The Megyn Kelly Show - Megyn Kelly Breaks Down All the Ridiculous Excuses From Kamala's Top Campaign Staff For Her Loss | Ep. 956

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

Megyn Kelly goes deep on the Kamala Harris top campaign staff's interview with "Pod Save America," including all their insane excuses, their refusal to take any responsibility for the massive loss, how they recklessly blew over $1 billion, what actually went wrong that led to her loss, how they still don’t understand why throwing money at celebrities doesn’t work or appeal to the American people, how they praised their campaigning in swing states but still lost all seven, their ongoing denial over the effectiveness of attacking Kamala's extreme stance on trans issues, why the Trump ad resonated with voters, ridiculous excuses for why she didn’t go on Joe Rogan, their spin about the terrible media strategy, how she faced almost no hard-hitting questions during her entire campaign, and more.XX-XY Athletics: Go to https://TheTruthFits.com  | Code MK20Home Title Lock: Go to https://HomeTitleLock.com/megynkelly and use promo code MEGYN to get a 30-day FREE trial of Triple Lock Protection and a FREE title history report! Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's AM special episode. Today, we had to take a moment to go through the recent Pod Save America episode with the Kamala Harris campaign team. You might've heard about this new brand called XXXY Athletics. This is the only athletic brand that is standing up for women's sports. And while we have had some recent wins in this area, we need to keep up the fight. This was founded by former elite gymnast and Levi's executive, Jennifer Say. She's been on our show many times. You know her. She was the by former elite gymnast and Levi's executive, Jennifer Say. She's been on our show many times. You know her. She was the first gymnast to speak out about the abuse

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And God forbid, if the worst happens, restoration services at no out-of-pocket cost to you. When was the last time you checked on your home title? Likely never. And that's exactly what these scammers are counting on. Make sure you're not already a victim. You can get a free title history report and a 30-day free trial of triple lock protection today by going to hometitlelock.com and using promo code Megan, or click on the link in the description. That's hometitlelock.com, promo code M-E-G-Y-N, hometitlelock.com. It was an unbelievable exercise in self-delusion. These top campaign officials went on there and spoke with Dan Pfeiffer, formerly of the Obama team, who's now one of the hosts of this Democrat podcast. You know how they're always saying, we need to infiltrate the podcast lane. How come we don't have any Joe Rogan's? This is one of the most popular podcasts. Stop fucking whining. Sorry. Stop whining. You have podcasts. You had Joe Rogan till you drove him to the other side. Pod Save America is a big podcast. If you're a

liberal, you'll love it. So quit your whining. And that's what this entire interview was a big, long, wide, so hard, the conditions that we inherited. Not one word about Kamala Harris. Not one. Not even like in a nice way where it's like, you know, our Canada had some issues in communicating in a pithy way. So that's something we combated by doing X. No, nothing. She was exquisite, according to these losers. And the way they exonerate themselves and take, and I do mean zero responsibility for that disaster of a campaign should have Democrats nationwide, never mind those who donated in a fury, in a true fury. They don't understand what went wrong at all. And they'll be asking for Democrat donations soon again to spend it on more folly. We're going to go through it and I will try to move quickly

with my comments, but I think you might find it interesting. I've got some soundbites, but I'm just going to kind of read some of it. So you'll know what they're saying. All right. There are three people here. General Malley Dillon, who is the campaign chair. Quentin Folks, who was, I think, the comms guy like messaging or Stephanie Cutter. She was messaging and Quentin Folks was high up the campaign. Also, David Plouffe is that Plouffe is there. He's he was brought in as a campaign consultant. Yeah. Folks is the deputy campaign manager. Stephanie Cutter oversaw messaging. Okay, so it's those four. General Malley Dillon, Quentin Fulks, Stephanie Cutter, David Plouffe.

Let's just kick it off at the top. Was there a moment when you understood on election night how it was going to end? General Malley Dillon, who's the most dishonest of the ones who are here. She's by far the most dishonest, and she was the one at the top of the campaign. She will not admit to any mistakes. You, you had a billion dollars and you wasted it and you lost an election and nationally humiliated yourself. But I guess you're not going to take any responsibility. She should never run a campaign again. It's fine by me. I mean, I'm not going to vote for her candidate, but like if you're a Democrat, you don't want this person. Um, the truth is we thought it was close race all along. We knew we'd have to have a strong turnout on election day. It really took us into the wee hours of polls closing for us to know

for sure that things were just not tightening. They were tight, but they weren't tightening in the direction we needed them to be. That's not an honest answer. For sure, they knew earlier in the evening. Everyone on Team Trump knew earlier in the evening. Elon knew. We knew earlier in the evening. Everyone on team Trump knew earlier in the evening. Elon knew we knew earlier in the evening. You could see the turnout was very high in the rural areas and much lower in some urban centers that were that they were relying on. You could see that red areas were turning out like they she's OK. So already we're not kicking it off on a good note. She says we we saw Trump turnout high in early vote vote but we just believe that to be mode shifting meaning people who otherwise would have voted on election day just turning out earlier by mail um we saw turnout was as expected in rural areas that's not true either um we saw some lighter

turnout in some of the areas we had hoped yes but difference a point, just a point here or there, um, little bit of a drop in support in a few areas for us, a little bit of a drop in support in a few areas for us. Okay. You lost 312 electoral votes to 226. You lost the popular vote by 2.4 million. It was not a little bit of a drop in support in a few areas for you. Hello, madam, you got crushed. I don't know whether anybody really told you the truth, but you were eviscerated. It was not a little bit of a drop in support in a few areas for you. Okay.

This is the big come to Jesus interview in which they're really going to get into the truth and honesty about what went wrong. Question. What did your polls tell you about the race heading into election day? David Plouffe. Now, he's like the number one spinner in this whole thing. Spin, spin. General Malley Dillon just doesn't admit anything. Nothing went wrong. Basically, we won. We won, except for just a few little areas where we didn't win, and that's what stole it from us. But we kind of won. David Plouffe is like, well, we lost, but it wasn't our fault. Conditions,

terrible conditions, political environment. Who created the political environment again? Again, who who created the conditions to which you refer? Keeps hitting the economy. You did. You did, sir. Your party, your candidate and her boss, Joe Biden. None of that is addressed. Why would the voters return to office? The very people who had caused these conditions for them in the first place, that's not addressed and therefore they will continue to lose. That's like the overall theme of what we're going to go through. Here's what he says. Okay. What did your polls tell you? Well, they're bad, but we climbed back from the hole that Joe Biden created. And even post-debate, we still showed ourselves down, but very close.

And by the end, it was a jump ball race. We needed some things to break our way. We did have some progress with undecideds in late October, but it was a dead heat race. But at the end of the day, he says, excuse me, the political atmosphere was pretty brutal. The political atmosphere. That's not an excuse. He says this throughout. Not an excuse, not an excuse, but everything was not our fault. It was not an excuse, but we did nothing wrong. It's not an excuse, but political environment. Again, who created that political atmosphere? Right track, wrong track? 2872. Right. Who is in power, sir? Who is creating the track? You are. Your party. And by the way,

those are the same numbers during the midterms in which you did rather well. So what explains that? Could your candidate have anything to do with this? Could it be her total ineptitude and stupidity? I guess we're not going to acknowledge that. And the Democrats are talking about nominating her again to run against the Republican at the end of Trump's second term. So, okay, fine. 70% of the country saying they're angry and dissatisfied. Why again? You had Trump's approval rating on his first term, frustratingly high, 48 to 51. They're so upset that people were looking with fondness on Trump's first term. Why was that? I'm like, Afghanistan, 19% inflation, between 10 and 20 million illegals. Did that, it is frustrating. I know when voters see and feel

all that and then hold the party in power to account. Then he goes back again. I think given that we had a challenging political environment and the fact that we got the race to a dead heat was positive, but boy, it was slow moving. This is what he says throughout started in a hole. We got it to a dead heat and we did better in the swing States where we actually campaigned versus, you know, the rest of the union. This is loser talk. This is loser talk. You know, I mean, you talk to a football team after it loses a game. If they want to win the next game, they say, I fucked up. I dropped the pass. I had buttery fingers today. Well, no man would say that, but that would be how I would describe it. And butter fingers. Anyway, they'd be honest about what went wrong. It wouldn't be like, it was snowy. It was a tough environment. The fans booed a lot.

Tough environment. They really, they hated us. They jeered a lot. Why did, you know, that's, this is not the kind of self-assessment that leads to better results in the future. Um, then he points out, as I say, so where Kamala Harris campaigned, we were able to keep the tide down a little. They keep talking about the right word shift in the country and how it went eight points to the right, six points to the right on average, something like that. But they kept it relatively, you know, less than that three points they said in the swing States. Congratulations. You you're, you're a loser by a little less. That's what they want their party to celebrate. We're losers, but we lost by a little less

where we spent our billion dollars, where we spent our billion dollars. Believe it or not, we will get to the point in this interview in which they bitch about the money, about Republican super PACs. You had a billion dollars that you raised in two months. Would you stop your disgusting whinging, as our friends over in Australia say. Um, okay. Margin of error race. He says again, where we inherited a deficit, we got it to even, but the thing never moved. So, you know, that's, that's where we were hopeful. Margin of error. These people are never winning again. Trump did not close. Well, he says. I thought Kamala Harris closed well. Trump was reminding people some of the things they don't like about him.

How was it? What did Trump do specifically? He didn't close well? I mean, again, he crushed you 312 to 226. What should he have done differently in the close? We thought that might give us what we needed. But in the end, I think the political atmosphere, the desire for change and all those fundamentals, um, that you spent some time talking about really

presented huge challenges for us. And we just didn't get the breaks we needed on election day, passive voice. Like we didn't get the breaks we needed, kind of hope things would break for us. You didn't earn the trust, the affection, the admiration, or the desire to spend more time with you of the voters. You failed because your candidate sucked. And by the way, no message guru could have fixed it. Um, but you certainly failed now that I get to know you for my God. I mean, like I'm truly, like I said the other day, I'm starting to feel sorry for her because she's an Nimrod. And then she had a bunch of no nothing advisors around her trying to affirm these empty messages an M-Rod. And then she had a bunch of know-nothing advisors around her

trying to affirm these empty messages as though they were brilliant. And you'll hear Stephanie Cutter actually get into this. It's actually quite fascinating. David Plouffe goes on in response to the question from Dan Pfeiffer, how deep was that hole that she had to climb out of? Well, here, he gets really honest.

He said on Twitter, right after the loss, we climbed out of a hole and he got so much negative feedback from the Dems. He had to delete his account. Well, now, now he's loosening up. He's leaning into, wasn't our fault. And I've got my new narrative deep hole. I got us out of it. Guy got us to even, but things didn't quite break our way in a few districts. No, David, no, that's not it. So what he says now though, is he's making it even worse. His heroic behavior, it's even bigger and better than you knew. Now we've gone from just, we were in a hole that we dug out of, to it was obviously pretty

catastrophic. Catastrophic in terms of where the race stood when we got in. Catastrophic, you say. We were behind. He says, we were surprised that these public polls came out late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw. In a hole, I tell you. All the digging we had to do, and we were the ones to do it.

It wasn't a race that moved a lot. You got to have the undecideds break your way more than your opponents. And you've got to get a little benefit from turnout. I mean, he's talking about this like it was razor. Like we had what, 10 million Democrats who didn't show up this time, who showed up last time for Joe Biden. Like this was not a nail biter, sir. It was not. The polls may have shown prior to the race that it looked tight. We saw that too. But your internal polls should have done you one better. Trump's internal polls reportedly were showing the momentum that ultimately showed up on election day. Okay. Were you able to do any thinking or planning in the one month period

between the debate and when Joe Biden ultimately got out? None. There's no planning. We didn't know what he would do. We were, we were in crisis management mode of keeping Biden in the race. This is Quentin folks. Um, okay. Then she gets in. That's when we begin to say, how can we define her? And also Trump's favorability numbers were creeping up and we had to do something about that as well. Okay. They go on to get into it. Now, Stephanie Cutter, the messaging guru. The first thing we had to do was put on a convention and we had about three weeks to flip a convention that had been for him to her. Okay. We had to fit this very new character of, ask yourself if this sounds familiar, a different generation with different experience and a different background.

And looking at the data at that time, there was, she had a huge deficit in favorability because people either didn't know about her or what they did know about her was based off of negative media. You mean like the interview she gave to NBC News with Lester Holt, where she said, I've been to the border. You haven't been to the border. And I've never been to Europe. Like that. Is that the negative? Like she was negative herself in her media because she was not unfairly treated by the press at all, at all. To the contrary, she was made into some heroic figure during the race. And prior to that, there had been some negative reporting about her bad behavior, but she was not the victim of negative media spin like Trump has

been since he came on the national political scene. So I don't know what you're referring to, Stephanie. We already knew how to do the negative on Trump. And we knew that there was a lot of Trump-nesia out there. People needed to be reminded. Okay. And she goes on to say the second imperative was to remind them of what Trump was like. Okay. So define her, remind them of how terrible Trump is. And the third is what's the choice? The convention demonstrated a lot of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris, a lot of freshness, future oriented, bringing a variety of coalitions together. We had independents, Republicans, Democrats, business leaders, sports figures at no place in this entire interview do they mention the word celebrity.

Not a word about celebrity, which was one of their biggest crutches, and it was an utter fail. And no postmortem, my dear, will be complete until you do that, until you realize we can't stand them. Meryl Streep is fine when she's up there in her movies, but she's less than appealing as a political advocate. And we all felt it. Why did you parade her out? Why do you keep parading out people like Taylor Swift, people like Julia Roberts, people like George Clooney. We don't like them and we know that they hate us. So the people you're trying to get, like the you say you need Republican voters, you make this point repeatedly, you need moderate Republican voters. They know that Julia Roberts can't stand them. That's not your girl. Okay. Julia Roberts is not your girl. You may now want to talk about bringing out sports figures who are more universally loved than celebrities,

but you're missing the sin that you committed. Uh, everybody coming together around a new way forward and finally turning the page. This is the moronic messaging idiot behind Kamala Harris. They actually convinced themselves that these phrases were going to persuade people to vote for her. A new way forward, turning the page, the freshness, the new generation of media. Okay, different generation. We hear this over and over. These two morons sat down together, Stephanie Cutter and Kamala Harris, and convinced themselves that that was a campaign message, that that was a, like a promise voters could sink their teeth into and hold on to and get themselves out on like a cold November day to vote for. She goes on, more ass covering. So in 107 days, you know, what

typically takes us a year and a half, two years in a presidential campaign, we were defining someone who is wholly undefined from the start. She was the vice president for four years. She was totally undefined, a totally unknown quantity. All these presidential races used to be the summer before the November vote. Like recently, like within the past 15 years, that's how the campaigns, this two-year campaign thing is a very recent development. Used to be like, even with Hillary,

she rested that nomination away from Bernie. It was June prior to the November vote, June. And then bang, we were off to the races that summer. That's the time you had, Stephanie Cutter. What's so hard about coming up with a campaign message over the couple of months before the campaign and then going with it into November? She asked like nobody's ever done it before. Never much less with somebody who's been a national quantity for four years as our vice president. Trying to remind people about the opponent, what life was like underneath him. Okay. They go on. Dan, David Plouffe. Okay. The question was, you felt the need to at least knock his numbers. Oh, okay. Now the question is, you guys disagreed with the analysis

that there was a need to knock his numbers down a little bit. And David Plouffe says, of course, that's nonsense. First of all, back to where this specific question you were asking, okay, to Stephanie about. Kamala Harris started this race, if I recall, with two favorables or with favorables, 33 to 35. She ended it at 48. She actually ended the election with a higher approval rating than Donald Trump. I'm not sure that someone has won the presidency with a lower approval rating. I mean, wrap yourself in your little blankie as much as you want, David. Like, right. They liked her so much more than they liked him. Sure.

Sure, they did. That's why he won. So I think people got to know her as they got to know her. They liked her. I think her approval rating post-election is North of 50. Not quite right, but it is higher than 33. That was really hard work. Uh, that was really hard work. He says, now, how did that happen? It happened thanks to $1 billion and all of the mainstream media telling us that she was the second coming, that she was brat, that she was joyful, that Trump was Hitler. They want us to pat them on the back for getting her approval rating up to 48

with the help of a billion dollars, all of sports, all of celebrity, all of media, not inside the digital lane, and all of the advertising that you could buy with all that money. And they're like, see, we're hot. We're hot stuff. See what we did? And we did that in the swing states, which shows, because we kept things tighter there, that we're actually winners, even though we lost all seven of them. What kind of a post-war like, yes, you got her approval rating up. Not enough. Why is that? Because she is unlikable. She is a moron. She has upper limited herself. People, you can see that very clearly on Trump. You can see Trump has high negatives. Nobody on this side of the aisle would deny that. We all see it. We accept reality.

You won't accept that you had a fundamentally flawed character who did not resonate with voters because yes, she had no message whatsoever and she's dumb and she's inauthentic. We're going to win. We're going to win. Come on, man. What do you mean, man? I have no decency. She's inauthentic. None of that winds up anywhere on these pages. Again. So we had a little more than two months to do bio, contrast on the economy, healthcare, raising the stakes of Trump. Never in history have we had this before. Since Grover Cleveland, we spent much more time trying to raise the stakes of a second term than re-arbitrating the first because voters just weren't open to that. They were not open to being told that Trump had a shitty first term, which is amazing, right? Because he didn't.

Because unemployment was at record lows. Minority groups were experiencing truly historic, low, historically low levels of unemployment. The stock market was booming. We had opened up the oil reserves. There were no wars. We, new wars. We were winding down Afghanistan. All like, yeah, it was actually a great four years in many, many ways. The Middle East was not a powder keg at the time. We had the Abraham Accords. Yeah, you're right. You, you did the right thing. Not reminding people of Trump's first term. And there's a reason quote voters just weren't open to this. Uh, we wanted to lean into the fact that he's more unhinged that he wants uncheckeded power. Project 2025 ended up being about as popular as the Ebola virus.

Ha ha. So we did good work there. And now of course that son of a bitch lied about it. He's hiring everybody who authored it. No, he's not. No, he's not. We looked it up today just to see like, who is he hired? Us affiliated with 2025.

The examples are, um, I think his white house spokesperson, right? Is that who it is, Deb? Who like, yeah. Yeah. Uh, to like offered an opening prayer or something. It's like, she was not a critical part of 2025. JD Vance, they cite the vice president. Okay. Um, who is it? Who's the other one? Oh, Tom Holman. Tom Holman. The border czar guy. The guy who's going to kick everybody out of the country. The deportation guy. Yes, it was a big secret what Trump planned to do along the southern border. At last, his protestations that he wouldn't be implementing border crackdowns have been proven wrong. What? Tom Holman was not some architect of 2025. Anyway, more dishonesty. Um, okay. La la la la la. Tried to make her a change candidate. Okay. Now it's getting interesting.

General Malley Dillon. I do think that we were really focused from the get-go on how she was different than everyone else, different than Joe Biden, different than Donald Trump. She was very clear that she was a new generation. Like it wasn't just a statement. She really meant it. This, this is like this inanity that we watched on Colbert was planned. That's what I'm starting. Like this whole, like, I'm not Donald Trump. Like she's, she's different from everyone else. Different than Joe Biden. Different than Donald Trump. They planned this crap. Remember this. Polling shows that a lot of people, especially independent voters, really want this to be a change election and that they tend to break for you in terms of thinking about change.

You are a member of the president administration. Under a Harris administration, what would the major changes be? And what would stay the same? Sure. Well, I mean, I'm obviously not Joe Biden. Um, and so... That would be one change in terms of... But also, I think it's important to say

with, you know, 28 days to go, I'm not Donald Trump. Directly out of the campaign manager's mouth. And so when we think about the significance of what this next generation of leadership looks like, were I to be elected president. Directly out of her mouth. It is about, frankly, I love the American people and I believe in our country. The glitch. She ran out of things to say. I love that it is our character and nature to be an ambitious people. Oh, God.

And back to her problem. All right. We've heard enough. We know. Get out. We know what she does from there. But that inanity at the top was directly from General Malley Dillon. They actually thought that was a message.

My God. That wasn't her just fumbling for an answer. They actually thought we were going to relate to that, that empty pablum of I'm not Donald Trump and I'm not Joe Biden. I'm a new generation of leadership. And now they're wondering why it didn't work. Then this Jen O'Malley Dillon goes on to try to pat Kamala Harris on the back. It wasn't just a statement, right? She brought her own point of view to thinking about things like housing, sandwich generation. That was probably her biggest applause line. That was about her life and also understanding what people in the country were really needing. That's it.

That was her contribution to your campaign messaging, the sandwich generation thing. No one's going to say it. Like, we had an ineffective candidate. And so I hope you keep nominating her because maybe we'll get sandwich generation in four years from now. And that will appeal to a very small sliver of Americans. I'm one of them. Hey, don't get me wrong. I like the focus on us, but good luck making all the social security, you know, all of the expenses that we pay to take care of our aging relatives tax deductible without Congress, something she never explained how she would do. Okay. She goes on. This is about her

life and understanding what the people in the country really need. I think whenever we had an opportunity, the vice president did put her own stamp on this and did it in a deeper way than I think probably we got the kind of full breadth of coverage on it. What? She really leaned in to her own vision, but the headwinds were tough. We lost. I'm not here to say that didn't happen, but where she campaigned, we did way better than the rest of the country. And Donald Trump did worse. So where you spent ads on negative money on negative ads against Trump, you did better. And she, where she campaigned, she did better than in States where she didn't. And for this, you're some kind of genius for this. People keep hiring you to run campaigns. So my plan is we're going to spend money in the swing States. That's what we're going to do. And we are going to drive your numbers up

in the states where you choose to campaign. You see, that's the golden plan. But then she goes on to say something very revealing, inadvertently. She says, this idea that people have just a well-constructed, already baked in idea about Trump. Okay. She's trying to say that, like, that people already understood Trump. This idea that people have just a well-constructed, already baked in idea about Trump and that they don't need to learn anymore. It's just complete fallacy. I mean, his numbers are stronger today than they have ever been. So what she's trying to say, folks, is you see, people do need to be told more about how terrible Donald Trump is. Otherwise, his numbers wouldn't be higher today than they've ever been. They needed to be told how awful he was. So we did the right thing

in reviving Hitler and fascist. We had to do it because they needed to be told how bad he was because today his numbers are stronger than they have ever been. She doesn't understand that no amount of messaging in the world about Trump being Hitler would have won them this race. They had it on magazine covers. They had it coming out of the mouths of CNN anchors, not to mention what happened over on NBC and the other nets. They are no longer credible and they are no longer believed. So Jen O'Malley Dillon is just gazing at the navel. She's playing with the navel. Look at my pretty navel or my navel. What? My navel? I'm just going to gaze at my navel. And she somehow thinks that's going to

change things between now and four years from now, without admitting that they've lost all credibility. They are the boys who cried wolf. We no longer believe them that the wolf is coming to town. Fascist Hitler wolf is not believable, but she doesn't get it. She just thinks, you know, with a few more billion, they could have gotten that ball into the end zone. Okay, then she goes on to pat herself in the back about how they, they limited the bleeding

in every other state, but the battlegrounds, there was a negative eight point shift to the right and the battlegrounds. It was only three. Good job losing by less. Again, we are, we were never going to satisfy everybody on how we handled our messaging, but we did talk about things like she's a different generation. Most of her career is from outside Washington. Her career has been about reaching across the aisle. It's not been about ideological politics. This is all, I never asked a victim whether they were a Democrat or a Republican. You know, I spent my life, not in Washington, right, but in government. All of these things, we were trying to tell a story and give the impression that she was different

without pointing to a specific issue. There it is. There's the reveal. All of that empty rhetoric about her time as a prosecutor, blah, blah, blah, blah, transnational criminal organizations that she prosecuted. It was them just trying to stay totally amorphous. So she did not have to distance herself from policies enacted by an administration of which she was a part and with which she had no disagreement, no disagreement. And they make that clear in the next few lines. Dan Pfeiffer follows up. Why not a specific issue? Stephanie Cutter, because she felt she was a part of the administration. So why should she look back and pick out cherry pick some things that she would have done differently when she was a part of it.

And she also had tremendous loyalty to President Biden. And, you know, if we had just said, imagine this, you've, I mean, you've been on plenty of campaigns. Imagine if we said, well, we would have taken this approach on the border. Imagine the round of stories coming out after that of people saying, well, she never said that in a meeting or what meeting was it when she said this or I remember when she did that. And it just it wasn't going to give us what we needed because it wouldn't be a clean break. This is them admitting that she agreed with Joe Biden on all of it, on the inflationary policies, on the open border, on the trans insanity. And so she was afraid to come out and criticize any of those things because they knew that Joe Biden insiders

would have leaked to the press. Here's exactly what she said when we debated the open border. Here's exactly what she said when we talked about trans stuff. Here's what she said when we talked about the spending packages, trillions of dollars, and the risk of inflation. Do it. She said, do it. Pedal to the metal. Spend more. Let's have more trans insanity.

She knew they had her. They had her. So she did not feel able to distance herself from anything Joe Biden did because she was a true believer in all of it. And therefore, they came up with these empty phrases that we all heard of, which meant nothing. Different generation and reaching across the aisle and outside of Washington. It's amazing to hear like the sausage. We saw the sausage and we were like, oh, the sausage tastes terrible. I hate this sausage. This is no Bob and Evans. It doesn't

have like the nice honey coating. It's disgusting. Does not taste good. Don't want it. But now we're seeing how it was made. And it's perfectly consistent with how the sausage turned out. Again, our focus was let's look to the future. Let's describe her and her approach to things. Let's use policies, blah, blah, blah, blah. They go on about how they needed to define her. She was at a negative 20 on immigration, but we got that down to negative 10. We lost by less. Trump had a positive 22 point advantage on the economy. We got that down to seven. And when he sort of looked at the core issues aside from the attacks like trans issues, well, those are just at the bottom for voters. The economy, inflation, crime, immigration are

at the top. This is one of the major flaws in this whole postmortem. He's saying trans issues were at the bottom for voters. No one gave a shit. Now I'm going to come back to that in a minute, put a pin in that. Quentin goes on a lot of the stuff that we did. So she's talking about her prosecutorial background and then saying that she went after transnational gangs, cartels. You guys can say it by heart. It was to push back on, to push back pseudo Lee on the immigration attacks that were coming at her. Duh, Quentin, we know. As well as credentialing her, her background on things that were absent and standalone of the Biden administration. Her John Wayne routine, we know. That's no big insight. We all saw what you

were trying to do and it did not work on any of us. Let's see. On the trans attack, on the trans attack, one, obviously it was a, it was a very effective ad that they unleashed, you know, the one like he's for, she's for they, them, he's for you. I ultimately do not believe it was about the issue of trans. I think it made her seem out of touch and it was sort of a pseudo economic ad underneath it too, because he was saying you're going to pay for it with taxpayer money. And it was in her own words. And that's something, but we tested a ton of responses to this and none of them ever tested as well as basically her talking about what she would do like for the American public on, on the economy, et cetera.

The trans ad team red, meaning Trump and all of his super PACs. Now they spent this money on it. Trump spent 37% of his money on this trans ad. Um, but Trump wasn't the only spender. We were getting hit across the board by it. They spent a lot of time talking about this. He says, and it's easy to say with the kind of resources that we raised, we should have been able to do everything, but that's not the case. You have to make decisions. We had to choose. He's saying between messaging on the economy and what she would do, defining Trump as Hitler and trying to run defense on some of the most effective messaging Trump was unleashing. We had to choose and we chose to focus more of our attention on one driving down Trump. And that was incredibly important that we did as well as

on defining her. So if we spent this entire race and not to be defensive about it, but if we spent this entire race pushing back on immigration attacks or crime attacks or on trans attacks, at what point are we bringing Trump down? All of our testing, all of our testing told us that the approach we were taking of her being more positive and talking about the economy and what she would do was a better tactic in response to that trans assault. You were wrong. Your testing was wrong. You should have listened to someone else like me or anybody right of center who was telling you in many ways and forms that this actually was a big issue and that voters did care, including Democrat voters, which you chose to find out the hard way. Quentin, how will you listen? Doesn't look like it.

General Malley Dillon, if we looked at this a lot and she points out she never got directly asked about it. Oh, we know, Jen, we know. We waited for a single interviewer to raise this issue with her. And Brett Baer was the only person to do it. He raised the trans prisoners thing. Did not get into boys playing in girl sports, but he did raise the, that's it. And she was given a pass in every other interview, but it was obviously something we looked at responding to. And then they, they admit that they spent David Plouffe chimes in that they spent,

he says, where is it? Maybe hundreds of hours on how to respond to that ad. Hundreds. So we took it very seriously, he says. But it wasn't something at the end of the day. It wasn't something. At the end of the day, what matters in an election is something causing someone to behave differently. And our sense was in the battleground states, this was not driving vote behavior to the same extent as the economy was generally, or even immigration. He did not think this mattered. I think we have some of this on tape. Yeah. Listen to David Plouffe on this. And I would just add, Dan, so both campaigns, super PACs, there was a lot of national ads. So I think if you're sitting in California or Texas

or Florida, you see this ad, you don't see any of our responses, right? So in the battleground states, you know, her talking, you know, in a very common sense way, in a very practical way, whether it be about immigration, whether it be about immigration, whether it be about the economy, was our best defense to because this was less about trends than it was about priorities and being out of the mainstream. So I think these voters in the battleground states, both through ads and through seeing her doing local interviews. And I think that's one of the reasons you had such a difference between the battleground states and the non battleground states is people knew her better, number one.

Number two, as Jen said, you know, it's very easy these days to understand who has experience in ads. So we were feeding a lot of digital ads to people who might have saw that spot. But, you know, at the end of the day, we were spending a lot of time with voters in these battleground states, both quantitatively and quantitatively. And this trans ad was not driving voters. So let me tell you what he's doing there. Trans ad was not driving votes in the swing states and in the swing states. We did respond to the ad. We just didn't waste money in states like New York and California. And therefore we didn't do anything dumb or wrong because even the Democrats have responded and said time and time again, why didn't you respond to that ad, which we all know did play a major role and the trans issue in general. And this is him trying to say, oh no, in the swing

states we did. You just didn't see it. You media people in Washington, DC and New York, you people in California who are all Democrats and mad at us. You just didn't see it. You see, we neutralize this in the swing states and the voters didn't care. This is amazing. This is just amazing to me. It wasn't a Republican group that did this survey. It was a Democratic group called Blueprint 2024. They didn't survey 200 people. They surveyed 3,200 people, 3,262 people, national and swing state voters, right after the vote, November 6th and 7th. And what they found is not Megyn Kelly. This is a Democrat group trying to figure out what went wrong, surveying 3000 plus voters. And I quote, Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class. She is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class. That was the number one issue for swing state voters,

David. So you might want to reassess your, the trans ad was not driving the vote. Indeed, sir, the trans issue did drive the vote and it drove your candidate right off a cliff. It's amazing how they just don't want to admit it. They can't admit it. I guess their identity politics are so part of their own identity as Democrats. They must hold on to it. Great. Keep losing. Doesn't hurt me at all. But just FYI, you're completely misreading this. Completely. You saw what happened to Seth Moulton. We talked about this the other day. That Democrat from Massachusetts who signed all the bills and the legislative proposals that would crack down on any attempt to keep boys out of girls sports that would mandate allowing them in. He loves boys and girls sports. Then after they lost,

he came out and he said, oh, I don't think it should be that I should have to worry about my girls' safety with boys coming into their sports and I shouldn't be allowed to say anything about it. Now he's had so many people like try to cancel him and threaten him with a campaign against him and so on that he's backtracking. Now he's, I'm not saying that's how I feel. Just saying we should have been able to talk about it. That's where the Democrat Party is right now. Even in the postmortem, you can't be honest about this issue. You guys should get used to losing because you're going to remain losers for a very long time. OK, we go on. Oh, he did raise one point, which I thought was very interesting and true. He says, uh, look, uh, okay. If we could have just said, that's a lie.

It's not anything she's ever believed, But, you know, she was on tape. Here you kind of feel for him. Yeah, that's a tough one. Surgery for people who want to transition in prison was part of the Biden-Harris platform in 2020. It was part of what the administration did. Right. We also saw Colin Allred, that was Ted Cruz's opponent in Texas, and Sherrod Brown in Ohio, both of whom ran good races, kind of directly responded to the trans attacks. And in our view, you're playing on your opponent's side of the field. So they chose not to do it. Okay, well, let's see how that goes. They had they had to try to disavow their earlier positions in order to have any hope in those races. Colin Allred just completely lied in his race about his position on that.

We went into that with the audience. He did that to try to save his neck. The fact that it didn't work doesn't mean he shouldn't have disavowed it. Doesn't mean you shouldn't have disavowed it. The voters want to be told you disavow it. Some 66, 70% of the American public, at least, that's according to the Democrat polls, say they don't want boys and girls sports.

I believe the number is much higher. And there's also a number in there that's just telling the pollsters what they think is politically correct. But those are not examples for you on why you shouldn't have tried to disavow it. Those are examples to you of the penalties of leaning in on this. And by the way, so is your candidate, Kamala Harris. The more you lean in, the more you're going to lose.

Losers. That's what's going to happen there. Okay. Okay, then this is Quentin Fulks. I think that the Trans Act is one of those, okay, he says, if you look at how Trump was targeting it, it didn't move those voters he was targeting, but it did make our job of sort of trying to get in front of them and making us seem like we knew what they were going through, and we were focused on their problems much more difficult.

That's right, Quentin. And so that's how I sort of see it. So he's kind of onto it, right? Like those swing state voters saying, we think that she cares more about transit voter issues and cultural issues like that than she does about inflation and things that actually matter to us. And then Quentin finishes with, but I don't think it was moving the vote. Wrong. So close. So close and yet no. Okay. Let's see. They go into some of the spending. They, 100 days, had to define her, all the nonsense.

They bitch about Trump's super PACs, which they outraised, but they're still mad. Okay. They go on with the finances. Really amazing. They defend putting her image up and spending on an advertisement at the Sphere in Las Vegas. Take a listen to Jen O'Malley Dillon, the campaign manager on that. You know, you mentioned the Sphere, of course, as you well know, to do something like that, we had to make some bets pretty early on. But we believed as we were closing the race that it was really

important for people to feel like they were part of something bigger and that we were trying to identify opportunities to culturally reach people. It's why in Philadelphia we spent, and in all of our urban markets, real resources on out of home. Yes, billboards, but also murals and other ways that people could walk down the street and they see something that's cultural and cool. She was never cultural and cool. That failed. Your murals, which were it was fun to watch them get painted over on November 6th, appealed to no one. Your sphere campaign appealed to no one. You wasted your donors money. That's what you did. And you,

would you, I mean, honestly, like, look at yourself, General Maley Dillon, you're not cool. Nobody looks at you and thinks you're cool. No, no, but you needed somebody who is actually cool to help advise you on what is cool and what might actually resonate with the voters. But murals on random city streets and the sphere just trying to make her look like a superhero didn't get it done. And that was pretty obvious even before November 5th. OK, let's see. Moving on. Oh, why she didn't go on Joe Rogan. Here's the messenger manager, Stephanie Cutter, on that. So we had discussions with Joe Rogan's team.

They were great. They wanted us to come on. We wanted to come on. We tried to get a date to make it work. And ultimately, we just weren't able to find a date. We did go to Houston. And she gave a great speech at an amazing event. The Beyonce event? Yes. Well, I'm going to call it Reproductive Freedom.

She was ready, willing to go on Joe Rogan. Will she do it sometime in the future? Maybe. Who knows? Who the F cares? Who gives two shits whether she's going to go on to the few? She lost. The only freaking point was to do it before the election. What do you mean? Who cares if she's going to go on in the future? Literally no one, including Joe Rogan. She's probably like, who knows whether you have her on now or not, but they just try to make it sound like it was very busy schedule. And like we had to choose where we're going to use their campaign resources and she couldn't leave the campaign trail, like the swing state. She couldn't leave for a day. Yeah. But she went to Houston, Texas, which is not a swing state. And that was for the Beyonce event where she didn't sing. Remember, she showed up and for literally three minutes,

gave a bunch of campaign nonsense and then went away without performing a song. Even Hillary got some songs. In Houston, where they were never competitive in Texas. Okay, utter waste of time. She flew to Texas. She blew it. She clearly didn't want to sit with Rogan because she couldn't. But here again, the campaign won't be honest about the ineptitude of their candidate,

their exquisite candidate. Okay. We'll look forward to whether she does it in the future. They just couldn't find a date for Rogan. They do talk a lot about how they tried to do podcasts, and apparently they had some other list of podcasts that they were interested in involving athletes and others. But General Malley Dillon says a number of these athletes and others were just not super interested in getting their brand caught up in the politics of this campaign. Right. And for that, we thank them. She says now. Trump wasn't talking to the kind of folks, you know, that we were trying to get. And these are big names that their reputations would be tied into.

But he certainly was able to tap into some cultural elements in ways that we couldn't. She's basically saying our stars are bigger than his. And so they didn't want to take the risks of getting political or associated with Kamala Harris. So he just went on a loser podcast. You see, he was associated with the losers who. So he just went on a loser podcast. You see, he was associated with the losers who nobody knows, like losers, like what, like, like Sean Ryan, right? Is that like Theo Vaughn? Like those losers, the ones with millions and millions of followers who actually helped deliver the vote to Trump or those like the no-name losers who

he went on, who like, they're not your people who are just too famous and rich to spend time with politics. It's really sad because she had so much to say, like how she's a new generation of leadership and she's not Joe Biden and also not Donald Trump. And then they lament that when Trump would go on these podcasts, the conversation wasn't even political, wasn't even political. Right. Maybe if Kamala Harris had tried like making herself into a real person. I mean, she did go on Howard Stern and talk about her love of Doritos and naps. But, you know, there's a risky for that campaign because Trump is actually quite charming, very funny and knows how to entertain. He was he. Tim Walz was a huge podcast person and was on podcasts all the time. OK, did basically none. Stephanie Cutter, Trump did none. Dan Pfeiffer, literally none. General Malley Dillon and got no shit for that. No shit. We got tons of shit, says Stephanie Cutter, that she wasn't doing enough media. And then we get into Stephanie Cutter suggesting there's a double standard. There's a double standard here. But we women don't get far in life talking

about double standards, but it was a double standard to criticize Kamala for not doing any interviews for a month, six, five weeks after she launched. I think she launched what, September or July 26th. And her interview with CNN was not until September. Remember it was after Labor Day. So it was at least six weeks. Nothing. Remember, she did nothing. Remember what a big deal it was when they finally sat down with Dana Bash, she and her emotional support governor? Nothing. That's when they were getting the shit of her not doing media. It wasn't forever. It was when they had her in the presidential protection program. And Tim Wall, same. Nothing. They didn't speak. So now it's a double standard,

you see. And Trump was holding pressers. I don't know, Steve Krakauer, we ran the numbers at some point, but he was doing pressers like every week and multiple per month and giving tons of interviews. So yes, he wasn't doing long sit downs, rewarding the mainstream media that was calling him Hitler with one-on-ones, but he was holding gaggles and holding press conferences where all of those media outlets that they're talking about here could and did ask him any number of questions. Not to mention, J.D. Vance was everywhere. Everywhere. This is just revisionist history. Okay. So then poor, poor General O Mally Dillon and poor Kamala Harris, O'Malley Dillon, 107 days, two weeks fucked up because of the hurricane. Okay. Now it's the

hurricane's fault too. Two weeks talking about how she didn't do interviews, which, you know, she was doing plenty, but we were doing in our own way, like the silent way where no one actually asked any questions or hears it. That way doesn't work. I can tell you as a professional interviewer, it's not a good way. You should think of different ways like in front of a microphone. That's tip number one, pro tip number one, or camera even better. I'm doing it in our own way. We had to, you know, be the nominee, had to find a running mate, had to do a rollout. Like all of that made it impossible for her to sit in front of a camera. Maybe it did. Knowing Kamala Harris could have actually been a problem.

Real people heard in some way that we were not going to have interviews, which is both not true and also so counter to any kind of standard that was put on Trump that I think it was a problem. It was a problem. And then she goes on to say, then we would do an interview. And to Stephanie's point, the questions were small and processy and about like Stephanie Cutter, dumb, just dumb. That's because you chose dumb people to sit with. You had, you have people. Oh, yeah. OK, let's listen. Real people heard in some way that we were not going to have interviews, which was both not true and also so counter to any kind of standard that was put on Trump that I think that was a problem. And then on top of that, we would do an interview. And to Stephanie's point, the questions were small and processy and about like dumb. They were they were not informing a voter who was trying to listen to um do you mean uh 65 have you served two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles

onions on a sesame seed bun working out of mcdonald's yes or no that's it i have okay because i will give you that point we are are in agreement. You sat with dumb people who asked dumb questions. We're simpatico on that. You should have made better choices. Then they actually try to say that she made herself available to anyone who asked, like everyone. Okay, not Joe Rogan, as we've discussed, and not the Megyn Kelly show, which would have been really, really interesting. Now, you guys know I don't't like her and I've been very critical of her, but you also know that if she came into the studio and I was sitting across from the sitting vice president and the democratic nominee for president, I would comport myself very nicely. I would be respectful and I would not show my personal bias against her in the interview. I just wouldn't. I don't. Did I show my personal bias in favor of Trump when I sat with him? No, I didn't because that's not the job. So she should have done it

because I'm exactly the audience that she wants, wanted to get. And she blew it because she was afraid. Okay. Again, we go back to Dan Pfeiffer and then David Plouffe. You know, it can sound like making excuses, but the political environment sucked. OK, we were dealing with ferocious headwinds. And then he laments how the country's gotten more Republican. It's gotten more and more Republican. We saw it in 2020, maybe a percent more Republican voters for us. It's going to OK, it's going he's going on about, that's why they used Liz Cheney. I mean, okay. They tried to justify that.

We had to raise people's concern and the threat level of a Trump second term. And we did a lot of that. We just didn't get it to the extent that we needed it to win. I mean, what else could we have said? Like Hitler and Mussolini. Oh, wait, they actually did do that. That was in the media reports that we played for you here on the show.

Fascist. Oh, wait, no, that we tried that. Maybe like Goebbels. That was tried, too. What? We just, you know, we did a lot. We did a lot of raising concern and the threat level around Trump. We just didn't get it to the extent that we needed to to win. OK. All righty. Let's see. OK, back to Liz Cheney. Well, you see, to win, you need more moderate Republicans and progressives of all ages. And they say, when your opponent is trying to make you more extreme and to make you dangerously liberal, the ways you can push back on that, you know, we talked about the trans ad earlier, is by having people stand with you that don't agree with you on everything, but do see you. It wasn't just that the Republicans that stood with us, literally Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, were saying that they

were against Trump, they were also saying that they were for the vice president. And why? And I think that had real impact. It did in driving people to Trump. They don't understand. I know they don't like Republicans and I know they don't like Trump, but like, don't they get paid to try to understand everybody, all the voters and what motivates them that don't, why don't like Trump. But like, don't they get paid to try to understand everybody, all the voters and what motivates them that don't? Why don't they understand that we don't like Liz Cheney and we don't like Adam Kinzinger? And seeing them go out there and rally for Liz Cheney, I mean, sorry, for Kamala Harris only makes us want to vote for Trump more. Like, I don't understand why smart people don't get that. Why didn't somebody say, why would we touch Liz Cheney with a 10 foot pole? This is not like having a moderate Republican that's kind of well-liked by Republicans who hasn't been voting for all the Trump impeachments come out and say something against Trump.

This is picking someone who is Lincoln project D and putting her on the stump and trying to say, see, she accepts Liz Cheney. She is a walking case of Trump derangement syndrome. And we all know that. Like, I, I truly don't understand it. I don't, I don't need to. Um, yeah, they talk about Latino men and African-American men. They try to say that they didn't lose any ground with African-American men. They did. They lost two percentage points from 2020. Trump had 19 percentage points with them, with men in particular, African American men in 2020. And this time it was 21. It was really Latino men who swung hugely to Trump by 18 percentage points. Um, and they did

accurately say that it was largely to do with the economy. And then they did spend some time on Trump being like a masculine man. And how does that show up for people? They say, how does that show up? Well, it shows up at UFC fights. It shows up with Dana White speaking at the convention. It shows up with the kind of podcast he's doing. It shows up in his rhetoric. He's constantly picking a fight and showing that he's going to take something on. I'm not saying we mimic that. We don't want to mimic that, but we have to pay attention to why people find that appealing and his use of Tik TOK and reaching younger men.

They don't really know what to do. They, as you know, during the actual campaign, their solution was to prod trot out Tim walls. It was like the man's man, the hunter. Everyone knows how that went. Total disaster. And again, inauthentic, not real, totally fake. And they don't seem to understand, like they're worried. They're too worried about seeming like Trump. The one guy, Quentin, later says we have to stop apologizing. Trump never apologizes, so we shouldn't apologize. And then he says, we're the victims of a circular firing squad. Like the Democrats eat their own

and they have to stop eating their own. do you know anything about the republican party it's famous or infamous for eating its own that's all they do it's so divided maga and the establishment types and the neocons and the america first crowd and the um you know christian nationalist whatever like there's so many different factions of the Republican party, the Republican party, most of them didn't want Trump for the it's nominee, but okay. But because they got a little blowback on their campaign strategy, which is what he's talking about. He's mad that people said you should have responded to the trans ad. He's like, we have to stop eating our own. It's very funny to hear them talk about, you know, their takeaways here. Um, any, okay. Is there anything that makes you question how we have traditionally done field

operations in the democratic party? They don't seem to have much question about that. And let me see if I have missed anything in here at all. Um, no, I haven't. I've covered the landscape. You're now up to speed. And so the takeaways are they've learned nothing. They have accurately deduced one thing about Trump that appeals to young men, but they have no idea how to counter it. They are deluding themselves about the new turnout amongst minority men for Trump and have no idea how to counter it. They are trying to make excuses for not responding to probably the most effective campaign ad we've ever seen that they knew was a threat that they'd been warned by Bill Clinton. They don't mention that here was a serious threat that they needed to respond to, but they chose not to trying to say what we were told is just to respond with positive

economic messages and that this actually wasn't an issue in the swing states. But I, again, show you this is a Democrat chart. It's not a Megyn Kelly chart. 3,200 voters in the swing states polled immediately after the election say it was their number one issue. And of course, immigration and the economy were right there too. but this was number one. It beat that. So the Democrat party is in shambles today. The people responsible for the massive loss and the blowing of a billion dollars are not taking responsibility for it. No one is getting honest about Kamala Harris and her immense weaknesses. There never was the in-depth article that was honest about that. The closest thing we've had is our retrospective, which I'll get

you the episode of just in case you missed it. Steve, look that up, please. Thank you. And they're now writing piece after piece about how she's the front runner for 2028, how she's in the forties, episode 945 for our retrospective on what was so wrong with her. How she's in the 40s and everybody else is in single digits. So this is how it's going. Not well. Not well. We're about a month post the loss. They've learned nothing. And so if you are a Republican, a fan of Donald Trump, or let's say J.D. Vance, if we're on a forward-looking basis, you have reason to celebrate this holiday season. And it's not all related to Santa. Thank you for tuning in. And

we'll be back later this morning with a new episode. See you then. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.