The Dispatch Podcast - Ex-Clinton Aide on Whether Joe Should Go | Interview: Philippe Reines

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

Philippe Reines, a Democratic political consultant and former aide to Hillary Clinton, joins Jamie to discuss President Joe Biden’s performance in last week’s debate and where Democrats should go from here. The Agenda: —Comparing Biden and Donald Trump’s health —“Heaviest president since Taft” —Should Biden bow out? —Hillary Clinton 2024? —January 6 and a second Trump term —Biden’s stuttering problem —Will Trump target Hillary Clinton? —Project 2025 Show Notes: —Phillipe's debate prep role as Donald Trump —Democratic Sen. Chris Coons on Fox News —Former President Barack Obama's tweet about the debate The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is former long-time Hillary Clinton aide and confidant Philippe Rhinis. He did work for Hillary Clinton through much of her political career and runs for president. And in fact, in 2016 was the Donald Trump stand-in during the presidential debate prep. So I thought he would be a good guest to come on to discuss Thursday. days presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, what he thought of it, whether there is any chance that Joe Biden will drop out as some friendly media have asked him to do, whether his former boss, Hillary Clinton would consider if she was asked, trying to get the nomination in a brokered convention. A lot of hypotheticals, but also we discussed threats of a future Trump administration and whether he fears or his boss fears that Donald Trump, if president, might go after her. So we get into a lot of interesting subjects. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful and interesting. So without further ado, I give you Mr. Philippe Rhinis.

Philippe Rhinis. Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. Thank you for having me back. We speak today, which is Friday, the night after the debate between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, this Friday afternoon. As someone who has seen many of these debates has participated as a debating stand-in during preparations, what did you make of last night's debate, specifically what did you make of Joe Biden's performance? It wasn't good.

I think it's as simple as that. It's not, though, an Ellie, an extinction-level event, as I think geologists and such call it. He is a good president who had a bad night. Donald Trump is a bad ex-president who had a good night. And it was the first time in six one-on-one general election debates that he finally did well. But I think defining well is important in that Joe Biden's performance, whether you want to call it, halting, however you describe it, took away from the fact that Donald Trump's performance was more of the same, was identical to Donald Trump of a year ago, two years ago, January 6th, 2021. And that's unfortunate because it's the president's responsibility to make sure that people understand what it's like to have Donald Trump back as president. And last night, more than anything, to me, was a big missed opportunity. Were you surprised?

I mean, before this debate, there's obviously been clips of President Biden looking like he might not, you know, be the top of his game, to say the least. Obviously, some, you know, the accusation was those clips were cut in such a way and maybe sometimes they were to make them look worse than he was. The fear is last night that this was supposed to doubt to show that was not true. And in fact, instead, it reinforced those. Were you surprised about his abilities to speak and his energy, did anything about last night surprise you? I mean, in the context of you are an insider, you probably hear stories of people that meet with President of Biden. You know probably more than most the truth of whether he is, you know, as someone said,

doing cartwheels in the Oval Office or not on top of events day to day. So was there anything surprising from last night? Yeah, sure. I mean, a friend of mine asked me earlier today how my predictions panned out over the last few days or the last weeks. And I went through them and I got a fair amount of them right. I got some wrong. They pertain to both the president individually and Donald Trump individually and just the dynamic on the whole. I start from a place where Joe Biden is 80 years old. He's not. No spring chicken. Donald Trump is about 80 years old. He is no spring chicken. So let's take this one piece at a time. They're the same age. If your father is 81 and your mother is 78, you don't say dad married a younger woman. Neither of them should be driving. Thankfully, they're not. That's not the job that one of them held and one of them holds now. In terms of cognitive ability, as defined by speech, Whatever you want to say or glean about Joe Biden from appearance, I find it both frustrating and hysterical that when Donald Trump is the opponent, that this is somehow an uneven playing field. Donald Trump has had, he basically wages a war on the English language on a daily basis. He has over the last, just in the last few months, he thinks that we're up to World War II.

He forgets that there was a Second World War II. He thinks he's running against Barack Obama. I mean, anyone who's watched Donald Trump over the last six, seven years cannot possibly think that his behavior and his speech is indicative of someone who's all there. Third is physical health. There's no doubt in my mind that when I'm 81, I'd rather be in Joe Biden's body. Donald Trump literally forged his doctor's note in 2015. like he was a fifth grader. It said all of his vitals and tests were positive.

And I remember a doctor saying, they're not all supposed to be positive. You don't want your HIV test to be positive. Actually forged it. He then disappears to the hospital one day in 2019. Doesn't tell anyone why for a year. Then he says he went in and he had some extra time for a colonoscopy. Jamie, I don't know how old you are.

I don't know if you had a colonoscopy. I have. you don't just show up to the colonoscopy shop and take one. It's a multi-day fast. It requires a fair number of things, including anesthesia, which when he was asked, he said he did not take. Then lastly, he came about as close to death as one can come having COVID, whether it was his oxygen levels, whether any indicia about it,

the tone doctor had to come back out, Sean Connolly, I think his name is, had to come back out a day after his initial briefing and said that he was too positive about what he said the day before. And the reason I bring that up is if Joe Biden had been in that position, essentially rushed to Walter Reed Medical Hospital and had COVID that bad for that many days, everything he would be doing now, the speech, the walking, you'd have panel after panel on cable news about is long COVID affecting his speech? is long COVID affecting his walk.

So if this is the basis that we're going to have on the assessing the two, then let's have it evenly. Now, I think it sucks that this is the comparison. And by the way, my frustration is mostly with my party. Well, I mean, there's no question that some of what you say is, or maybe all of what you say is true. I mean, Donald Trump is probably the heaviest president since Taft in the White House. and maybe he lost some weight, they say, during his wilderness years here, I don't know,

I haven't seen him in person. And obviously his diet is famously not great, the cheeseburgers from McDonald's. But there is no question that just performatively looking at them, looking at the energy levels, just as appearances, which debates matter, appearances. One does look much more vigorous than the other and does at this age. But I guess my question to you is, have you heard at all through the, the grapevine. I mean, there was a lot of... No, I mean, I didn't answer your question the first time.

I mean, yeah, there are people I worked with over the years and who I count as some my closest friends who work for him now, who I don't mean work in some office in OEOB that see him once a month. People who see him regularly. They say he speaks softly. He walks slowly. It's exactly what we see, but he's with it and sharp. And I wish, I mean, He's a cantankerous old man. I wish there was a camera on him all the time, because from what I hear, you know, he's more than capable of snapping at staff for something stupid in a speech. He's more than capable of taking someone's laptop and editing it with track changes to make

it easier than dictate it. We don't see that. And that's not a criticism, but unfortunately, it's been reduced. our vision of him has been reduced to at podium staring into cameras squinting for you know he looks what he looks like

he's 81 and I get it I get the optics of life I get all of that to me and I hadn't thought about this until you just asked if he had come out last night looking obviously looking identically but gave

great answers I'm not exactly sure how the debate would be discussed today, probably too much about his appearance. Here's the issue, I think. You have a lot of pro-Biden. We've seen some bad debate performances in the past. I mean, famously Barack Obama's first debate performance, he made him better against McRomney. I have never seen pro-someone commentators, Biden commentators in this case. people that are, for him all the way, you know, from, you know, Tim Miller, who's a senator of, I guess, Senator Wright Biden supporter these days at the bulwark, who I think

thinks Biden's the best president of the 21st century, to Joe Scarborough, to the entire cast of MSNBC, to CNN, say that what they saw last night is not a man who can run for president, that he needs to bow out and then have something that I don't know how long we have seen something even similar, a convention, the side of the nominee. Do you think that Joe Biden should bow out? And what would the mechanisms look like in order to choose a new nominee? I don't think you should bow out, not because I'm some kind of medical or otherwise expert who can observe him and come to my own opinion.

I implicitly trust the people around him and work for him and him, frankly, to make that decision. So that's the first part. The second part is maddening to me. And to put it in a little bit of context, it's a terrible analogy because it's not analogous, but it's reminding me of the Axis Hollywood weekend where the Republican Party panicked. and infamously, Reins Previs, the GOP chairman, went up to term power to plead with him to bow out. And they had done that to some extent earlier in the season where everyone was panicking to get him to not be the nominee. So I think there is a notion, there is a, freneticism is unfortunately contagious in these orbits.

You see that as much as I do. but let's just say for sake of argument that someone was going to pursue this forget about the front end of this which is joe biden deciding not to run exactly working backwards who is it that anyone thinks should be the nominee because whenever i have this conversation with someone by way this has been going on since the primaries i mean you have people in the primaries who were saying you know, Biden should be running for re-election, he should get out of the way, and it should be X. And you never hear the same name twice. Someone I bumped in two months ago said,

Cory Booker. They really like Cory Booker. You get a lot of people who say Gretchen Whitmer, Gavin Newsom. Now, on the one hand, I don't know if any of them could be Donald Trump. On the other hand, it really doesn't matter because if someone suggesting the Democratic Party and its 4,500 delegates could come to some kind of consensus on who the best person is and that person not be the sitting vice person in the United States, you've got a three-part problem here. One, Joe Biden is president. He's running for election. So it's a moot point until he says otherwise. If he were to say otherwise, why wouldn't it be Kamala? And if for some reason people went around Kamala because they don't think she's up for it, that would have a tremendous negative impact on the process, that someone would say, oh, the first black woman to hold the job isn't up for running for president.

We should bypass her in favor of a white male. I mean, does anyone think that that's actually what happened? So let's just take another extreme. Barack Obama. Forget about the Constitution. Let's just stick Barack Obama's name in there. Barack Obama, I think, would beat Donald Trump. He could certainly raise a billion dollars pretty quick.

He's vetted. I'm not suggesting this. I'm just giving it as an example. And he would smooth over any ruffled feathers, or he would render them moot. I can't think of another person that fits that bill. And if you can't figure out who that person is, then the process is moot. And the process does not exist. The process, I mean, technically Joe Bind is not the nominee.

Technically, we do not have a nominee. But that's not the point. Well, let's just say the process could be, you know, redone. Obviously, any process can be redone. you're talking about at the end of the day, who is it you think? I mean, is there anyone polling better head-to-head? I haven't seen that. Well, let me cut through this out.

You know, I tweeted last night the same thing. The problem is, for it to matter, you have to figure out because there seems to be a consensus that Kamala Harris would be worse against Donald Trump than even Joe Biden, whether that's true or not. But assuming you think all 4,500 delegates agree with that? it's not that I agree or disagree to play your name game assuming you got past that I did it a little bit of my mind that's one of the reasons you're on here I said

you know well Gavin Newsom obviously is good in front of a camera but I don't know if his record is that great in California and the skeletons in the vetting process are probably somewhat significant or potentially significant Josh Shapiro might be the best qualified governor right now to do it

he would be an interesting candidate but I don't know if he has the juice there is someone who's vetted and who's run for president before. Oh, God, don't do it. Don't do it. Has there been any conversations with Hillary Clinton? I mean, I've exchanged notes with her since last night,

and she basically feels very strongly that Democrats, she has felt the same way for a year now when it comes to this notion of President Biden stepping out of the way or bypassing Kamala or how President Biden's health is treated by, Democrats. She believes that people need to gut up, that there is a huge opportunity cost when Democrats sit around and talk about these fantastical scenarios, but then don't do anything past that. If you want to sit around and talk about, oh, I can see how we'd end up with Gina

Ramondo. I mean, it's hysterical how everyone ends up with the name that they thought a year ago should, would be the best president. They coincidentally just happened to be the best person now. So Pete Buttigieg, who I like, you're going to replace, you're going to skip over Kamala Harris and put Pete Buttigieg in who got basically zero percent of the black vote in 2020. Like, that's not going to work out. But there's an opportunity cost when people just, when there's paralysis, if you, I just literally came from the studio van. You know, they bring the van and they have the dish. I did a fox hit against, uh, I was clay trash. Travis. So I think his Rush Limba was, he was his successor on the Martha McCallum show.

He and Buck Sexton. Yeah. It's a two-person successor. Yeah. And that's not an easy conversation in general, let alone the day after a debate like that. And I basically tried to make the argument that I just made to you. I tried to do it in 60 seconds. But if you want to have a conversation about age, fine. They're the same age. You want to have a conversation about cognition. Trump is cuckoo for cocoa puffs. If you want to have a conversation about health, Donald Trump lies about his, he conceals his, and he is a walking, not healthy person. Dems don't do that. And it reminds me a lot of us in email in 2016. So email without relitigating it, which obviously became a problem. And Dems would whisper, what was she thinking, bad judgment.

And that's fine. Whisper away. But they stopped there. They didn't go the next step and say, okay, fine. It was a mistake. But boy, is it stupid. And let's not forget, Donald Trump has gone bankrupt six times. He has never held office.

He is incompetent. You can go on and on and on. It's that opportunity cost. The opportunity of paralysis in my mind is very high. And that's what I think is happening now. and I believe Hillary has been in the same place for, I mean, when I have spoken to her about it prior to today, I know that that's where her head is and I know that she thinks that people need to defend the president.

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collapse after this, we don't know where they're going to go. And Kamala Harris also decided to step aside where she would, if asked. But why is that, I mean, that is a big, I agree, I agree, I agree. But maybe if certain party heavyweights, you know, James Clyburn and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama came to both Biden and Harris and said, this is such an important moment. This isn't a movie. I mean, I don't think it works that way. I mean, Joe Biden. But we played this hypothetical. Okay. You played mine. I'll play yours. Do you think there is any circumstances, assuming those two stepped aside, that if asked,

and this went to a brokerate convention, Hillary Clinton would consider the nomination? No. I also think it doesn't matter. I mean, first of all, brokered convention, if any of this were to happen. I'm just playing along, not just with Hillary. You would need to go into the convention with being wired somewhat. This can't be 80 names put into nomination and then 700 ballots until we end up with someone here. Wouldn't it need to be? I mean, you'd have to go in with Joe Biden and Barack Obama and, well, obviously, Bill Clinton's going to support his wife, and Nancy Pelosi and all the party heavyweights in Kamala, around one person, right?

You would have to have, it would have to be, you know, the most famous names in the Democratic Party. Okay, I'm stipulating. Right. I disagree with those steps, but since you played along with mine, I will stipulate that if all that happened and President Biden were swayed and for some reason, Vice President Harris were to say, don't mind me, you know, I'll just. stay as the vice presidential nominee and you can pick someone and layer me. Let's just say that. I have to say it's every 10 seconds just in case someone is dialing in and hearing me having

this hypothetical. If the concern with Joe Biden is, or forget about last night for a moment, if the general concern of people has been in this race that they don't like the choice between to 80-year-olds. Why wouldn't you pick someone in their 40s? Now, I don't think a Josh Shapiro would win right now. He'd be tar and feathered by the RNC before he even got out of the gate. But why wouldn't that be the approach? Why wouldn't it be something to excite younger people?

I mean, obviously, I'm biased. I think Hillary Clinton should have been president. I think she should be president, you know, if Joe Biden doesn't want it. I'd be happy if she ran for it, you know, when she's 100. I think the issue in this hypothetical would be you would need someone who is most efficient to rally around. You know, you know, you know whether you think they're scandals or not. You know the scandals that are going to come out or that have been litigated. All these other candidates have never been or almost all of them in a presidential stage.

Well, I'm no longer her spokesman, but I think if she were honest, with us right now. She would scoff. She would join. And she would hit the leave button because that's just not something she would do. Not only because she believes Joe Biden is a good president, and I'm not just saying that. I know she does. But because that's just not the solution she would think. Also,

I think just because she's a known entity doesn't mean the right wing wouldn't just have a field day with it. I mean, I would argue something, someone needs to happen, like if you put vetting aside, if someone were fully vetted, the benefit would be that the focus would be on Trump. I mean, that's the most, to go back where I started, the most disappointing to me last night was if you were to just watch the half of the screen of Trump, he's still lying through his teeth. He's still just saying things that aren't true. And here's an example. So I was on Fox and I was watching the previous interview. It was Chris Coontz.

And he was one-on-one with Martha McCallum. And then Martha asked him, how did Joe Biden forget that 13 soldiers died in the withdrawal of Afghanistan? Now, first, I don't remember that being what happened last night. But I do remember Donald Trump saying, no one died on my watch. Now, I thought that was interesting because it's always stuck with me that four special forces died in Niger or Niger. I don't know how to pronounce it in 2018. So why is he allowed to forget what happened on his watch without anyone talking about cognition problem? about who dies and when, but not...

Well, I think it's obviously performance-based here. I mean, and also Trump. Yeah, but I think it's responsibility. I don't think it's my responsibility or my role to just say, to just throw my hands up in the air and say, yeah, it's performative, and we're stuck with that. You know, I don't want to look at my Twitter feed for days because I don't want to see what response was I get when I go on Fox.

But I do hope there were 10 people at, of the two million, who said, oh, yeah, that's a fair point. He is, you know, he does a lot of the same things because he's orange. He looks like he's tanned and healthy. I mean, I don't know what to, I can't, if we cede the point of optics, then it's over. Could have told you that a year ago. And by the way, then, you know, there are a lot of people who should have, should have beaten Donald Trump.

I still believe, with all my being that Donald Trump was a terrible president. and that somehow people need to remember that it wasn't just because he looked up at the sky when there was an eclipse without glasses, that he did some horrible things and I got worse every year and this isn't, people shouldn't think that they saw this scary movie

and the second time around, they know when to shut their eyes because they're not going to fall for it twice. This is a sequel, this is like scream where each movie gets worse. He's going to pick up where he left off. The last thing, two things he did leaving off was one, was trying to overturn the election. And two, thinking it was funny to whip up whatever verb you want to use the January 6th attack.

You think he's just going to come back in and go back to using a magic marker on weather maps, and that's going to be the extent of it. And people need to think that through. And people, you know, Joe Biden and his campaign and surrogates and party faithful. and activists need to remind people. There's nothing about what Donald Trump last night, nothing about what he said that should give anyone pause or any kind of reason to think

that what I'm saying is is being lighting my hair on fire. And look, I think about January 6th every time when I think about this election. I don't think all of America does, though, because it's not a day-to-day thing. I don't, you know, I don't know. I mean, you know, we make a big deal out of this when we say people say this, people say that.

I have a friend who yells to me every time I do that because I don't know what 300 million people think. There are these subsets of people. I don't know who they are or why they are or how they can't make a decision. But the reason I'm bringing this up is the January 6th stuff is there was polling through the primaries that people were, if he were to be found guilty of any of these crimes, no matter which. trial, even though the intelligentsia said, oh, the stormy trial is stupid, it's baked into the cake, that they would not necessarily abandon Donald Trump, but they would feel, they would be unhappy, and they wouldn't necessarily flock to Joe Biden. But I would say basically that they'd be a jump ball, or they'd be getable, whatever you want to call them. And that has borne out

since the trial. You have these subsets, particularly independence. And I do think that those people are in particular, don't like his January 6th of. And he, you know, Donald Trump, and you can tell me if you don't see it this way, but Donald Trump, he didn't have to move to the center in 2016. 2020, it was an about policy. It was about just his being angry. A lot of his routine now when he talks to his people is the January 6th, you know, whatever I call them, people who were put away, that they are.

are patriots that should be pardoned. Whenever Donald Trump is faced with a moment where he has to decide between saying what his base wants to hear and saying what a little change or softer that might appeal, he never veers from what the base wants to hear. I take your point about January 6th, but I do think that one of the elements of the people who are up for grabs is they are uncomfortable that he thinks it was no big deal. And he is, you know, he didn't answer it last night. He still believes they should all be pardoned.

And I think if that's something that has continued to beat home, then that might make a little difference. We're talking about 40,000 people have, you know, fewer people than fit into FedEx field. Yeah. I do want to address the hypothetical that I'm coming up with because I understand. that every election season will they drop the vice president and replace them? They did that with Bush and Shane Ewe in the second one and they do it over and over again.

It's the quadrenial stuff of brokered convention electoral college tie is the next one. I understand. And in fact, when I suggested this concept for a thematic episode for the podcast two weeks ago, I said, we should bring one on just hypothetically to see how this would happen. It's implausible. And I'll say before I go on what I'm going to say, but President Obama tweeted out earlier this afternoon.

We're speaking Friday. You know, bad debates happen. Trust me, I know. Blah, blah, blah. I stand with Joe Biden. Biden looked better in a speech today in North Carolina, tried to address it. I mean, I don't know where his cold went. He seemed tanned and a little different.

But here's my butt. I think what makes this different is, you know, have all these media figures that are generally favorable to Joe Biden, whether it's the New York Times op-ed section, specific columnists especially, that talked to him, Tom Friedman, Nicholas Christop, the MSNBC hosts, almost all of them, CNN, saying, wow, this does show that this is a man maybe not fit in this time for him to step aside. And therefore, the ads are just going to write themselves. Trump's going to say, even his friends say he's not capable. And you're going to vote for a guy.

Well, you could say even, well, hold on, but hold on. Even your vice president, Mike Pence, says you shouldn't be. I mean, I, you fight fire with fire. I do, I take President Obama's point. I will concede. I think this is a notch different than a bad night because people just look at Joe Biden and have a view. So it really doesn't. That's why I had given in our battle of hypotheticals.

I had said, let's say he gave great answers last night, you would still have the right saying anytime he got any kind of syllable wrong that he shouldn't be present. They've been saying this beforehand. It's their hobby horse. The right loves going after people's health. They did it with Hillary. They did it with Pelosi. They do it with women in particular. They're doing it with Biden.

and God bless them, they do it well, but usually they do it. Is there truth to it here, though? I mean, I remember with Clinton, you know, she had that incident where she collapsed. It was already helped lead into what they were saying before, which was, you know, that she's ill. And obviously she's not ill. I was with her the day before. She stupidly knew she had, you know, pneumonia, and she didn't take it easy. She shouldn't have prepped.

But is this different? Is this different? Isn't there potentially? I do think it's different, which is why we all have to figure out how to say, yeah, he's old, but so is the other guy. Yeah, he jumbles some words, but the other guy is not so. And this is not, I don't want to be the person offering 10 different things. But one of the things that I think President Biden never talks about enough is his stuttering. And my understanding, and again, I read this.

This is not anyone whispering in my ear. It's like, can you introduce this as a talking point? My understanding is that it gets harder. The tricks of the trade on controlling, stuttering, get harder. I, look, I know the people who prepped him. I know them pretty well. I work for them. In general, I work for them in the prep for Hillary.

I imagine, and this is another one that sounds like a talking point. is I'm sure they wish they had more time. You can't, five days is not enough. And I think they will be scared straight. A big difference this year is because it's not the package of three of the Presidential Debate Commission, yeah, there's this September 10th ABC debate, but wow, that's a long time away. And it also feels, I mean, if you took a poll of insiders in D.C., Most of them think it won't happen.

So when President Obama had a rough first debate, or President Bush had a rough first debate against John Kerry or Al Gore did in 2000 when he came out looking, you know, his makeup looking orange, you knew you just had to get 10 more days or two more weeks. Unfortunately, you got a long, you know, a long road here before. But, you know, the Supreme Court could have let out a decision this morning, and you and I wouldn't be talking about this. Now, it doesn't make it, I don't mean that that it's not an issue. If someone is basing their vote on who looks tanner, they don't care why, they don't care if it's a tanning bed, then look, you're going to vote for Donald Trump. If someone wants to vote for hair, I mean, I don't know. But you're allowed to do that. You're allowed to vote for height.

You're allowed to vote for anything you want. But you should have as much of the information in front of you. The Republicans are doing a great job of making sure that the information in front of the American people about Joe Biden is about as bad as it gets. I don't think we as a party, going back to, honestly, 2015, have done enough on the health front. And anyone in my life, if they were on right now, they would say he has not shut up about this since day one. And I think the, you know, is it the Roosier coming home to Roost? What is it? Something's coming back to Roost, where we've given this guy a free pass on his health stuff.

And it's so crazy to me that of all candidates, he's the one that's benefiting, from someone confusing some words every now and then. I mean, I don't. And I'm also, it's not like Joe Biden concealed his age from us when he ran in 2019. And it's not like he won the nomination by a hair. I mean, he walloped the field, just absolutely walloped. People are mad at him for running for re-election. Oh, my God.

How dare he? I mean, I'm sorry. It's just, this is where we are. This is where we're going to be for 130 more days. How it plays out, how people factored in, I don't know. But for 130 days, we have to say we have to call out the bullshit. Well, I was just going to close on this. There's obviously a non-zero chance,

and maybe even a greater than 50% chance that Donald Trump is the next president again. He's also talked about retribution. Have you talked with your former boss, Hillary Clinton, about whether she worries that in a second Trump administration that she could be targeted for prosecution if Donald Trump gets... I don't think she personalizes it.

I know she's scared to death of him winning again because she knows that the guardrails didn't work the first time around. And he was... Didn't they? Didn't they work? I don't think so because... Overall. It does seem like they work.

I see what you're saying, except the guardrails that actually, the reason he left office was because his Republican vice president didn't go along with the joke. the Georgia Republican governor didn't come up with the 11,000 votes he wanted. His Republican Secretary of Defense didn't, you know, seize the ballot boxes. His Republican Attorney General refused to say publicly that there was any fraud. In fact, he made a point of saying the opposite. So the fact that he left office, I don't think that that. that's a function of guardrails. I think that's a function of, in his mind, that he picked the

wrong people. He was enamored by the bill bars of the world and the Jim Mattis's, and I don't think he particularly learns from mistakes, but I do think this one's pretty obvious that, but for Mike Pence, God knows what would have happened. And thankfully, we passed, I'm blanking on the name of the legislation about making it so much harder. But, Don't you think the Supreme Court would have? He would have ignored it. But at the end of the day, if you just say, okay, fine, I'm ignoring you. What does the Supreme Court do, send it to U.S. Marshals?

I mean, it's all predicated. I mean, you know it must be turning their grave is Richard Nixon. Like, he left office because people came to him and said, you got to go. The Supreme Court's going to do X. I mean, Donald Trump must think he's the biggest sucker in the world. If you just ignore it, I don't know, I mean, I don't know what. You don't think that if you passed 12 o'clock, the military would have, you know, not allowed? I mean, they would have, you know, his guard would have stood down at the end of his press.

I mean, I like to think. I would like to think, but my God, I mean, we're not sure. And this is what you're calling the guardrails is whether the military, I mean, it's not supposed to come down to that. And, you know, Trump and the Republicans were furious with Mark Millie. Imagine if, you know, he picks someone, you're now in a position where he's going to choose his guardrails. It's like self-imposed. Even what you're saying, your boss has never talked about the threat of prosecution. I mean, she must have thought it's about it the first time when he.

I mean, this is, yeah, I've got to say this is a bit. Well, hold on a second, Jamie. He says he never said lock her up, you know. I think this has been par for the course with her. And I don't think these folks, I don't know if they don't believe. believe it. I don't know if, but I honestly think that it scares the bejesus out of them

that he might get back in. I mean, the example that's stupid, but I keep thinking of is he came back from Paris after seeing their military parade and he wanted one and they resisted him and then he kept saying he wanted one. They told him that the tanks would do too much

damage to Pennsylvania Avenue and he kind of, you know, just gave up. Could you imagine a year from now if Donald Trump his president and someone tries to tell him that the tanks are too heavy for Pennsylvania Avenue. I mean, there will be no, if you look at why he was stopped, you know, for instance, he blames John McCain with the infamous, you know, voting against repealing Obamacare.

I think a smarter president with a smarter congressional outreach staff, I mean, don't forget, the Freedom Caucus. in the House voted against we're appealing Obama here because they were so pissed at how Steve Bannon handled them. It was one vote. Are you telling me that a Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney

wouldn't have gotten either McCain or Mikowski or Collins? And I guess I'm saying that because all these failures were so close so that his executive orders in the first week about the Muslim ban, they just thought

I write in a piece of paper and I sent and it's done, or him telling his caddy to order the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Now, all you need now is someone with a little bit more sense. He doesn't need to learn to be a better president. He doesn't need to act, but he's still going to get phone calls from the craziest people with the craziest clips. But if you've got a Stephen Miller as Chief of Staff or Stephen Miller, I mean, the thing that scares me to death is this 2025 project where unlike 20,

17, where they came in with no one. And worse, they thought, worse for them, they thought the best way to control government was leaving it empty, they realized that's not it. So you've got enough people here. I mean, they're going to put people in cabinet, sub-cabinet, political appointee positions that don't hesitate for a second when he said something. And I, this is, since I know you want to wrap, this is the crazy. thing. Okay, you'll love this since we're talking hypotheticals. Given his disregard for the rules or his innate temptation to bend them and I now think break them. So my theory relies on the fact on him getting Senate confirmed people, which he wouldn't

get right now because it's, you know, democratic control. And even if he's flips he might not get because it could only be a majority Republican majority by two or three and you might have two or three sane people who's although the same people are heading for the doors you know I

if I were them and I don't mind saying it out loud because I know they're crazy enough to have thought about this I bet they have considered the idea of using the Vacancies Act to stick people in where they want them because they will

take the opinion that X was Senate confirmed in like 1952 and therefore he can go anywhere. Now, that's not what the Vacancy Act was for, but he tested the limits of the Vacancy Act during his term. And yeah, the courts didn't side with him. But again, if you just run roughshod, if you say, I want Sebastian Gorka. to be my deputy secretary of defense. You're telling me that the guardrail is the poor military aide who refuses to put the Bible out and swear him in? I mean, I just don't see that. And whereas he was played by the relatively reasonable people in his White House and his

administration, there ain't going to be none of them around, none. And he can do what he wants. He can sit and watch TV all day. He could be the exact same person. But the folks around him, they aren't going to be Reince Previs and, you know, every other person that worked there that never worked in government, you know, no golf caddies, no, you know, none of that stuff. No personal bodyguards who suddenly become oval office operations or him trying to make his helicopter pilot, head of Air Force One. There are going to be a few people, at least in key positions. And again, I think Stephen Miller is probably the number one,

who will hear what he says and just leave the room and get it done. And you're telling me, Stephen Miller, be concerned about whether the courts turn it over? No. And also, I mean, we're going to find out pretty soon where the courts are in terms of presidential authority and presidential immunity. But I think they probably feel pretty good about the makeup of this court on some of this stuff. Lee Brynus, thank you for joining the dispatch podcast. Thank you for this hypothetical fest. I love it. I'm going to go now and fret about all the things you brought up. That's additional threats to our democracy. You know,