The Daily - 12 Days to Go: French Fries and Fascism

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

Warning: this episode contains strong language.With less than two weeks to go in the race for the presidency, Donald Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff is warning that he met the definition of a fascist, Kamala Harris is seizing on the message of Mr. Trump as a threat to democracy and Mr. Trump himself is relying on viral stunts and vulgarity to break through to undecided voters.The Times journalists Michael Barbaro, Michael S. Schmidt, Lisa Lerer, Reid J. Epstein and Nate Cohn try to make sense of it all.Guests: Michael S. Schmidt, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, covering WashingtonLisa Lerer, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.Reid J. Epstein, a New York Times reporter covering politics.Nate Cohn, the chief political analyst for The New York Times.Background reading: John Kelly, the Trump White House’s longest-serving chief of staff, said that he believed that Donald Trump met the definition of a fascist.Harris called Mr. Trump’s reported remarks on Hitler and Nazis “deeply troubling.”A look at the polls: A slight shift toward Mr. Trump but still no clear favorite.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro. This is The Daily. John Kelly told the New York Times, former President Trump is, quote, certainly an authoritarian who falls into the general definition of a fascist. With two weeks to go in the race for president, We should point out these are not terms casually thrown about in American political dialogue, certainly not this close to a presidential. Donald Trump's longest-serving chief of staff

is warning that his re-election could lead to fascism. Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable. Kamala Harris is seizing on the message of Trump as a threat to democracy. In just the past week, Donald Trump has repeatedly called his fellow Americans the enemy from within. And Trump himself Here's the story. Ready?

I'm going for a job right now at McDonald's. I've had, I really wanted to do this. is relying on viral stunts and vulgarity to break through to undecided voters. So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you've had enough, that you just can't take it anymore. We can't stand you. You're a shit vice president. The worst.

Today, I gathered four of my colleagues, Mike Schmidt, Lisa Lair, Reid Epstein, and Nate Cohn, to make sense of those developments. It's Thursday, October 24th. Hello, friends. Hello. Here we are again, our fifth campaign roundtable. And I just want to say, as I have in the past couple episodes, when we're talking, because

news tends to happen after these conversations and can be difficult to account for. It is about 1.20 p.m. on Wednesday. And I want to welcome you, Nate Cohen back. Thank you, Michael. Reid Epstein, welcome to the roundtable. Thank you, Michael. And here for the first time, Mike Schmidt. Thanks for having me. We're gonna start with you, Mike,

because you have brought us some really important new reporting that candidly we didn't anticipate being a part of this conversation, but it just feels too important to not make very central to this episode. And as a result, this roundtable's gonna feel a little bit different because we wanna spend time with the reporting that you're bringing us.

And just by way of explanation, Mike, this reporting you did, we've been talking about it, you and I, for a really long time. You have been trying to speak on the record with a single former high ranking Trump administration official for years. How many years? Four. Four years. And he's not just any official. He's John Kelly. He's President Trump's former chief of staff. He's a highly decorated former Marine

Corps general. And he's somebody that people in both parties hold in very high esteem. And over the past couple of days, after saying no to you for four years to have this conversation you wanted to have, he said yes. So just tell us about that. I have been trying to get John Kelly to talk and allow me to record it.

And I tried really, really hard to do this because I believe that his story is central to the Trump story. Kelly spent more time behind closed doors with Trump when he was in the White House than anyone else. Right, longest serving chief of staff. His longest serving chief of staff. I had pushed Kelly over and over again

to do an on the record-record interview, and he finally agreed to it. Why do you think he says yes, just to begin with? What changed? I think that Kelly saw Trump's comments in the past few weeks about using the American military on Americans. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're the, and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by national

guard or if really necessary by the military. And for Kelly, the idea of using the military domestically is a red line. That is beyond the pale for him. And when he saw Trump say that, he felt compelled to speak out. So let's, I think we should play some of this audio of your conversations with John Kelly. They were phone conversations, correct? This is a key moment in the conversation where you ask him the rather provocative question of whether Trump in his mind would Preside as a fascist if reelected now, I'm gonna play that clip now. Do you think he's a fascist?

Well looking at the definition of fascism It's a far-right authoritarian ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader centralized hypocrisy It's interesting that he decides to look up the word fascist. He's being very careful. I didn't ask him for the definition of it. I didn't ask him to look it up. He went ahead and did that on his own.

And for me actually to hear that, it was actually helpful because it gave more texture to Trump's behavior. The former president is in the far right area. He's certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators. He has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist for sure. Fascist is a term, you know, you're a fascist, he's a fascist, Trump's a fascist. These things are thrown around. But when he provided a definition to it, these are the boxes that fascist checks, and Kelly believes Trump is those things. He would comment more than once that Hitler did some good things too.

And of course, if you know history, it would be pretty hard to make an argument that he did anything good. And Mike Kelly in his conversation with you also confirmed previous reports that Trump had said to him that Adolf Hitler did, quote, good things. Correct. And to me, so much had been written about it, but it all had been in text. Hearing it was different. Hearing it from this person who looked into Trump's eyes for a year and a half when he was chief of staff is different. America in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, you know, the way we look at everything.

Another really stunning thing that Kelly talks to you about is about how Trump feels really about any kind of commitment to something larger than himself. Mike, can you just set this clip up? So it's Memorial Day of 2017. Trump has just become president. He's at Arlington National Cemetery, and he's walking with Kelly through the special section where soldiers and Marines who were killed in recent years in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried, including Kelly's son.

And as they're walking through that section, there's something that Trump says to Kelly that really takes him aback. And he came down, I mean, this is the first time I ever heard him say it. I said, you know, what was in it for them? Trump is saying to him, what was in it for them? The soldiers who died. Correct. And I thought he was asking one of these rhetorical kind of you know

Question, but I didn't realize he was serious. He just didn't see what the point was where as I got to know selflessness Was something he just didn't understand what Kelly is saying to me is Yes, Trump referred to those who died on the battlefield as losers and suckers Yes, Trump referred to those who died on the battlefield as losers and suckers. But there was something worse than that to Kelly. And that was the fact that Trump said, what's in it for them? Trump is not asking a larger question about the meaning of service or what that means to the country.

And Trump is doing that to the highest-ranking American military officer to lose a child on the battlefield in the post-911 wars. All right. Whatever you think of John Kelly, few Americans understand sacrifice and selflessness more than him. And Trump's saying, so what was in it for them? Like, you know, in a way that cheapened their sacrifice. Is there anything else that we need to talk about

or is this enough? I think it's plenty. But like I said, Mike, I'm not, and just to make it clear, I'm not recommending anything to anybody. I'm just saying, other than that when you're looking to vote for someone, regardless, you got to look at the character and all of those kinds of things.

Kelly's whole thing is, look, I'm not going to tell you who I'm voting for. I'm not going to endorse a candidate. I'm not going to recommend anything. I'm going to answer factual questions about what I saw. And I'm going to tell you that I think that fitness and character are important. Reed, where does all of this audio that Mike collected fit into Kamala Harris's campaign strategy in these final weeks of the race?

It feels like it fits in quite powerfully. I mean, the Venn diagram of what John Kelly is saying and the argument that Kamala Harris has been making the last few days is almost complete, right? It is that it is more important to pick someone with the right character and temperament to be the president, regardless of whatever you think of their policy positions. And it is really, it is an argument that Harris has been making herself as the campaign gets closer and closer to the finish line.

Mm-hmm. And in fact, just moments before we all gathered in this room, Harris came out and pretty much held a news conference based on Mike's reporting. Right, she spoke at the Naval Observatory, her residence in Washington, which is rarely a place for these types of campaign or political events.

Kind of the closest she gets to a White House back up. Right. And basically said, please read and listen to these clips of John Kelly. And she made the case that it proves that Trump is unfit for office. And I think we can expect to hear her make that case again and again as she campaigns in the closing days of this race. Nate, what's important about what we just said is that Kamala Harris's closing argument is increasingly focused on questions of whether Trump is, in her words, unstable, unfit, a threat to democracy. For a lot of us who watched the original Joe Biden campaign that she is

now replaced, we recall lots of conversations about whether that was effective. And you, I remember vividly telling me, telling our listeners that you were finding in your review of polling and in polling that you've done yourself, that that's not really resonating with people. And that's complicated because we're talking about really, really important audio and revelations. And is it mattering to voters? Will it matter to voters, even if Kamala Harris decides to make a very big deal out of this?

Matthew Feeney I think measuring the effect of these sort of things is so challenging. But just stepping back for a second, this is a campaign between two candidates with enormous weaknesses. Harris is weighed down by immigration, the economy and her record. Donald Trump is weighed down by the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs, his conduct on January 6th, and the idea that he's a threat to democracy. There are a lot of voters who are weighing those two things.

They sympathize with both of those set of concerns. And while it may not be the case that the democracy issue disqualifies Donald Trump for 60% of the electorate, or whatever it is that Democrats would have hoped a year or two ago when Donald Trump clearly was on a track to become the Republican nominee. It is nonetheless the case that this is one of the arguments that a majority of voters do side with Harris on. They think she's better on democracy than Trump. And to the extent that's what they're thinking about over the final two weeks, if they're one of those conflicted voters who has some negative feelings about Donald Trump, if this is what is on their mind as they enter the voting booth, you can

see how it could be decisive. Now, in such a close election. But who does it matter to really in this moment? There's a group of relatively moderate and conservative, traditionally Republican-leaning voters who are deeply troubled by Donald Trump's conduct. And sometimes they have voted against Donald Trump, whether that's for a third party candidate for Joe Biden. They've also voted for Democrats in some critical Senate, governor's races in recent years. In the midterm election, there were a number of races where Democrats clearly managed to

appeal to this group of voters. And if they win them again, or if Harris can win them again, then her path to winning looks much better than if those same people are thinking about, oh, Harris is a candidate who's too far to the left, who's presiding over inflation, and who has unleashed chaos at the border. Mike, how do you think John Kelly would feel to hear that there is a chance that this might move people, but it's a pretty small slice of people who seem movable and might be moved by this? Do you think he wanted to change people's minds when he agreed to do this interview

with you? I think he's deeply conflicted about it. I think that he hates partisan politics. He didn't want to have to do this. He doesn't want to be seen as injecting himself into the election. And he's not really sure how to handle that. And he gets there by essentially saying, I'm not going to tell you who to vote for, but I will answer your factual questions.

And I will say that character and fitness are more important than policy. If we're reading between the lines though, I have to think he's trying to put his thumb on the scale of skepticism of Trump. He's trying to get people to vote for Harris. I think he's essentially saying, look, I've been inside the room with this guy. I've seen him up close. And I think he's a threat to democracy. That would be the sound of you emphatically hitting the table, just in case anyone...

One thing that's worth noting though, and it's part of why the audio is so credible and so compelling, is that he isn't pounding his fist on the table. It's so matter of fact, in a way that you can't not take it. I don't see how you can listen to it and think that he's trying to move an election, even though that may be a motive in what he's trying to accomplish. ["The Last Supper"]

Mike, we're going to say goodbye to you, and we're going to tag in our colleague Lisa Lair for the second half of this conversation. Thank you for coming in. second half of this conversation. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for this reporting. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back.

Okay. We're back. And Lisa Lair, it is very nice to have you return to the roundtable. Mike Schmidt warmed your seat for you. Happy to be back. I'm here for the mugs. And you can't take them still. I want to talk.

Really? No. I want to talk, Lisa, to you about something else that Kamala Harris has been doing over the past week. In addition to the news conference she held responding to Mike Schmidt's reporting on that conversation with John Kelly, what Harris has been doing is campaigning with former Congressman Liz Cheney to court voters that we don't tend to think about as super gettable for Kamala Harris.

And that's conservatives, including those who are anti-abortion. Can you tell us what's going on there? Yeah. So they basically took Liz Cheney, who of course is a very prominent Republican who had come out against President Trump on a roadshow of the three blue wall states and did these moderated conversations in key counties in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. And really what they are hunting for here is something that's called the shy Harris voter. This is someone who maybe is a Republican, probably a woman, more likely a woman, who maybe doesn't want to tell her friends that she's voting for Harris, but is concerned about Trump's rhetoric, his divisiveness, all the chaos that this person remembers from when Trump was in office, and is going to go, the Harris campaign believes, could go into the voting booth and pull the lever for Harris. Now, as our friend and colleague and frequent podcast guest Maggie Haverman reminded

me earlier this morning, this is a common idea that we hear about in presidential politics, the shy voter. And Maggie reminded me of the shy Romney voters, which was a thing that I'm sure the three of us who covered Romney together at this table all remember. And that, of course, didn't manifest. Romney lost that election. But then in 16, we had a lot of talk of the shy Trump voter and those people were there and Trump won. So it's sort of a similar idea that there are these secret voters out there that the Harris campaign can pull even if they're not out there volunteering or even saying publicly that they're going to vote for her. But they have to be activated.

They have to be activated and they believe they are available to her. It's a pretty big bet and it's a bet that, you know, could end up determining which way this election goes. There was something Cheney said that I'm now remembering from one of these events that I think taps into this idea. I certainly have many Republicans who will say to me, I can't be public. And let's just play a clip and listen to Cheney for a second.

They do worry about a whole range of things, including violence, but they'll do the right thing. And I would just remind people, if you're at all concerned, you can vote your conscience and not ever have to say a word to anybody and there will be millions of Republicans who do that on November 5th for President Harris. You don't have to tell anyone.

Like as if it was literally a secret. That was really an amazing moment when she said that because it had come after she had said, it's okay to be pro-life and vote for Kamala Harris. She was just building these different elements of a permission structure to say to conservatives, particularly conservative women, it is okay you can do this, I did it and you can too. You know it's interesting because I have a story that was up today on how gender

is such a defining piece of this election and one detail we had in that story are these post-it notes and stickers that are popping up on women's bathrooms in the stalls saying, woman to woman, nobody knows your vote, basically encouraging women to vote for Harris even if they don't want to say so publicly. And obviously part of this, we have to say, is abortion rights as well is intertwined in this argument. But how appealing is that message, Lisa, to conservative women who are opposed to abortion? Because I get the sense that Liz Cheney's message was meant to reach them too. Well, we know that about 30% of Republicans support abortion rights in some form.

And so those people could be inclined to vote for Harris, even if they don't typically vote for a Democrat on this issue. If if, and this is a big if, if it continues to have the same potency that we saw abortion have in the midterm elections, which we just don't know because this is the first presidential election we're having in a post-Roe world. Right, because it's not just Democrats who think that the restrictions at the state level since the fall of Ro row have gone too far. In some cases, it's going to be moderate Republicans. Interestingly, though, Reed, even though you're not a woman, neither Harris nor Cheney talk

much explicitly about Harris being a woman, especially the first woman who could be president. Well, Harris doesn't talk about that at all on the campaign trail. I mean, she came into this race after Joe Biden dropped out with a huge burst of energy, but everything was sort of implied. She did not come out and do the Hillary Clinton, I'm with her type of sloganeering. She sort of does more to make herself a generic Democrat than the trailblazing path-breaking Democrat that she would be if she were to become

the first woman president and the first black and South Asian president. But she, throughout her career, has not gone out of her way to emphasize that piece of her biography. She has gone in to talk about her qualifications. And in this race, you know, we've known, and Nate has told us for more than a year,

that a generic Democrat beats Donald Trump in this race. And that is where she's trying to frame herself. By self-genericizing. I mean, and I don't mean that in a negative way, just making yourself less pioneering in that way. You know, it's worth noting she was asked that question directly by NBC News on Tuesday night, and she made it really clear. pioneering in that way. You know, it's worth noting she was asked that question directly by NBC News on Tuesday night and she made it really clear she does not believe that Americans want a president

of a particular race and gender. She is running to be a president for everybody and that is the focus of her message. And she also said she's not worried about sexism hampering her bed. So she is pushing hard to generify as you said. Size. Genericize herself. On to Trump's week for just a moment. His closing argument seems very much attuned to viral moments.

Nice to see you all. How are you? Nice to see you. How good are the barbers here? He was at a barber shop in the Bronx talking to voters about the economy and the viral moment that really seemed to break through was a stunt. I love McDonald's. I love jobs.

He went to work. Open it up. Keep it tight. You got the salt on it. Kind of at McDonald's for 15 or 20 minutes. Hello everybody. This is not a normal situation, is it? I'm curious to read to someone who covers Kamala Harris.

This felt like the kind of stunt that Kamala Harris would never do, but of course it was fundamentally supposed to be about her. I've now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala. Okay? She never worked here. Right. And almost every time she speaks, she talks about her own middle class upbringing. She has talked in the past about working at McDonald's as a summer job when she was in college, which is a story that the Trump campaign has tried to cast doubt that it ever happened. And so he went to McDonald's to try to illuminate this idea

that she was inventing a piece of her biography. And it was a big troll of the Harris campaign. Nate, who was that event for, besides Twitter and every front page? It's for a group of working class, black and Latino voters who have traditionally voted for Democratic candidates, but who are really upset about inflation and who are curious at least and perhaps leaning towards voting for Donald Trump in this election in no small

part because they believe that he'll do best on the economy. And to the extent that he has a weakness on the economy, it's on the sort of cares about people like you question. They may think he's a good manager of the economy, but they don't really buy that he's in it for them in any sort of way. And I think that this is an attempt to address maybe his single biggest weakness in this space, that he has any capacity to empathize with the struggles of the voters that he is hoping to win over.

Effective? Important? I mean, I don't know. It's hard to know what's important when you're in the middle of it. It certainly was a piece of political jiu-jitsu, and it's part of his effort to cast her as too liberal, too elite, out of touch with mainstream America who's working at and eating at the golden arches. I mean, my big question about all of this is what we know is that when voters see more Trump, they tend to like him less, right? And so I do wonder if putting him out there more helps him or hurts him.

We witness something else from Trump over the past few days, which just seems notable because it's a continuation of, Elisa, what we started talking about in our last roundtable, a growing vulgarity and kind of deliberate outrageousness. Trump ended up speaking about the manhood of the great golfer Arnold Palmer. He called Kamala Harris lazy. He called her a vulgarity in front of the word vice president that began with S and ends with T. This felt like intentional crudeness. Yeah, look, I think Donald Trump is trying to motivate as much of his base as possible. And he knows that many people in his base love that about him. They think it's authentic. They think it's real. they think it's real,

they think he's flouting political correctness. But that, I think, does carry a real risk. Because what we also know is that for the past eight years, the biggest motivator in democratic politics has been Donald Trump. And it's comments like that, that sort of remind people of what they didn't like about him in previous races. So I do think that's part of what they didn't like about him in previous races. So I do think

that's part of what the Harris campaign is trying to capitalize on in these final days. You know there can be a cost for courting his base and that cost could be exactly the people that Harris is trying to pull into her camp, these more moderate, probably more female Republican voters. Nate, as we conclude this conversation, I want to remind you, you weren't here last week, so we talked about you behind your back. We talked about how, in Lisa Lair's infamous words,

it's time to get off the polar coaster, the addiction we have to poles. You weren't supposed to repeat that to him. Because the poles are so close. You said what? And then, Nate, you write a column in which you say, basically, I don't know how much attention you're going to be paying to all these polls because they're really close.

But within that column, you also said, quote, the past week's polls made a clearer case for movement toward Mr. Trump. So which is it? So first, just a high level. This is one of the most stable final months of polling that we have on record. The numbers have moved a little bit. You know, Harris had a three point lead and now maybe it's a little bit under two, but compared to prior years, there's almost no movement at all. Now with the race so close, any little bit of movement is the difference

potentially between whether one candidate can claim, claim deserves to be in quotes here, like a nominal substantively irrelevant advantage. And I think there are signs that on balance the race has nudged ever so slightly towards Trump over the last month, but big picture, extremely stable, extremely close. And that's how it's been for a long time now. So I think what Nate's really saying here is that my advice stands. If you need to exit the polo coaster, you can get off. This is a really tight... It's in fact, it's so stable that it's very safe to just walk off the polo coaster right

now. You know, it's like, what's that ride at Disney World that goes at like five miles an hour past all the... It's a small world. Yeah, yeah. It's like that part of it. We're going to do some more polls, but like, I don't really expect them to show anything different.

Maybe they will, but it'll probably be still really close and either side will probably be able to win. Well, let's just end rather than with a contemplation of whether your job should even exist at this point. That's a good question. With the reality that we don't have to rely so much on polling at this point because we have so much early voting. I think at this point, it's 20 or so million Americans who have voted early.

And Lisa, when I brought this up last week, you quite memorably with an eh said to me that I shouldn't consider this to be good news for the Democratic Party, for the Kamala Harris campaign, because we didn't know who was in that pool of early voters. What we have learned since then is that a lot of those early voters are Republican. Are we at a point where we can say that within this early vote, there's surprising energy among the Republican Party? No, not really. I was going to give you more.

I was going to update my eh with a hmm. Oh, good. Michael, like hmm. Oh, that's pretty good. But why can't we say that? Almost all of the people who are participating in early voting at this stage are the sort of people who are absolutely going to vote. And it doesn't really matter whether they vote two weeks before the election,

on election day. If you're the sort of person who went to day one of early voting, you're going to vote anyway. You're going to vote. And you can, it's in the data, you know, you can see like, oh, hey, 95% of these people voted last time or something like that. And those that will vote on election day will be much different. But I think what it does tell us is the Republican aversion to early voting has changed, which was pushed by Trump has changed. We just don't have a baseline because the last election where early voting was so big was the pandemic. It was crazy. I mean, it was a politicized pandemic where how you voted itself became a political act. Right. So there's no baseline to measure the level of Republican early vote against the previous

level. But I do think it's interesting. I will give it a Michael-like hmm. Very good. Okay, so the polls are so close that we shouldn't really obsess about small movements and the early vote is so ambiguous that we should not try too hard to decipher it. With that new round of advice to our listeners, I thank you, Lisa, Reid, Nate, and in absentia, Mike Schmidt. Thank you all.

Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Thanks, Michael. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. During a CNN town hall on Wednesday night, Vice President Harris said that she agreed with the assessment of Donald Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, that Trump fits the definition of a fascist.

Let me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump is a fascist? Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted. Again, look at their— that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted. And the U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin confirmed that North Korea has sent troops to Russia to join the fight against Ukraine, a major new development in the war. If there are co-belligerents, their intention is to participate in this war on Russia's behalf. That is a very, very serious issue.

Austin described Russia's reliance on North Korean soldiers as a sign that Vladimir Putin has grown desperate. This is an indication that he may be even in more trouble than most people realize. But again, he went 10 days early on. Today's episode was produced by Olivia Nat, Rob Zivko, and Shannon Lin. It was edited by Lexi Diao and Paige Cowitt, contains original music by Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsferk of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily.

I'm Michael Bobauro. See you tomorrow.