The Press Box - Ep. 110: ‘Meet the Press’ Host Chuck Todd, Trump's "Pivot," Polling Mayhem, and More

Episode Date: May 12, 2016

Jon and Dan talk about Trump's attempts to pivot, "cocky" Democrats, close polls, and The NYT Magazine’s Ben Rhodes profile. Then, ‘Meet the Press’ host Chuck Todd joins (50:30) to discuss Trump hacking the political process, Todd’s critiques of the media, and the future of political journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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If you guys are listening to us on Channel 33, good news. Keeping at 1600 now has its own podcast feed. You can find us on iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play Music, Stitcher, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So if you're listening to us on Channel 33, every single episode of Keeping at 1600 is now on its own podcast feed. Welcome to Keeping at 1600. I'm John Favro. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. We're very excited this week. We have Meet the Press moderator and NBC political director Chuck Todd joining us a little bit later.

So excited about that. But first, we will begin with the week in politics. And starting with, as always, Donald Trump. Because what else are we going to talk about? Because now we're in the media. It turns out people really like to hear about Donald Trump. Yeah. So this week was Trump's pivot to the general election that was not really a pivot in any way, shape, or form because he still said all kinds of very Trumpy things.

It started, as usual, something important happened right after we finished taping the podcast last week with Trump's Taco Bowl photo. Remember that? What? I forget now, because it's been a week. What did he say there? It was something about, like, I love Taco Bulls. Also, I love Hispanics. I think that was the truth. Trump Tower makes the best taco bowls.

I love Hispanics. Oh, right. And so let's unpack this for 20 seconds. First of all, first of all, the Yelp review about Trump's, Trump Tower Taco Bowls was not all that great. It was about two and a half stars. Yeah. First fact check right there. Which is shocking.

One, Taco Bowls is not a real food. Right. This is not a traditional food. Second, Cinco de Mayo. He did this on Cinco de Mayo. Of course. Is actually a Mexican holiday. a day. And Hispanics is a much broader term than that. And does no, I think it seems pretty clear

that no actual Hispanics work on the Trump campaign or work for Trump. But how does anyone green light a tweet? And this isn't just Trump like the middle of the night, you know, making jokes about Megan Kelly or Marco Rubio's, whatever. This is like someone stood there and took a picture of him, type the words taco bowl and I love Hispanics and then hit sent. Are you suggesting that the Trump campaign operation is not rigorous in telling their boss hard truths about politics, Dan? I'm suggesting that like it's possible that not only do they have no Hispanics working on this issue, they have people who have never met Hispanics working on this issue.

I think that's probably correct. And then of course, later in the day, someone, someone took. tweeted a picture of CNN and there was a kairon. Now, of course, someone, after Trump did the Taco Bowl photo, someone went and asked Hillary Clinton about it. And she was like, as she should have just dismissed it altogether and didn't really take the bait on that. But of course, she said something.

And so it was quoted in the media. And then sure enough on CNN is the kairon, Trump-Clinton spar over tacos, which to me is just like is symbolic of what we're going to be dealing with in this election from year to November. Right. Let me do a disclaimer here that when I'm not doing this podcast in my other job, I'm a paid contributor to CNN. So everyone should just be aware of that as we talk about CNN. But look, I don't think that I think that this is this week showed us what in the Taco Ball showed us what this election about is Trump does something fucking ridiculous.

Hillary Clinton is required to respond because she can't stare blankly at the reporter when they ask. And then the press will run an entire story about the battle over the dumb thing that Donald Trump did. And it's an open question to me whether who's winning that battle. In some sense, it's like Trump looks like an idiot. And so lots of coverage of Trump looking like an idiot while potentially helpful in a Republican primary is not helpful in a general election. But then Hillary Clinton also was like, you know, the worst, most least gratifying job in the world right now is Hillary Clinton's policy staff. Like, they are, like, coming up these, like, really intricate governing style policies,

like, basically add some whereases, and you can ship it to Congress and they can pass legislation. And the entire, and she gives speeches on it. And then we talk about Taco Bowls for three days. And so in that sense, Trump is blocking Hillary Clinton's ability to get her message out, both to the general populace and to the Democrats that she needs to bring on board, you know, the Sanders supporters. And like this is going to be a big challenge for them as to how to figure out how to solve

this problem. Yeah. I mean, I noticed it too later in the week when Trump brought up Bill Clinton's prior infidelities. And Hillary Clinton responded by saying he can run his campaign however he wants. I'm going to run mine. I'm going to talk about the issues, et cetera, et cetera. and then, you know, there was all kinds of footage of Lewinsky stuff on cable news because Trump brought that up. And you're thinking, okay, did she have to, in order to get coverage, did she have to get down in the mud with him and start talking about all of his past infidelities just so that there would be also footage running on cable news of all Trump stuff?

And it's like, I don't know. I mean, that is a tough decision to make, right? Like, obviously not. You don't want to get down in the mud with him. But like you said, I don't, I think Hillary. Clinton could have the problem that Jeb, our friend Jeb had, and all of the other Republican candidates in the primary of getting airtime because she's not going to say things as sensationalistic or out there as Trump is. And she's going to go for, she's going to go as she

should be, you know, if you're running for president to, you know, govern the country and kind of put forth a policy agenda. She wants to talk about her agenda. And I'm sure they look at polls and the polls say voters want to hear about your agenda. They want to hear about your positive vision for the future. But that's not what gets you on the news. Yeah, it's really challenging. In some ways, there's like one argument where Hillary Clinton is the best person run against Trump because she's the most serious qualified person in either party running. And so if he can be portrayed as unserious and unqualified and ridiculous, like Hillary Clinton seems like they do that problem. In the other sense, Trump has hacked the media in a way that makes the unsurious be the conversation of the day.

And Hillary Clinton is such a, like, serious wonkiness, sometimes to the point of tedium, is her default, right? Like, she wants to talk about her child care plan. And even if no one's going to cover it, she wants to talk about it. And so not having the sort, like, I think Obama could sort of split the difference a little bit because he could very easily deliver sort of like funny takedowns of someone like Trump. You know what? I was just going to ask you that. Like if we were, so if we were on the Clinton campaign, except it was the Obama campaign this week and Trump did the Taco Bowl tweet. And, well, I mean, usually we would have had to deal with one thing a week, right?

This week we would have had to dealt with the Taco Bowl tweet. the white nationalist delegate to the convention that he put on his California slate and sent in because again it somehow slipped through the rigorous vetting operation at the Trump campaign. Trump saying that he wanted to give our creditors a haircut and maybe not pay off our national debt in full. I don't know. There's like a million things he did this week. Like how would we, what would you have said Obama should have done if we were running against Trump? That's a great question.

Right? Because I want to like, on one hand, it's like, oh, the Clinton campaign, there they go again, being so cautious in them. I'm like, well, what would we have done? I don't know. I actually don't know how we would respond to that. I think this is what they're, like they are, they're fighting a two front war right now, which is really hard. And we, I mean, I think you remember this from the same point in 2008 when Hillary was still in the race. We were just literally getting destroyed in states like Kentucky and West Virginia in the final primaries. and we were starting to turn our fire to McCain. And so they're in a challenging position. I think for some of the – I think we'll get in this a little bit,

but some of the critiques of the Clinton campaign's initial responses to Trump are sort of not – this is not a fair sample size for what I think the general election will look like. But I think what you want is a consistent narrative stump speech argument about why Trump is unfit and ridiculous. And it would have to be pretty funny, I think, in some – ways. And then we would just be adding clever topper, you know, very soundbite, you know, tweet-worthy topers about the Taco Bowl or everything else. Right. As we went through it. I mean, we had a very consistent argument against McCain in 08 about how he would be a continuation of the Bush policies. And then every day we would surf the news for what the thing is, the thing in the news that

best made that argument. We put at the top of Obama speech and that's what would be on the news that night. Yep. That like we were operating in a massively more simple. news environment at the time. The Clinton folks are here. McCain was a much different figure on so many levels than Trump. But, you know, I think that's where they're going to get. I have great confidence they'll get there. But, you know, some of their, I think some of the instincts of, like, how politics

used to be done, like what I think, some of the things that I think would make Hillary Clinton a very, very good president may not serve her really well in a race against Trump. And they're going to have to figure this out pretty quick, I think. Yeah, I mean, my thought on this was you can't, you have to go along with what's in the news cycle, but then you have to use it as an opportunity to pivot to something more substantive or to better, to more fertile ground for you, right? So, for example, if he does the Taco Bowl tweet, you don't respond with something on the minimum wage. You respond by acknowledging the Taco Bowl tweet, making fun of it, doing some mocking comment, and then immediately pivoting towards his policies on immigration.

His policy, right? And so you make it somewhat related to the crazy thing Trump just did, but you try to make fun of him, make some kind of sarcastic comment, and then pivot to something more substantive, I think. Like, if I was the Clinton campaign, I would have some working group, either folks inside the campaign or some collection of folks outside the campaign, whose job it was every day to figure out. what they were going to make Trump respond to when he called in to the morning show the next day. So is that an ad they're putting out before that? You know, like a quote unquote ad, a video. Like some of the videos the Clinton campaign did last week with the Republic, you know, basically having Mitt Romney narrate a negative Trump ad were really good stuff.

I think they did very well in terms of shaping a conversation online, which I think is critically important these days. But like there should be what is what is what are we going to do that Trump has to respond to. And that's like a full-time job because he's always going to be more available than Hillary because he's going to be on the morning shows four days a week and three Sunday shows a weekend. And he's going to call in at 6.30 in the morning and he's going to tell Chris Cuomo or

Savannah Guthrie or whoever else some crazy thing. And then they're going to turn around. All the reporters watching it are going to turn around and they're going to email Brian Fallon and Jim Palmieri and from the Clinton came in and asked them what the response. is. And then Hillary Clinton's going to do an interview later that day. And what's your response to what Trump said about X? And that is a recipe for one, at least a really painful seven months for the Clinton campaign, but we'll make it very hard. If there's a world where Trump calls into Chris Cuomo when they say, Chris Cuomo says, what do you say, what's your response to this video or what's

your response to this thing Hillary Clinton's doing today? Then they're at least shaping the conversation on terms they choose, on ground they choose. Yeah. The only thing I wonder here is, if, because Trump's always willing to go do the negative attack himself in his own words, if it's going to come to the point where you're not going to be able to get Trump to respond to a video, but you're going to have to get Trump to respond to something Hillary says herself because they don't ask about the videos because there's so much video stuff out there. And you have Trump himself who will say something awful about Hillary. Yeah, that may be.

Because that correct the record video that was out this week about all of the unbelievably awful things Trump has said about women was, first of all, a great video and very, very well done. But I didn't hear a lot of people ask Trump about that this week. I saw Trump tweeted about it to let everyone know that when he was talking about someone eating like a pig at his wedding, it was Rosie O'Donnell and not Hillary Clinton.

Thanks for the clarification, Don. And that was about all I heard from him in terms of response, though. I don't think Hillary should be afraid. I think this will be a debate for the Clinton campaign, which is, you know, in current form, her favorable and favorable, while better than Trump is not where you would like it to be the person driving the negative. The sort of classic way of thinking about politics is if you deliver the negative, your favorable numbers go down. And so if you already have low favorable numbers, why would you do that? I don't think here's a real choice.

And, you know, in 08 and 12, Obama delivered the negative all the time. Yeah. It wasn't like he gave some wonky policy speech. And then just like Axelrod or Plafer Gibbs or an ad would deliver the negative. If we would use that as well. But Obama on the stunt made an aggressive case for all the hope and change, you know, rose-colored glasses, memories of 08. Obama delivered a like uplifting but brutal contrast argument against just just ask the Clinton campaign.

Yeah, exactly. The campaign would say the same thing. Yeah. And I don't think she should be afraid to do that. I think you have to do it with humor with Trump because I think it exposes Trump as ridiculous. I totally agree. Which I think is the best argument. And if you're laughing, the one thing we know we knew from President Obama was, and he's very good at this.

But if you're laughing when you deliver the critique and it's funny and the crowd's laughing, it doesn't seem mean to people. Right. And actually you got to be careful not to be mean. but that's better than just like scowling and we've seen Obama do that too but scowling and seeming angry and then it seems more like a political attack and by the way and by the way we've seen Trump do that too Trump delivers a lot of his attacks with humor or at least is laughing while he does it you know whether you think it's funny or not now the other challenge that the Clinton campaign is going to have is figuring out how to deal with Trump's flip-flops as he

or as he calls it, having flexibility on various issues. And so this week we saw him try to give himself some room on minimum wage by saying, you know, well, before he was against it, now he's saying, well, it should be left up to the states, and I don't know how people get by on $7.25 an hour. And then on taxes, he has tried to go back and forth on, you know, I mean, clearly his tax plan has a gigantic tax cut for the wealthy, but he said, oh, you know, wealthy people are going to pay a little bit more. maybe under my tax plan.

But we'll see during the negotiations. But he's clearly leaving himself open to the fact that his base, the new base of the Republican Party, or maybe it was the old base that no one really understood, wants higher taxes for wealthy people and as a lot of working class people who probably want to hire wages as well. Now, so in the Clinton campaign, do you try to pin him down on his original positions, or do you try to paint him as a con man who's lying to you? And look, we had to make this decision against Romney in 2012, to a much lesser degree. Right.

I think with Romney, there was a big debate, both some in our campaign, but mostly among all of the armchair folks around town giving us advice. We love them. We love you guys. was do, was Romney obviously changed a lot of positions from his 94 liberal Republican race against Ted Kennedy to, you know, trying to out Rick Santorum for the right-wing vote. And do you paint him as a foot-flapper or a conservative? And we chose conservative, right-wing out-of-touch conservative, because a more dangerous argument is, hey, he doesn't really believe this.

You know, he'll, he's just saying, voters actually believe this idea that politicians will say things to get elected when a primary get elected, and then what really matters what they really believe. And if they really believe that Romney was a liberal Republican, that would have been very hard for us. It was better for us to try to make them believe, which how we absolutely believed he would govern, which was as a right-wing, you know, pass the Ryan budget, end Obamacare stuff. So I think with, for the Clinton campaign, I think has to have an approach, has to have an approach of one they have they have to subscribe some positions to him since he has all the positions pick the one that you like best right so if he's for if he says one day he's for the raise the minimum

wage the other day he says the minimum wage shouldn't exist pick the minimum wage shouldn't exist right that's his fault right like if one day he says he's for higher taxes on the wealthy and the other day he puts out a plan that's a massive tax cut for the wealthy pick that one because why not right I do think the argument against Trump is not going to be a policy-based one that's going to work. I think it's going to be a... That I agree with. Yeah, I just think they have to, I mean, this has to be a character thing, right? Because the truth is, and most people are, a lot of people understand this just by watching Trump.

And it is people's problem with Trump, not just from the Democratic side, but also from the Republican side, is that the man has no positions. I mean, you know, people thought that Romney was a flip-flopper. this is like on steroids, right? This is a, he's not even flip-flopping because flip-flopping means you go from one position to another. He's, like you said, owning all the positions at once. Sometimes in the same interview, in that minimum, both in his answer on the North Carolina transgender discrimination law and or the discriminatory law in North Carolina.

And his answer to the minimum wage the other day, he takes all the positions. And the press tends to go to. he's changed his position because that's sort of what they're supposed to like that's not the wrong thing to do. But within one paragraph, he can take three positions. Yeah, he can. And I think that, but I think part of the argument against him has to be it's not flexibility when he does that, you know, it's fraud or whatever, whatever they decide to say.

Because you have to go right at the core of what he's doing wrong, which is not just taking conservative positions when he wants or liberal positions when he wants. It's the fact that he has, there is no core to him. that the guy is clearly trying to pull one over on all of us, like he tried to pull one over on the Republican Party and succeeded. And so I think you're in one way you're right. You need ads up there and everything saying, like, look at him. He's against the minimum wage.

Look, you know, he wants to give wealthy people a huge tax cut. But you also got to go with the character of someone who would be all over the map like that. Yeah. I think the best ads against Trump will be ones, I think we talk about this in a recent podcast, but it will be the ones that make people envision him behind. behind the desk in the Oval Office during tough times and in paint him as a ridiculous figure, right? Like, you have to make people really step back and think, we are going to elect a guy who is

essentially a old white male prejudice version of Kim Kardashian as Presby United States. That's what this is. And people have to, like, it's easy in the way in which this is a lot of people right now, like, hmm, yeah, I tune into that. All these other things. but are we willing to elect Kim Kardashian's president of the United States? If we are, then Donald Trump, Air Force One is yours. If not, then Hillary Clinton will win.

And I think that's the sort of argument that they should use. She probably can't use that since Kim Kardashian is a supporter of hers. But thank you, get my point. So the next question is, what does Paul Ryan think of Kim Kardashian slash Donald Trump? We are recording this right after the huge Ryan Trump meeting, which is just blocked out the entire day for coverage here. I think there was like six split screens on cable for people just waiting outside the meeting of Paul Ryan and Donald Trump

to see if, you know, a puff of white smoke would come out and party unity would rain. But what do you think about this? It looks like from the statement that Ryan put out and Trump together that, you know, they acknowledge that they have differences but that they both believe that party unity is important. No shit. But do we think Ryan caves here at the end or what?

Yes, I have believed from the beginning that there is no scenario that Ryan doesn't support Trump in the end. It's just impossible. McConnell is supporting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is supporting Trump. Most of the Republican senators are a large portion of Ryan's caucus are basically little mini-Trumps. They were the, you know, they were though like the canary and the coal mine. that we'd have a Trump, a bunch of these members like Steve King who say all the same offensive things Trump has. And Ryan does support it all of them and patted him on the back and raised money for him.

And so the, and he's the chair of Trump's convention. So it seems. Yeah. I don't know that he'll ever be an enthusiastic supporter, but this statement that there, you know, a positive step to unification is a bridge to Ryan and endorsing Trump in some way, shape, or form. It just drives me. I mean, look, I'm going to say this as a, uh,

a Obama Kool-Aid drinker who does not like to give in to cynicism, as our old boss would often say. So I think there are, there are, you know, you'd like to see Paul Ryan do quote-unquote the right thing because he clearly does not agree with many of the things Trump has said or most of Trump's agenda. But let's set that aside for the sake of politics and let's think about the politically smart thing for Ryan to do. I have no doubt that in the short term, the politically smart thing for Ryan to do may be to go along, unify the party because there's too much pressure and you can't have the party divided because then you'll get a Hillary Clinton presidency and that's what they don't want. That's what they all agree on. But I'm wondering who in this party is looking and thinking about long-term politics. And if Donald Trump goes down in a pretty heavy defeat, which is quite possible,

though, you know, not, not definite by any means, if he does go down and defeat and you're Paul Ryan, and you've decided you were not boarding the Trump train a long time ago, and that you have a different vision for this party, and it is Paul Ryan's vision of limited government, and entitlement reform and big tax cuts and all the things that Paul Ryan, and immigration reform, and all the things that Paul Ryan believes in, you know, isn't it, it's, I mean, Paul Ryan seems like a guy

who wants to stand, wants the party to stand for, something. It's not something that you and I agree with, but it's something that he wants the party to stand for. And Donald Trump does not believe in any of those positions, or at least a lot of them. And I'm just wondering, is there some leader in the Republican Party who has a future in the Republican Party that's going to stand up and say, like, no, we're a different party? Or is that just, am I just, am I just idealistic and naive? I mean, both things can be true. Yes. I think, I think the reason to oppose Trump, is not that he doesn't agree with your positions because he is going to be a like just from a pure policy perspective he is going to do if he wins there is no doubt that the republican state in control the house of the senate and they will he will sign all the bills that mccano and ryan get together and send him he will repeal obamacare he will pass the ryan budget he will all those things

he will sign the reason to oppose trump is not a party reason it's a patriotism reason it is is you believe this man is so unsurious and ridiculous and embarrassing to the United States, he should not be president. And some very prominent Republicans have taken that position implicitly, not explicitly, but George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Mitt Romney, and Jebush, who obviously has probably some personal animus here, or he was just, didn't have enough energy to go to the convention. These guys are all going to sit out the convention and not campaign for the nominee or say they're supporting the nominee. And that's a fairly, phenomenal thing. So if you were to pick one politician who, let's say Trump embarrasses

everyone, goes down in flames, the person who may have best positioned themselves in this to make a comeback, if they so choose, is Mitt Romney. Yeah, that's true. Good old now. Well, and no, I mean, Paul Ryan is probably, I mean, I don't know if Paul Ryan wants to run for president again or run for president, I guess, in the first place because he was on the ticket. But whether he decides to ultimately back Trump or not, I suppose you could make a case that once this election's over, if he ultimately supports Trump and Trump goes down, Ryan can later say, well, I had my misgivings. I clearly was one of the last people to get on board. I was doing it for the party. And clearly you know that I'm not someone who approves of Donald Trump and believes in what he believes in.

So maybe he's setting himself up that way. I don't know. Yeah, I think even if the Republican Party loses big. here, which I hope, but it's certainly not a guarantee, but if they do, it will be an interest the primary, the electorate's not going to get much more moderate. So the party may moderate itself, as the Democrats did after they lost three consecutive elections after the 88 election. But I think it would probably be a net negative for a politician, with a possible exception

of, I guess it's an open question. Is it a net negative? if you were running in the 2020 Republican primary and you did not support Donald Trump, and the argument is you helped get Hillary Clinton elected president by not being a loyal party soldier, I can see that being a negative. I mean, that is the argument that, I mean, not to get super old school here, but if I understand my history correctly, it's what Richard Nixon did. He campaigned furiously for Goldwater, even though I think he had misgivings about Goldwater's electability.

and then use that to build up chits to run again. And maybe that's the calculus here. That's right. No, I think that's a good argument that you could get the, look at the disastrous Hillary Clinton presidency we've had for the last four years, which no matter how well she does, that's what they'll say. Yeah, that's right. Whether that becomes true or not, that will be the line. And maybe Donald Trump would have been better because you can always talk about the hypothetical, especially four years out. So the other question is, you know, are Democrats, us included, are we being too cocky in thinking that Hillary will win this thing and Donald Trump will in fact lose?

There have been a few national polls out this week that have showed the race a bit tighter than any of us might have imagined. We can argue about the respectability of all those polls. but in addition to national polls there was also some Quinapec polls that in the states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania had the race very, very tight as well. Now, back in 2008, when you and I would look at polls

along with the rest of the campaign every single day, I would usually be terrified every day of the polling. I would look at the Gallup Daily Track even though Pluff yelled at me not to multiple times and constantly be worried about this. And we called it the polar coaster because we would have up days and down days. But, I mean, what do you think about all this?

Are these polls accurate? Is the race going to get closer? Should we all just keep freaking out every day or what? I think these polls are bullshit for a whole host of reasons. So there is just— Unkew the polls. Yeah, I want to unskew the polls for you, which is— Let's just take the Quinnipiac poll for an example.

Kunapeake polls tend to either oversample, Republicans, or undersample the Obama coalition. It's also just impossible, given Donald Trump's approval ratings with young people, Hispanics, and African-Americans that he could be winning in Florida right now. It's just not a possible thing. And then this Reuters tracking poll is bullshit. For one, daily tracking polls are the worst things ever. because polls fluctuate and there's noise and then we have to spend every day talking about why Hillary Clinton went up three points or down three points. And all it means is a different set of people answered their phone that day. And it's all in the margin of error.

But also that poll had like 19% undecided. And there's no chance that, you know, a fifth of the American people are like, I got to learn more about these Clinton and Trump people before I make up my mind. So I've been wondering about this. A lot of these polls have both of them in the low 40s. And I don't understand that. And I wonder if there's like I would love to. people to do a little more research and a little more reporting on the undecided voters, because like you said, it can't be that they want more information about either of these

candidates, because I don't know if there's two more candidates. I mean, it's said that, you know, these are two of the least likable candidates that we've had in the general election, but they're also two of the most known candidates we've had in a general election. I don't know that those two things are unrelated. But, you know, and so I wonder people just, if these, if undecided voters is someone who does not like Donald Trump, does not like Hillary Clinton, and is just wondering who to hold their nose for. I think in a future podcast we should have on some of our friends of the polling community and do like a deep dive into polling for folks.

I think it's pretty interesting. In this case, there's a difference between some polls force the choice, basically. It's hard to get people to say who they'll vote for, which is one of the reasons why general election polls are bullshit in May. But it's hard to get people to absolutely say who they're going to support, even if they already. know and some polls put you in that situation where like yes but if you had to pick right now who would you pick and then you get a forced choice can give you a more accurate reading um so i find it has more to my guess is the huge variation in polls has more to do with polling methodology and reliability than actual shift in voters because it's just it is if something

in one of the like rules of looking at polling is if something doesn't make sense it's usually a on the poll, right? If you see, like, when you get a poll back and there's a huge drop of like 25 points with like Latino voters and you can't figure out what the thing, you can't, you don't automatically know a specific thing that could lead to that. It usually means it's noise because people make decisions based on new information presented to them. If there's no new information presented since the last poll was conducted, it's very, very unlikely that that poll is accurate. And I think it's like when, uh, it's like, it's like I reminds me of the night. or a couple nights before the North Carolina-Indiana primaries in 2007, 2008 at that point.

And David Axelrod suddenly went into like panic mode because our internal polls suddenly had us down a whole bunch of points in both North Carolina and Indiana. And we had been leading up until then, or at least very close with Hillary Clinton. And suddenly we thought this is going to go very, very badly. And then we were fine. And, you know, he won North Carolina and that pretty much ended the primary right there. But that was a bunch of noise. It turned out there was just a bad internal poll one night and it didn't have anything

to do with the real result. I think to go back to your original question, are Democrats too cocky? The answer to that question is probably yes. Like I've been, like I've talked to a bunch of reporters in recent since Trump won the nomination who call and to like talk about the general. And you're like, and I've been someone who has said Democrats should not be complacent about Trump. Like he has some set of skills that are unpredictable and you're going to have to rewrite the campaign playbook and that's hard. And so we should be wary. And then I talk to these reporters

and I go through the demographic makeup of the electorate and Trump's approval numbers with those groups or the fact that even if Trump flipped Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, he would still lose because the Democrats' electoral structural advantage is so large that I find myself being like, how does this guy win? And then I fall back into cocky, bad karma mode. Yes, I'm the same way. But here's how we, here's how Democrats lose. It's very simple.

People are people don't, they think Hillary's Co Clinton's going to win a lot or they're not super inspired by her. And so they don't bother to show up. Like all of the models that which you hear, all these smart people talk about in terms of turnout and Latino turnout and the fact that Trump would have to double more than double Romney's percentage of his his percentage of the non-white vote to win, all depends on 08, 12 turnout levels. And if we don't have those, then we could be back in a Kerry Bush 2004 situation where

just a handful of voters and a handful of precincts in a state like Ohio or Florida could shift it. And so cockiness can lead to complacency. And complacency is the biggest vulnerability Democrats have. Yes. If we, if the Hillary Clinton runs a barely competent campaign and we execute and turns out the Democratic base and Democratic voters and the Democratic voters that voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 when he won by a little less, they will absolutely beat Donald Trump. But those things have to happen, you know. So one last thing before we get to Chuck. want to talk about our friend Ben Rhodes. We debated whether to talk about this for a few reasons.

First of all, I should say, we're talking about there was a profile in the New York Times magazine about Ben Rhodes, who is the Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications in the White House and a very good friend of both of ours that has been the fodder for quite a bit of Washington discussion, to put it lightly, over the last week. Not so many people were happy with the Ben Rhodes profile. And I didn't, we, Dan and I went back and forth on whether to talk about this today, A, because we are so close to the situation, because we're really good friends with Rhodes. And B, I also, I didn't think it would still be in the news as we're taping here on Thursday. But then I woke up this morning to yet another think piece about the Ben Rhodes profile.

And I was like, okay, well, people are still talking about this. It is still something that's out there. So perhaps we should dive in for a few minutes and at least give some perspective on it. So, you know, as you point out, we are incredibly biased here. And there are two biased. Not even pretending we're not biased. Yeah, exactly. Like one of our closest friends, we worked with him for eight years going and talk to him

in some way should perform almost every day. So, but we're biased in a second way, which is also we don't live in Washington, D.C. Right. And so there's been this real disconnect of, like, Washington, D.C. blew its fucking lid over this. And, you know, Washington Post wrote five pieces, I think, on it. And, like, Twitter, like, D.C., foreign policy, Twitter was freaking out. Josh Ernest, the White House press security, got asked about it. Out here in, like, your San Francisco, your Los Angeles, my San Francisco world,

my friends who are not involved in politics, the main takeaway was, hey, is that Ben Rhodes guy coming to your wedding? I'd really like to meet him. He seems like a cool dude. I know. Me too. Every single person, my parents read it, a bunch of other people I knew, like random friends in L.A. that are not in the political industry. We're like, oh, do you know that Ben Rhodes guy?

That was a really cool profile. And look, I know people are going to roll their eyes in Washington about this, but this is part of Ben's point a little bit in the profile, is that you should really think about how people outside the city that you work in view these things. And there's a huge disconnect. And so if the people who do believe that it was a very bad profile and said bad things about the Obama White House and Rhodes, you know, you need to realize that there's some work to do convincing the rest of the country of that. Yeah. I think it's also fair to say that the profile is not an accurate picture of who Ben is, right? And you and I have both been, you know, profiled in, you know, various Washington publications during our brief time in the political spotlight.

And those things never, you know, it's always interesting to know either be the subject profile or know the subject profile because, you know, they're varying degrees of accuracy. Well, and we should walk through people, we should walk people through how this happens, right? Because a big question that a lot of people have asked is, why did Ben agree to do this? Right. That's like the big. And this is what happens. If a reporter comes to you and says, I am working on a profile of you, which is usually what they say, they do not. say, hey, do you mind if I do a profile on you? So you don't get that question. It is. And in Ben's

case, I remember Ben told me when David Samuels started this profile, he had already talked to a bunch of people in Ben Rhodes' life, not just former colleagues, but like former friends, roommates, college professors. So he had, Samuels had already done a bunch of conversations, had a bunch of research on Ben, was working on this profile. And then your question is, do I participate in this profile to get my side of the story out and to make my case, or do I just trust that this journalist and his conversation with all these people that I know and have worked with, some of whom don't care for me that much, will have an accurate profile that I'm happy with.

And so that's a question that you have to answer right off the bat, right? Yeah, I had this happen to me in 2013. Jason Horowitz, who's now at the New York Times and was with Washington Post, it was then with Washington Post, declared to me he was writing a profile on me. And it was at a particularly unpleasant time in the Obama administration. It was after the IRS and think Snowden was happening. And like, this wasn't a time to profile one's genius. And I, and I like try to convince him not to do it that failed.

And he's a tough profiler. And he has made a lot of people look not great over the course of the years. Me, you. Yeah, exactly. Both of us. And so I said to John, to Eric Schultz in the White House Press Office, who was going to handle this for me. Actually, I take that back. It was Josh Ernest who took out over. And I was like, I don't want to have any involvement in this. Like, try to connect them with people I know. I don't want to talk to them because I think, I thought going in, like, doing an interview for your own profile is not great. And then, like, I get emails from Jason. It's like, I talked to these people. I heard these 10 things and about this thing about your life. And I talked to all these people. And you're like, at the end of the day, I felt like I had. to talk. And because there was no other, for all my desires to do with the, I felt like the only person who could respond to all the things that other people said about me, not even all

negative, but just some not correct or not exactly how I would have phrased it. And I ended up spending like an hour in my office with them. And I will say at the end of the day, for as much as I dreaded it and as much as there were lots of things in there that, a handful of things in there that I did not love. It was, I think he was mostly fair about it. But it's a terrible position to be in. And let's be honest. And let's be honest, too.

I mean, there is a part of all of us that when someone from the New York Times or some big publication comes to you and says, we're doing a whole profile on you, you're, there's a small part of you're like, oh, great. There's going to be a big profile of me out there. And maybe it's going to turn out well. And maybe people will like me and know me. And, you know, so there is a little bit of, you know, self-centeredness there, too. But I just think that you, the, oftentimes the answer is to participate, right? And I know that when Samuel started this with Ben, you could also tell, because Samuel's talked to me for this profile, that he really liked Ben, or at least he appeared to really like Ben. And so I got all these questions, Samuel asked all these questions about comparing him to Holden Caulfield, right?

Which rode at the very beginning was like, I don't know why he has this thing about me in Holden Caulfield, but he just keeps talking about it. And I thought that was ridiculous. And I was like, I have no answer to that. I don't compare them at all. But so it seemed like it was very favorable from the get-go and that this. guy really liked Ben. And I think to this day, if you talk to David Samuels, we would probably say, I do like Ben. You know, like, I do not think that this was some Trojan horse to destroy him, but I think that's, you know, clearly he ended up writing something like that.

I think the takeaway I would have for people on this is one, Ben is if is one of the smartest people we know. Like if I was starting any enterprise, uh, presidential campaign, a White House, a company, like one of the first three people I hired. is Ben Rhodes, right? Super smart. He is a really, really nice, good person and who cares passionately about serving the country. He has been at that job of incredible pressure every day in the White House. And I don't like, there's two people who've left in recent years. I don't know how he's still standing. And like it portrays him in a totally, I think, false way in the same. In the that all he is is some sort of like Twitter digital media Sven Gali trying to trick people.

And it's worth noting that he's not David Samuels. He's not. Right. But Ben is also a very serious, you know, Ben's greatest accomplishment in his job is that he is the person, apart from President Obama, most responsible for the new, our new relations with Cuba. He negotiated that deal in secret for years. And that is not even mentioned in the piece. Like that when in every story about Ben, every bio, you know, for the rest of his life, that will be the first line. Yep.

And it's barely mentioned in the piece. And that does a disservice to his seriousness as a foreign policy person. Well, and this is what sort of upsets me. And I have one very stated bias on this podcast, which is, you know, I hope people will go into politics and go into public service no matter what side of the aisle you're on, whether you're a hardcore conservative. or a hardcore liberal. I hope people. And profiles like this make it seem like people are in politics for purely cynical reasons and purely selfish motivations. And I'll tell you, like, Ben Rhodes does have those feelings about the foreign policy establishment, but they are deeply felt because he thinks that going, the way we went to war in Iraq was not just a problem of George

W. Bush, but a problem of weaknesses in the Democratic Party, weaknesses in the media, and he thinks that mistake was a tragedy, you know, and he feels deeply about that. And you can disagree with him, and you can say, no, it was, you know, this person did it for this reasons, and you're not right, and your policies. I mean, you can have that argument, that's fine. The idea that this is not something that's deeply felt by Rhodes because it's substantive, and this is what most of his life's work has been. And by the way, everyone says, oh, he doesn't have any foreign policy experience.

How did he get here? Well, the guy started his career writing the Iraq Study Group report and the 9-11 Commission report, or at least helping write it. And so he was very steeped in this stuff from me. many years. And so he believes it deeply, you know? And it's hard to like, and it's not like he was trying to spin the press or stick it to neocons or do anything like that. Like, this is just what he believes about the world. Yeah. He, look, Josh Ernest, when asked about this on Monday, because of course, this is something so important that we should use the White House press

secretary's time for it. You know, a reporter gets to ask a White House press secretary like one question today. I'm like, let's definitely do it on a New York Times profile and a White House staffer. but, you know, he said, Ben would not as every, that some of the quotes in there were, you know, not a full representation of how Ben feels. And, you know, I think that, you know, Ben has said that and we'll say that. And that, you know, there are journalists who cover the White House and foreign policy that he deeply, deeply respects. He was, his frustration towards the way some people cover it is one that is shared by everyone in both parties, I think.

And you probably would have heard the same thing from the Bush people about, you end up with these, you know, you're dealing with these complicated foreign policy, these complicated issues, whether it's foreign policy, health care policy, economic policy, and sometimes people covering you, not all. Like, let's not over, the problem was, is the way it was quoted, suggested that he felt that way about every reporter. We know that's not the case. And reporters know that's not the case.

You know, and you're dealing with it in the people or even complicated issues of political strategy, and the reporters who are your filter to the American people for this information don't have context to be able to do it because they're, new to it. Now, say fair point on the other side that, you know, if you're David Sanger or Jeff Goldberg or, you know, Robert Pera, you know, at the New York Times on health care, and you're, sometimes being forced to deal with an assistant press secretary in the White House who also doesn't know it. Like, it's, it goes both ways. Yeah, that's a good point. It's a totally, it's a totally fair point. But I think it is, if you read this and you, I think the one thing we want people

take away is that the response to this was, so ridiculously disproportionate. The country is very lucky to have Ben Rhodes in that job. And the reason people are like Ben's been in that job too long, well, anyone who's been in the White House for seven years has been in their job longer than is any human should be expected to do that job, particularly one with as high pressure as Ben's. But the reason he hasn't left is not because he really loves working in that windowless office and getting a New York Times profile. It's because he's so important to what is happening there on very important issues that he can't leave. Right? I think the president would say that.

And the truth is, he needs Ben. Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying. It's like this whole thing is like Ben puffed himself up in his own role. Like, no, there is a mind meld with Obama and Ben on foreign policy. And if you want, if you're looking for one person in the world to best articulate Obama's thinking on every foreign policy issue, it's Ben Rhodes by a mile. You know, like, I'm not saying that like obviously the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, they all have like much more important roles in terms of executing substance and policy and making big decisions. They totally do. But in terms of what Obama is thinking and how he thinks and how he articulates his views, that's what Ben's job is.

And also, and we should say, too, the actual substantive critique in the Samuel's profile about the Iran deal and the timeline of diplomacy has now been debunked so many different places that that part's just completely ridiculous because that's the part that we'll live on, the Republicans will see it on. But that we'll send you some links on that too because that's been fairly well debunked. Yeah. We can go on about this forever, clearly, but we will not. And so thank you for, thank you to our listeners for giving us this moment of personal privilege here. If you guys want to hear today's full episode, including our interview with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, Keeping at 1600 now has its own podcast feed, so please go subscribe.