The Daily Beast Podcast - How To Screw Up a Vice Presidential Pick

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

Steve Schmidt and Philippe Reines worked on the McCain/Palin and Clinton/Kaine campaigns. So they know a little something about sub-stellar Veep picks. On the latest edition of THE NEW ABNORMAL, Schmidt and Reines talk to Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson about what went wrong, and how Biden can avoid the same fate. (“In a perfect world, he would pick Bernie Sanders,” says Reines, before clarifying greatly.) Plus! Our dynamic duo asks the important questions, like: What exactly is wrong with Mark Zuckerberg? And will the caregivers at the White House assisted living facility try to give Donnie the pudding he likes? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, this is Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfest, novelist, an editor-at-large at The Daily Beast, and the person who tells Rick not to tweet the things he wants to tweet. I'm an editor-at-large at the Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. The new abnormal is about one nation under a pandemic and how it's changing all of us. We'll talk about what's happening in the country and the culture and look at good and bad people, leadership, and ideas. Molly and I come from very different political worlds. But what brings us together is that we both love America, and we realize that putting our country over party

and ideas over ideology might be the only thing that gets us through this. We'll be joined by smart guests from media, politics, culture, medicine, and science. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of curse words and try to keep our pets and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers. Well, folks, it's another episode of the new abnormal in that weird space we now exist in, where Donald Trump's executive order about social media is hovering over all of us like a black cloud, will we be sent to Gitmo? Will we be able to still type the words F Trump into our various browsers?

Stay tuned as Donald Trump's executive order becomes the national talking point of another 24 hours of distracted chaos. So, Rick, I have a question. This is just a way to use a culture war to distract from the 100,000 coronavirus. virus deaths, right? It's 102,000 as of, by the time this podcast hits, but yeah, this is, Donald Trump is trying to feed the pool of Trump voters who exist purely on feeling aggrieved by the culture at large. He's trying to give them some candy so that they will say, well, finally someone's going to

stop the shadow banning on Twitter. I always tell these guys, you're not shadow banned. Your content just sucks. For a fuck sake. There's nobody winier than. And Donald Trump, he did this whole executive order because he got butt hurt over Twitter saying he was lying about mail-in voting. Which he was. What I'm always impressed with with these executive orders is that they actually don't mean anything.

Well, they don't, generally speaking, have any import. And they are essentially, look, the caregivers at the White House assisted living facility are trying to give Donnie the pudding he likes. So he doesn't, like, rub his feces on the wall in protest. They're trying to placate him and make him happy and to achieve, as I said, feeding that Trump-based voter with the agreement fuel they need to think that the world is out to get them. I do think this is a terrible precedent, of course, because it's as a conservative. I missed the part in the whole Buckley, Burke, Kirk, Hayek manifesto where the argument was, oh, I don't like a certain form of free speech, so I want to make sure I use the power of the Federal Trade

commission to punish people who allow that speech to be made, or I don't want my speech to be accountable in any way, so I want to punish the people who are trying to hold me accountable. It is a remarkably un-conservative. It proves me what I say all the time, Molly. These guys, these Tea Party guys and the Trump Party guys, they don't want freedom and liberty and individual rights. They want a strong authoritarian daddy to hold them in his big, burly arms. So my question is now, if we have this, basically Twitter scolded him and he was able to run into the arms of Facebook. Of course. Mark Zuckerberg was there to catch him with a soft pillow in one hand and a stuffed rabbit in the other is saying, it's okay, Donnie. With us, you can always lie. Don't worry. It's fine. The whole

increasingly obvious character of Facebook is that it is an adjunct of the Trump campaign. He could go on there tomorrow and say, I want to post a recipe for roasted child, Zuckerberg. would be something the effective. I'm not going to be an arbiterate of truth. I don't know how it's going to taste. So Zuckerberg was on Squawk Box this morning with my new favorite television interviewer, Andrew Ross Sorkin. He's been bringing the fire this week, hasn't he?

He's been amazing. That talk where he said, you've basically just tried to excuse away Trump. I mean, that was amazing. Yeah, it was very well done. He's got some serious heat on the television machine the last few days. Again, this thing is a terrible precedent. I posited this point to conservators this morning on Twitter. I was like, okay, so what happens in 2028 when let's just pick up a name, President Smith,

President Castro Hernandez, President Shang, pick any random name in the world, okay? And that Democrat, progressive, hardcore person says, well, I don't like social media sites posting anything that is anti-abortion. Because I think that's wrong. And then uses the power of government to browbeat them and intimidate them, just as Trump is trying to do right now. Of course, Trump conservatives are not, shall we say, the most clearly self-referential sources of analysis. Yeah, they're not thinkers. They have a lot of trouble getting outside of their, but it owns the lives, man, a box. I wonder, though, what this idea of regulation, he's able to sort of pivot back and forth in this strange, don't regulate.

Don't regulate coal mines, but regulate Twitter. Twitter, to be nice to me. It's the larger thing of getting back to that grievances work. He knows the base likes grievances. Oh, God, yeah, that's their bread and butter. But I mean, I think the thing, and you'd mention this in the beginning, he doesn't want to talk about 102,000 dead people. He doesn't want to own that problem anymore. So he's having a temper tantrum and a hissy fit.

And it is a perfect example of what Trump does when something matters to his ego, okay? When he knew COVID was coming in January and February, he lied, he delayed, he bullied, he bullies, He bullshitted. He deceived people about what was happening. He ignored his experts. Nothing was going to go forward unless Jared could work a grift off of it. When he decides that Twitter has pissed him off, the entire federal government turns on a goddamn dime and has an executive order 18 hours later where he's going to try to regulate a trillion-dollar industry in this country. It just tells you that this guy doesn't give a crap about anyone or anything except his delicate little feels.

Yeah. What's interesting to me is, like, he's also involved. this culture war on the mask stuff, right? Like Cuomo today said he has an executive order that you have to wear masks, you know, in businesses in New York State. Government buildings, right? Right. And then you have Trump's refused to be photographed in a mask.

And they all went down to Cape Canaveral yesterday. And no one's wearing masks, except then there's this one photo of Jared not wearing a mask, but Ivanka and her kids are wearing a mask. I suspect that the mask, no mask culture war, a thousand years from now, people will look back on it and say it was something like Elizabethan courtiers. He was wearing a small bit of lace on his left sleeve today. What could it mean? What faction is he with? You're going to end up with something like that because it's just so goddamn silly and inconsequential in the end. But it matters that signifies that it matters as a signifier. And these idiots won't just tell Trump, okay, Mr. President,

no, you're just wrong. We got to fix this. You got to wear a mask. And in Japan, I mean, they've really managed to control the virus by wearing the masks. They have. And it's been an extraordinarily successful effort to stop the spread and to mitigate a lot of the possibilities of this thing that it did not look like it was going to go well at first, but they took the hard decisions. They did the hard things. So it's all now down to what pleases the Trump base. If they're owning the libs and if they're being transgressive, well, that's just an amazing thing for them because obviously the only people that care about this stuff are libtard man babies and blah, blah, blah. Bye, grandma. And it's interesting because it does speak to why he's, you know,

getting crushed with these older voters, because he is constantly trying to sell this idea that it's okay if they die. Yep. All their pushback. I mean, you've seen it all. The pushback of, well, more people would die of suicide if they're locked up for this long. First off, there's no evidence to show that. Second off, suicide isn't a contagious disease that's killed 102,000 people so far. Thank goodness. I think there's a sort of wink and a nod with some of his supporters who have said the last few days, you know, you're off the rails, sir. You need to stop this shit. I mean, even folks like National Review.

Do you really think there's anyone in the White House who says stuff like that to him? Oh, no, no. I'm saying the outside, even National Review and the Washington Examiner of all places, we're like, you've got to stop the Scarborough stuff. You've got to stop this. You're endangering yourself. It's not a good, sir. Whether it does any good or not, I think this may be part of the very, very, very,

early going for some of these groups and individuals to start to say, I really wanted to stay with him. He did so many good things, but finally I had to. Part of Trump's rage and fury against Twitter is due to this New York Post story. The head of sight integrity is a guy who's a... Who one time said actual Nazis in the White House? Right. He's a guy who is really a tech guy. But because we're in Maga World and everyone this disdemean, dystopia is so stupid. The magas decided that site integrity meant integrity. And so they are enraged

that this engineer tweeted negative things about Mango God King. The double irony of this is that any of them complaining about integrity and supporting Donald Trump at the same time. I mean, my irony meter is peaked so hard right now. I feel like I may pass a kidney stone. But it is amazing. I mean, it's just yet another example of Rupert Murdoch sort of direct. directing this president, say? Of course. If Donald Trump is reelected, Rupert and his spawn may have some chance of survival, the stoking of irrational fear on the Trump part always comes back again to that cultural war argument, always comes back again to that they're trying to stop you, they're trying to get you, they're trying to hurt you. Well, you know what? Nobody who's telling people to be careful

about COVID is saying there's some mysterious they. It's a virus. It does what it does. It's going to kill you if you get it and you're in certain health categories. It's not a good thing. So why do you try not to get it? Well, that enemy, that invisible enemy, as a certain president says, is real. The invisible enemy of like the giant never-trumped Soros-Hillary conspiracy to make your freedom go away is not real. But they will believe it till the last dog dies because this is their culture now, not just their politics. Well, I think when we look back on this time, we're going to see it as what happens when you politicize public health. I think so, too. I think you're going to end up with people who at the end of this are very resentful of the party that said,

okay, Donald's right. He's smarter than all the doctors. The experts know nothing. Trump knows everything. Sorry about your grandma dying and sorry about your husband or wife taking fish tank cleaner and dying. And sorry about hydrochloric when telling you was going to cure you when it doesn't and it also hurts your heart. So I think there's a lot of that in the office. So, Rick, did you get somebody fired? It looks like my friends and I at the Lincoln Project got Brad Parskow in a little bit of trouble. We ran an ad last week that did not make the president happy. And Brad was already kind of in that shit with Trump for spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Trump's polling numbers going nowhere, except down.

And so this week, just after our first taping of the week, the news came that Brad Parskow was being moved to a less lofty position in reality. He keeps the title, but a guy named Bill Steppian, who's a much more traditional Jared suckup Republican operative, is going in there. And so in campaigns, you know in campaigns when they say, well, he's not fired. We're just adding skill sets to the team. We're just expanding our ability to manage this complex operation. It's always bullshit. Jared lost faith in Brad Pascal. And so here he is now.

Sitting at a basement cubicle looking, where's my stapler? Will Brad be able to afford his numerous, Ferraris and million-dollar condos. These are problems that I'm not going to sweat for Brad, but I will say this. If he paid cash, I hope he kept the receipts. And if he didn't, resale value right now in the era of COVID is about to go down kind of precipitously. So I'd move those things onto the market as quick as I can, Brad. Hey, in case you missed it, the Daily Beast recently launched a crossword puzzle.

It's made to let news junkies like us flex our mental muscles with clues based on what's happening in politics and pop culture. on over to the DailyBeast.com slash crossword dash puzzles to play now. It's a great way to pass the time during the coronavirus, and it's free. Today, we have an exciting episode on the Veep Stakes. Philippe Rines has worked for Hillary Clinton. He actually her longest serving communications advisor, and he worked on her 2016 campaign. And if that wasn't enough, we have Republican strategist, Steve Schmidt, who worked on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

I wanted to get from you, Steve, and from you, Philipp, your perspective, the sort of the 30,000-foot perspective on where you think the race stands right now. Yeah, I think right now Trump is losing. He's someone who promised to run saying, I alone can fix it. I'm going to make America great again. And we fast forward three and a half years. What we see is mass death, suffering, economic collapse, total unfitness for the office. And so that slogan, Make America Great again, was in transition to keep America great.

And now it's something about transitioning to greatness, which is the type of thing that happens when you're on a losing campaign and there's 20 pollsters all sitting around a table and nobody can figure out what to say and vote by committee and transition to greatness. It's all nonsense word. How about you, Philippe? What's your take on the current state of play? Well, I want to revise my answer. I'd like to go before Steve because that is a whole.

card act to follow. And I don't have much to add to that, except I would say for the last couple of years, I think I and many Democrats have been suffering from paralysis by analysis, which for those who don't listening who aren't familiar with the term, it's basically you're so afraid of Trump. And he's so because he's such a wild card and the whole notion that he can do anything that you miss the farce for the trees. And I think when you take a step back, Steve just outlined the state of the race perfectly. And the age old adage of if the election were tomorrow, he would get shellac. The problem is, and I say this staring at my countdown clock, is that the election is 158 days from today. So when I can get out of my own head and look at things rationally, it would be

insane for this person to be reelect. But I keep going back to something Trump said in 2016 that stuck with me at the time that I think was a little bit more of a national slogan than it came across at the time. He, I think of all places, was speaking to an African American church in Flint, Michigan. And he was doing his usual routine about the Democrats only come knocking on African American and minority doors every four years to get their votes. And then in between Democrats don't care. But he said, what do you have to lose? Which he repeated recently with his talking about his potion that people should try. what do you have to lose is the 2020 version of Are You Better Off than You Were Four Years

ago? Who the hell is better off than they were four years ago, aside from the Mitch McConnell's of the world? Like, I don't know who these people are that are getable, but I can't imagine any of them thinking that this turned out the way they wanted. Yes, a lot of people just wanted to blow up the system. Understandably, the system was horrible. Even for those of us who worked in government, know that things aren't working great. I think, though, that we would be a little bit more constructive about it, that if we were to blow up the system, we would replace it with something ideally better. There are some Trump supporters that just wanted to see it burn. But I think for those who wanted to make things better, this is a failed experiment. And amateur hour is over. 40 million Americans are out of a job.

How the hell does a president get reelected? So the title of this pod today is Veep Stakes, right? Because we're in this moment of he's sort of figuring out who he's going to pick. I think bottom line is, I think it's Warren. I think for a couple of reasons. Biden has the same responsibility gene as Hillary did, in part because he was vice president. Hillary was first lady and she saw the value of the vice president. And the best piece of advice I think she was given four years ago was. You want to pick someone that when they come into the room, you feel relieved, that you're happy that they're there, that they have your back, that they are net positive. You don't want to wince that someone you picked for whatever reason is angling for this, angling for that, which is now the problem is is that's how you end up with someone like Tim Cain, who is a very terrific person and senator.

But I do think the two adages that should drop after the last few years is, one, debates don't matter. And two, that vice presidential picks don't matter. To go back in time, Joe Lieberman was not a great pick, particularly since all these Jewish women in Florida who were Sheppinachas by checking his name and not Al Gore caused a little bit of problem. I say that as a Jew. And, yeah, look, you replaced Tim Kane. And not all votes are created equal, but my vote in 2016 was for Warren because she brought a number of things to the table that I think she brings now. And the biggest question is, what is Biden lacking? And it's two things. It's one. one, in a perfect world, he would pick Bernie Sanders. I mean, that would be a horrible world. But in that

world, he would pick Bernie to consolidate the party and money. He's not a particularly good fundraiser. And he's certainly not a particularly good fundraiser when he can't do it in person. And Warren is the closest thing to that. Now, I will add that I was shocked by Biden's $60 million April fundraising. I think that was eye-popping and it has not gotten a lot of attention. He's looking for someone that's a partner. Warren, whether they're closer in age or because she has a more policy focus, I think that he probably finds that appealing. And by the way, the other contenders are shooting themselves in the foot. I mean, Whitmer's husband has pretty much knocked her out of the So can we just add that Warren was your pick in 2016? She was because I thought what Hillary

needed. First off, Warren got under Trump's skin second only to Obama. But Obama couldn't do it every day, whereas Warren could do it every day, not that she would get attention every day. I knew she would take a tremendous amount of pressure off on fundraising. And frankly, I like the idea of a two-woman ticket. I don't think a white male did much to reinforce that. I think Tim Kane was like a, I don't think he helped or hurt particularly. But Steve, what can go wrong with a VP pick that goes off the rails? I mean, there's some chance that Biden, his sort of low-key referendum on Trump campaign right now,

could be upended with the wrong choices. I think that, as Philip said, that he's got to pick somebody who is ready to be president on day one. And so I think that there's a standard here, right? And you saw this with the space launch yesterday, right? Which is that if there's lightning within 10 miles launches off, right? Period. Doesn't matter what any of the other conditions are, right? And so I think that you get into trouble with these picks sometimes when you make a political pick and you subordinate the answering of the question, is this person ready to be president on day one to, well,

an accommodation, well, they'll get there, you know, in time or after the campaign. You try to rationalize the qualifications. So the person is either ready to be president or not, period, full stop. And I don't think there should be anyone on Joe Biden's list who doesn't meet that requirement. And so it makes it a pretty small list. Now, I think what you look would happen in Minneapolis, I think it's either going to be Elizabeth Warren or it'll be Kamala Harris. And I do wonder when you look at African-American vote share in the last election. Before all this started, there were some worrying signs, as you know, Rick, Trump making inroads into that community. I think you look at just the outrageousness of that video and the importance of that community to the Democratic Party and turnout.

I think Kamala Harris is going to have a very strong case around her as people are debating it to the vice president around the campaign. And then lastly, you know, I think that the core of this campaign, is a prosecution of Trump for his incompetence and his ineptitude. It requires the ability to make an argument. And I was thrilled to hear the vice president use the word fool in describing Trump because that's exactly what he is, right? He's a fool behind the resolute desk. And that's why we have a shattered economy and 100,000 dead Americans.

And I don't use these words to name call when I say he's an idiot or he's an imbecile, right? But these are the words that have meaning in the English language to describe the behaviors or the comportment of somebody who exhibits them. And that's why they're appropriate to use when we're talking about the 45th president. I would say something that people forget is just the psychology of it, where this is the biggest decision Joe Biden is making, certainly of this campaign, short of deciding to run. But in a lot of ways, it's the biggest professional decision of his life. And sometimes you get caught up in that. And you want to be unique. You don't want to pick Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris, because Steve Schmidt and Philippe Arnis are saying that those are the two finalists.

That's when you get a little bit too wrapped up in your own mind and you're trying to prove that you are your own man, when in fact you should be proving that you have the confidence to make the right decision. Philip, somebody said one time that the selection of the vice president is the first presidential decision people see this person who is asking to be in the highest office. That's the first presidential scope decision that people see them making. I mean, I think Quail was an unforced error in the 88 campaign, obviously. But Al Gore turned out to be a brilliant selection for Bill Clinton in the 92 campaign. Both of you guys have seen that. I mean, like I said, I don't think Kane did any harm or any help.

I mean, Steve, you went through the ringer with, you know, who. 100%. The first presidential decision that they're going to make. And this election should fundamentally be a referendum on bad decision making. We have somebody in the office who is so profoundly unfit that we could talk for the next four. hours about it. The pick has to be somebody who fills every conceivable requirement of fitness, who's a person who amplifies the good decisions that Joe Biden is going to have to make. And he has to make a lot of good decisions, right, as the next president.

I'll just not to go off like on a tangent at all, but I came from my wing of the Republican party that I always felt attached to was I was a Jack Kemp Republican. So I was an opportunity Republican as a civil rights. Republican, but I don't know what it means to be a limited government conservative in a month where the government spends $3 trillion. And more so to understand that it was necessary for the government to do so, though it was done with profound inefficiency. When you guys did your VP picks on the campaigns that you guys have both worked on the most recent ones, did you feel like you were able to influence it? I think pretty clearly the answer with me is no. I do know that Warren was

one of the finalists. So I guess the list started out about two dozen, and then each of them are vetted by teams of lawyers and just as a piece of color. I'm not sure how Steve has done it and been around it, but you have multiple law firms doing it so that no one group knows the entire list. The finalists, as I understand them, were Kane, Booker, Warren. There's a debate about whether it was Vilsack or someone else, but the true telltale is who did they make the signs for Clinton Kane, Clinton Booker, Clinton Warren. In some way, people guessed Kane from the beginning and ended up with Kane. And it's very possible that people have been saying Harris from the beginning, there's something just felt right about that, despite the kerfuffle they had on stage

during the debate. So it's very possible we end up there, which is back to the point about you want someone to make the decision without one of the criteria being feeling a need to have a surprise party about it. And I don't know who pushed back on Kane. Because I do think there was an element of, it's Hillard Clinton running for president. Are you telling me that you need the bottom of, and I don't mean this in an arrogant way, because everyone's always tagging us as arrogant. But is the bottom of the ticket really going to be what puts her over the top. So I'm not sure that there was any heated debate about Kane. I do think there were discussions about criteria. And I do think that there were candidates that she related to on a personal level. I know that she very much like John Hickenlooper. She has known Tom Vilsack for a long time. But it's not a of who you want to go to the movies with. It's a matter of being able to do it on day one. There's an added element of importance here because Joe Biden will by far be the oldest person ever inaugurated as president. So not to be morbid, but the day one rule very much has to be in effect. And don't forget, Bill Clinton was 46 when he ran. George Bush, I believe, was 50 something, 51, 52,

53, 54. Obama was 47. So you're not looking at the V. You're not looking at the president as, well, this guy keels over, who's the number two? Here, in some ways, and I imagine Trump will paint this as you're voting for 16 years of whatever it is. You're voting for 16 years of socialism or communism or ineptitude or whatever it happens to be. It's important that that person be seen in and of themselves as someone who can do it or far more importantly is not seen as someone who can't. I think that puts a real premium on not to. testing names that haven't been known. I understand, and I'm going to hopefully, I'll just ignore any blowback on this. I understand the fascination and the appreciation and just the full-on enthusiasm about Stacey Abrams. I don't think that would be a good idea because most Americans don't know who Stacey Abrams is. I'm not sure welcoming coming out party is the best way to handle this pick in particular. And I do think Biden should think a lot about the next four months. Because I think to go back in time, Hillary would rather have an advice person that annoyed the hell out of her for eight years than to be unemployed for eight years.

So probably there should be a little bit more on the side of the scale of who will help now. The one thing I'll disagree with with Steve is there's an irony in that Joe Biden is more popular with blacks than any of the black candidates he's considering, including Kamala Harris. So it's kind of a weird dynamic. I know because of his recent comments that there might be. some pressure to do so, but I would hope that that's not at play. I mean, I think we're a bunch of white people talking about this, but I would like to think that the black community completely understood what he said. And there is a reason why his approval in that community is above 90%. Well, I mean, it was the cane process was a cluster fuck from beginning and the five's description.

I mean, there were moments in that campaign. You know, you almost went to John and said, you do know we have to pick a vice president, right? I was an advocate internally for books and movies and everything else. But I like the idea of McCain taking a one-term pledge with Joe Lieberman there to pull the country together. There's two types of elections, change and more are the same. And that was a change election. You've had three incumbent presidential parties get a third term in the last 120 years. And the last time it happened, Reagan had a 60% approval level. And, you know, George Bush was in the mid-30s. And really, it was Poleni and Romney. And he My view of it was that we had to throw a football through a tire at 50 yards, and we had to come out of that convention ahead.

And despite popular perception, you know, when I took over the campaign, the two things I was not put in charge of were the VP vetting in the convention. So it was a couple days after we picked her, you know, that I had a sense she couldn't find Iraq on a map or Afghanistan or thought that the president worked with the Queen of England and on and on and on it goes. But the process was a disaster. and it was not an illegitimate criticism to look at the disorganization that always existed around John McCain. People knew him well and said, God, how is this guy going to run a West Wing? It does demonstrate something innate about the decision-making process. And I do think for this pick, and to that point, and to Philippe's point, I mean, this is one of the great crises in the country's history. And it's going to require strong and good decision-making to get the country

out of it and starting with the VP pick. And you can't ignore the fact that a 77-year-old candidate, particularly in an era where, you know, that demographic is most susceptible to a novel coronavirus that's killed 100,000 people so far, is that it's got to be somebody who the country will instantly recognize as this person is ready to be the president of the United States. You know what process doesn't get enough attention was the 2000 Cheney pick? Because that's kind of hysterical in that it's Cheney saying, I think the best choice is me. Well, look, I mean, Dick Cheney is a masterful inside player. No one would be more suited to making that inside play and convincing W of that than

Cheney himself. And there was an argument that even though W had been a governor, that Cheney's deep inside Washington experience was going to be something meaningful and helpful. Because remember, we weren't talking about going into a multi-year war in Iraq or Afghanistan when they were running. they were running on things like compassionate conservatism and education reform. But I have this sense there are a small number of people around Stacey Abrams and who really like Stacey Abrams.

And I hear some of the same things because I remember when Palin was announced in the 08 campaign, I talked to a couple of my friends who did a lot of RGA work and they're like, oh my God, she's amazing. She's so fantastic. She's got so much charisma. And I'm thinking, hmm, are we seeing a little bit of that kind of history playing itself out again? because I think she's got still some momentum inside of that world, even though other folks around Biden clearly want to put the brakes on that idea.

I already said some stupid shit on this, but if you think I'm going to compare it. My fiendish plan has been foiled. If you remember, the very first thing out of the gate, I think even before Biden announced was there was a, I think, politico piece about how he had talked to Stacey Abrams

and they had mentioned or he had offered. I don't think the story was entirely true, but it probably wasn't entirely untrue. I think Steve and I are saying the same thing. This is not a time to gamble. That doesn't mean you're picking a plain vanilla pick. It means that you're picking someone that reinforces the overall idea of competence and of security and of the ability to help things get better. I think the appeal of Stacey Abrams is, look, I hope Stacey Abrams is president of United States one day. I just, that doesn't mean that she should be vice president of United States in 2021. Will you explain what happened with the Lieberman, the idea of having a mixed party ticket?

The way that I thought that McCain could conceivably win that race was that he would go out and he would say something like this. I'm 72 years old. I'm an old man now. I've spent every hour of my adult life since I was 17 years old as an imperfect servant of the nation. The only exception was the six months when I ran for office. And if the American people so honor me with it, I'm ready to go on one last mission. It's going to be a four-year mission one term, and I'm going to ask a great American Al Gore's running mate, Joe Lieberman, to be my wingman. We're going to take a timeout from all the poisonous partisanship, and we're going to fix this country's three biggest problem. And I'm not going to run this race talking about what's wrong with my opponent. I think he's a fine man. And I have no doubt that Barack Obama is going to be a fine president of the United States one day, but he's not ready today.

The problem with that theory, then theory is great. In practice, Joe Lieberman was already persona non grata in the Democratic Party. I think he was independent at that point. Which is the only way it would have worked anyway, though, because you can't have a mixed ticket. When you look at it, particularly after the financial crisis, and you look at the spending disparities that existed in that race when, you know, Senator Obama came out of the public financing, we needed to have a disruptive moment. And to show that this wasn't going to be the third Bush term. It was going to be something different. It was a bad Republican year. You know, I'm not sure Abraham Lincoln could have gotten elected in 2008. And what's ironic about it is if you go back to the conditions, right, at the beginning of the Great Recession, right?

It looks like an age of plenty in prosperity to what we have now. That was the question I wanted to ask, Steve, is there's really nothing in our, no one in living memory has gone through a campaign cycle with an economic tsunami. Well, as you said, this makes 2008 look like a nothing burger. And I'll ask this to both of you. How far do you think it will be before we know how bad the economy is in the October, November window and how much it's hurting Trump in this campaign? I mean, the answer to your first question is unfortunate in that we won't know until 2021.

There's always, in 92, George Bush suffered from the people's feeling and the reality, the people were out of jobs. But we were already coming out of a recession. You just don't know that for a fair amount of time. There's Jason Furman who worked for President Obama, who I've known for 20 years and is just about one of the smartest economic minds and Democratic Party. He's made the point that things are absolutely horrible right now. They can only get better in the coming months and how much of that getting better plays into some kind of psychology. I disagree with that, even though I have absolutely no economic bona fides to do so because this isn't Hurricane Sandy.

This isn't some kind of natural disaster that's a pause. You have businesses that don't exist anymore. They don't even know they're not going to exist. So you've got 40 million people out of a job. It's not just that they're holding their breath until this is over. They might not have a job. They might not have a company to go back to. Companies might not exist.

Airlines might not exist. So I can't imagine that there's this euphoria. And this idea that everyone is just kind of the day after, quote, unquote, what the country reopens is going to go to Outback Steakhouse and going to go to the movies. It's kind of insane. What are you going to do? You're going to go sit in the restaurant with shower curtains in between each other? This idea of pent up consumer demand. You can't have pent-up consumer demand and unemployment at the same time. But you have a president who is a world-class bullshitter. So if Barack Obama or Mitt Romney or John McCain were in this situation, they wouldn't

say, well, it's not true that they're 40 million people out of work. The government doesn't count right. There's actually only two million people out of work. You couldn't do that in a same situation because there would be facts and fact checks. In this case, the question is who believes that. You would hope someone who is sitting at home, who lost their job, or at the very least for a period of time was out of work and sees that what Donald Trump did, whether it's his medical advice or his economic decisions, were not on par with what needed to happen, is going to say, I don't care what this person feeds me. I'm not buying his bullshit. I know that this didn't work. I know that amateur hour has to be over, and I'm going to vote for the ticket that brings stability and capability to our nation. My instinct is with Philippe, it's that I think there's a lack of imagination still about the magnitude of this disaster. And I think that not only, right, are we not at the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning, I think we're still in the beginning of this. We won't be through this until there's a vaccine. The governmental response is a disaster. It's really difficult to figure out what's happening in the States. If Dr. Fauci and the public health

experts are right, I believe the public health experts in this age of Trump, right? It's extraordinarily you have to qualify it. When you look at the images, right, of the Lake of the Ozarks and everyone, then there's going to be a big outbreak. And there's going to be a second wave of this in the fall. It's the first time he can't bullshit his way out of something. He can't say there are no cases and make it so. The other thing we should get people credit for is by all statistical measurement and by polling, people started to sequester themselves before their states and their localities mandated it. And people will probably continue to do so after they're lifted. So people are imprinting or they're not ignoring their own innate common sense about things. And that's common sense is also Donald Trump's enemy. If he wins re-election, we all deserve this. I have a question for you guys, but say you were running Biden's campaign right now.

What would you do? Rick at the very beginning said the word referendum and there was a disdain dripping from his voice. And I understand this at some point can't be as simple as a referendum. I'm going to quote Hillary, who quotes Bill, elections are always about two people. To Steve's point about the but, Biden, if it's going to be a referendum, Biden needs to make sure that the math remains, okay,

it's the blow-hard, incompetent asshole versus the solid, stable, sane, capable person. It can't be the blow-hard, incompetent asshole versus the pedophile, assulter, corrupt, and every other nonsensical term that they try to shalack Biden with. And I think the four of us, and probably most of the people listening, applauded when he called Trump a fool. Because I don't care if he's doing it, if Biden's doing it from his basement, if he's doing it from his addict, if he's doing it from the front lawn of the White House, he needs to call it like it is. And calling him a fool and calling it like it is is is important. And to date, to answer your question directly, if I was there, I would say, I really think the vice president needs to be far more aggressive. defending himself about dementia because these are things. Forget about whether Republicans fall for it.

The worst part of email four years ago were Democrats who said, I love Hillary, but what was she thinking? It just suppressed enthusiasm. They had nothing to say to their crazy uncle at Thanksgiving. Here, you've got the same thing going on. I'm curious from Steve and also from Philippe. What would you do if you were the campaign manager of this campaign? Like, would you have him do rallies? What would you do? I think him appearing right, well lit, properly framed on your television set, like an ambassador from like normalcy, is about what he's got to do. He should play the role every day of normal shadow president. The criticism he's getting about get out of the basement, I don't know what that's about. He looks great.

It's not like he's going to go fill Gillette Stadium with 80,000 screaming fans because of his soaring rhetoric. And if he starts, he did one in person interview this week. I just, I don't think that's, he's delivering message better than if he was. I thought his, the Memorial Day visit was very good. He's got to tell the country who Trump is, what Trump is done. He's got to talk about how serious the situation is and what the plan to get out of it is. And, you know, look, and he's got to be direct about communicating what Trump is, right? And, you know, all this stuff, right, apologizing for this, that, the other, allowing Trump to play by different rules, all that's got to end to be a very tough campaign.

Yeah, Biden cannot brook this dementia routine or pedophilia. And because look at who's attacking him. So the next time there's a sleepy Joe or Joe has lost his fastball is, are you kidding me? Look who is saying that. This is the sickest individual who has ever occupied the office. He's concealing both health and God knows whatever else. He gets rushed to the hospital, won't tell us what's it about, pretends that it's just some tests. These are the things he doesn't do.

He doesn't necessarily stand up for himself, particularly. strongly we saw with the Hunter Biden stuff, and he never pivots hard at Trump. I think it's important that he does that. And that's not getting in the gutter. That's not punching down. That is just not allowing you to be defined by Donald Trump in ways that just simply aren't true. What do you think, Steve? He's got to look in command and on top of it all the time. And there's not going to be big rallies. Campaign travel is going to be limited. This is going to be about making an argument delivering a message with clarity and focus. They need to distill the race to its fundamental choice. And it's going to be a very tough campaign. I was thinking, if I was the spokesperson,

you know, and I'm on TV and I got a question about whether they would grant the Trump campaign access into the archives at the University of Delaware. I think my answer would have just been like, what? And the person asked the question would have been like, huh? Like, no, I can hear. Like, Are you crazy? Right? What's wrong with you? Yeah. The other answer is, oh, sure, yeah, as soon as Trump gives us his taxes. The whole notion that spend days and days and days on defense being accused of having dementia by a guy who you look at the jerking of his body at the Memorial Day ceremonies, the slurring of the words, the idiocy of the statements, the non-secretors, the nonsensicalness of it all, you know, just cannot be on defense on this stuff. Can you just talk about conventions for a second, Stephen, then Philippe? Like, what do you think should happen there?

I don't think that you're going to see a convention full of people, like, on the floor for four days in the way that traditionally we have. You talk about Trump's insistence, right? And some of the reports will they request is they want PPE for all of the delegates? I mean, you're going to have thousands of people in PPE and masks on the floor. What a perfect visual metaphor, right? for failure of this administration, right? Because that's the thing, right, around the world. We're in the worst position. I think that's what Americans can't possibly understand because we don't see international news, right? There's no place that's got a more shattered economy, more death, more illnesses than here. That's his legacy. So, I mean, but the idea that there's going to be some giant Republican convention gathering this summer, I think is absurd. It's also assuming, you know how many delegates are like two, three thousand. You think two, three thousand people are all going to show up. All you need is tend to not show up. for the media to be going crazy about, oh, people were pretty hypocritical where they wanted things to open and they wanted the convention. But when it came down to it, they wouldn't get

on Southwest or JetBlue and come stay in a hotel and then mingle on the floor. The Republican side is problematic as they're fighting science. Democratic side, the moment you want is the balloon drop and holding hands with the interlocking arms with the VP and the chairing. You're going to lose that no matter what. Look, if the network said to the D.A. We're going to give you three hours a night no matter what. No one would be debating about whether we should have an in-person convention. They are just worried about whether or not the transition to a virtual convention comes at the cost of primetime television. The fear is that the vice president's acceptance speech and the nominees that everyone that week looks like the state of the union response, where it's some hallway where Marco Rubio was reaching blood, and Bobby Jindle doesn't look good.

Bobby Jindle's haunted mansion? Needle, because you're not going to get thousands of people who want to do this. The irony of the whole thing is that chose Milwaukee because of the whole Hillary didn't go to Wisconsin routine. That probably plays a lot into it. This is like the Olympic. This was inevitable that there's not going to be an in-person. It's not worth it. It's also too contrary to the message.

Democrats can't say, take it slowly and thoughtfully and listen to the science, but then we're going to have our jamboree. We're all packed on top of each other. And it's a total aside, there's a bad. balance with, if you stick to the date. Well, guys, I cannot tell you how much we appreciate you joining us today. This has been an absolutely fantastic discussion from some folks who know this stuff like nobody else.

Yeah, thanks for joining us. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your first. favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest and he's the Rick Wilson.

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