The Bulwark Podcast - Symone Sanders Townsend and Olivia Nuzzi: Kamala v the Weirdo

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

Trump and Kamala are meeting for the first time at tonight's debate, because in 2021, he took his ball, went home, and skipped the inauguration. Seven weeks after the change in the ticket, Trump still doesn't seem to know how to fight her— while Kamala will likely be focused on her message of fighting for the people vs Trump fighting for himself. show notes: Olivia's piece, "I Examined Donald Trump’s Ear — and His Soul — at Mar-a-Lago Symone's MSNBC show, "The Weekend" 

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Hey, everybody. A quick programming note around the debate. We got a doubleheader today. I've got Simone Sanders-Townsend talking from the Kamala perspective and from her experience having worked for her. And Olivia Nuzzi talking about her recent interview with Trump and how him and his allies are looking at the debate tonight. In both interviews, I'm trying to get a bigger picture. Obviously, we got a shelf life for the debate tonight. So if you're catching this on Wednesday morning, I definitely get into kind of the psyche of both the Vice President and Donald Trump in a way

that I think will remain interesting for two women who know these candidates very well. So that's what you're going to get on this podcast. I am in Philly right now. I took a 5.30 a.m. flight from New Orleans. So I'm going to be a little bit punchy. And I'm going to be on MSNBC a bunch. I'm on at 2.30 Eastern and then sometime between 4 and 6 and then sometime between midnight and 2 and some other times in between probably. So you can catch me on ms with simone and some others and then at the bulwark youtube page

starting at 8 30 tonight we've got jvl sarah longwell sam stein ab stoddard going live before the debate after the debate they're going to pop in at commercial breaks wi-fi dependent i'm going to try to pop in from the spin room uh where i will be so uh maybe keep an eye or ear out for me but definitely subscribe to the youtube page you can have as a second screen get instant advice you know have these folks as your pals to deal with your anxieties before the debate starts and during the commercials. So it's going to be good. So make sure you subscribe to the YouTube page. Keep an eye out for me on MS. And up next, my friend, Simone Sanders Townsend.

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm pumped to be here today with co-host of MSNBC's The Weekend, former senior advisor to the Biden 2020 campaign and senior advisor to somebody you might know, VP Kamala Harris. It's Simone Sanders Townsend. What's up, Simone? Greetings, Tim. How are you? I am well. We're going to be on late night together for people that just can't get enough debate coverage, can't get enough of Tim and Simone. We'll be on MS from midnight to two tonight. And you also got a special coming up, Black Women in America, the road to 2024 with Melissa Murray, Sunday, September 29th, 9 p.m.

Tell us a little bit about that. What's happening with that? Yes, 9 p.m. This is an election, as we've talked about, it's going to be decided in the margins. So Melissa Murray and I have been going across the country talking to women from the cities to the suburbs and everywhere in between, Black women, about this election. We talked to them right after our first conversations were right after the first presidential debate between Biden and Trump. And we've had conversations all the way up until just last week. So we have run the gamut and just really trying to get a feel for where black women are in this election. I think that a lot of people believe

they know black women's ideology, their voting patterns, but they might be surprised by some of the things they hear in this special. So tune in on September 29th at 9 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC to hear what black women across the country have to say. All right, we'll be checking that out.

We got some business to talk about. There's a debate tonight. I've been breathing into a brown paper bag all morning. I was on an airplane at 530. My seatmate was looking at me strange. And I was just like, you know, I'm nervous. I can't be as bad as I was in Georgia. I'm stressed.

I can't be as bad as I was in Georgia. But before we do it, I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to do it. But my former colleagues are forcing this on me. My former party is doing this. I'm sure you've seen this. There's a story coming out of Ohio. In Springfield, Ohio, I guess J.D. Vance was raising the possibility that the Haitian immigrant community,

there are a lot of Haitian immigrants in Springfield in part because of the economic development that's happened under the biden administration but that's a side point uh haitian immigrants have come in and jd vance is saying that they've taken over the town and that they're abducting people's cats and eating them this is based on a single facebook post about a different city in ohio canton where like some lady's kid's friend said that they lost their cat and saw their cat getting skinned by a neighbor. Again, the neighbor was not a Haitian immigrant. It was not in Springfield. And we don't even really know if it's true, since it was like a my friend Sally's best friend's, you know, Janie kind of story. Nonetheless, that hasn't stopped the Republicans. Ted Cruz sent out a tweet that said, please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don't eat us.

J.D. Vance this morning saying, don't let the crybabies in the media, I guess that you had made, swayed you fellow patriots. Keep the cat memes flowing. This is fucking depressing, racist. I don't know. What do you think, Simone?

Everything in between. It is all an attempt. You know, when this first cropped up, I was like. J.D. Vance is a sitting United States senator. He is not some rando with a microphone in his basement. He is not someone that cannot get accurate information. Therefore, when he speaks and when many elected officials speak Ted Cruz included others people who follow them whether we're talking about on social media or actually follow them in real life like what they're doing keeping up with what they're saying people people listen to their comments a little

more closely because obviously they would know J.D. Vance is a is also the the vice presidential um the running mate to Donald Trump and will be the next vice president if Donald Trump gets elected. Ooh, that's a sentence I didn't like to utter today. So words matter and there is a responsibility to ensure that they are speaking accurately with real information. And this is, I think, very, it's very, very dangerous what has happened over the last 24 to 48 hours because he is speaking as though it is a fact. Ted Cruz is speaking as though it is a fact. Republican elected officials that know better are speaking as though it is a fact. So people who do not know any better, well-meaning Americans who look to sometimes their elected officials to definitely, we expect J.D. Vance to know what the heck is going on in Ohio, they will believe some of this. And the reality is it is all a lie. And you said it was racist.

Yes, it is racist. It is true that this particular town in Ohio has seen an influx of people from Haiti who have originally from Haiti, who have immigrated here from Haiti. That is a fact. What is not a fact is the insidious lie that has been drummed up to other them. They are essentially saying that these Haitian people who are now living in this town in Ohio, who are not from here, they are cannibalists and they are willing to eat animals. If they'll do this to cats, what do you think they'll do to us? It is designed to- Well, I'm sorry. I don't know if they're cannibals unless they're identifying as cats, I guess. Then they would be cannibals. You never know.

We are not too far off from them going there. There is a direct line to one piece of misinformation to another. So I would just say this is- We had the author of- Jason Stanley, the author of this is, we had the author of Jason Stanley, the author of this new book about fascism, which is like a new book about fascism on our show this weekend. And his second book on fascism, his seventh book. But this particular book is about how education is needed for fascism to thrive. And he talks about stripping away knowledge from people, attacking the the schools changing the curriculum

how people get their information because if you can control how people get their information if you can affect that it's very easy to usher in all kinds of things and this automatically took me there like very concerned yeah and are there no consequences where are the consequences for the lies tim no he jd vance pushed this yesterday and everybody's like it's not true and everybody's like, it's not true. And today he's like, but it feels true. And so we should keep posting about it anyway. That's where we're at. I feel like a size six. That is not true.

I feel like a six when I wake up in the morning. You're looking like one to me. I don't know. Strong 10-12s. And we love and honor strong 10-12s as well. The thing that, for me, is like like they play stupid right they play stupid this isn't really racist right this is just people that are do have legit concerns about the border and legit concerns about immigration i'm just like fuck you if this was a community of you know belgians

that had moved in to town for whatever reason there were some there was a you know some belgian expats that decided they wanted to move to springfield jd vance wouldn't be running around talking about how they eat cats all right so i don't or ukrainians i mean people you know what i'm saying like that we always in our in our political discourse it always seems that a certain type of immigrant they are oftentimes non-white are the people who are being othered and demonized. I have not heard people talk about Ukrainian refugees who have come to America in the same way that some people talk about Haitians and Venezuelans and literally anyone from south of the U.S.-Mexico border. Well, I love Haitians. I love Haiti. Creole culture is amazing. We've got a lot of Haitians

in New Orleans and in Miami. So I lived right next to little Haiti in Miami. This shit pisses me off. But unfortunately, you know, this kind of ties my next subject, which is the vice president. I haven't got to spend as much time with her as you have. Does all this stuff get to her? I mean, like, let's just talk about her mindset going into tonight a little bit, because she hasn't had the reps, you know, that like generally a presidential candidate would have had coming into the first debate. Like she wasn't in a primary. Yeah, there was not a rigorous primary, right? Like this was the people across the country and

Melissa Murray and I were talking to them. Young people refer to this as the switch. And I'm like, what's the switch? They said the switch at the top of the ticket from Biden to Kamala Harris. And to your point, yes. I mean, just a couple of days ago, the Harris campaign, there was an issues section added to the website and people made much to do about it. But to be very clear, if this were a regular normal election cycle, right, the vice president who is running for president would have over the course of a primaries put out a bunch of different policies. There would have been a bunch of different debates. And right about now, we would be talking about each candidate's

100 day plan. This is just not a normal election cycle. But that shouldn't concern you, Tim. Don't be concerned. It shouldn't. I'm concerned about her nerves. Here's why. I'll talk about me. I'm going to talk about me, not about her. Because I'm hoping she's better than me. But A, I'm nervous today. But B, thinking about those debates, I sat next to all those men, mostly men, at those GOP debates in 2016. It was different, man. I was there in 2012, but Trump got there, and the interest was higher. The Klieg lights were brighter. The element of surprise, I don't know what this fucking weirdo is

gonna do on stage you know adds to it and i saw them jeb was nervous little marco was nervous i stood three feet from them they were all nervous all right and i'm nervous for her tonight so i don't know you've been with her in high stress situations what what's what's prep like what do you think the mindset's like my experience with the vice president is she's, I think I like to, I like to tell people, I don't get nervous, but I think we all get nervous. I would not say I have seen her nervous. I think she's been in a number of, you know, high stress situations throughout her career. And while this has not been a normal election cycle, so there has not been a normal like primary process where she has put out all of these things and there's been all these primary debates. What there has been and what she does have, I think, is the experience out

there on the campaign trail and over the last, not just this cycle, but the last presidential cycle. And she does have debate experience. While Donald Trump, it is a fact that he is probably the most experienced presidential debater ever because he's had so many debates. She has had a lot of debate experience on her own, and it would be, I think, factually incorrect and just untrue for people to state that she's inexperienced on debate stage. When she was in the DA race that she ran for, they had about at least a dozen debates in California. For the Attorney General, about three debates. For the Attorney General's race in California. For the attorney general, about three debates. For the attorney general's race in California, when she ran for the United States Senate, they did about three

debates. And then obviously the last presidential primary, when it came to the Democratic Party, there was at least five of the debates that the vice president herself, then Senator Harris, stood on. And then she had that debate with Mike Pence now. And this debate with Mike Pence is what is making Donald Trump nervous. And you know how I know? Because he said it. He said, he said, I don't want her to do to me what she did to Mike Pence. Well, sir, you are saying the quiet part out loud. She was mean. She was mean. But really, if you look back at that debate, and I was on her debate prep team for that particular debate during that time, what the goal was from a prep team perspective, as we were coming in speaking with and working with the then Senator Harris, was to not let the American people forget about the coronavirus pandemic that was raging.

They were literally going to be feet apart on this stage because of COVID. And that was her home base. And so they're going to talk about all these different things, but don't let them forget about the pandemic. And that is a construct that she herself developed that she wanted to make sure that because so many people were being affected, so many people were dying, working class Americans, we talked about the people on the front lines, if you will. And so that is what was top of mind for her. And then at that time, also workshopping, okay, what are you going to do if he's going to interrupt you? How you respond when he interrupts you matters. And we understood at that time, which I think her team understands now, that

Kamala Harris cannot do exactly what Donald Trump does for a number of reasons, one of which he has autocratic tendencies that she does not have. And she's a sitting vice president of the United States of America. But another reason is- He's a megalomaniac also. Yeah. Seems a little unwell to me, if I could just be honest. But at the very basis of it, he is a white man and she is a woman of color. And so what her actions are going to be perceived slightly differently because through that lens of that. And that's just something that everybody understands. We understood it then. She understood her entire career.

She's been the first in many things she's done. And I definitely think it's definitely understood coming into tonight. And so how is she going to respond when he attacks her, when he interrupts her? And a response could be a facial expression. It's not always words. Are you going to respond at all? Are you going to dismiss and pivot? All of those things were things that we worked through in our debate camp, as we called it in 2020. And I have no doubt that over the last week or so, as she and her team were debate camping in Pittsburgh, that she stood on a stage that was a replica to the stage that she will stand on with Donald Trump tonight, and that she is very prepared to meet the moment. Can I just say one more thing about this thing? I have three follow-up questions from that rant already, but keep going going i've got a list i'm making a list former president trump and vice

president harris has never met have never met and when i i wrote an op-ed for msnbc that popped today and the the standards people were like did you did they never meet i'm like no he and he after he incited the mob that you know tried to stop the the certification of the 2020 election sent them to the capitol he didn't where'd he the he didn't come to the inauguration he went home he did not come to the inauguration he went home mike pence notably then vice president mike pence he showed up to the inauguration so this is the first time that they will have met they've been in the room together one other time during the state of the union when vice president harris was then a senator yeah he took his little ball went home his little binky had his little temper tantrum. My two follow-ups, the two things I'm interested on,

I guess first let's go to kind of this element of how things are a little bit different for her as a black woman. This is hard for me to get my head in. I've been thinking about this. I'm like, not only am I not a black woman, I've never prepped one. All of my candidates have all been white men because I used to be a Republican and most of the candidates are white men. And so we don't prep facial expressions that isn't something you do and i remember the last time you're on the pod months ago we were talking about how as vp i was like agitating for her to be more aggressive and you're like you know there's just this balance you have to think about given her identity right that you don't want to come off as the angry black

woman or whatever right you have to think about how you pick your spots. And so I'm just wondering how you would think about that going into tonight. Obviously, she's gonna have to challenge him and stand up to him. How might that be unique for her? Maybe it gives her opportunities that a white guy wouldn't have. I think it does. And it could potentially trigger him more. Or but it also, I think presents challenges. So how would you think about that if you're a preppener? I think that there's a difference between strength and aggression. And oftentimes when people say, oh, the candidates need to get aggressive, what they really mean is that they want their candidates to project strength. And an example of this is, again, while she has never met Donald Trump, she has been saying on

the campaign trail, you know, I know his type. And so the strength that she is projecting in this moment is really drawing a contrast between herself and Trump while also weaving in her bio. Like she's letting you know, I am somebody that knows what I'm talking about, that while I may have never been president, I'm the sitting vice president of the United States. But not only that, I have done the work throughout my career. Like she is. That's what that riff is about. You know, she talks about, you know, she's taking on fraudsters who have cheated the work throughout my career. Like she is, that's what that riff is about. You know, she talks about, you know, she's like, she's taking on fraudsters who have, you know, cheated the big bank. She talks about cheaters, people who have, you know, lied. And, and, and then she adequately, I think ties Donald Trump to that. That is strength, not aggression, but that is strength that is showing you have a command of the landscape.

And furthermore, it's building in that bio because also what she needs to do, which is why it's strength, not aggression. Because to be clear, as a woman of color in this country, apparently aggression is never acceptable. We always have to be very nice and da, da, da, but we can be strong. Okay. Like forget that. Yeah, you can. There are people who still say they don't know enough about her. They don't know her. And this is an opportunity to further introduce herself to a large swath of people. And so I expect us to see that contrast between joy and retribution. There is nothing wrong with being joyful. Donald Trump hates her

laugh. You know how we know? Because he keeps talking about it. So I hope that she laughs at him. Whenever she decides that she's going to respond to him in some way, shape, or form, or address something he said and respond to the moderators and the people at home, some of it, you must be dismissive. I think the best way to handle Donald Trump is to be dismissive to him. And we heard her say during the DNC that he is very unserious, but what he is planning to do is very serious. Again, that's a nice balance. It projects strength, a command of the issues, but also somebody that's like, they're trying to gaslight us and we are not about to be gaslit. Were there any lessons on that from the NABJ thing?

That's the thing that I look to think about. You know, obviously there aren't any lessons from the first debate with Joe Biden. We're not going to talk about that. But maybe there's some lessons from the NABJ and how to kind of get under his skin. Because those gals didn't like really go at him hard. It was kind of easy to get under his skin, frankly. I mean, they asked regular questions. And he was very defensive from like the moment he sat down.

I think, look, the microphones will be muted, right? And there's no audience. So two things. Every single candidate, as you know, they feed off the audience. They use the audience. It can be a boom. When you have a good point, they're clapping. And so, you know, you feel that energy.

So it makes you want to get a little more rah, rah, or, you know, it could work to your opponent's perspective. There's an audience here. And so because there's an audience that's physically in the room, you have to play to the audience at home. I think Donald Trump's mic being muted will eliminate some of what was seen at NABJ because he interrupted a lot. Now it'll be muted for the people for us watching but the vice president and obviously lindsey davis and david muir will be able to hear everything that is being said so is the vice president gonna say look he tried to interrupt me and i think you all at home should know what he just said and then at that point does abc make a decision to open up donald

trump's mic like part of this could be there's a tactic here where if she is addressing him and ABC still has his mic muted, that is like a, oh, well, at that point, we got to open up the mic because she's talking to him. It's like, you know what I mean? So that's a game time decision. And that could be a tactic that the vice president could employ on the stage to get into a back and forth with Donald Trump because a back and forth between her and Donald Trump, it benefits her. Your staff owns you muted, but I wouldn't mind hearing what you have to say, you know, something like that. Your staff's trying to muzzle you. Unmute me. Unmute me. Yeah. And then he looks unhinged and crazy and she looks in command, calm, collected,

like a commander in chief. Because at the end of the day, it's not about Stormy Daniels and them. It is not about whether Donald Trump thinks the vice president is black enough or not. Who is he to tell, who is taking race advice from the birther in chief over there? No, you cannot allow Americans, voters to get distracted, which is why I think the vice president has not and will not lean into the conversation about race and gender, especially with Donald Trump on that stage. Because then you allow the conversation to become about all of these other things that have nothing to do with whom is more fit to sit in the Oval Office. I like that. My one piece of advice for those

guys, they can take or not, but Trump just has so much material. He has so much, and he wants to move on past so much stuff that he's ready for a response to the, you're a criminal, the E. Jean Carroll stuff. But you can go deeper. You know, there are plenty of deep cuts. And she does this kind of on her speech, talking about how he defrauded people at the Trump University. You know what I mean?

You can get him on his back foot a little bit, talking about some of his other crimes. All right, just one last thing from her on PrEP. The one time I did get to meet her, man, I saw these binders. These are binders. I've never seen binders like this. And so I thought on the one hand that demonstrates like a seriousness, you know, she was like getting up to speed. I forget. I think she was just coming back from a foreign trip. On the other hand,

you can be overprepped for this stuff, you know? So like, how do you balance that? Like, what was your experience in working with her and getting her ready for something like this? The vice president is similar to President Biden in that they're both lawyers. And, you know, if you've ever worked for a lawyer, it's like the lawyers, they are looking at this from 50,000 different angles. And it's like, yes, when I would be in preps with the president, I'd say, yes, sir. But especially during the campaign in 2020, sir, but that is not going to come up. This is what this is. Okay. Well, I want to know about that. Okay, sir. We could talk about that, but this is what this is. I don't think that's going to come up. Yes, but that connects to this. Okay. Well, let me tell you about that then, because I did look at that because I knew you was going to ask. The vice president is the same way.

And I think it boils down to this is, especially for the lack of the audience. Right. This is more like a Senate hearing for her, I think, in terms of preparation or literally prepping for trial. And when you are out there on trial or in a Senate hearing, you can anticipate what you're on trial with a witness on the stand is going to say. Or if you are in a Senate hearing with a witness literally sitting before you on the days is going to say. But you don't know for sure. And you need to have different paths and different ways to go. That is what, in terms of her prep, I think the additional material is about. To be clear, sometimes you get all this information just to boil down to this one specific point, but I needed the backstory to be able to make this point because I might need to pull from the backstory. So I view it like that. She is not trying to cram a bunch of random numbers in her head. So I view it like that. She is not trying to cram

a bunch of random numbers in her head. When I used to work for her and we would travel during campaign season, every place we went, she wanted the three numbers for, when we were talking about the economy and whatnot, it was housing, it was the price of gas, and it was one of the things she wanted. And we were all like, what? She's like, she wants those numbers for every single place we went. And so we would update the document that, you know, the little card that we would give each of the, you know, Biden had a card as well to make sure that we had those three things. So she could just glance at it and know her three. And then she would weave that in to something else that she was doing. But she wanted the three things.

But when we would see her, you know, do her spiel, do her stump or be out there answering questions in a town hall or an interview, I saw the three things come through. And I'm like, this is why she wanted them. So sometimes it's a lot of paper, but it boils down to this one specific thing, but the backstory matters. What is our specific thing tonight? Last question. What do you think it is? What's the main case she's trying to make against him? I think the 2020, it was about coronavirus. This is about the choice between somebody who fights for you and somebody who first and foremost fights for themselves. And I think she's going to continue to weave everything back to, I'm going to fight for you. He's going to fight for himself. And when she talks about policy, she's going to say her piece about her policy and then give that

little, like she would do in a courtroom, juxtapose that with what Donald Trump would put forward. When I did Biden's debate prep in 2020 in the primary, I played her in the debate prep. So I'm she would do in a courtroom just suppose that with what donald trump would put forward when i did biden's debate prep in 2020 in the primary i played her in the debate prep so i'm very familiar with how she does the things well that's wonderful simone thank you for your expertise on this thanks thank you for coming on i'll be seeing you late night tonight uh remember folks uh black women in america the road to 2024 sunday september 29th at 9 p.m do TiVo or your DVR, whatever you're doing these days. We'll put it on Donald Trump's Super TiVo down at Mar-a-Lago. We'll try to get Mark Caputo

to help us with that and make sure he can get triggered by it. And we'll see that. We're going to we had a little audio of Melania we're going to play, but I'm too, Melania was like talking about how the assassination attempt might have been an inside job, and I'm just too vulnerable to do that today. I'm just too vulnerable. We're going to leave that for later this week.

Again, reckless conversation. Reckless. I know that. Reckless. Okay. Reckless. Up next, the view from Mar-a-Lago with Olivia Newtsey. Stick around. At Catholic Charities Agencies Nationwide,

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that every community is different and has different needs. They put food back on tables at pantries where clients can shop with dignity. They train and place local workers through career development programs that strengthen communities. They unlock doors to new homes and fresh hope and walk together with clients on the road back to a better life. Help Catholic Charities serve your neighbors in need and make communities stronger. Join them at wearethere.us. That website again is wearethere.us. And we're back with Olivia Nuzzi, Washington correspondent for New York Magazine. Her latest piece, I Examine Donald Trump's ear and his soul.

Ew. Hey, Olivia, how are you? I'm great, I think. You were with Donald Trump again. Can you explain to me why they let you back in to the premises? It's interesting. This is like the third installment in my features about 2024 where I've interviewed him. The first one was before he had announced that he was running, but he had made up his mind, he told me. And then the next one was about him being sort of cocooned in Mar-a-Lago with no real campaign to speak of, but he was already technically running. And he really hated that. The Norma Desmond piece. The Norma Desmond piece. Yeah, he really hated that piece. He called me like dumb as rocks and unattractive and all these things.

But I was confident that he would talk to me again after that. I just knew it would take a little while. And it did take a little while. He's sort of like the eternal optimist in some way. He said something to the effect of like, yeah, you've written some mean stories, but let's try it again. What the hell? And I was like, huh, okay. I hope my mother's not listening because her and Donald Trump are opposite in every way.

But they have one trait that's together that maybe I also have a little bit of, I got from her, which is, I just always feel like I can win you over. Yeah, I have that same thing. Like, if I could just do the one, if I said the one right thing. Well, I relate to it because I refuse to have an enemy. You know, like I view it as a challenge if someone doesn't like me. And I think that's maybe the one thing that I have in common with him. And one other just factual matter before we get into the meat of the story. Did you touch his ear?

Did you physically touch it? I did not touch his ear. He seemed to invite you to, though. I don't know. I didn't want to invite you to, though. I don't know. I didn't want to, you know, it's very, it was at sort of the beginning of the interview, too, that this happened. And so, you know, he was showing me from a distance. He was sort of like moving his ear back and forth and showing it to me. And we were seated, you know, maybe two or three feet apart.

And I wear glasses. I'm completely blind without glasses. And so I really needed to come closer to see what he was referring to and i did not touch it uh but i got close enough that i can tell you that he doesn't smell like anything which is very interesting the smell the smell story was false maybe that's something about your olfactory i actually have one more thing before we get into the substance of the story there's the there's the conspiracies and i had this like this just about like whether what happened with the ear and like there is a nick you can see in the pictures and i had this thing how it was in french court i'm wearing my flip-flops

and i have this like tiny cut on one of my toes i didn't notice in my flip-flops and i came home that night and i was taking off my clothes you know i'm in the bathroom and you know i wasn't really paying attention. The next morning, I woke up and I had blood all over the sheets, all over the bathroom floor. And it was the tiniest little nick. So, I do think that we can get rid of any of the conspiracy mongering. He was nicked. There was blood.

Yeah. I mean, I don't have any doubt that something happened to his ear. You know, it seemed, I mean, if you watch the video, you know, a million times while writing this piece. And he seemed so disturbed by what happened. I mean, in a way that he can't fully, can't fully acknowledge. I think there's no doubt that something happened. And all of the kind of blue and on theories that it, you know, it was prop blood or whatever people are saying. I don't give any credence to any of that you delve deeper into the psyche of donald trump than i like to be usually and maybe that some listeners like to be so they might not want to go there so before we

get back to that yeah hey it is it is it's our it's our reality we didn't choose it before we get to that i want to in the context of the debate and like what to expect from him. I think it was interesting in the piece you discussed kind of how he has struggled to make this pivot from Biden to Kamala. Just talk about kind of that conversation and how you see whether he's been able to get his lizard brain around his new foe. It's interesting. I mean, first of all, he's just very frustrated that he has to do this. He thought that he sort of had it made with Biden as his opponent. Things were going super well, in his view. And then he had the rug pulled out from under him. And I think he sees some irony in,

you know, he performed so well comparatively at the debate. And, you know, the gift that he got in return for that was, you know, maybe losing this election, whereas before he did not think that he was going to. So he's very frustrated by that and feels like it's unfair, but like add that to the list of, you know, every other thing that he believes is unfair. But it's interesting. I noticed this in 2020, and I'm sure you did too, that he just could not figure out how to talk about Joe Biden. He didn't really seem to want to talk about Joe Biden. He was talking about Hillary Clinton or even Barack Obama much more than he was talking about Joe Biden. He just wasn't a great villain for him to

run against. He didn't animate the base. If you go to rallies or you went to any rallies in 2020, you could tell that people just didn't really care that much about Joe Biden. And so he would sort of see, I think he's very attuned to whether or not the crowd is engaged on something. And he would just pivot to talking about Locker Up or talking about Barack Hussein Obama or whatever. And then he finally landed on, you know, some language to talk about Joe Biden and finally got comfortable with it after losing to him in 2020. And now he's got to talk about Joe Biden and finally got comfortable with it after losing to him in 2020. And now he's got to talk about somebody else who he really doesn't seem to know very much about Kamala Harris at all. That was sort of one of the big takeaways for me from our conversations,

just basic biographical stuff. He's not really in a defensive posture right now, or at least he wasn't in conversations with me. And so when he was referencing Kamala Harris as being this sort of Marxist, and he was using her father being a Marxist professor in his words, I just, just conversationally was like, I don't think she even really knew her dad growing up. Like, I think she was raised by her mom. I'm pretty sure she doesn't maintain contact with her dad. And he sort of was like, huh, yeah, maybe that's right. I don't know. And I just thought like, it's one thing if he's just being shitty and just like misrepresenting her biography to make some sort of political attack. That I sort of expect, right? Or I definitely expect. But for him to genuinely

just be sort of spitballing about her and not be sure about whether or not what he's saying is true sort of surprised me. And he seemed sort of surprised by it. Like, yeah, maybe, maybe that is wrong. I don't know. There's always some subtext, the Olivia deadpan, I'm kind of wading through. And that same section, you're talking about how one of his advisors was surprised that he wasn't as attuned to like these biden interviews back when biden was trying to save his save his campaign um after the the debate so is the subtext there did you feel like he's losing a step disengaged some signs there he wasn't as sharp or like what were you trying to get at the thing that you're referring to i talked to an advisor you know i called someone after that

exchange with him and this followed my meeting with him at Mar-a-Lago and him trying out a new nickname for me, Kamabla. And I genuinely had not heard it. I, you know, I confess, I don't read every Truth Social post. And I didn't know about this nickname. And I really just was trying, I was trying to understand what the hell he was saying. And it didn't make any sense to me. And I was like, what is the joke? What is Kamabala? And I think he realized how genuine my confusion was. And he just looked crestfallen about it. And to my knowledge, they haven't really been using the nickname Kamabala since then. So I do sort of take credit for that. But I talked to an advisor after that other exchange about Kamala's father. And I just was sort of like, is he not being briefed? Are people not doing sort of the work of getting the principle up to speed that you have to do on a campaign? And this advisor was like, absolutely not. He's not being briefed. And to that effect, he didn't even know that George Stephanopoulos was interviewing Joe Biden after the debate. And he asked me where he could TiVo it. And I thought that was such an interesting story. I can't, he's in such a little bunker down there in Mar-a-Lago. And it's sort of like the campaign

is in two different modes. It's either he's in the rally mode and he's traveling to these swing states or what have you, or he's being dragged into some court appearance or other, or he's in this living room, this like gilded space where people are sort of coming and kissing the ring and being very respectful and deferential to him. It's not the kind of like hectic, chaotic people elbowing for proximity environment of campaigns past. And I think that there's probably a lot that just from a purely political perspective is like good about that in that it's not creating insane headlines every day. And he's the only reason why they're off message. People seem a little afraid of him on this current campaign. That's sort of what I got. And maybe it's preventing them from really doing their jobs. How does the gilded living room smell? Different times of year, I've noticed it smells different. I was expecting it to be pretty bad in hurricane season.

It wasn't so bad. I've been in there before where it really smells like mildew. And you can just smell all of the old people who have been in that space over the decades. But this time, it just sort of smelled like an old house. Another thing that you get into, which is, I think, relevant to the debate tonight, is you mentioned he's annoyed by the situation and he's aggrieved by the situation. But he also is, like, annoyed by her a little bit, the attention she's getting, annoyed by the weird thing. Totally. That isn't great for him.

Like, we saw at the National Association of Black Journalists when he's annoyed, that usually doesn't reflect well on his performance. So, do you think that that's persisting or is he getting over it? I think the advisors I talked to said his task has to be to not get irritated by her, basically. And I know he's received some other advice about sort of just not allowing her to get away with just pithy soundbites or sh you know, shiving him rhetorically to sort of force her to talk in some more depth. I don't think he really has much ability to not get annoyed by someone. I will say like... Oh my god, wait a minute. I have two things in common with Donald Trump. This is a horrible podcast. Anyway, continue.

I did find that I could tell, sometimes I would formulate a question and I could see him make a decision. I could sort of read it on his face that he it was something that he very easily could have gotten very irritated about and responded very defensively and take an issue with the framing of the question or the way that I said it or whatever. Anything that he would typically do in the past. It used to be the case that it was like dealing with this wild animal and you're trying to waltz with him and not get him so angry that he just thrashes you around, but you're also trying not to let him, you know, walk all over you. This was a much more relaxed Trump and you could kind of have a semi-human conversation with him. And I saw him decide not to take the bait and to take me sort of at face value in wanting answers to my questions. So maybe it's the case that this sort of slower, chiller post-shooting Donald Trump is not going to act like he acted in debates with Hillary Clinton. But I don't know. Then you saw, you know, on last

Friday, he stood, I was there, he stood in the lobby of Trump Tower for what felt like four hours talking about every allegation, not even every, I mean, it was probably a fraction of the allegations of some sort of sexual misconduct or sexual assault against him. And then he was extremely irritated and he was mad at his lawyers. And it just seemed like, you know, Donald Trump, as we've always known him. So I think think he maybe he learned something from the biden debate which is if you keep the focus on your opponent maybe they reveal themselves in a way that's advantageous to you but i don't know does he learn i don't know yeah can you do it with a black woman next to him that makes it a little tougher i do think i did see there was a there was and who the hell

not like you just can't even believe anything these people say but there was a report from gates and gabbert and his whatever his little debate prep team jason miller that they were like he is going to focus on prosecuting i don't know maybe they're prosecuting but like the record like the biden harris record and she's going to defend the biden harris record and i'm just, that just doesn't sound like Donald Trump. No. Right? That he's going to press her for details on the policy record. That just doesn't sound right to me. Are you saying he's not a details guy? Well, I think he is a details guy.

I bet he could tell you more about the Hunter Biden laptop from hell than anyone in America, except for five people. I ran tabloid, details about tabloid gossip. He may be, but like policy detail. No, I think with all that stuff, he just sort of gets the gist and he moves on.

But like, I have to tell you, I asked him at one point, I was trying to get him into a conversation about the Hannibal Lecter thing. And so my way to do that without just jumping right into it was to first ask him about the movie business and to ask him to tell me about what it was like to know Robert Evans. And he talked about Robert Evans in more detail than he has ever talked to me about anything. Like he, I was like, oh, he is a policy expert. If that policy is like old Hollywood filmmaking. So I don't know. I have a hard time imagining him standing up there kind of reciting a list of talking points against

Kamala Harris where he knows stuff about her record. I think that's not a Donald Trump that anyone has ever experienced before. Yeah, I think it's pretty tough because he also just absorbs some of that stuff via cable. In the 2016 like debates, like at the end of them, he had just like this lizard brain ability to kind of regurgitate stuff that was in his brain because laura engram had said it you know and just like repeat and he knew the bad stuff about about hillary and all this bonus he just hasn't had the time to like let that seep in with with comma it takes him a while like it really takes him a while he really didn't know how to i always thought it was so funny in 2020 and probably part of why he lost that he was saying that jo Biden was a criminal mastermind and also that Joe Biden was basically

dead. And it was like, well, what is it? You know, is he creepy Joe or sleepy Joe? And he couldn't figure it out. And I think that made it difficult for his base and for everyone he was talking to, to really have a clear idea of what the alternative was that he was presenting. So I don't think he knows enough about Kamala Harris to create a caricature of Kamala Harris that would be appealing to, you know, whatever tiny fraction of swing voters he's trying to persuade. All right, I want to get to the other part of the story. You have a line in there about how Trump and his opponents agree on one thing, that he has not changed after the assassination, but you make a kind of, I will just say, because we're pals, kind of a dubious implication that you think maybe we might both be wrong, that both Trump and his enemies might be wrong about Trump. So, come on, make the case. I think that he is resistant to the reality that if you go through something traumatic as a human being, I think that he has never really thought

of himself as part of the human race. Like, I think that he thinks of that as being beneath him. And so therefore, you cannot have a human experience or a human reaction to an experience if you are not a part of the human race, if you are better than that. And so he's very resistant. And I asked him if he had nightmares. That's what I was asking. But I asked him if he had dreamt about the shooting, for instance. And he knew immediately that what I was asking was, are you fucked up by this? And he was absolutely not. Absolutely not. That might happen to some people, some weaker people, he's suggesting, but not to me, Donald Trump. So it's not that I think that he's changed, but he does seem different in conversation. He looks different. He looks a little shell-shocked, frankly. I've been interviewing

this man for 10 years, almost 10 years, exactly. He just asked me where I'm from. He is making conversation and curious about other people in a way that is, frankly, alarming. It's like, oh, God, like, what happened to this guy? Does that mean that his values, you know, a phrase I hate, but that his values are different or that what motivates him is different? Absolutely not. When I come around to the end of the piece, you know, at the end of the interview, I was sort of just teeing up what was frankly just like an easy slam dunk softball question to mix sports metaphors. I don't know anything about sports, obviously. And I had seen recently his home in Queens that he grew up in.

And I was really struck by the fact that like, I don't know what I was expecting, but it just looked like a house in Queens. Like my mother grew up in Middle Village, Queens. It just looked like a regular Queens house. It looked shockingly small. And I mentioned to him that I'd seen the house and I said, what do you think when you consider your journey from there to where you are? And I figured he would give me some bullshit like about, oh, well, my mother or my father, or I've accomplished more than anyone on earth. And instead he just launched into, he was like, I'm honored by it. I'm honored by it. And I'm waiting for the, you know, the thing about how amazing he is. And he just launched into this like rant that went on for, for minutes about how everyone on earth talks about him all the time. And no one has been talked to. No one has been talked about as much

as Donald Trump has talked about. He was talking in the third person like he always does he sounded just like donald trump as i've encountered him you know before the trauma of the shooting so by the end of the piece i suppose it's subtle um i come around to no he hasn't really changed but i think that he is traumatized by what happened and i think that he has no desire and no ability to process it. Okay, we've got to talk about Donald Trump and God, just because I have to do it, since you wrote about it. An advisor described his religious curiosity. He has questions about resurrection and eternal life, good and evil, right and wrong, and the afterlife, and what happens. How does God decide who lives and doesn't during experiences like that? Give me a break. And another longtime advisor described his curiosity he has questions about the resurrection eternal life good and evil

no right no no no there's none of this happened donald trump did not ask any of these people about the resurrection there was another element in there where you talked about how so one of these fuckers talked about how he literally turned the other cheek. Yeah. Come on. It's funny. It's like a lot of people are projecting onto him what they wish he would become in the wake of this. Right? And it is true. He is suddenly like, when I asked him a question about God, it was like, do you think so?

And it's part of the general curiosity about like, oh, maybe I am part of this human race that people talk about. And I'm interested in the other people who are a part of it all of a sudden. And the thing I really wanted to know was, how do you explain, okay, you think that God intervened to save you, right? And this all appeals to his narcissism. But he doesn't really think that. He doesn't really think that. I don't know, but I think it really appeals to his narcissism. Sure. The idea that, right, there's a God and that God is my fan. I love my fans, right? I want to meet all my fans. Okay, all right.

Now you're speaking my language. That sounds like Donald Trump. There was a line in the piece to that effect that I guess got cut. I haven't looked at the piece. To him, if he can understand God through the prism of fandom, and God is his fan, and God thinks that he is so important, that God stopped everything that God was doing to turn his cheek to look at this stupid fucking chart, right? Then I think he's

all in on the God thing. But I asked him, you know, how do you explain a God that would intervene to save you, but not to save the gentleman who was killed or not to save the two people who were shot and badly injured. And he really, he said, yeah, I've thought about it. And then he launched into this, when he gets uncomfortable, he yammers, right? Like he's just like a grade A yapper and the yapper yaps to fill the voids that they don't have to look into it, right? And so it can't stare back. And he was just yapping about how much money he had been able to raise and divert to these families and, you know, praising a friend of his that he alleges gave

a million dollar check and talking to me about how much money a million dollars is. It doesn't matter how rich you are. He's just yammering and yammering and yammering. And then finally, he took a breath and I was like, okay, but I'm trying to have you thought about it or not. Why would God intervene to save you and not Corey? And then he sort of looked off and he really did seem to be thinking, which is more than I could say for the Donald Trump of the previous nine years that I've spoken to. And he said, I don't like to think about it. He went on a whole thing about how he's been really busy to explain why he hasn't been thinking about it, even though he knows. And he said, I guess I should think about it. And this was another interesting thing about this conversation. He didn't apologize for anything, but he was weirdly willing to accept

that he had made mistakes at different times. You know, I asked him, like, why would you have enlisted John Bolton? Why are you relying on advice from Lindsey Graham and all these neocons if it's so at odds with what you claim is your worldview and your foreign policy? And he gave me this whole like song and dance about how he never really went to Washington before. He'd been there a couple times for his hotel, but he didn't really know anybody. And so he didn't know like who was an idiot and who's not an idiot. And he made some mistakes as a result of that but but now he's pretty sure that he knows who the idiots are and who he shouldn't trust but i thought it was interesting that you know he used the word mistake in relation to himself which is not something that i've ever known him to do i mean the bar is low the bar is really

really low i can't get any lower really i thought it was just interesting the one last thing on the god thing was when in a different part you're talking to him about it and he like starts to do the like he starts to play pretend about how he thinks that god really intervened and then and then you're like then he like downgrades himself to talking about how other people are talking about how yeah he just can't get another point when he's talking about god he's talking about how. Yeah, he just can't do it. And even at another point when he's talking about God, he's talking about God. And then he immediately is like, you see that photo? Oh, did you see that really good photo? And then he's like, were there any other really good photos that day?

Why was that photo iconic? Do you have any theories? And he wanted me and Isabel Browerman, who was painting his portrait during this interview, to assess aesthetically these photographs and why some of them broke through and some of them did not. And it was like that conversation started with me asking him about God and it ended with him being like, yeah, these photos are really amazing. But it all reminded me of, there's this wonderful story, I think it was actually two stories, but this profile of Lee Atwater by Marjorie Williams, who used to write for Vanity Fair, and she's dead now, but she's like one of the all-time great feature writers and someone I admire so much. And at the end of his life, Lee Atwater claimed to have found God.

I've read this. The story is that she goes and visits him or she relays that, you know, someone that she was speaking to for this story goes and visits him on his deathbed. And there's like a stack of Bibles and they're all still covered in plastic. Right. There's always a bit of that with Donald Trump. Is the portrait, did you get a peek at it? Is like an update of the golf portrait of him in the white vest? The portrait, we ran the portrait alongside the story in the magazine. I'm on the app. I missed it in the app. It must not have appeared in the white the portrait we ran the portrait alongside um the story in the magazine i'm on the app i missed it in the app it must not have appeared in the app version um and

it's it's uh it's really something i kind of i wrote the piece with the portrait like looming over me and in uh isabel's apartment and i think it affected the kind of surrealistic aspect of the piece perhaps that is dark well you always make me like just reconsider is not the right word think again about don't like just kind of like look at askance at donald trump from a slightly different vantage point than i'd than i always have looking at him which is a deep challenge considering how much time i spend thinking about this asshole so uh that is uh to your great credit. Last thing, any predictions? We're in prediction business.

The people listening to this have five hours till the debate. So they're nervous. Their stomachs are nuts. Is there anything that you want to leave them with for tonight? I'm not really good at predictions. Me neither. Any advice to them for their anxieties? Any cocktails?

To the candidates? No, to the listeners. Oh. To the listeners. It's like, what the fuck do I care? The listeners right now, you're their therapy right now. They're like, this debate is coming. I'm breathing into a paper bag.

You know? Yeah, yeah. You're in real trouble if anyone's relying on me for therapy. I feel like, yes, it might matter. I don't know, I keep having this debate with people I know, right? Where it's like, does it really, does anything that happened in these debates, leaving aside the last debate where it really mattered,

does anything that happens now really matter? And I kind of think it does. I think like for the, like when we're talking about that tiny fraction of voters who will decide the election, I think a lot of those people are people who are going to vote pretty emotionally and are going to make a decision based on one or two things that they see where they say, oh, I can't vote for that person. Or, oh,

I guess I could vote for that person. So I think it really does matter at surface level as it all feels. But no, do I have any advice? Don't do a drinking game. I think that's a bad idea. People always tell me they do that for debates. I can't understand why you'd want to take a downer during a downer. Horrible. Yeah, don't do a drinking game. I always think back to election night 2016. I saw the tweet that was after Trump won Florida that was like,

things are getting so real, I've stopped drinking. That's how I feel about the debate. It's too real. It's too real for alcohol. Olivia Nuzzi, thank you as always. We'll be talking to you soon. I hope to see you out on the trail. Thank you so much. Thank you to my friends, Olivia Nuzzi and Simone Sanders-Townsend. I'm not nervous. You're nervous. We'll see how it goes tonight. We'll be back tomorrow to break it all down. We'll see you all then. Peace. Make it out staying in, the system was broke I kill, I kill in the wild I run, I run in the wild You get anxious when you feel it

I get anxious when you feel it I get anxious when I feel it You get anxious when you need it I get anxious when I'm alone You get anxious when you feel it I get anxious when I feel it You get anxious when I feel it. You get anxious when you need it, need it. I get anxious when I'm about you.

The Bullwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Breck.