The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 95. DNC Special: An alternative view from a Trump supporter (David Urban)

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

What did a Trump supporter make of the Democratic National Convention? Does Donald Trump have any friends? What message did the DNC send to those who don't support Kamala Harris? Alastair is joined by CNN correspondent and Trump supporter, David Urban, to answer all these questions and more. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Podcast Editor: Nathan Copelin Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispolities.com. Welcome to The Restis Politics with me, Aleister Campbell. Sadly on my own today, not with Rory Stewart,

but I do have a very, very interesting guest. Because here at the Democratic National Convention, you can tell by the word Democrat, most people here are Democrats. I've found not just a rare Republican, but a rare Republican who is a close friend, confident, advisor, including in the 2016 election campaign, to won Donald Trump. Listen to this podcast will know,

Donald Trump is not one of my favorite people. So David Urban, you were apparently a very good footballer in your use, then military. Yeah, and I'm charming, Alice. You forgot that. So are here. But you kind of background is business and politics, and now the reason you hear, you're in the kind of resident Trump supporter,

on CNN. So first of all, I want to say, a lot of people like me and Britain find it incredible that Donald Trump became president, find it incredible that he's not politically dead after all the things that he's said and done. So I want to ask you, you seem like a reasonably good guy. Why is he still in the race? Why is he still there? This is what befuddles up like, you know, liberal elites in London and New York, because you don't understand the rest of the country, right? I wish, Alex, I wish you could take you in a car, take you to my hometown, Aliquipa. Pennsylvania, right? Blue collar, you know, once great mill town, a factory town. 15,000 people used to work there, right?

Where my dad has worked at a factory. So my dad, when he graduated in high school in the mid, early 50s, if you had a strong back and a good work ethic, you could go down to the factory and get a job and raise your family and have a life, right? And those jobs all kind of went away and that hope went away. And so there are people in America in Aliquba, Pennsylvania, Canapolis, North Carolina, and Flint, Michigan, lots of places in our country

that had kind of lost hope. They felt that nobody in the political class was listening them. He doesn't listen to them. No, no, he does. Donald Trump doesn't listen to them. He does. People feel like they speak for him.

People feel in America that the government, right, is so big and bureaucratic and it's non-responsive to them. And so they feel that he is their voice, that he says things that they would say to the government. He says things that they would say to other people if they could,

people in power if they could, if they had a voice. So he's tapped into the zeitgeist of that group. But, David, the difference between them and him is that he has had real power. He had four years as president where he could have really changed their lives for the better. But one of the lines of attack here all week is being that he doesn't really care about them. He cares about himself and the rich. Is that not a fair accusation? Yeah, well, that's an accusation.

I don't think it's a fair accusation. You don't think he's fair. Listen, under the Trump presidency, pre-COVID, right? Let's remember that COVID came across and destroyed. everything that happened in the world. Would you handle badly? No, I don't know if you handle badly. If you look at Operation Warp Speed, right, the U.S. government, right,

jump through incredible hoops to produce a vaccine that helped stop the spread of the disease. If you want to just say blinch. No, no, that's not even factually correct. If I had Daniel Dale, listen, I'll get you the facts. I'll update you the facts now. I'm not to have Daniel Dale sit with us in fact check. Listen, so under the Trump administration, they got a vaccine. They kept businesses open.

Look, if you look at how New York handled COVID and how Florida handled the COVID, the number of fatalities are exactly the same, right? And one shut everything down, kept kids out of school, harmed kids long-term education. When you look at the guy, you know the guy, I don't know the guy, you know him really, really well. He talks about himself all the time. Oh, absolutely.

He's a narcissist. Absolutely. Listen, Donald Trump could do lots better. He doesn't care about the people. Oh, he does care about the people. Listen, I spent a great deal of time with him, even this past Saturday, as I shared with you. I was with him this past Saturday in Wilkeshire, Pennsylvania,

kind of, you know, a place that once was mighty, right? And has hoped to be mighty again. I watched him talk to more police and firefighters about their lives, their jobs. Thank you for doing what you do for our community, our country. Talk to one of the Secret Service agents that helped save his life, a woman who's gone on a maternity leave. I mean, I've seen him as a human being care about people one-on-one. He's not reduced to some caricature or cartoon figure when I'm around him, right? It's easy to say things about people you don't really know.

I've fortunately been up close, but do I wish he'd talk about things differently? Do I wish he's this today in North Carolina? He was talking about the abysmal jobs report that's out, right? The jobs report that just came out today, 818,000 jobs that we revised the report, okay? For the past year, from 2023 to 2024 to today, the Biden administration had said, we have a million more jobs than we really have in America. They revise it downward. Hold on.

So that job report is the biggest downward revision since 2009 in jobs, okay? Five out of the past six jobs reports in the Biden administration have been revised. downward okay right right let me keep going let me get going no it's four point three percent I've been seen by Donald Trump you worship by Joe Biden no and this is why no and this is why Donald Trump is popular right no because no this is what to say these things and this that's why that's why I'm here Alistair right right I'm helping out I'm I'm I'm I'm the man standing there in the wings down Donald Trump he's standing for office listen I but he's standing for office and he's got a lot of people standing with him who are going to help him say these

things Alston are going to help get this message across right do you it's important right but you say he's got emphasis which we don't really, doesn't come through in his public persona. You say that he cares about people, but you can't say that he's somebody who believes in decency in public life or telling the truth. He doesn't tell the truth very often. Donald Trump believes, if you read the art of the deal, truthful hyperbole.

He didn't even write the art of the deal. A truthful hyperbole. Listen, I'm sure you know quite a few people in your industry that didn't write their own books, okay? Let's not run around in glass houses with stones, okay? So, listen, he is truthful hyperbole guy. right so he said truthful life that's his tagline right so it's truthful verbally

listen if I brought Donald Trump to any town in England and sat him down in a pub every person in there we won't have a pint with him when they left they would say this is one of the most interesting men and I would vote for him not saying he's not interesting in Europe and in England and other places right there's been this ascendancy of Trump like

characters all across the world and it's not because of Donald Trump it's because people are missing something in their electorate they're missing something I understand that I understand that What I just feel like here we are in America, still the most powerful democracy in the world. And you've had a guy who lost an election, provoked a really, really dangerous insurrection. A riot.

And he's still there, still saying that he lost the election. Now, you seem an intelligent guy. He lost. He lost the election. So why do you still support him? That's a big lie. Listen, he lost the election. I wish he had won the election.

He lost the election. I support him because in the election. this building, right? In this building, it's worse. Joe Biden, listen, Joe Biden says, said famously, don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me the alternative. And I and others in our country believe that what's in this building represents worse, worse for America, not worse people. Policy. Yeah, policy. The people aren't bad. Everybody in this building wants the same thing that I want, a successful America, a better future for their kids and grandchildren, a stable economy, our allies to be, our friends, our enemies to be feared, right? Everybody wants the same thing.

that you and I want for your country, I'm a country. How we get there is something completely different, right? And so those policy differences are why I support Donald Trump and the Republicans, right? Because Donald Trump is a Republican. There are people in his building that were colleagues of mine that are friends, Jeff Duncan and Adam Kinziger and others, who are Democrats, Republicans who say, we need to burn the party down to start over again. We need to go and help these folks. I don't believe that Kamala Harris's economic policies that she's espousing on price controls, which were widely panned by economists on the left, not even economists on the right, but the Washington Post wrote, you know, this isn't a serious proposal.

I don't know what the FTA or other papers have written about it, but it's just not a serious proposal. We have inflation in the United States that precludes people, working class people, from paying their bills. They no longer could fill up their gas tanks. There's a restaurant here. You're a lot more disciplined than Trump. There's a restaurant here in America.

You're a lot better on message that is. There's a restaurant here in America, Alas, called Denny's. is like a breakfast joint, right? So Denny's in 1977 instituted this breakfast in honor of Hank Aaron a famous baseball player called the Grand Slam breakfast, okay?

When the Grand Slam breakfast was introduced, it was $1.99, bacon and eggs and some potatoes, right? And so in the 43 years, it went up $4 to $5.99. And the Biden administration, the four years of the Biden administration, it went up $6.

$6 in four years to $1299 for that breakfast. Now, that doesn't seem like, okay, what does that matter? Here's what matters. If you're taking your kids to soccer on a Saturday, you take the family, we're going to go to Denny's for breakfast. Six bucks apiece we can afford. That's $24. U.S. dollars for breakfast, we can do that.

Now at $13 times four kids, right, you might not be able to afford breakfast with your kids. That's why those things matter. That's why these inflationary policies, the tax code, policies that you say, like Harris campaign just said they support $5 trillion in new taxes. You know, that money comes from someplace, right? it comes from your pocket, my pocket. The people in the Republican Party believe that money's better than the government's pocket. I can spend it better. Businesses can invest it better. But are the values of the human being? You say it's the alternative. I get that. But do the values of the human being that's at the top of the ticket not matter? And can you really support the values

that he represents? Listen, I believe Donald Trump represents the values of here's the values I believe he represents. And it's a kind of a Roar Shock Act, just like it is for Kamala Harris, right? So you see in your elected official, you see in your politics. is what you want to see. Kamala Harris, her policy positions to date have been incredibly progressive, right? Gun confiscation, right? I know what he said. All these things. So listen, no, no, no. I'm going to say, so, so if you look at her policy positions, people say, well, she stands for this. We don't know what she stands for. She hasn't told us what she stands for. My point is about him. Okay, so listen, so people look at Donald Trump and say he stands for limited government, love of our country,

patriotism, strong military, allowing our oil and gas industry to flourish. Strong military, where he says these terrible things about... No, listen. But why does he... Why does he do that stuff? Why does he do that stuff? I can tell you on some of these things, I don't believe that they're true.

I was with him in Paris for the armistice. No, the thing he said about the medals the other day. I mean... So there's what he said about the medal. I was with him. So what he said about the Medal of Honor, the Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, right? Two separate things.

The Medal of Freedom is given out to artists, athletes, you know, James Taylor gets the metal of freedom. Stevie Wonder, who's performing here this afternoon. I just saw him performing. And so the Medal of Honor, right, is the highest military award you can be given. Completely two separate things, right? The medal of what Trump said, and I was with him,

I was with him on Saturday and talked to him about this, literally one-on-one, I said, explain this to me. And I said, he said to me, well, David, when you give out the Medal of Honor to somebody, it's a really somber occasion. Somebody's usually dead. The military person is usually dead because it's spinning for him. I'm not spinning.

I was in my, listen, Alster. Hand to God, I talked to the guy on Saturday. You'll communicate. You'll communicate. On Saturday, he said, when I'm with him, David, the wives are. are crying, the kids are crying, it's a somber sad occasion. When you give out the medal of freedom, it's a happy time. Everybody's in a good mood. It's a ball player. Suckers are losers. Yeah, I don't,

suckers and losers. Listen, John Kelly, right, General Kelly, who's, who that's attributed to, who that's attributed to. Okay, I've not heard him. He said that he said it. I understand. John Kelly is an honorable man. Yeah. And I have a great deal respect for him and fondness for John Kelly. I've been with President Trump in those, I was the chairman of the American Battle Monuments commission. I know. And that, that may not have a lot of meaning to most people, but I ran all the cemeteries overseas. So Cambridge American Cemetery I've been to, right, in your beautiful country. And Sarens in France and Normandy, I greeted President Macron and President Trump at the 75th anniversary of D-Day. I've been there. I walked those graves with him. Not once, not once did

he ever say those things to me. I took him to West Point, my alma mater. I'm a military officer myself, West Point, duty-honored country. I've been around the guy a great deal. Around me, in my presence, he's never expressed anything but ultimate admiration for people in the military. in the utmost respect. So maybe he said that to somebody else, or maybe he's made a comment that somebody mistook for that. I was not in that one-on-one.

I will 100% unequivocally stand by Trump, loving the military, supporting the military, and not denigrating the military. All right, David, listen, we're going to have to take a break and we'll come back for more of your pro-Trump spin in a minute.

Hi, everybody. It's Dominic Samerick here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, the rest is politics when Rory was away, and I was filling in, and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Restis History,

which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. People are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the,

trade unions and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues and people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now. whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975,

a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bail. out. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you accept that there is a sense of this being a bit of a cult? Oh, listen, I mean, do you think that the Obama fault? It's a movement. I don't think it's a cult, right? I think there's a difference. But when he said he could walk down Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and his supporters. He kind of was telling the truth there. What was it? I mean, Bill Clinton, look what Bill Clinton did, right? Bill Clinton was the first president who kind of tested that thesis out, right? You didn't kill anybody.

Oh, but Bill Clinton did equally is kind of... Listen, you're as bad as I but any question about a Republican. You tell me about a Democrat. Listen, Alistair, I'm just making the analogy for it. That's what you want me here for. Listen, we want you no, no, no, we want you here because you're one of the few people here who knows Donald Trump.

And I'm explaining you. So I'm going to know about him. Yeah, I'm explaining to you. I know about these people. No, no. So you're saying, how could Donald Trump exist? Donald Trump couldn't exist, right? But for Bill Clinton, right? If Bill Clinton and John Edwards, who's going to be here today, right? If all these people, Gary Hart, if all these scandals hadn't taken place before,

and people kind of said, oh, he's guilty. He's guilty of stuff. There's way worse. But in which, in which, tell me the things are way worse, things. Well, I would say, for example. Way worse than having sex with an intern on one of the most sacred icons on the on the resolute desk. That's pretty bad.

Do you really want to put Donald Trump? Trump and other presence in a sexual predator league table. Well, listen, he's got, your friend the mooch, your friend the mooch said he has got no rivals. No rivals. Well, we can have the mooch on another, we'll have a moot on another cast. We'll sit down with the mooch. Maybe I'll go with him, Caddy Kay and I'll have another on his show. I think on the Americans no longer, and look, I don't know how it's in Great Britain,

but Americans don't look at their president and say, I need you to be my moral leader, right? You go to your pastor. It's a big change, though, isn't it? It is a big change. But, you know, I think that's been a change. you know, that's kind of gone away. Remember in America, FDR was in a wheelchair for his entire presidency, and there's not one picture.

There's not one picture of the guy in a wheelchair. The press corps has changed. America has changed. And I think that takes, you know, from Vietnam on, right? There's been this great distrust in our institutions and government. And I think it's eroded and, you know, people now, everyone has clay feet and no matter where we go. And I will tell you this.

COVID in this country broke down that trust even further, right? Yeah, I get that. Because people now trust our government even less. And that's scary because the next time the wolf comes, people are going to say like, oh, you cried wolf so many times. I'm not really worried. That's what scares me. But that's why part of the job of all politicians should be to protect the institutions. He undermines the institutions, left, right and center. Not accepting that election, undermines the institutions. I'm not. I'm not arguing that. Donald Trump lost the election, fair and square. Shouldn't that just put him out of the game for good? I don't think so. I think you'd challenge the election.

You could challenge it. You could say, I don't think it was fair. I don't think it was. This is why I think President Trump does not think it's fair. And a lot of supporters. During COVID, right, the rules change in America dramatically on how you vote. And the Democrats were poised to exploit those rules. And listen, they were legal. They were legal. Poised. They were poised. They proposed most of these rules changes, right? Like the people in Georgia are doing now.

Well, no, but I'm saying in Pennsylvania, lots of states, they've changed the rules during COVID and took advantage those roles and they play the game much better. At my point to Republicans is we need to play the game better, right? Don't how to the moon learn how to play the game better. We need to vote by mail. Every time you hear Donald Trump say, I'm against early voting or voting by mail, I yank the few nubs of my hair out of my head because we need to vote by mail. We need to vote. That's what the rules are. Okay. So the Democrats are much better. Listen, Alistair, in our country, it is so whacked that we can't have a victor on election night. We'll be people on the moon. We cured pediatric cancer. We do all these incredible things, right? We can't on election night tell you who

won the election. It's pathetic. But that's partly because your system. It's a bizarre system, which is founded from a completely different age. It's crazy. So what happens in the state of Pennsylvania, where I'm from, there are 67 counties. Yeah. Each county has its own rules. There's not even one rule in Pennsylvania. So each county has, there's 67 different election laws in the state of Pennsylvania. There has to be a change in our system in the way we elect people. We're definitely agreeing on that. Because Americans, and this would go a long way in terms of challenging Trump and things like this, right?

Because voters go to bed on election night and they see Donald Trump's up by 10 million votes and they wake up the next morning and Donald Trump's losing by 20 million votes, that erodes confidence in the electoral system, right? Even if it's factual. But they don't believe it's factual because they don't understand it, right?

Because they've been told by people like him not to believe anything. Because they don't trust our government. They don't trust the government anymore because of things like COVID. Because our government's told them things that, Listen, if you don't take this vaccine, you'll die, right? Do this. Stay inside or you'll die.

And now they know that was a bunch of malarkey. You won't die. It wasn't malarkey. To Laughey, you stand. You're not going to die. People took the vaccine. You still got COVID, right? People didn't die.

I mean, people died who had the vaccine. So there's trust. Listen, Alistair, the trust in American government has been so degraded. And so listen, you're back to, so on election night. In this building, Republicans and Democrats should get together and say, number one priority. You won't get together because it's so polarized. Number one priority. And he thrives on polarization.

is fixing the way we elect people, right? Because on election night, if you press a button in the state of Florida, remember we had 2000, it was Gore v. Bush in Florida, and that was the ground zero. And look at the difference in the way that Al Gore dealt with that. He did. They did decency. Right. Well, I guarantee if it was today, they'd fight a lot harder and be different.

Do you think so? I think it would be. I think it would be because it's a different, it's a different day. That's 24 years ago. That's ancient history in politics, right? I mean, think about how decorum has changed, right? Gore is still younger than Trump. Yeah, well, I mean, he looks older, actually.

Donald Trump, by the way, is incredibly bizarrely vigorous. He's an incredibly vigorous guy. Hey, listen, you say that. Can I just suggest? I've been watching these recent appearances. I think since Joe Biden has announced he's not standing and Kamala Harris has come in, I think you guys looking very, very defeated, lacking in energy, rambling even more than usual. I mean, look, that's your observation.

I was with him. Again, Saturday. I can only go off my... How often do you see him? You know, unfortunately, not as much as I used to because I'm doing these kind of things, right? I work for a living now. I don't do politics completely all the time, right? I have jobs.

I was with him on Saturday. I was going to be with him again this week, but then I had to come here. I will see him probably once a week now. Did he call him a friend? He doesn't strike me as having friends. I would say, you know, we're obviously friendly. He and I talked almost, you know, several times a week during his presidency. And I, you know, I got lots of pictures he and I together.

He says lots of nice things about me. So I would say we're friendly. Friendly, yeah. I mean, look. Does he have friends? Oh, he's got tons of friends. But they're not. Real friends.

More peers, I would say. They're more peers. I mean, yes. He's got a lot of real friends. Actually, you know, mostly guys who golf, right, who play golf with them that hit the ball around and they're friends, right? I've been in his presence when he's talked to other executives who are his friends, right? People whose names you would recognize, but I'm not at liberty to say who, you know,

his friends are, but he's got his relationship with his wife, which I'm sure people are puzzled by. He and his wife have an incredible relationship. Really? They laugh together. They are, I've been, I've been, I've been, listen, on the speaker phone, I've been present when she's on the speaker and it's laughter. It is a great relationship. She's a very protective mother, protective spouse. She hates the game. It's just like Michelle Obama hates

the game. It's not her life. She married into it, right? She married into it. She's a very proud of She looks like she likes the guy in public. Oh, she does like the guy. Your friend again, the mooch. Yeah. He says that she hates him more than anyone on the planet. But you believe the mooch. You don't believe me? Well, I've only just met you. But it is interesting. You've got a different way. So, for example, Stephanie Gresham. Yeah, I know Stephanie very well. She's a very nice person. Very nice person.

Amazing speech I saw. So how come they can get to such a different position to you? You know, it's incredible, Alice, or so. So Stephanie especially, right? I've been around Stephanie a lot. I was, she came, I was already on the campaign in 2016. Stephanie joined. Very nice.

She said yesterday, or maybe the day before, her comments about Trump saying that his supporters are basement dwellers, some negative. I can't remember the exact comment. Yeah, basement dwellers, yeah. Listen, I have been around Donald Trump more than Stephanie Grisham has been around Donald Trump in those settings. I mean, in 2016 and 2020, I probably did 30, 40 rallies with President Trump in and around the Pennsylvania, you know, lots of time with him and supporters. Never one negative con. If anything, we're driving in the, I've ridden him with him in the beast in the car,

right? And he'll say, look at all these people. Look at they're waiting for me here. I can't believe it, right? I can't look at my supporters are so great, right? All these good things. Okay. Do you think this has been a good week for the Democrats or not? I think they've had it, Last night was a really good night. I think the week they started off is terrible. It was very sloppy. You know, if you were expecting them to run the country, they couldn't run the convention. I don't think that's enough.

I mean, James Taylor's day. They couldn't. They couldn't get things going. They're hours behind. It looked like kind of a mess. Last night was pretty solid, right? I think it was run. It was a big success, a lot of music, a lot of energy.

We'll see tonight. I think tonight's going to have more celebrities, more music. Look, these are parties. These are parties for the party. So it's pretty hard to screw it up. So, yeah, it's successful. And it's accomplishing. They've got to energize their base, keep people happy.

happy, get them believing. I think they've accomplished that. Okay. Well, it's lovely to be you. Alas are good. Thanks. Vote Kamala.