The Dispatch Podcast - How Do You Solve a Problem Like Trump?

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

“People ask me this all the time, ‘Why the hell did you stay?’ ” explains Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration and founder of the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform (REPAIR). “And my response is: If you saw what was happening, why the hell wouldn’t you stay if you cared about your country?” On today’s episode, Miles Taylor gives Sarah and Steve an inside scoop as to what it’s like working for a president who constantly gives you orders to break the law and who believes he has “magical powers” to do whatever he wants. The most frustrating part of his job as DHS chief of staff, he said, was watching high officials who expressed disdain for the president in private but refused to speak up when it mattered most. “There was another time that we were in [the Oval Office] and he went off on a tirade about the Mexicans,” Taylor explains, “In the conversations he said, ‘Look, Mexico is just a total hellhole, isn’t it? It’s just a total hellhole.’ And he kind of looked around the room for agreement, and he was like, ‘Right? You know I can’t say shithole countries anymore but it’s a hellhole, right?” Taylor said most people in the room—except for one official who Taylor didn’t name—laughed it off and nodded rather than standing up to the president. Taylor said he and his colleagues went into that administration recognizing that Donald Trump was a man of pretty poor character, but there was a hope that the office itself would perhaps change the president for the better. “I really think once he had the powers of the presidency, he got drunk on the powers of the presidency and they did not have that sobering effect, they had a very inebriating effect on President Trump and magnified some of his worst impulses.” Tune in to hear Miles explain what it’s like having a Trump tweet change the trajectory of your entire day as a DHS staffer, whether Republicans should vote for Biden this election cycle, and how REPAIR hopes to fix the GOP in the post-Trump era. If anything, tune just in to hear Taylor explain why “every single day in the Donald Trump administration was a pride swallowing siege.” Show Notes: -The Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our special Friday Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgert, joined by Steve Hayes. This podcast is brought to you by the dispatch.com. Check out the website and sign up for a 30-day free trial to get all of our best newsletters, including members-only stuff. And you can jump in the comments section, finally. Also, right after the debates coming up, September 29th, we will be having Dispatch Live for our members. So if you're You sign up now for the 30-day free trial at the dispatch.com. You can join us right after the debates for a special members-only dispatch live to get Jonah, David, Steve, and my take on how it went. All right, our episode today, we are joined by Miles Taylor. He was the chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security

and has come out to endorse Joe Biden and start the group repair. We will talk to him about why he has endorsed Joe Biden after serving in the Trump administration and what this group is all about. Tell us what the acronym means. The acronym is the Republican political alliance for integrity and reform. And thank God for acronyms, because we will just call it repair. For the rest of this pod, yes, definitely. For the rest of this pod. And what's the thesis of repair?

So we started the organization with really a threefold mission. One, we feel like we need to restore leadership in Washington, D.C. That's a very not so subtle way of saying. We think that Donald Trump's tenure in Washington should end this coming January. Two, we're really focused on getting the Republican Party to adjust its priorities and be a more inclusive and intellectually diverse party in the post-Trump era. And then three, we really are trying to repair the country. We think that the president, not just his rhetoric, but his policies have done real damage to the fabric of our republic. And so the organization is going to bring together senior officials from the

Reagan, H.W. Bush, W. Bush, and Trump administrations along with former members of Congress to lead an effort to talk about the future of the Republican Party and the country in that post-Trump era. So we're excited about it, and we just officially launched this week. So we already had the Lincoln Project. We also had Republican voters against Trump. Why did you think there needed to be another never-Trump organization? That's a great question. So I had conversations with a lot of those different groups, and the conclusion that I came to was they were all focused on November 3rd

and defeating Donald Trump. But there weren't enough groups out there focused on the post-Trump period. What are we going to do after November 3rd? What are we going to do with the Republican Party? Who do we want to be after the Trump era? Because look, I think that a lot of folks would agree, the Republican Party right now is a cult of personality. It's totally built around one man.

So what do we do when that one man's gone, whether it's in six months or four years in six months? And we wanted to start that conversation. We felt like those other groups because they were so focused on the election and the politics weren't as focused on the ideas that needed to come next to replace Donald Trump. So that's really going to be our focus

is on the ideas and the what comes next. So you joined the administration in the Department of Homeland Security. what did you not know about Donald Trump from the 2016 election and the beginning of his administration that allowed you to join the administration that you then now feel has changed your mind entirely? Yeah, so I think most of us were pretty clear-eyed going into the administration.

Anyone who says otherwise is either, you know, creating revisionist history or is trying to get something from Donald Trump. I think we all went into that administration recognizing he was a man of pretty poor character. But there was a hope, I think, that the office itself would perhaps bring a little mental sobriety to Donald Trump, as it has for a lot of people who sat in that office. We've watched as Barack Obama went gray and George W. Bush went gray, and they've said that the office changed them. I don't think anyone was under the illusion that Donald Trump would suddenly become a paragon of virtue by entering the Oval Office and sitting behind the

Resolute Desk. But I think that we all hoped that in the immediate, he would, you know, reduce his tweeting and, you know, be a little bit more of a controlled and self-disciplined figure. What was both surprising and terribly unsurprising at the same time was that this didn't happen. And if anything, the Oval Office had the opposite intended effect on Donald Trump. I really think once he had the powers of the presidency, he got drunk on the powers of the presidency. And they did not have that sobering effect. They had a very inebriating effect on President Trump and I think magnified some of his worst impulses. So look, at the beginning of the administration, I think a lot of us felt like, okay, this is very tumultuous, but it's always tumultuous in a

transition period. But by the end of the year one, it was clear it was going to remain extraordinarily tumultuous, and that the responsibility for that lay squarely at the president's feet. But after year one, you didn't start as chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security. So, you know, you accepted promotions, et cetera, even knowing the flaws after year one. Definitely. And you know what? I would say this. I would even go as far as to say, despite the fact that I am fervently focused on making sure that Donald Trump does not win re-election. If he wins re-election, I will be the first person. person to go to folks in the Republican Party and say, if you have the opportunity to serve in

this administration, you should go do it. Now, not just anyone, those are people who I think if they're qualified for their jobs should go do it because what we're talking about here is, you know, the most powerful country on the planet. We're talking about departments and agencies that do real things to protect and defend the American people. And we need folks that are qualified to be in those jobs. So you ask a great question, Sarah. And people ask me this all the time. They're like, well, why the hell did you stay? And my response is, if you saw what was happening, why the hell wouldn't you stay if you cared about your country? Because in the Trump administration, as we've seen, and we predicted this at the time, we didn't know if it would be

true, but we predicted that if Trump purged all of us, we would all be replaced with campaign lackeys and people who were unqualified to do those jobs. It is precisely what happened. And at one point in 2018, amidst the family separation debacle, behind the scenes, I was pretty adamant that it was time for us all to pull chocks and get out of there, that it was time to resign. But then we quite literally saw the list that someone who, you know, at the White House, Sarah, a list that someone had of who we were going to be replaced with once we got fired. And it was a spooky list. It was a group of people that I was worried, they stepped into our jobs, definitely wouldn't tell the president no when he said, do X, Y, and Z illegal or an unethical thing, they would be the first to jump at the opportunity to do whatever he said.

So we hung on a little bit longer, hoping that we could forestall that outcome. Now, fortunately, some of the people on that list did not make their way into the administration. Some did. I don't want to name names, but we tried to do the best we could for as long as we could. But the point at which saying the words no, saying the word no was no longer enough is when it was time to get out of the administration. When the president stopped listening and we couldn't put bad ideas back in the box, we had to get out there. And now you have an administration that in addition to campaign lackeys who are totally unprepared to run some of the offices that they're in. And this week we've seen some of those people pop up in the news who are not really fit for their jobs.

You have this army of child soldiers spread throughout the administration, these like 23. year old mega maga hat wearing college frat boys who are thrilled to be in the donald Trump administration and who are incredibly remarkably unqualified to do their jobs and this has a real impact okay these are people who are in jobs where they need to think about things like you know cyber security policy or counterterrorism uh and and they're not equipped to do that so I genuinely think that the consequences for Americans are real now that the so-called access of adults has been dismantled by this president. Steve?

So I want to try to give our listeners a sense of what it was like on a day-to-day basis working in the administration. One of the things that's been so frustrating to cover as a reporter whose job is to convey sort of the truth and the reality of what's happening is that I would talk to people like you, I think who have many of the same views that you hold, had similar experiences to the ones you had, who would tell me these stories off the record in a way that I wasn't allowed to report them. And I'm talking about dozens and dozens and dozens of conversations like this.

as you're doing your day-to-day work, are you aware in a sort of a general sense of who else shares your views? And were there pockets of you who spoke to one another? And, you know, after a particularly crazy meeting, like the ones that you've written and spoken about, say, oh, my gosh, I can't believe this is happening? Yeah.

It's a great question. I want to start by saying, though, you know, you asked Steve what it was like to work there. And I would normally say it's an honor to be in public service and it would be in any administration. But every single day in the Donald Trump administration was a pride-swallowing siege. And it made it very difficult to continue. You literally would wake up to the tweets. And it's not just that the tweets are bad or poorly written or anything else. It's that they changed the trajectory of your entire day. So when Donald Trump would get up and tweet about a caravan and say, you know, I'm going to seal the southern border, well, you know, that day, we might have been responding to a real-time intelligence threat stream against Americans having nothing to do with the border. But because the president got up and said, I'm going to seal the border, we had to cancel everything, rush to the White House, get the senior staff involved, and try to convince the president that sealing the border actually wasn't going to solve the problem. We can talk about the mechanics of that later and why his obsession with sealing the border was so completely misplaced, both in terms of his authorities and the actual ability to solve an immigration problem. But that's what the day would be like is those tweets actually had a waterfall effect on everything in Washington. And it's a truism in D.C. that when the president's schedule changes, everyone's schedule

changes. His cabinet secretaries, the sub-cabinet, all the way down to the staff level and reporters, the whole thing changes. That happens occasionally in Washington. I worked in the Georgia-W. Bush administration, and sure, the president's schedule will change and, you know, the whole day shifts. But with Donald Trump, that happens every goddamn day. And so the levers of government don't function when they're being twisted and pulled and turned in all sorts of different directions. They not only don't function, they break off. And that's what it was like under Donald Trump. Now, to your second question about, did people feel this way?

I would actually say, I have a tough time thinking of more than the people I could count on two hands that didn't feel that way. So less than 10 people I can identify were so in line with the president that they wouldn't comment on these things. And there are some of the names that you can imagine at the White House. Other than those, you know, 10, 8 to 10 people, virtually everyone felt this same way. And at least in the universe that I was in with the president's national security cabinet, to a person. They all felt that Donald Trump was reckless, that his impulses, if allowed to be implemented, unimpeded, would be dangerous to Americans. And I'd say the majority of them genuinely felt that the president was unfit for office. They really felt that this man was just not qualified to do his job based on what they were seeing.

I don't want to call any of those people out by name. I'm really hoping that they'll speak for themselves. But it was virtually everyone. Yeah, I mean, Sarah knows. You would leave these meetings and you would look at each other and just be like, dear God, you know, what did he just say? And often you would walk out and he would have just given you an order that was something you literally couldn't implement, either because your agency didn't have the resources. or the authorities, or again, because it was against the law, and you would say, okay, so what do we do to, like, get back in there to tell them we can't do that?

And often that would fall to the White House chief of staff or someone else to later in the day have to go to the Oval. But then, you know, you would get direction from the chief or someone else. Hey, just pause. Don't go forward with this yet. And let's see if we can figure it out. But this was all the time. And what was disappointing to me, though, many things were disappointing.

This administration's been one of the greatest disappointments of my entire life. But what was really disappointing was how many people in that room who, though they felt this way, would sit in the Oval or the situation room or at a meeting with the president and wouldn't speak up. So there were a lot of folks that felt this way behind the scenes, but in that crucial moment when they've got to speak truth to power would be silent. And that was especially evident in years two and really year three at this point. By the time a lot of the senior folks had been kicked out, there were just a lot of yes men that took their jobs and would sit there and smile at the president at whatever he said, whether it was racist or xenophobic or inappropriate, and they'd kind of laugh and just play along. That was really disturbing for me to see. And people at the cabinet level, too, who were just really well-respected folks on the outside who would hear the president say, just nasty stuff. And they just kind of chuckle at him and move on with their day.

That's when I thought that's a sick. Yeah, isn't the dilemma there? I mean, let me play devil's advocate. Let's say your Secretary of Health and Human Services and the president is in a meeting and saying a bunch of things that are contrary to what he's being told by his top coronavirus advisors. He's spouting off about hydroxychloroquine. He's down talking the use of masks. He's saying things that I think the ever-shifting scientific consensus is against.

If you're Secretary Azar and you speak up, especially in a meeting where you would be challenging the president in that way, isn't it likely that you're going to be gone before the end of the week? And aren't you better off to sort of hold your fire, do what you can behind the scenes, working the levers of the bureaucracy to affect. change, then frontally challenge the president in such a way that you will be on the outs? Or is it the case that once you start doing that, you always do that and then you're just an enabler? Well, there were, there's, there are ways to do it. And I will, I'm really trying to keep most of the names of my former colleagues and bosses out of my mouth, but one person you're welcome not that I want to say. Well, I want to mention John Kelly. Look, when John Kelly was White House chief of staff. I think he really did this the right way. Because Chief Kelly would not openly challenge the

president, unless it was an important fact that needed to get out there to contradict maybe a misperception or something in the room. If the chief had differences with the president that needed to be aired very openly and candidly, he would do that privately with the president. And I think that's very important. I don't think it's appropriate, you know, to, you know, go to battle with the president in front of a large group of people in an uncivil way. And so, you know, folks handled that in a lot of cases the right way. But, you know, when he's sitting there, you also can't be scared to tell him the truth. And people were frequently scared to tell him the truth. I mean, I'll give you one example. I've said before that the president liked to say that he had magical

authorities to do whatever he wanted. Well, one of those authorities he was really excited about is something called, it's a provision of law that's Section 212F of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the president to deny entry into the country of certain individuals, and he can cite national security reasons. President really didn't understand how this authority worked. He just, he was told by someone in the White House that it allowed him to keep whoever he wanted to, out of the country, whenever he wanted. So, you know, we were sitting in the Oval Office, and he had some very senior folks in there and said, well, I've got 212F. Like, let's just use that authority.

It's that magical power. Let's use it. We're going to use it to keep everyone out. Okay? That's the order. Let's move on. No one spoke up. So, you know, little old me from the couch had to jump in and say, you know, sir,

it actually doesn't work that way. There's a whole bunch of restrictions, you know, to this authority. And he hated hearing that. But it kind of forced us back into a conversation of, no, we can't use this tool to do everything you want. We have to explain that to you. But too often people don't jump in and explain the things that he needs to know. But or on other occasions, Steve, like when there was another time that we were in there and he went off on a tirade about the Mexicans and how much, you know, how frustrated he was with the Mexicans. And I won't get into some of the details because

some of them had to do with sensitive negotiations. But in the conversations, you know, he said, look, you know, Mexico's just a total hellhole, isn't it? It's just a total hellhole. And he kind of looked around the room for agreement. And he was like, right? He's like, you know, I can't say, you know, can't say shithole countries anymore, but, uh, but it's a hellhole, right? This is the president. He said that. And you know what? Most people in the room did. They just kind of laughed and they nodded. What they should have done, Steve, is say, you know, no, they're actually great partners. And there is someone who was in that room that day. And I won't say who, uh, but who chimed in and said exactly that. And just said, no, they're, they're really good

partners, Mr. President. And that's how we should treat them. And we moved on. But people need to do that. They can't let him be like this, especially in that office. He shows no reverence for that office, nor, you know, are allies in the way that he should. What do you say to a voter who is looking at their ballot this year and sees Joe Biden and Donald Trump and thinks this is a binary choice and understands everything you're saying and believes what you're saying, but also looks at what has actually happened during the administration, the policies that have been implemented, and the Supreme Court justices that have been appointed and says, yeah, I hate the tweets. I hate his mannerism. I understand the character problems. But what this administration has actually accomplished

are some goals that I'm in favor of. And I think the Supreme Court is really important. And Joe Biden would be potentially one of the most liberal Democratic presidents in history. So, you know, I'm not electing a pastor-in-chief and all of those phrases. I'm making a calculated policy decision. And, you know, I wish he didn't do all those things. But if I have to make the choice, how am I supposed to pick between those two? What do you tell them? So I would start off and say this.

Donald Trump has done a lot of good things as president. And people are so overtaken by Trump derangement syndrome that they have a hard time seeing it. So we've got to be candid about that. President's done a lot of good things, and he's done a lot of good things that conservatives, like me, would like. Deregulation, and you mentioned judges, Sarah, and before COVID-19,

I actually think the president has partly been responsible for the surge in economic growth that we had. There are good things about this administration. On balance, I would respond to those folks and say, despite those good things, the ledger is actually imbalanced on the negative side, and as a country, we're in the red. Forget what Donald Trump's done in terms of civil discourse, which I actually think is the biggest problem and the biggest detriment of his

whole presidency is he's so fundamentally divided this country all the way down to the household level that we don't talk to some family members now because of how much Donald Trump has divided us. Put that aside, on foreign policy, my simple answer would be our friends don't want to talk to us anymore, and our adversaries are totally exploiting us because of the president's policies. On national security, I would say that America is less safe because of Donald Trump, and I saw that every day from any number of emerging threats that the president wouldn't pay attention to because he had this wall or nothing approach to governing. He was so focused on the border wall to the exclusion of other emerging threats. And then when it comes to our democratic

institutions, I think the president has laid waste to our democratic institutions and checks and balances in a way that will have long-term repercussions, especially if he has a second term. So, look, on balance, I actually think, no, he hasn't been a good conservative president, and he's done more harm than good. But that said, he raised a very difficult choice because someone who's a conservative is going to look at that ballot and say, well, if not Donald Trump, that I'm choosing an administration, a Biden-Harris administration, that's likely to govern more from the left than Barack Obama. My response to them is, this is a character election.

Donald Trump's going to do more damage in a second term than Joe Biden will do in his promised one-term presidency. But your only choice is not, it's not binary. It's just between those two. It's not just between those two. Because your best defense against a left-leaning Biden administration is the rest of that ballot. And we're actually pretty good as a country about splitting ballots. So I would recommend to that voter, look, vote for Joe Biden because he's the one that's going to beat Donald Trump. and protect this country from irreparable harm, if you can't, write someone in. And if you're still

worried about a Biden administration, as I will be, I'll be in the loyal opposition on day one, then your best defense against that is the rest of the ballot. It's those senators, it's those congressmen, it's those representatives that are going to have to hold a Biden administration accountable. And guess what? The system works. I mean, look, Congress wasn't designed to pass laws, right? Congress was designed to stop bad laws from being passed. So we need to, to elect people into Congress that will hold any administration accountable and make it so that they're not just a rubber stamp on whoever the president is and whatever their agenda is. Let's look at a little bit more at what your repair group is doing and sort of a post-Trump world,

whether that's in a year or in a couple months or in four years. Let's assume that Joe Biden wins that we know that within a reasonable amount of time. a day or two. It's a pretty strong rebuke of the Trump presidency, and Republicans lose the Senate as well. In that instance, the conversations that are taking place that week among Republicans, these are the conversations that you want to help shape. Is it your view that most Republicans will immediately seek to distance themselves from Donald Trump? Trump, his presidency, Trumpism, and what he's done, or will it be the case that because of his sort of overwhelming presence and the way that he's reshaped the Republican Party, the hold he has

on his hardest of hardcore base, that he will continue to be not only a major presence in Republican Party and the discussions about what comes next, but the major presence? There will be an unprecedented reckoning within the Republican Party in the post-Trump period. It will be an internal civil war for the soul of the party after Donald Trump. And I think you've framed it perfectly, Steve. And I think it will be a group of folks who think that Trumpism was effective, both as a political strategy and a governing style and they'll try to hold onto it. And a good chunk of those people will do that because they so wedded themselves to Trump that they feel like they're going to be unable

to separate from that. So they will double down. And I think part of that is really just is psychological. Some people have just so bought into it that now they don't know how to go back to who they were before, focused on, you know, principles-based governing and talking about real conservative policies. And then there's another side. And those will be the electeds who decide that they need a rinse and repeat cycle and they want to go back to how things were before. But that's going to be tough, and it will be really interesting because the Trump kids are going to try to stay in the game. I mean, the Trumps will not disappear from the scene, whether that's next year or four years. But my prediction would be that a lot of those folks are going to be laughed out of the room.

I think that it's really, really hard to maintain the veneer of Trumpism when he is no longer in power. power. And people, because it's a call of personality around one man, it's really difficult for them to carry on their own. So I do think that more rational conservatives will win out, but there has to be what I call this rinse and repeat cycle. Or in another context, you could think of it as a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, like you've seen in countries that emerge from civil wars, where they really try to grapple with what happened. That needs to happen in the Republican Party. There needs to be honest dialogue about how we went down the path of Donald Trump, what it meant, what damage has been done, and how we get back. Our group intends to play at least some modest role in that, but we also want to bring together the other conservative groups who maybe disagree with us to have that conversation, to create that rinse and repeat cycle for some of our electeds and hopefully emerge from the other side of this, you know, beyond that cult of personality. back to an actual party of ideas. I mean, the aftermath of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or just going through that exercise would suggest that there needs to be some kind of purge.

Are you suggesting that the sort of non-Trumpy Republicans try to rest control of the party and purge the Trumpists and along with them the base of the Republican Party that is, I mean, Donald Trump always exaggerates. It's never 96% approval. And I think it's fair to point out that the Republican Party is smaller, considerably smaller, I think, than it was when he took office. But he does have. I mean, there's a huge group of rank and file Republicans who are, I think, could be accurately described as reluctant Trump supporters and will probably break away when given an opportunity. And that includes, I'd say, a vast majority of Republican elected officials in Washington. there is still this base of the Republican Party and, you know, a core group of Republican elected officials, and we can disagree about how many would really, will stick with Donald Trump after such an election. But are you suggesting a purge? Those people have to be ousted? Or is there some way to try to find a way forward that includes Trump enthusiasts? I think that we have to try to find a way.

And there's really, really strong disagreement among some of my peers on that question. There are a lot of folks who believe the Republican Party is dead and the only way to bring it back in any, to give it any semblance of what it once had as the party that emerged from classical liberalism, libertarianism, you know, what have you, is to burn the entire thing down to the ground. A lot of people believe we just got to burn it all. down to the ground. I'm actually not one of those, because I think if that's the only way to do it, then we're resigning ourselves to being out of power for a generation. And I'm not sure

that what emerges in its place, if we burn it all down, is any better. I mean, there's something to be said for a very big party, if we can expand the tent, where there's a lot of ideological disagreement. There's something to be said about that because those forces in the party tend to have a moderating influence on each other, or they should, if we break the Republican Party in two and then we let all of the factions go off and do their thing, we will have a whole bunch of extremist factions that we don't want to see in American politics develop their own singular voice. I think having them under the tent of the Republican Party allows them to be regularly challenged and kept in check, but also allows some of the good elements from within them

to emerge as part of the broader party. So I think it's very important. It's going to be tough, but I'm not one of those people who thinks that we should go and nuke all of our elected Republicans who supported Donald Trump. I mean, look, there's a whole bunch of people. You guys know him as well. There's a number of senators and congressmen, very prominent. We talk to behind the scenes that we're all friends with who see who Donald Trump is. They say to people like us, he's unfit for office.

I've known it for the whole time, but, you know, I've got to vote for him. Otherwise, I'm going to lose my, you know, re-election. got to support him. And some of these people in very important moments of decision have lost their spines. I could not say in stronger or harsher terms how disappointed I've been in some of those members of Congress. But you know what? I'll be the first one after this election, if Donald Trump loses, to go to them and say, I completely understand. But let's all start working together again. So the Trumpists need to be kept in the conversation. And I think that's the only way we rebuild is to understand where they're coming from,

but understanding where they're coming from is not an elitist thing. It's really understanding where the American people are because the American people elected Donald Trump four years ago. So there's something about him, even if you find his character repulsive,

there's something about him that is inherent in us. Our leaders tend to represent us. And Washington works pretty well in that way. I mean, the founders designed it to be a reflection of the country. So when people say D.C. is broken, I say, you're wrong. Say, we are broken.

And so there's something in Donald Trump that we need to learn about ourselves and talk about after this. And the only way to do that is actually to keep the Trumpists in the conversation. Steve and I have a friendly wager about 2024. If Donald Trump loses this election and decides to run again a la President Cleveland, I think that he will crush in the Republican prime. Mary and be the nominee in 2024, and Steve does not. And I think you can imagine both of our arguments, namely, and Steve, correct me if I'm wrong, Steve thinks that for all the reasons that you've sort of described and the ambition of many other Republicans out there who want to

run for president, there will be plenty of people saying like, okay, well, we tried that, but look, we need to move forward, vote for me, and that that will be enough. I think that they will divide the non-Trump vote. I think primary voters look very different than general election voters, and that name ID alone would overwhelm all of that. And you'd end up with something actually pretty similar to 2016. Where do you fall on the Grover Cleveland, 2024 dilemma? Well, you know, that presumes that in that primary, Donald Trump can beat Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity and Chris Kobach, and I think that's going to be his challenge, is can he defeat the monsters that he's helped create? No, I really don't. I really, really firmly believe

that Donald Trump would fail if he tried to run in a primary again. And here's why. Hopefully, we learned our lesson from 2016. Donald Trump eeked through, I don't think, you know, by virtue of his positions, I don't think the majority of people in the party loved Donald Trump. I think he got very lucky in that it was an incredibly split field. And there were so many moderates and conservatives in that field that Donald Trump's very vocal foaming at the mouth, let's say, 23 percent, ended up carrying the day for him time and time and time and time again. And he snowballed all the way to the nomination. I think if this happens again, given what we've seen, and Donald Trump tries to run for another term in 2024,

the field will be much thinner and deliberately because we will be focused on making sure as a party that this doesn't happen again. Maybe that's a little bit too optimistic. Maybe I'm wooly-eyed about this, but I think it would be a different field and a different primary if he made another run for it. But it's a conversation that people haven't had before, Sarah, and I think It's a really good discussion point to continue to put out there because it's a barometer for, you know, where we are as a party in a country to think about that hypothetical. Okay. Last question. On Wednesday, we discussed our least favorite chores around the house and certainly in coronavirus times. I think we're all doing more chores, probably. But I'm going to flip it. What's your favorite chore, however you want to describe that, like, thing you do for up? keep around the house that maybe other people don't like, but you take some pride in or some joy in?

I really, really, this is going to be the weirdest comment. Look, I'm just going to say the first thing that came to my mind, Sarah. I get satisfaction out of seeing the toilet bowl cleaned. I'm not going to lie. You know, if that thing, it should always be clean, okay? But if it's not, it's the thing that needs to be cleaned more than anything. If that's dirty, it's a problem. Do I really like doing it?

No, but am I happy to walk in there and say, that has no germs on it? I'm very happy. So I went there. I just, not in a million years did I think that was the answer to you're getting? Neither did I, you know? It's reasonable logic. Steve, what brings you joy? I like to vacuum.

I like to see the progress that I've made. You can listen to podcasts or music. I like to vacuum a lot. Huh. Like a lot, a lot. I mean, not that much. Let's be honest. I like to, in the context of crappy household chores,

I like to vacuum a lot. Well, I like the crappy one. In coronavirus times, I have found I really enjoy tidying the kitchen. but it's like you said, Miles. It's not that I enjoy the tidying. It's that I love walking by the kitchen and it is tidy. And therefore I don't mind putting in the tidying needs. I can get on board with that. Yeah, it brings me such joy. All right. Well, thank you, Miles, so much for joining us. This has been a treat. You and I sat across several tables together for a few years there. And it's nice to sit across this virtual table from you. Well, likewise. It's been a pleasure to be with you guys and a lot more conversations to have in the future. And now I'm worried that people are going to be ringing me up and asking me to clean their bathrooms. So anyway, stay tuned on that. I already drafted the text. That's so awkward.

All right. Thank you, listeners. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again next week. You know what I'm going to be.