The Bulwark Podcast - Kate Bedingfield and Marc Caputo: Debate Day

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

Former White House comms director Kate Bedingfield serves up some keen insights into Poppa Joe—he is a night person, he regularly seeks out Jill's opinion, and he is a calming influence. And he's probably not as anxious as Tim Miller is about tonight's debate. Meanwhile, Marc Caputo reports from Magaville on Trump's posturing that he is definitely, absolutely not at all prepping for the debate. Your pre-fight night comfort food to calm the jitters. show notes: Kevin Williamson piece Tim mentioned

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month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hey, y'all. I'm in Atlanta. I'm doing an MSNBC mega marathon around the debate. And so we got a double header for you on this podcast. Up first, Kate Bedingfield, longtime advisor to Joe Biden. And then after that, my colleague you that are listening today, Thursday. And we wanted to focus also a little bit big picture on how both campaigns are seeing the race. And so I think you'll enjoy it, even if you've already seen the debate tonight. Fingers crossed. We're all just a little bit anxious, but hopefully it's going to be a good night. Oh, and one more thing. If you want to do a watch along with the debate tonight, join the Bulwark Plus JVL and your favorites will be there on Zoom. I'm going to try to pop in during commercial breaks and then we will have a live reaction on YouTube. To join the Bulwark Plus, go to plus.thebulwark.com

to subscribe. We'd love to have you. We'll be seeing you tonight. Up next, Kate Bedingfield. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is debate day. Everybody's excited. Nobody's at all anxious or nervous. You know, nobody is at all panicked. Nobody's mentorating. We're all vibes, Tim. We're all vibes. I used to. Well, hold on. I'll tell you what I used to do after I introduced my guest. Kate Bedingfield. I wanted to have somebody that knows Joe Biden, knows debate prep. She was White House communications director for Joe Biden until she left for the finer pastures of CNN. She was also deputy campaign manager in 2020. Kate, what's going on, girl?

Hi. Thanks for having me me we love a big day I used to vomit on debate day did you ever did you ever dry heave or puke before a candidate debate I cannot say that I actively puked although I think there were some instances where it came very close yes the whole debate day situation you're like you know you've been through the prep you're like anxious for the candidate is he gonna land this great thing god we have this great thing teed up is he gonna crush the thing then there's the spin room after and all of that insanity and if you're a comm staffer out you know making your way through the spin room it's you know its own level of misery so uh yeah debate days are you know they're intense they're intense okay so yeah so my tradition seems like it was made a little different for you my tradition was about about two hours out when i was finished with the last prep

session i would go i'd change close your ears mom i'd chain smoke two parliament light cigarettes and then i would try to pull the trigger and i'd like dry heave in the bathroom and then i would and then i'd drink a coca-cola and put some mints in my mouth and i then i would be kind of ready to go from there you know i wish we'd had this conversation earlier when I was still doing debate prep, because that seems like a hell of a routine. And I think I might have benefited from it. So we have to start, obviously, with the most serious topic related to your former boss. And that question is, what drug regimen is he on? Is it the Khalifa Kush, would you say? The magic mushroom bonbon?

The two CMC pills? I mean, if I told you, I'd be giving up the game. So, I mean, I can't do that. It's a special cocktail, you know, that is calibrated for him. You know, and I think America is going to see it on display tonight. It's gonna be great. The one thing, obviously, Joe Biden is a teetotaler, and we're joking. Yes. It is interesting though. The debate is at nine Eastern. It ends at 1030. That's Papa's bedtime. That's a little late. Is there, does he do a non-narcotics? Is he a coffee drinker? Okay. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. He loves late nights. Like he, when we used to come home from like domestic trips too, but foreign trips especially. And this was like even back in

VP days when it's sort of like easier for him to like move about the cabin in the plane, you know, you would be flying home, you're tired, you're asleep. And like, here comes Vice President Biden to say, you know what, we didn't get to that. I really want to focus on, on the next asleep. And like, here comes Vice President Biden to say, you know what, we didn't get to that I really want to focus on on the next trip. And what did you think about this thing that I said? Do you think that that was did that was not effective? Or would you say that wasn't effective? And can we go in depth on how effective you think that was? And it's like, you know, you're at the end of a long day, you're tired, and he's just raring to go. So he actually is a night person. So I'm not as worried about the late start time for him. He'll get some good rest today. And I think he'll

be he'll be ready to go. That explains the morning Joe viewership that has been reported on. You know, it's like, he's out late, you know, he's brainstorming in the morning, honestly, like me, me and the president, I guess are maybe more on on the same schedule kind of want to lay around the bed a little bit in the morning you know flip through the channels you know he gets he gets into the gym it's like eight o'clock hour it's like he's he's in the gym he's watching morning joe so you know but he does some he does good thinking at night so we'll see there are elements of the debate that make me anxious that is actually not one of them because it actually like aligns with his natural rhythm. Before we get to this debate, let's just kind of do a little bit of memory lane and just, you know, talk about his process. We've all worked for a bunch of

different candidates. We both have. And, you know, some of them want some zingers. You know, you practice some zingers. Some of my candidates wanted to spend hours discussing policy matters that would never actually come up during the debate. We won't name them, John Huntsman. Some other candidates like, you know, want to do like live, you know, kind of, yeah. So like, how did you guys do it in the primary? And I guess you were there also in the general last time. Yeah, I was, I was. So he has a very methodical process. He likes to spend a lot of time going through all of the issues that he thinks are going to come up. And so there's before you get to the mock debates,

which he does and kind of understands the value of having to, you know, stand behind the podium and go through the whole format and do it with no stops. And, you know, he gets the value of that. He doesn't like that as much as he likes sitting down with the team, going through Q&A, you know, he gets the value of that. He doesn't like that as much as he likes sitting down with the team, going through Q&A, you know, workshopping answers. He views it as certainly like brushing up on policy, yes. not come up or be relevant during the debate and more just about kind of talking through with his team talking out loud thinking out loud like he's a really he thinks as the country i think has learned a little bit like he thinks out loud you know he's as he's working through things he likes to talk and get feedback so i would say probably like 75 to 80 percent of the debate prep process with him is sitting around a table, going through answers, you know, people taking his feedback, recrafting the answer, you come back for another

session, he tries it out, he says like, yeah, no, actually, I don't think that's right. Or that's not the way I want it. And then the last kind of, you know, 25% is doing some of those mock run throughs, which is about standing behind the podium and going through the answers, yes, but also practicing, you know, kind of for the camera and, you know, what's your body language going to be like and, you know, mimicking what that's going to look like and recognizing that ultimately the debate

is for a TV audience and making sure that he's kind of ready to present to a TV audience. Yeah, what about the, you know, bad orange man side of things? Yeah. I mean, you didn't have as many practice runs in the primary with Jeb. I mean, there must've been,

if there were two debates, there were 3,070. I don't remember how many there actually were, but like there were a lot of, a lot of, and it took us a while to like, just help Jeb like process, like that he's dealing with a different animal here. Right.

And like, he is just going to spout a fire hose of nonsense. And like, it is not like debating Lawton child. You can't like, we can't rebut every point that he has, right. You gotta like,

you gotta pick one and lean in on it. You got a counter punch. How'd you guys think about dealing with Trump in 2020? Well, I mean, I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that a big piece of the prep for Trump in 2020 was going through the personal attacks, the family stuff, the things that, you know, essentially no other candidate or, you know, person of any level of

decency would say or raise on a debate stage, but knowing full well that Donald Trump would. So it creates an interesting environment. And I give Joe Biden a lot of credit for this in the process in 2020. He was always very open to and willing to let people come at him with the horrible things that Donald Trump might say, you know, and it, you know, it can create a weird dynamic, right? Here's the President of the United States, somebody you work for. Oh, man, definitely. I definitely have had candidates get mad at me for bringing up personal things. Yeah. Yes, I had the distinct honor in the primary debate process in 2019 when I was playing a

candidate of having Joe Biden accuse me of enjoying it too much. So, you know, it can create a weird dynamic. But, you know, he recognized that he needed to absorb what that was going to feel like and not have, you know, the first time Donald Trump said something horrific about his son, you know, be on the debate stage in front of millions, tens of millions of people. So that was a big piece of the process, a depressingly big piece of the process, considering, you know, you're preparing for debate for, you know, president of the United States. And that's what you have to focus on. But that was a big piece of it. And then the other kind of bizarre piece of it, which you know well too, I'm sure, is you also have to account for the 16 different versions of Donald Trump's position on an issue and trying to anticipate which lie he's going to tell, which way he's going to present himself. I mean,

there's very little consistency in the way he talks about himself. So preparing for a debate against somebody who, you know, baseline, you don't even, you're not even really certain like which, you know, version of their take on an issue is going to show up on the stage. It's a very, it's a weird process. So, you know, we tried to apply some method to the madness and, you know, kind of get things organized for Biden in his head so that he had a, you know, a clear sense of home base on the big issues. But it was a, you know, it was a unique process. And I can't even imagine what it's like for them this go around. So this challenge of dealing with Trump, right, like is he, you know, takes every side of everything and, you know, the odd angles. There's one side of this that it seems like the campaign has really

settled in on as far as a message standpoint that I'm interested in your take on, which is this idea that something broke in Donald Trump at the end of 2020, that he's gone even crazier, you know, and that he's totally lost it. And at one point he might've cared about other people, but now he cares about himself. So, you know, something to that's totally lost it. And at one point, he might have cared about other people, but now he cares about himself. And something to that effect, I assume you'll hear something like that tonight. You've been hearing it more and more from the president and from his campaign. Like that is a strategic choice to do that, right? I mean, it might not be true. Like, just as a fact, I mean, I'm like of the view that like, Trump's been kind of crazy and racist his whole life. But it's interesting. So I'm curious

what you think about that choice and what the rationale is. To me, it seems like it's twofold. I mean, one, just as a message choice for the campaign, I think it's a way of trying to jolt people out of their kind of light nostalgia for the Trump years. Like, if you're somebody who says like, well, you know, there were things I didn't like about Trump, but you know, the economy was okay. And I don't know, was he really that dangerous? I think their campaign brings some urgency by saying like, look, this isn't even the guy that you saw in, you know, 2018, 2019. He's so, you know, we've since seen January 6th, we've seen him go crazy trying to defend himself from, you know, 2018, 2019. He's so, you know, we've since seen January 6th, we've seen him go crazy trying to defend himself from, you know, criminal wrongdoing. I mean,

he's like, he's worse than you remember. I mean, I think that's from a message perspective. One of the things they're trying to do is kind of, you know, knock the edges off of people's nostalgia about him. From a debate strategy standpoint, you could imagine how that's a tactic to try to irritate Trump, try to get under Trump's skin, try to get him fired up, try to get him defending himself. I mean, really, like anything that Joe Biden can do to get Donald Trump going, it almost doesn't matter what direction you get him going in. You just got to get him going. And so, you know, you can imagine that calling him unhinged, saying he's completely lost it, especially as Trump has spent the last, you know, three years, four years, trying to argue that Joe Biden's lost a step. You know, you can see the way that could get under Trump's skin. But I guess, I guess we'll all find out. Yeah. So to that point, and I think that many people

will be listening to this before the debate, but some after. So both tonight at the debate and the biggest picture for the campaign, like there's just so many places to attack Donald Trump. It's like you see these advice things from pundits. It's like, he should get him on the suckers and losers comment. Like he should get him on officer sick Nick. He should get him on abortion. He should get him on Medicare.

Like, okay. So there's, there's plenty of material there. If you were sitting in the debate prep room, or if you're thinking about the campaign towards the end, like, what are you honing in on? Well, I think you've got to funnel all of these attacks through two or three of the lenses that have shown themselves to be his biggest vulnerabilities. Abortion is one. It just is. I mean, we've seen it turn voters out to the polls. We've, you know, so we've actually seen people in elections in this country go out and vote

because they feel motivated by the fact that Roe fell. So, you know, I think that has got to be a huge piece of his line of attack because it's also an issue where you can draw a through line between Donald Trump being president of the United States and us being in the state we're in now with, you know, no longer women, no longer having a right to reproductive freedom. I mean, it's one of the easiest cases to make. And obviously Trump has spent a lot of time trying to kind of weasel his way out of his position because he knows he's politically vulnerable on it, but you got to hammer. I think that the other lens that the campaign needs to apply to every line of attack against

Trump is, is this an attack that goes at how Donald Trump makes life worse for people across this country? Like there's a lot you can attack Trump for that's about, you know, what an awful person he is, what, how he's, you know, how he's like, shouldn't be representing the United States of America, that he represents a break from everything that we love and care about in this country. But I think that ultimately for a message to land with voters, it has to feel like it has resonance in your day-to-day life. And so, you know, there are some attacks that may feel like great to the chattering class and may feel like an absolute slam dunk that just don't, you know, just don't,

you know, that don't connect in the same way. So it's like, you got to make the chaos argument, but then you got to take it down to the next level of, you know, this is how this is going to make your life worse. How it's going to make life more expensive for you. You know, it's how it's going to take away your right to vote and feel like your vote matters and will be counted safely. I just think the campaign cannot lose and Biden can't lose that last step, right? There's like the satisfaction of punching Trump in the face because he represents a threat to everything that we love and care about. But then you gotta like, you know, you can't just stop there. It's gotta, you gotta connect it to people's lives. And that means that sometimes the attack that

might feel the most satisfying ultimately winds up not landing in in the right way and so you don't think the zinger i sent ben the bolt about the raffensperger call in georgia is what that's not what we're talking about you know what i'm not saying that that's not that that isn't in and of itself should not be disqualifying for donald trump to be president united states but i think you know we also have to accept that not everybody in the country is thinking about these things in the same way that we are. There's this conundrum that I've been working over in my brain and talking to people about on the podcast, when you look at the data, as the fact that the president is running behind democratic senators and all of these swing states, Casey, Baldwin,

Gallego. And it's like, okay, why? Like on the one hand you could look at that as a very big negative, right? It's like, Oh, something must be really wrong. If these people are switching overs on the other hand, it might be a positive, right? Where it's like, man, if Joe Biden shows them tonight that he cares about, you know, the things they care about, that he's not, you know, dementia riddled, then maybe you can win some of those people back. that he cares about the things they care about, that he's not dementia riddled, then maybe you can win some of those people back.

What's your sense for what the disconnect is? And what do you think they need to do to try to consolidate that demo? I think they have such a difficult and just frustrating challenge here because I think the message for the most part is right. And I think if you look at a lot of the testing, you see that he's talking about corporations having too much power. He's, you know, he's talking about prices are too high at the grocery store and I'm working,

doing everything I can to bring them down. He's talking about choice. And, you know, if you look at, if you look at message testing, you see that that's what people, you know, want to hear from Democrats. So is there a disconnect between message and messenger? And then if so, how do you solve for if people are hearing what they want to hear, but they have concerns about or qualms about or just can't get there for whatever reason on the messenger? You know, I think they over the next four months after this debate, I think they have to really think about how they put Biden out in front of audiences who can connect with him. I think there has to be less standing behind the podium and there has to be more, you know, more Howard Stern. And I think that the team knows that,

by the way, this is not me, like, you know, it's so great, right? It's so great to be in the pundit role. You're welcome. Isn't it i cringed when i sent a i sent a thought to somebody on the campaign the other day and i was like i'm that guy now yeah i'm like i'm that guy that i hate it that right you know anyway exactly i'm grappling i'm grappling with becoming the person i hated but like damn the lack of of responsibility is terrific it is nice you know and I do think the campaign knows that, but I think that it, it matters because I think, I think there's so much potential for Biden as a person to assuage these concerns that people are holding onto about

him. And I think it's putting him in, in venues like Stern and, you know, doing more digital where he can connect directly with people and not relying so much on the podium remarks that can be really powerful, but that just because of the state of our media landscape just don't reach people the way they used to. But I also think to this point about Senate candidates running ahead, I mean, I also think at the end of the day, split ticket voting is a rarer occurrence than it even used to be. And I just have a hard time believing that when push comes to shove, there are going to be a significant number of Democrats who are going to vote

for the Senate candidate, but not for Biden. I mean, it's a challenge. Campaign has to focus on it. What about the age part of it? I mean, can people have real talk with him? I mean, it could just be that, right? It could just be that he's going to show up tonight and demonstrate that he has the vigor for this. I mean, obviously, it's not like he doesn't know that he's old,

but what do you think about that? Yeah, and I think he will. Look, he is very much a game day player, okay? He's somebody who knows when the big moment is coming. I mean, I think the whole country saw it around the State of the Union, but he knows when a big moment is in front of him and he you know focuses and prepares and he knows that his task here at least in part is to show energy and vigor and so you know i don't i don't have any concern with the whisper talk

i mean that's been you know that's been a trademark for 50 years i know i know i loved it it was good when it was good sometimes it's hard to move away from something that was you know part of your brand one of these days i'm gonna have to take off the pearls you know like tim it's looking cringe it's starting to look cringe where's the coterie of advisors around you who can be honest with you tim about the pearls you know where are those people okay that's my tip the whisper talk um all right i want to i'm lobbing a softball at you here but on the bulwark reddit page which i love people should join the bulwark reddit page if they if they haven't it feels like it might be our more lefty listeners that go to the reddit page but

that's okay i like i like hearing from the lefty listeners we do a decent amount of complaining around here about the urgency from biden world like and i think maybe it's just like as the never trumpers as like the near enemy of Trump, we might feel just a different level of panic and sheer hatred and panic. That's on a different level. And one thing we say is like, everybody should be out there. Like,

where is everybody? I mean, like we had a good JV Pritzker thing the other day and their little glimmers of people getting out there. It's like, where's the cabinet? Where's Kamala prosecuting it? And,

and where are all the Republican endorsers? And somebody wrote on the board page, it goes, hear me out. Is it possible that the Biden campaign knows what it's doing? Could the lack of forceful surrogates be that they know that trotting them out this early isn't as effective? So what do you think? Could we see more urgency? Do they know what they're doing? Is it somewhere in between? So, okay, yes, they know what they're doing. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna like put myself out there and say, I'm shocked that that was your response. I know. I really, it was really a hard one. I know you're stunned. That's my answer. But I worked very closely with a lot of these people was in the trenches with them through a very hard primary campaign through a very hard general

election campaign, like they know what they're doing. So I have faith. I have faith in them. I also think it is true that people are not as tuned in to this election right now and that they will be as we get closer and closer. I think this debate will mark a turning point. I think we've seen a lot of data that suggests a lot of people are going to watch tonight, but even those who don't watch are going to hear about it. They're going to see clips. It's going to feel, I think, in a lot of ways, like the kind of unofficial starting gun for the final sprint here. So yes, I imagine we're going to see more and more of these surrogates. And I would argue you've seen VP Harris out there like really, you know, pushing the case on abortion. She's been a terrific messenger for the administration

and the Biden campaign on abortion. And I have no doubt that you will see more and more of these folks out as we get closer into the fall when people are paying attention. I hope so. You know, I get it. It might just be me. It could be me. I would still like to see a little bit more urgency. One more VP question, though. I asked Simone about this, Simone Sanders-Townend, earlier this week. I hear you on the abortion thing. She's been good on it. Abortion is important. I really like, by the way, as somebody that has mixed views, I think in the big middle of this country where a lot of people are, that there should be some restrictions on abortion, but not the crazy shit that they're doing in some of these red states.

I like that the Biden campaign's ads on this have focused a lot women who like wanted to have a child but had a health issue that they were denied. Okay, so I like all that. VP Harris also was a prosecutor, and she became a star as in those Senate hearings when she was prosecuting witnesses and Kavanaugh, etc. Shouldn't we have a little bit more of that, like prosecutor, cop kamala out there you know doing the traditional vp attack dog thing so one i guess i would like dispute the premise a little bit that she's not like carrying a pretty significant heavy message against trump i think she is but i also think there's i i'm gonna knock like knock you over with a feather here but people have different perceptions of women than men on the campaign trail. And you have to be- Simone gave that answer too. I know,

it's just misses my male privilege. I'm just like, maybe that's true, but I want to see her with Trump's bloody shirt in her mouth. I want to see her kill him. I mean, so do I, but that's like a lot of the country doesn't receive women that way. Simone's totally right about that. And so it doesn't mean that VP Harris can't carry an effective negative message. I would argue she's been doing it. And I imagine as we get closer to November, you'll see her do it more. But these are the things that you have to be aware of when you're, you know, when you're thinking about the image of a woman in public office and a female candidate.

It's just a slightly different ball game than it is for men. Someday, Tim, I hope it won't be. And someday, you know, you will have women candidates accepted when they're out there like shredding their opponent with a bloody shirt in their mouth. But right now, it's not quite that simple. Yeah, when my daughter's running for mayor of New Orleans, I'm gonna be feeding her punch lines you know i hope she crushes her male opponent you know all right last question last question give us something cute give us a cute buying story does you have a favorite favorite ice cream flavor you know if we wanted to send them some jenny's like is there uh do you have a fun little behind the scenes laugh moment like give me something give me a little oh man give me

a little something to make something something cuddly a handhold like i always i'm gonna tell a jeb story to give you a minute to think about it i just thought the cutest thing i ever saw with jeb was we were leaving a debate and we were in the one of those suburbans or whatever and i'm in the last row and he's in the second row with columba and they're like holding hands like in the second row from the from the debate to the FBO. And I was like, oh my God, they've been together 50 years. That's so cute. So anyway, cute story.

So sweet. Oh, I mean, my God, if you want to talk about like him and Jill, I mean, he's constantly calling her like he wants to know her opinion on everything. It's like they don't go like hours without talking to each other, which is I think is amazing. But he's also like, okay, like, for example, during the primaries, we were on a plane, we were landing in Iowa, and it was super turbulent. And I don't love flying generally. And I definitely don't love

flying on a small plane. And I definitely don't love flying on a small plane in turbulence. And so, you know, we're it's turbulent, we're landing and my many male colleagues who I love dearly, you know, we're kind of making fun of me for being a wimp. And I'm like gripping the arm of my chair. And Biden just reaches over and puts his hand on top of mine. And he's like, it's going to be okay. We're going to be fine. It's all right.

There's an element of like pop, grand pop. You know, he just he brings a genuine humanity and kindness to all of his interactions. So, you know, he just what you see is what you get. Like, there's no artifice with Joe Biden. He is a genuinely kind person. And he loves chocolate chip ice cream. That's his favorite. And he will he will like direct the motorcade off route to get to chocolate chip ice cream.

I can't tell you how many times that happened. Chocolate chip is a good flavor. I wish she'd put his hand on my hand right now because we're in turbulent times. That was a metaphor. That was a metaphor for our life. It's going to be okay, Tim. Thank you, Kate.

I mean, we'll see. I will be seeing you in the spin room. We're both in Atlanta together. So I'll see you in the spin room in 3D in a little bit. We can do a squeeze. Thank you so much for coming on the Borg podcast. Anytime. Come back again soon. Would love to. Thank you. Alright, up next

we got Mark Caputo with a view from Magaville. Buckle up. ... And we're back with my colleague Mark Caputo. Mark has been suffering through MagaWorld for us. He lives in MagaWorld. He talks to MagaWorld, Magaville, I guess what the newsletter is called. You should get the newsletter if you want to know what's happening in Magaville. What's going on, bro? Not that much. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm in Atlanta. I was already at the debate site this morning. I kind of want to throw up. I used to throw up on debate nights before it was my candidates.

I didn't do that in 2020, but I'm back to wanting to throw up a little bit. I want to talk first, some of these folks will be listening to this when the debate is done, so I want to talk a little bit big picture also about what Trump world is thinking. But before we get to that, Mike Kevin has gone on the saddest run of any post defenestration politician I think I've ever seen. And let's listen to him together on the Jesse Waters show, because that's what he's doing with his time now. There were different moments. Every time I met with with him you got a different joe biden and there's times that he was really engaging i remember talking to him when it's air force one coming back from a g7 meeting and he could tell me all the different

meetings he had he was fully engaged the next day i met with him and it was a totally different joe biden talking off cards so let's not lower expectations. He's going to be prepared the best he's ever going to be prepared. Let's not lower expectations, says the guy who was on a front page Wall Street Journal story about how Joe Biden is crippled with dementia. Why is he doing this? Couldn't you just go be a respectable post speaker like John Boehner in lobby for the marijuana industry or something?

Like, why is he doing this groveling nonsense? What's happening here? Well, Kevin McCarthy always had the quality of being sort of the test tube product of a mad scientist who wanted to create a dishonest, slimy, two-faced, double-talking politician. So the idea that he is continuing to be true to form doesn't really shock me that much. I think this stuff is pathetic. The fact that the Wall Street Journal published his sourcing about Joe Biden's mental acuity was, I think, a really poor editorial choice. Yeah, as a reporter, what surprised me is that, generally speaking, if you write a story that's attacking a Democrat, you usually want an admission against interest and have your first quote be Democrats. Same thing. Or any quote be a Democrat. Well, there you go.

One Democrat. Or anecdotes. Or if you have a story attacking a Republican, again, you want that admission against interest. You want a Republican saying something critical about a Republican. Otherwise, it's just people are going to say, of course, a Republican is going to attack a Democrat. Of course, a Democrat is going to attack a Republican. Otherwise, it's just people are going to say, of course, a Republican is going to attack a Democrat. Of course, a Democrat is going to attack a Republican. McCarthy's effort out there, he's primarying Matt Gaetz. He's trying to primary Nancy Mace. It's just failure. It's like rake after rake he's stepping on. He can't handle the fact that Gaetz totally outmaneuvered him and booted him out of the house. All he has left with Ga Gates is he's run this poor,

sad sack of a guy. I can't even remember his name running against Gates. It's going to look like cannon fodder when it's over. And then he's got his pals on the ethics commission who are continuing with the sort of Kafkaesque investigation where they continually say, we're investigating Matt Gates for sex crimes. It's like, okay, well, let's see the evidence after two years. Again, plenty to criticize Matt Gates on, but I do kind of agree with this. It's like, okay, well, let's see the evidence after two years. Again, plenty to criticize Matt Gaetz on, but I do kind of agree with this. It's like, okay, we've been doing the whisper campaign on this for a while now. Whisper campaign? Hell, it's been through a bullhorn. There's plenty of public things that Matt Gaetz has done worth criticizing. So maybe let's focus on those

for starters and wait for the evidence. The takedown of his opponent, whose name I also forget, by Kevin Williamson over the dispatch was one of the most delicious pieces of writing that I've read in quite some time. So I'm going to put it in the show notes for people. Okay, enough of my Kevin. So it's the debate. It seems a little half-hearted, the whole drugs thing this time. I mean, they tried this against Clinton. They tried it against Biden last time, but they kind of feel like they had to do something because they were worried that Dementia Joe had set the bar too low. What's your take on the whole, you know? I think it's that. And the other thing is, it's just, this is just what they do,

right? One of the things that characterizes the Trump world style of attacks is they will use any possible attack, even a contradictory one, even from one that our opponents of theirs, as long as it hits another opponent. So that's in keeping with that. If you're looking for consistency and a certain amount of logic behind it, you're not really going to find it. One minute, one second, one sentence in a paragraph, Joe Biden is a dementia patient. The other one, he is the evil Dr. Moriarty, right? And by the way, if this serum exists that makes Joe Biden suddenly spry and everything like, A, why is Joe Biden not taking it every day? And B, where can I get it? Yeah, it is funny. My buddy Peter Hamby was making this point. It's like,

it's not like this is Barry Bonds, like juicing and they're messing with the integrity of the home run records. Like if there is some serum that makes our president's acuity a little sharper, wouldn't we want that? Like, what is that? Well, I think there is that liquid microchip that's been invented by Microsoft. I'm just kidding. Welcome to Muggerville, my friend. Yeah, watch out. You've been in Muggerville too long. Your story on the Trump debate prep was pretty delicious. I enjoyed it. My favorite part of it was somebody, one of your sources said that he was working on policy refreshers.

What a euphemism that is, policy refresher. It's a two-part euphemism. One, it implies that he cares about policy, that he needs to be refreshed about that. But two, it implies he's not really doing debate prep, right? Like, isn't that there's something there, like he doesn't want to admit the weakness? They literally will not call it debate prep. Is it an alpha thing? Is that why they're saying that? Like, what's the point of not calling it that? His position, by the way,

this was Trump's position in 2020, is that he's already prepared. He doesn't need preparation. You know, all he needs is a refresher to remind him of the things that he's done and his successes and the like. But again, it wasn't true in 2020. Famously, he almost killed Chris Christie during the policy refresher with COVID. He did. And in that one, Chris Christie, while he didn't play the part of Biden and in these debate preps, quote unquote, debate preps or policy refreshers, what makes it different with Donald Trump, both then and now, is he doesn't have someone who is playing the part of Joe Biden.

But in 2020, Chris Christie was trying to push Trump behind the scenes. He would argue with him. He would yell at him and he would try to get him used to being under pressure. That didn't work because Trump just shit the bed. That's actually a direct quote from one of his top policy advisors or debate advisors back then. Now it's a different situation. And according to Trump's campaign, he's more relaxed and sort of more able to do it and has had four years to think about how he made mistakes in 2020 and how he actually gets a

second chance to have a first debate against Joe Biden again. No reason not to be relaxed. He's been golfing a lot lately, seen a lot of good pictures on his social media. The learning from 2020 is interesting because you sent a tweet earlier that was not about Donald Trump at all, but I thought paralleled this situation. You were referencing AOC's comments after the Jamal Bowman loss, which seemed to indicate that the squad has not really learned a lot from the Jamal Bowman loss, which is kind of crazy because they're like all these squad candidates that won primaries handily and then one lost. And so you think you might like to learn a lesson. Like what happened that was different in this one?

It wasn't like AIPAC liked the other candidates. Anywho, that's an aside. My question for you is, do you think Donald Trump has learned from his losses at all in this debate? And do you think we'll see something different? I think in some ways he has from what I gather and from what he's told others and what they told me he said is this is not like last time. This isn't 2020.

So the Donald Trump who showed up at that first 2020 debate and was just angry, had absolutely no sense of humor left in him or wit or ability to kind of manage Joe Biden, who he thought he was going to push over. From what I have been told, he has been, to the degree Trump is, chastened by that. But to your broader point, yeah, Trump is the one guy who sort of breaks the rule. If you learn more from your losses than from your wins, he's just like, I didn't lose, I didn't lose, I didn't lose. And well, here we are.

Right now, nominally, marginally, he's sort of leading Joe Biden in the polls, again, within the margin of error. But here we are. Yeah, I want to learn a lot more about that than I think in the next couple of weeks. I'm interested in when it comes to that side of this debate thing. If the lesson from 2020 was that crazy Trump hurt Trump. Stuart Stevens and I talked about this on yesterday's podcast. Do we know whether it was the Trump campaign or the Biden campaign that wanted the muted mics? Does Trump world have a view on the muted mics? Because it seems like that helps Trump.

Trump's campaign says it does help him. But Trump's campaign says they didn't make that insistence. They didn't make the insistence on having no audience. They didn't make the insistence on not having RFK there. A lot of the wins here as far as the structure of the debate have actually been on the Biden side of what they wanted. Now, Trump's people are saying, one of them told me, like, look, I'd never tell Trump this to his face, but it's good that his mic is muted because it sets up a guardrail and keeps him from sort of crashing off the road or driving off the road. Yeah, I bet Susie Wiles wishes she had the mute button sometimes, you know, down there having to listen to him talk. Okay, I want to back up a little bit and talk more broadly about this, about the campaign and like the view from Maga World. There's a new ad that the Trump campaign

put out this morning. I want to listen to that together and just see what that tells us about where they're going message-wise. When you think about the Joe Biden you saw in the debate, ask yourself a question. Do you think the guy who was defeated by the stairs got taken down by his bike, lost a fight with his jacket,

and regularly gets lost, makes it four more years in the White House? and you know who's waiting behind him right vote joe biden today get kamala harris tomorrow i'm donald trump and i approve this message so two interesting parts to this i'll get to the kamala part second i don't know if this leaked by accident or if they put it out, but if you listen to the language, it's an ad to air after the debate. So it's the Joe Biden you saw at the debate, like they're basically calling their shot that he's going to seem whatever, not up for it, feeble, dementia. What do you think is going on there? Is that just showing that they're going to, no matter what happens to Joe Biden tonight, they're just going to keep running with the Joe Biden old thing? Yeah, because they believe that there are two things that have enabled Trump to be in this kind of nominal leadership leader position that he's in one the economy and to Joe Biden's frailty. So this is what they're going to keep hitting and keep hitting and keep hitting. I think what's notable here is the use of humor or the attempted use of humor depending on your sense of humor. Generally, a campaign that starts making fun of an opponent

is following one of the rules for radicals of Saul Alinsky about how there is no defense against ridicule. It's your most potent weapon. Very often, campaigns that are in front and feel like they're front runners do this sort of stuff. So it gives you an idea of where they're coming from. What surprised me about the Trump campaign and specifically Tony Fabrizio, the lead pollster and top advisor to Trump or one of them, is he is generally a pretty pessimistic guy. And he has been very optimistic for many months. Yeah, it seems to show a level of optimism, I guess, about the debate. I mean, you can always pull the ad down, right? You can always pull the ad down if Joe Biden dominates Donald Trump tonight,

and if Donald Trump sharts himself on stage or something. I don't know. Sorry, you got me. But no, I don't think they would. You said ridicule is important. I can also employ it. It's a two-way street. But remember, there's that sort of Thanos reality stone issue with Donald Trump, where

he just comes up with a message and sticks to it. They are going to stick with this idea that Biden is mentally diminished no matter what. And so, yeah, I think even if there was a repeat of the 2020 debate, where Trump falls apart and goes nuts and Biden holds his own and looks okay, I think you're still going to see the Trump campaign hit that. And it's notable that Kamala Harris, they're finally bringing her out as the kind of boogie woman or boogeyman or whatever you call her or the dynamic. Yeah. What do you think the dynamic is with that? Because so Nikki Haley, before her brief period as an attempted Trump slayer, her six weeks in the light prior to that, that was her big argument, right?

Was that she's not even running against Biden. She's running against Kamala. I found that a whiff gross for a variety of reasons. But that's different than, I think that was a different situation, especially because she's like losing by 50 points in the primary. Anyway, the Trump thing now, it feels a little bit like a weird time to bring it out. I don't know. On the one hand, I agree with you that like a ridicule ad gives the air of a team that thinks that they're leading. A bank shot, oh, you might get Kamala, I think maybe betrays a little bit of weakness, though.

I don't know. What say you to what why now do you think on on this kamala might be president mine which we haven't haven't really heard well for my part and again this is a someone who who kind of covers the campaign and talks to them and yeah we're just looking for your perspective on what they're thinking what surprises me is that it's this late yeah right i'm surprised they haven't been hitting this the entire time because generally polling has shown generally that her favorability ratings are lower than Biden's and Biden's by like maybe

a point or two, and this depends on polls and they fluctuate, have generally been worse or about as bad as Trump's. So in the view of the Trump world and of Republicans generally, Kamala is an easier opponent. I'm not sure that's necessarily going to wind up being true, but that's just generally been their point of view. So as I said, I just think it's surprising it's this late, not that it's this early. I guess I agree. I do wonder if there's maybe some reticence around black voters.

I do think that Trump thinks that the Trump world thinks that they could potentially be gaining with black men, right? Right. And really not black women. Right. It's men. Right. Hispanic men, black men, white men.

Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like, okay, well, you know, we don't want to jeopardize that. But maybe at this point, you're at a judgment of like, I don't know, the types of black men that might be gettable for Trump are probably not going to be the types to be offended by like swipes at kamala i mean you know we're speaking very broadly here but but maybe that was part of the reticence because because you continue to see this offensive from them trump called into a barber shop yesterday with byron donalds it's a very weird campaign event it's one of these campaign events because you know you tell me if

you think about this it's the second one they did like that yeah like cognac it's like it's like byron donalds is in a barber shop with four other black guys and trump's on a speakerphone and like trump's talking about tax cuts it's kind of on regulation cuts it's like i don't know if that's the prime issue and then he's talking about like how cool his mug shot is well who the hell knows i don't know it seems like this is the kind of thing that if this was the Jeb campaign and we were doing this and it was like, if we had our one black surrogate in a barbershop and Jeb was calling in on speakerphone, I feel like we would have been just ridiculed by everybody. But like people are, are inured to this a little bit with Trump that they definitely are, however, ham handed or like really focused on this. No.

Well, they are. And and remember this is the second event like this they did one in philly uh it was byron donalds and wesley hunt the texas congressman and at that one that's where byron donald decided apropos of almost nothing like you know what families black families more intact during jim crow it's like why did you say that and that created its own uh stir but compared to that event, this was tame, right? This did not produce that sort of level. We didn't praise the Jim Crow South. Congratulations, you've cleared the bar, right? And also, I really wonder if Donald Trump didn't want to go to this event because he doesn't smoke, he hates cigar smoke and the stink of it, and he doesn't drink. What has he been doing besides the

policy refreshers? Just golfing? He hasn't had a very heavy- Golfing and fundraising. They have been doing boatloads of fundraising. That's true. They were in New Orleans. They blew the doors off of it in May. Blew the doors off of fundraising. Yeah, he was in New Orleans at this rich guy's house.

A third Romney cousin was there, so I was very disappointed in. I was tisking her and Boise Bollinger. Yeah, I don't know. It was a little too close to my home for comfort garden district action i would assume yeah it was all the way up by ottoman park actually i want to do a little veep stakes so your last article i think rightly had had caveats that are like who the hell knows what donald trump is going to do he like he's going to do what he wants to do but the conventional wisdom is congealed around Burgum, Rubio, and Vance.

Conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. And so I'm wondering what you think about where we sit right now. You know, once in a while when you write a story, you discover things from your own presentation of the facts. And while the insiders generally favor the idea of J.D. Vance, the more I type the pros and cons from the perspective of Trump in picking these guys, it was difficult for me to find enough cons to have Burgum match Vance and Rubio. Meaning, I think... Burgum has fewer cons. Burgum has fewer cons for Trump.

And while the insiders think it's Vance, I'm starting to think it might be Burgum out of those three. But then again, who knows? He could pick someone off a park bench, right? It's just Donald Trump. Yeah. Are there any other names that have emerged lately or anything else floating in the ether? Yeah.

Not that I have heard recently. Trump played one of his games and got the media and NBC to write this piece about like, could be today or could be tomorrow. And then the campaign mocked it. So I wouldn't be surprised if Trump either holds it for whether he gets jailed or not, the announcement. And if he gets through that, like maybe there's going to be a rose ceremony at the RNC at the Republican National Convention. To me, the con on the list is, and by the time this podcast airs, I might, there's a chance I might be on TV with a Burgum surrogate today. So, you know, I might be able to get the chance to ask them myself.

That could be interesting television, daytime cable. It just depends of it all. The Pence element. I don't look at Doug Burgum and think that like that guy is, you know, like, let's say it's, it's fall of 2028. And Trump doesn't run again. And Burgum doesn't because he's a VP. And the nominee is some Republican that is not as popular as Trump. And they're getting schlonged by Josh Shapiro or something. And Trump is staring down the barrel of a post-presidency, second presidency, where he's going to be in court again, maybe in jail.

And the next president he doesn't think is going to pardon him. And he looks at the VP and he's like, I need to create some trouble here. Are you going to stand with me on whatever I come up with? I don't think you look at Doug Burgum and think that guy's going to be solid. Right? I mean, he seems a little bit like a milk drinker, a little too much milk drinking from Doug Burgum to me for Trump. Doesn't Trump want somebody with a little bit of a bad boy streak? Well, I'll admit I never considered that specific scenario. You never considered my fantasy? I spend a lot of time in the evenings. The milk drinker one, I was like, how do I answer that? Thinking through what 2028 fall looks like.

I think whoever Donald Trump is going to pick is going to make sure to stick with him through thick and thin to make sure that after he leaves the White House, he doesn't wind up in the big house. Right. If he can do that or, you know, to try to make sure that he winds up in the White House and not the big house. So I think on that count, all three are kind of equal. and not to be too literary, the problem with Vance and Rubio is the quote from Caesar in Shakespeare's play where he says, let me have men about me who are fat, sleek-headed men and such a sleep of nights. Jan Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much, such men are dangerous. And I think Vance and I think Rubio in the regard of ambition, and another quote from the play Ambitions Made of Sterner Stuff,

when they get in the Naval Observatory, human nature is going to take over, and their ability to not run for president four years hence is going to be greatly diminished. I think Burgum will still run for president as well, but he, partly to your point, he doesn't seem to have the same sort of like hunger and ambition for it that I think Vance and Rubio do. Yeah. Cassius, I have nothing to add to that. The Cassius thing is right. Okay. I got to run. I'm going to do your Miami buddy, Dan Levitard's podcast. If you want some sports debate takes, listeners, you can go check out Dan Levitard's show. I'm going to be on with Pablo Torre, my buddy today, and then I'm on MSNBC all day. So I have 30 seconds left for you, Mark.

The jail. The jail. I mean, he might go to jail. Do they think he might? What do they think about it? They think he won't. And I asked like, hey, if he's in jail and he's not at the RNC, does he have a video made ahead of time? And one of them told me, why don't you come up to Mar-a-Lago and tell Donald Trump to film a video for his RNC address because he's going to be in jail and see how that works out for you. So nobody's got the balls to do that around them? No. Guess not. A bunch of shoe shiners. All right. All right. I said it. You didn't. Okay. Mark Caputo, always appreciate the candid report from Magaville. We'll be seeing you soon, Amigo. Thanks, man. Sometimes existential dread Comes ringing through loud and clear

Other just accidentally let go I guess it is what it is I'm not sure of what's going to be next But I'll be alright As long as I keep breathing I know I'll be alright I know I'll be alright The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

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