy is at stake in this election. But I have been a longtime critic of the idea that we should run on democracy, because democracy is a very, this very nebulous thing that's for most of the target voters that

we need to get are ones who are more cynical about politics than the rest of us which is saying a lot frankly so basically you become the status quo party right we're going to save democracy we're going to save this political system that does not you think does not work for you and you think is so broken that you're even open to considering voting for someone like donald trump so freedom is a much more powerful way of getting to the same thing. Future versus past is that is always the message you want in a campaign. And that was not available to Biden. And it's just it is remarkable, just and we'll see how this goes in the coming months. But just how quickly we went from a referendum on Joe Biden's first four years, right and comparing that to Donald Trump's four years to a actual debate about what's

going to happen in the next four years. And Kamala Harris is like, she embodies that that's been the thrust of her campaign. She's not out there litigating the CHIPS Act, or passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill. She's just out there talking about what she's going to do. And she's going to have absolutely have to add details to that. And what he would do that's bad. And that is just that is just a huge shift. And so that's where you want to be because you can make donald trump old in the past you got a real shot here yeah it's just so refreshing to to not have to be bogged down in all of that defense of everything and a lot of times biden was right on the merits but you know if you just felt like you had to defend everything it just it felt weak it felt like a losing message and

i don't know i've been a lot of folks when i've been doing the rounds have been asking me about the kamala flip-flops or whatever the move to the center on all these issues and how she should handle that whenever the interviews start and you know my point is always just like i love that her message is future not past right that's just like i'm not getting bogged down and all that we have a plan for the future donald trump doesn't here's what we're going to do on energy. You know, here's what we're going to do on healthcare. Keep pivoting back to that. We're not going back and we're not going to get bogged down in what happened on the 2019 campaign. What's your sense for that? Do you think that's the right way forward for her? A hundred percent. And it is just, this is what

happens when you run with the United Party. You know, Donald Trump has been able to get away with all kinds of things, right? You know, he can break with Republican orthodoxy on things that he thinks are unpopular, parties with them, right? That was the convention, do whatever you want, united. Biden did not have that because half of Democratic voters didn't want him to be the nominee. He was basically running this year and a half primary to unite his base as the general election was happening. And Kamala Harris has a united Democratic Party from an instance. So she can make these decisions that are the right decisions for her campaign to win. And she's like an eight blowback. People aren't coming after her. It's easy to do this in a statement to Politico about why you change your position on the federal

jobs guarantee. She's going to sit for interviews. She's going to have to do it. Great switch, by the way. Just thumbs up on every switch she's had. She's just getting totally bulwark filled. You know, I'm getting emails like, are you concerned interviews she's going to have to do it great switch by the way just thumbs up on every switch she's had she's just getting totally bulwark filled you know i'm getting emails like are you concerned that she's flip-flopping i'm like every flip slow star has been from a vision i didn't like to one i like so i have no complaints so far when she gets to the you know on a in a real an interview a town hall a debate stage she's gonna have to have more than just like ice changing position you go forward but there's also this intervening event if And she was vice president for four years. She was like, I learned things there. And this is where we are now. This is what I got to be in every big meeting. Here's what I know. Here's what we should do. And she also has the ability, and this is what's so

important about the future part of her message, to find ways to chart her own course on issues that Biden has had problems with on inflation in Gaza, et cetera. We did these things for these four years. For the next four years, this is what I want to do. And it's going to be slightly that Biden has had problems with on inflation in Gaza, etc. We did these things for these four years for the next four years. This is what I want to do. And it's gonna be slightly different in these ways. And that's not disrespectful or dismissive of Biden. It's just his future versus past. What do you think about the fact she hasn't done an interview yet? I mean, I'm just assume she's just waiting for the right pot save America episode to appear on. We have a very busy calendar to request in. I'm sure that'd be a really hard-hitting hard-hitting interview i'm

sure you're planning on really you know holding her to account if she came out she came on this pod but you'll be trying to take her down we do have a request and we'd love to hear from the vice president and i and i would like to talk to her about all the flip-flops to the correct positions that she's been taking very encouraged by it happy to hear from her on that i guess the more serious version of this question is, at some point, does the pressure start to build on it? That's what I worry about a little bit. I like that she's had a very clean week and a half.

It's kind of like when you're rolling double sixes, why stop? But at some point, she's going to have to do it. I think the question from a planning perspective is when. She's going to announce her VP early next week. Then she's got two weeks to convention. I would say she probably has to do some sort of high-profile sit-down. And honestly, if it's about pressure, doing

the Bulwark Pod or Pod Save America is not going to alleviate that pressure. It's not like all of a sudden the New York Times could be like, oh, they were on these two very pro-Kamala Harris podcasts. That's fine. She has met her obligation. It would help. Might as well get some reps in. Madam VP, you might as well get a few reps in. Yeah.

I think it would be massively more impactful for her actual goal of winning to do those podcasts and do some of those other more traditional interviews. But if you worry about it's just that narrative, she's not doing it, we won't solve that problem. You probably want to try to get one in before the convention so that you can just do that, have your convention, come out of the convention with your tour, and then do some media stuff there. But probably in the next week or so, I think is probably when she's got to do it. Get on the other side of the VP rollout, I think. What do you think about the worries about Shapiro?

Do you share the concerns that it will dampen the vibes with the left, with the progressives at all? Do you think that's overstated? I don't think so. I think that's overstated. Me too. Everyone comes with pros and cons. I think Kelly, if I was just doing based up pure on paper, Kelly is probably the one I would pick.

He's got gravitas. He's got a great story. He's an astronaut. Arizona, good border credentials. But Shapiro would be great. Tim Walls, great. Brings less in terms of home state benefit, which I think is probably overstated anyway. But the internet has fallen in love with Tim Walls, and I thinkings less in terms of home state benefit, which I think is probably overstated anyway.

But the internet has fallen in love with Tim Walls, and I think that's kind of cool, which is a very surprising thing. The real strange turn of events is that the governor of Minnesota is now an internet star. Walls is fine with me. I'm fine with all of them. There are no's that I don't like.

I'm not as Walls-pilled as everybody else. Occasionally, things happen with my new teammates on the pro-democracy movement, where they get really excited about something. I'm like, this isn't giving me the thrill up my leg but that's okay i respect everybody's whatever gets you going i respect that i want to move on to kind of looking at the polls and um i'm talking about like the campaign mechanics when i initially emailed you i you did a segment over on on pod save america about kind of what a campaign is going to look like for

the next three months i want to do that but just really quick on the democracy thing let me just push back into the other side of this argument. There were a lot of people in 2022 that said that the Democrats were focused too much on democracy. It ended up working, maybe not democracy as a highfalutin principle, but like the idea that these people are crazy, they're anti democracy, they're a threat along with they're a threat to, you know, your rights for women, you know, with the overturn of Ro roe like those two paired together worked and so would it be a mistake to completely ignore it and i say this in particular the other clip from the trump event last night where he was talking about january 6th and he was totally dismissive of officer sicknick and the other officers that

were injured and said he actually cared more about the the limestone it was like than he did about the injured cops who cared as a builder he cared about that the limestone was defaced by progressives last week and that was more important to him than the dead police officer that's sick stuff and i think there is a certain type of people if you look at arizona the john mccain voter that that appeals to so is there an argument that you shouldn't totally abandon that i think that's conflating two different arguments and i think the democrats learned the wrong lessons from 2022 that we've sort of had this retroactive narrative that biden gave these democracy speeches like this is a big part of the biden argument uh over the last few weeks gave these democracy speeches that they

somehow turned the tide in the election and there's no evidence to support that and there's no evidence people actually consume those speeches that election was about abortion and extremism your listeners consume those speeches the listeners of the bowler's podcast loved the blood red mind and speech i do i do think they're already voting for democrats in the midterms probably right i wasn't going to speak to your listeners i know our listeners were uh they did not need one democracy speech to flip from uh dr Oz to John Fetterman. That was not where we were. But the January 6th stuff is about extremism. Abortion is actually an argument about extremism, right? And I've seen this in your colleagues' focus groups. I've seen this

in other primary research. I've seen that Dobbs did unlock a view of Republicans as extremists that did not exist before. And so that there is a potent combination. And election truthing also is a piece of evidence of extremism. And that basically what Democrats successfully did is they put in a time of high inflation and dissatisfaction with the incumbent president and the economy, they very successfully made an election about abortion, and they painted their opponents as extremism. Both those things are very available in this election, but that is different than saying, we are doing this to save democracy. It's almost semantics, and I hate getting into like Frank Luncian word choice here, but freedom is, I think, a much more resonant way of talking about the things that are at risk than this amorphous political system. I'm basically with you. I also

think that there are two groups of voters that are really on the table here and one is the least engaged voters that just is going straight over their head the democracy stuff i do think that there can be a niche you know argument for the you know some of my people and the georgia burbs the kemp warnock voters where you're talking about just donald trump's totally un-american attack on the country's principles and what happened on january 6th but i i think it's like a big thematic argument it's hard to argue calmless argument of hey i'm a younger woman that wants to make sure to protect your freedoms from this fat old authoritarian like that feels like a better contrast than you know quoting the

founding father so some people do like Hamilton, I've heard. Swing state polls out this morning from my old colleagues at Public Opinion Strategies. It's a GOP polling firm, but they're legit. Pennsylvania, Kamala 48, Trump 45. Wisconsin, Kamala 48, Donald 46. Arizona, Trump 48, Harris 43. Nevada, Trump 46, Harris 45, Michigan, tied. What's your thoughts on, I mean, it's just one poll, we've seen kind of some movement, we're only a week

and a half in, do you expect more movement in her direction? Like, what do you think about the map at this point? It still has to wash itself through the system, right? We are in a, like, just the last, as you said, like the last 13 days of pure tumult here have got that have gone on. But what I think you can take away from the polls we've seen is Kamala Harris is in this race in a way that Joe Biden certainly was not. And the Biden map was three states, and he was losing in all three, right? And now we are tied in Wisconsin, maybe tied in Wisconsin, to be fair. But his ceiling was 270 electoral votes. I would have given him a ceiling of 281. He could have won Arizona, couldn't he have, maybe?

No? It was over? 270? No, I don't think he could have won it. I mean, anything is possible, but that's even less likely. These are toss-up races in all six states now, right? And I think you mentioned this earlier, but the fact that the Trump campaign is on the air in North Carolina just says that there has been a fundamental shift in the underlying dynamics of the race. It doesn't mean that they're in danger of losing North Carolina per se,

but if Biden was in the race, they'd be on the air in New Mexico, right? That's what's changed, right? They've gone from offense to a modicum of defense there, which makes sense. There is an anti-MAGA majority in every one of these states, right? That was there in 2020 and there in 2022. And Kamala Harris has united that anti-MAGA majority in a way Joe Biden hadn't. Is that enough to win in all those states? Maybe, maybe not, but it's certainly enough to be incredibly competitive in all of them. So as you look at the map now, well, I don't want to prejudice you with my thought. Where do you think she's weakest? Probably Nevada, would be my guess.

That's the most pro-Trump demographically, if you believe that he has movement with working-class Latino voters and working-class white voters, obviously, as his base. And Arizona too, right? I mean, I guess if you look at the numbers, there's been some movement among Latino voters in the polls, in the national polls. But it feels like still the group that is a little bit dicey for her right like it seems pretty clearly that she has

already basically consolidated most of biden's weakness with young voters and black voters and hasn't lost a ton maybe just slightly there was some evidence that she's moved maybe slightly down among older white voters. But I guess that's the question, which is that can she do well enough with Latino voters to carry Arizona and Nevada? With young voters, based on some of the points, she has gotten back to Biden 2020 margins. Black voters, she's still not yet back

to Biden 2020 margins. We need to see more polling. We're looking at some real subsamples here, some smaller polls. With Latino voters, she has improved, but not yet to, that's probably where the largest delta is between her and the Biden 2020 margins among those three groups is Latino voters. So that obviously puts the states you mentioned more challenging than the ones where you can get there with young voters, you know, high black support, high black turnout, and, you know,

suburban college educated whites, right, which Georgia can get you. Okay, I wanted to move to what what I referenced earlier, what you're talking about on the pod, because I think I was just thinking this morning, with the news of the president release, right? And you're thinking about what behind the scenes, you know, you had those 10 days on the Evan Bayh campaign, you've worked on a lot of presidential efforts, you worked at the White House, and the president is running for your life the advantage that she has on actual like ability to campaign i think is pretty understated like you have what you had with president biden he just wasn't doing that much there was that one anecdote that i keep coming back to a new york times story so that even

after the debate he had only called over 10 days, like 20 members of Congress or something, like two calls a day. On top of that, he had a real job to do. So, you know, you imagine he's still on the campaign trail today, let's say, had he not dropped out. There's presidenting you have to do when you're doing a prisoner swap with three people. And just one additional detail in that point showing kind of what Biden was up to while he was still campaigning and deciding what to do. A new report this morning says that just an hour before he announced he was exiting the race,

he was on the phone with his Slovenian counterpart urging them to make the final arrangements for this massive prisoner swap. So she doesn't have to worry about any of that. She can be fully focused on this in candidate time. So I just for listeners that maybe like haven't like been on a campaign, like talk about what that actually means. Yeah. So I mean, first, it's just worth noting that running for president is a very hard job. Being president is much harder than that. And running for president while being president is nearly an impossible job. You have to do all that campaigning and you still have to do all the meetings, all the foreign leader calls, all the the sit room meetings all the stuff that comes with the jobs you have to pass bills sign declarations

all of that and biden obviously was not doing those things right he he could not trump is not campaigning like it's supposed to be like he's barely campaigning himself but biden was being president and then not doing a lot of campaigning well he's golfing he's sending out bleats on his social media feed um and like you know he's doing like two or three rallies a week he's golfing. He's sending out bleats on his social media feed. And like, you know, he's doing like two or three rallies a week. right i mean he was also the he was quite popular back then and the one who was in demand particularly in the south but he could do it because he was vice president right you have more freedom and so like i guess the question is what does a normal campaign schedule look like like what do you what does the candidate do is that what you're asking yeah sure i just walked just walked through for people like what is like what's thursday looking like for kamala i think kamala's in a still in like a little bit of a purgatory phase but like once we round the bend of the convention when

her campaign is fully up and running and fully staffed and she has everything she needs, you wake up in a hotel room somewhere in America, probably in one of those six states we've just mentioned. You meet a staffer at the door. The staffer dials you into six different drive time radio calls over an hour. Drive time in Atlanta, drive time in Milwaukee, drive time in Detroit, wherever else. Then you probably do a greet in the hotel lobby on your way out with a bunch of organizers, labor leaders, folks like that who want to say hi, or a big or precinct captain to somebody who do a lot with Obama, get in the car, you probably got to dial a bunch of donors while you're in the car or some people whose endorsement you're trying to get

while you're driving to the rally location. You do a morning rally, right? If they're there for an hour, you speak for 30 minutes, you do the rope line leaving, you probably do a morning rally, right? If they're here for an hour, you speak for 30 minutes, you do the rope line leaving, you probably do a couple of local interviews, particularly this day and age, like campaigns are getting like local influencers to be backstage to film like a brief interaction with you put that out, get on the plane, on the way to the plane, you're doing more calls, maybe another interview, maybe a conference call with your staff to talk about whatever the news of the day is. Another rally, after that rally, probably maybe you sit for an hour

and do satellite television interviews, like five interviews back to back to back for the full hour. Leave, have dinner, probably not by yourself, probably with a bunch of organizers or local elected officials. And then you do a late night rally. You're doing three rallies. Oftentimes in the night rally. You're doing three rallies.

Oftentimes in the federal structure, you're doing three rallies in three cities and every waking moment is spent doing something other than resting, right? You're doing interviews. You're doing donor calls. You're doing local elected official calls. You work your tail off.

And Kamala Harris can do that. And as vice president, she's free to do it in a way that an incumbent president would not be. And she's young enough and has the she's free to do it in a way that an incumbent president would not be. And she's young enough and has the energy and stamina to do it in ways that Donald Trump does not. And that was like another thing that was neutralizing, you know, a Trump weakness.

Like that's tired. Like he's an old fucking man. Like he's an old ass man. He's not, he doesn't want to do all that stuff. It does take me back to a question I meant to ask at the beginning. Why do you think he did the National Association of Black Journalists interview at all? I think they thought they were running against Joe Biden when he agreed to do it. They have this theory that Donald Trump can win enough Black voters to keep, in this case, Biden from winning the battleground states. And it's a symbolic move, right? I remember

in 2000, I was working for gore 100 years ago and george bush went to the naacp right and it was like the point was showing up he got a ton of coverage for doing it like he got we did that yeah you get a hundred times more coverage as a republican going to the naacp than a democrat right right it's like obama had a version of this going to a mega church yeah right and so the idea was he would do i don't think it was strictly well thought out because it was going to be an on state what It was a speech that makes perfect sense, right? Where you can go do your appeal, whatever. They figure Harris Faulkner's there.

Yeah. And probably at the end, they just were like, well, it's going to look horrible if we back out. Yeah, yeah. They got sort of stuck to it. I think it was an idea like on a whiteboard in theory that was not particularly well thought out. But I understand how they thought it fit

with their voter targeting strategy. Just the execution of it was never going to be great, given he's not good in interviews and these are going to be tough interviews. And you add on to the fact that he was already sort of reeling and acting like a lunatic because of the change in the race. It looked terrible. Yeah, grumpy and seething. And like you have these three women who kind of stand in for Kamala and his racist head

probably a little bit. What a bad idea. Speaking of that outreach to the other side and how that gets you attention one of the other things that was not happening uh this was publicly reported and i can maybe show a little more leg than i was at the time because conversations were private but like biden was not reaching out to top republican types right i mean like chris christie said this publicly you know so i'm not reviewing anything on that. Like Chris Christie was like, he hasn't called me,

which is insane to me. But again, when you go through that schedule that you were talking about with the vice president, it's just like, okay, well, if she's able to do 40 calls in a day, a lot more room to do this. You know, if somebody is doing four, you know, and you got to call big donors,

you got to call labor leaders, whatever. There's not room for Chris Christie in the schedule. Sometimes I worry that maybe I'm overstating this. How important do you think it is, looking ahead to the convention, that the Harris campaign gets some validators from either Trump administration world, never Trump world, former Republicans, that type of thing? Is that that sort of thing that's maybe only the pundit class cares about? Or do you think that matters?

No, I think it matters, right? I mean, look, everything matters in a race that's likely to be as close as this that was the strangest thing about buying theirs they were very good at that in 2020 right casick spoke at the convention sydney mccain spoke at the convention there was a real effort to show to create this permission structure for your listeners your people to feel okay with joe biden in a way they wouldn't with other democrats potentially and there is still this universe of Nikki Haley voters, right? Who I don't think most of them can identify Nikki Haley in a lineup, but are Republicans dissatisfied with Trump that you can go get and you can

get validators to do that, right? Chris Christie would be good for that. I mean, you know, Liz Cheney, like all of these people, right? You finally got Adam Kinzinger's endorsement, but having some of that at the convention to mix it up. And I think it's probably even more important for Kamala Harris, who was undefined. Joe Biden at least brought to bear a, you know, multi-decade view of him as a sort of moderate, you know, compromising Democrat. She's undefined. There's a greater hurdle for a candidate of color. And so I think it'd be very valuable for her to do that and have one of these people, if she possibly could, speak at the convention in a way that voters would actually see, whether that's Liz Cheney or Chris Christie or someone like that.

Mitt Romney? I agree. National security for me, too. Yeah, Mitt. Or, you know, you could even, if you're a politician, you aren't getting a Mark Esper, a Condoleezza Rice, like somebody to kind of bolster the national security side of things. All right. Any other thoughts about the convention? Anything you want to see, what you don't want to see?

I think it's going to be a fun convention, and an exciting convention, which has been a long time. We haven't had that in a very long time. 2016 was pretty divided and filled with all kinds of 2016 primary acrimony. 2008 was amazing, 2012 was amazing. I think based on that rally in Atlanta the other night, this is going to be very, very fun. I'm excited to be there.

I wanted to give the heads one coconut line. Just give us the coconut thing one time at the convention. I think it would blow the roof off. It'd be like the 1992 Michael Jordan, you know, where the Bulls did the intros. Maybe they should do that, like the Bulls intro in Chicago. Okay, those are my ideas for you on the convention side.

Final question for Dan. I was in the Crooked Media store today, and i noticed there's a big discount on one item it's a it's a hoodie uh for youtube viewers we'll put it up on screen here it's a hoodie that says yes we dan yes we dan uh it's it was 55 down to 22 now it's a hoodie is that something that did you approve that item or uh what why do you think that's so highly discounted? Well, it's been out for a while now. I'm surprised it's discounted,

but did I approve it? It was made, designed, and basically almost put in the store before someone asked me about it, at which point I felt sort of obligated for it. And there were T-shirts

and mugs as well. We have the mugs in my house because at a later time in life, I want to be able to explain to my children this very weird period in time when my when i'm not particularly attractive picture of my face was on a mug and why that was but look if if any any folks who are particularly moved by this interview want to go to the crooked store and buy some of that yes we did merch i

highly recommend it okay great this is the moment grab it while it's hot the shelves might be emptying only 22 only a couple sizes available. But give that a check. Dan Pfeiffer, thank you for doing this. This is your first time, right? You never did, Charlie. No, this is my first time on any Bulwark podcast, frankly. First time on the Bulwark podcast.

It's so good to have you. And now that I know you have Evan Bai on your resume, you'll be back soon. You're among your people. Thanks so much. We'll be talking to you soon, brother. All right, bye. All right, thanks to Dan Pfeiffer. Coming tomorrow, George Conway. He explains

it all to me this time. We'll see y'all then. Peace. We're gonna move on up, one by one We ain't gonna stop until the work is done Am I black enough, black enough for ya? Am I black, black enough for ya? We're gonna move on up, two by two This old world is gonna be brand new Am I black enough for ya? Am I black enough for ya? Get a lot, start marching in time You better make up your mind I got to stay black enough for ya Get along Start marching and drive You better make up your mind We gonna leave you behind

We gonna move on up Three by three We gonna get rid of gravity I got to stay black, black enough for ya I got to stay black, black enough for ya We gonna move on up Oh, oh, oh We ain't never gonna suffer no more. I got to stay black and black enough for you.

I got to stay black and black enough for you. It ain't life. Dark marginal time. You better make up your mind. We gonna leave you behind. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.