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So wherever, like, where are we? So we're, I think, three weeks out today. What's the state of the race?

Well, people say it's going to be close for sure. I don't agree with that. I think it could be one of them could win easily, and I think today that's more likely to be Trump. All the variables that you would look at to say who's going to win point towards Trump. With four big exceptions that I think I know is what the Democrats relying on. Barring these four things coming together, I think Trump will win. And I think he might win easily, but she could still win. Number one is abortion. Just don't know how big a vote it will be. Now, I say to people, why wouldn't that be showing up in the polls now? Why would that be a secret? But the reality is there's an emotion to that issue as you know, politics is about emotion more than anything else. There's an emotion to that issue that may be bigger than is currently measured. Number two is, but to be clear.

That'S not showing up in the public polls right now.

Well, I mean, by definition, it's not showing up in the two places you look for. One is in the horse race. She's not way ahead in the horse race. And number two, when we ask people, what's the most important issue to you? Abortion is well behind the economy, inflation, immigration, but we've seen its electoral power, and we know that Donald Trump thinks it's a big issue because he struggled to neutralize it. He's not doing that for fun. He's doing that because he sees the same data, that there's a power to this issue that may be beyond the current measurements. That's number one. Number two is simply, is a gender gap just the reality that women vote more than men? And again, they may, this connects to abortion. But it's not just about abortion, because women don't like Donald. A lot of women don't like Donald Trump. That may just power a victory. Three is her ground game, the mechanical process. Her campaign is run. The chair of her campaign is someone who grew up as a field person. I don't think that's ever happened in a major presidential campaign before. And they have way more money.

And President Trump has gone out of his way to demonize early voting. He's trying to change it now. But the mechanics of that, if it is, in fact, close, people say that could be worth three points, three points could well be significantly bigger. And then lastly is the notion that he has a ceiling, that if the third party vote is very low, and it's much more likely to be low like it was in 20 than high like it was from the libertarians and the Greens and Cornel west, then it may be that he can't get above 47%, that this simply, we call it Trump fatigue or January 6, whatever you want to call it, puts off limits to him, some number of voters that she may, in effectively, a two person race in the seven states may be able to get to 48, 49, and he can't. Those four things are what give Democrats hope that they can win. But in my reporting over the last week, Republicans are not measuring the drapes and picking the cabinet, but pretty close to it, not at the level they were at the convention when Joe Biden was still their opponent.

But there's extreme confidence that they're going to take the House, take the Senate, take the White House. Democrats are somewhere between worried and freaking out. And her conduct and her capabilities as a candidate are not reassuring them. If they were honest about it, they would say, as some of them have started to say, how could we have dumped Joe Biden for someone who has a few advantages over him, but has many of the same problems, and, by the way, some additional problems of their own? And I think they're recognizing that when you choose a candidate like that, you're taking a bit of a risk, and the risk just may not pay off for them.

So on what basis are they evaluating the race? What polls are both sides people you listen to, the smart people with predictive success over time. What are they looking at?

Well, they're looking at the reality that the race may be back, as some Trump people told me immediately after she became the nominee. We may be looking at a situation where she's back to where the party's back to where they were when Biden was the nominee. Before the debate. Before the debate, he had one electoral college path, which was to win the three Great Lake states in the Nebraska congressional district, and that's it. No one's ever won when they had one electoral college path. It's margin of error, but not impossible. But they have to be all in on that. Because Biden was not going to win the four sunbelt battlegrounds. She's edged back closer to that. She may be able to win them or one or two of them, but it's possible that those are going to be as off limits to her eventually as they were to Biden. And she's weaker in the Great Lake states than he is. So if you look at the private data and where things stand, these races are close. And if it's within two points, if Trump has consistently has a two point lead or a three point lead or a four point lead, does that mean he has to win the state?

It doesn't, but it's the consistency that has come in the last couple weeks in both parties data, where she has come down and he has come up a little bit that make them worried that she simply hasn't done enough to win. Her problem is, I say, the p problem of policy people, just the undecided voters just don't understand what she's about, and she has not done. Some of them find it insulting how little she's explained what she's about, and we really don't know. I've known her a long time. I've covered her a long time. I've studied her positions and her public policy engagement. I don't really know what she stands for. I don't really know what she'd do as president. I don't really know what she believes in or why she's running. And you contrast this with Trump, where even his enemies can tell you right away what he stands for, what he would do in a second term, at least the big picture. And his problem is personality. And he's done almost as little to address that issue as she's done to address hers. And that means, I'm amazed people have said for so long, no one, so many people in the electorate don't want Trump or Biden.

They want a third choice. You don't really hear that now as nearly as much, but it's almost as true. Not as true, because she satisfies a lot of Democrats who are not satisfied with Biden, but a lot of Democrats and certainly a lot of independents and centrists and moderates, they don't like either of these choices. And that's part of what Democrats are looking at because I think in the end, as much as she's not satisfied, people's desire for knowledge about her, they won't vote for Trump. They just simply don't want four more years of Trump. And she's turned to that message in the last 24 hours, the way Biden did. Now, I don't know if she'll stick with it, but she's now emphasizing this notion of we can't go back to somebody this unstable and this and this unattractive in terms of personality.

Changing your personality is hard. Well, it's probably impossible. And any attempt to do it comes off as false. So there's, of course, a cost and risk, but coming up with a platform is not hard. You just sit in a room with your pollsters and your policy guys and, like, pick three topics and stake out positions that contrast with your opponents. And, like, why? Why haven't they done that?

Yeah, a lot of the questions about things shes doing and not doing are mysteries, even to a lot of Democrats, even some people close to her. Youve named one, but why is she doing one event a day? Some days, most days, why isnt she flying to three battleground states in a day? When people ask me why, I think shes more likely to lose than nothing. Her great weakness is she is indecisive. She doesn't like to make hard decisions. And coming up with policy choices is difficult. If you think of everyone who's been elected president since HW Bush, so Clinton onward, they've all put at the center of their campaigns a set of policy proposals and kind of an ethos of things that start with this sentence. What my party's gotten wrong is x, right. They've seized on some things that they really believe their party's out of step with the country and wrong on the substance. So Bill Clinton 92 supported the death penalty, right to work, NAFTA and welfare reform. And he would say, my party's wrong on these things. Right. It's obvious for the rest of what they did. Not only has she not said that, I'm not sure she believes that.

I'm not sure that she thinks the party's out of step with the country on anything. And when you see government funded operation operations for illegal immigrants who want to change their sexual identity, no way would Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or John Kerry, no way would they have said, I'm for that. What is she.

Because there's not strong public support for that.

No, just the opposite. So we say, why can't she come up with a platform? Any position she takes is going to be criticized if she moves to the center, by the left, and even on the left, even if she takes something further to the left, as she has, some of the things she's come up with, new government spending programs and tax programs, they're still subject to be criticized. And she doesn't like to be criticized. She'd rather try not to take positions now, the other day.

But can I just ask, even within the Democratic Party, which I routinely dismiss as crazy and evil and poisonous and all that, but paying for sex changes for illegal aliens, that can't be a hugely popular issue even within the party.

It isn't. But it is a popular position for the loudest, angriest, most influential part of the party.

But if you do, the sister Soulja, that actually works. So if your goal is to get elected, I mean, this is amoral evaluation of this, right? But you just denounce the unpopular wackos in your party. It's not hard, right?

Well, it's hard for her because she's indecisive. She doesn't like. That is, I think what explains it, her big sister soldier moment was to say, I want to raise the capital gains tax rate less than Joe Biden. That was her big sister soldier mom. She also, you look at her career, she's not really been a font of policy ideas. No. And that she's stolen a lot of Trump's ideas, which Trump people don't like. But I guess it's smart if the other side's got a smart idea and you can claim it, do. But in terms of original ideas, it's just not been her thing. And again, I think partly is she doesn't like to go onto terrain where people might shoot at her from the left or the right or both.

And she is in a complex position just because of the nature of how she got to where she is now, the fact that there's a sitting president sort of in the shadows behind her. What is her relationship like with Biden?

Well, it's gotten a little bit afraid of late because I don't think he, I think he, there are people who say he doesn't want her to win. I think he does want her to win. There are people who say he only wants her to win without disrespecting him, even though he has said privately to her and the teams have said to each other, she needs to do what she needs to do to win. I mean, I saw his mental decline in 2017. I did, too. I saw him do a public event for a book in 2017, and I said after the event, thank goodness he's off the public stage. Thank goodness this didn't happen earlier, that.

Those of us who knew him before, and speaking for myself, always liked him in a very shallow way. But, you know, he's fun to be around, totally, and sort of large personality, touchy irish guy. I like people like that. But those of us who knew him, it was immediately obvious that he had some sort of cognitive decline.

So I think the things he's done of late, that the press cast is hurting her, I I just think he's doing, because he's not super sharp.

He's kind of out of it.

And the staff, as they have when he was still the nominee, being deferential to him. But there is, again, just recently, in the last ten days or so, there have been a number of things, like he went out in the briefing room right when she was starting her event. No one's really explained how that happened. It's hard to coordinate right between the West Wing, Wilmington and the vice president's office. Like, those are three entities, busy people doing other things besides coordinating. So I think they've dropped some stitches. I think they're determined to stop dropping stitches the rest of the way.

So you don't think it's passive aggression?

I don't think it is. There are many people I respect who think it is. I don't think it is. I think it's just, it's hard. And he's not up to doing hard things. And she's, even though she's not campaigning very much, she's still on the road. And it's just, I just think they're dropping stitches. I really don't think there's a passive aggressive or even a, a mixed feeling about, I think he wants her to win.

I mean, the toughest question for her that I have seen is, how will you be different from, from Joe Biden?

Yeah.

Why can't, why haven't they thought through a better answer?

Again, it's hard to get a straight answer about that. I think there are three things at play. Number one, she doesn't want to appear disloyal, and that is something he does care about. As I said, he wants her to win, but he wants her to win his way. He doesn't want her to win at his expense. That is an ambivalence, but not the fundamental question of does he want her to win. So, number one, she doesn't want to disrespect him. Number two, taking different positions from him involves risk. There could be a backlash. As I've said, that's her main problem. She doesn't like to take risks. Then finally, there's just a basic performative question with her. That's not her only bad answer. That's the one that people are focused on the most. But she's just not good at delivering soundbites or complicated messages in a way that is helpful to her. She does these interviews where nothing bad happens and they give high fives that nothing bad happened or only a few bad things happen. None of these interviews has she come out of her people said, wow, now I get it. Now I get why this person should be my president.

And that's, again, just testament to, she's just not that good at this thing called answering questions that are hard or easy.

What are the donors who put her there? Think of all of this.

Yeah. So I'd say impressionistically, because I haven't talked to them all, but impressionistically, about 80% of them are just, we got to look forward. The elections coming up. Trump must lose. We have to do everything we can to help. 20% say, how could we possibly have replaced, we all said the only Democrat who could lose to Donald Trump was Joe Biden. How could we have possibly played a role in replacing him with apparently the only other person who could lose to Donald Trump now Joe Biden. And I and Kamala Harris would say these other democrats would be struggling as much or maybe more than she would even though they wouldn't have been as burdened with the Biden Harris record. So what they're saying is, this is the best we could do. This is better than Biden. The pollsters are saying, the public polls are saying she can still win it. Let's put our heads down and win. But there will be a lot of soul searching about how they possibly could have placed her in this role without the benefits of actually beating Donald Trump. How did that.

I think you were the one of the very, maybe the first person to report that this was coming, that Biden was going to step aside. How'd you know that, by the way? I predicted it, but just predicted, you reported it. So how did you know that and how did that happen?

I reported it against my instincts because I did not believe Joe Biden would give the nomination up. First of all, it's embarrassing and staying on his legacy as much as they built it up, as great for his legacy. But also, he believed that she would become the nominee in all likelihood, and that she could not be Donald Trump, and that if somehow she didn't become the nominee, he didn't think Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitman or any of these other people could be Trump.

And I think Biden didn't think Kamala Harris could win or be a good.

President, as I understand it. So he was really. Yeah, he's, he, from the day, from the transition forward, he told Ron Flain and everyone else, she needs to meet with foreign leaders all the time. And she did. I mean, she's had an unprecedented tutorial in that she needs to be supported and all that. We all know what happened. She did not run a good operation. There was leaking, and her approval ratings were ridiculously low. Part of it was his own pride in himself. But the people around him, to a person, would not have told you that she could be Donald Trump. So my point is, I reported on it thinking, he's not going to step down. And I had lots of people who you and I both know, very smart, who said, you're wrong, he's going to have to step down, particularly Republicans, said, the party can't be that irrational. They can't say, we're going to continue, along with a guy who 70% of the Democrats say shouldn't be the nominee, but he didn't have to give it up. I can't, obviously, say exactly how I broke it, but it started with a tip about the vetting of vice presidential prospects by her.

And one of the stories that hasn't been written yet, I'll tease it out here and hopefully someday somebody will give me a big enough book contract I can write it is. She started maneuvering for the nomination well before the Sunday morning when he called her and said he was not going to run. And part of that was vetting of potential running mates, which her team knew that couldn't wait. That had to get underway. That's something, you know, normally takes months. So I got a tip that that was happening.

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Oh, yeah.

You're vetting your VP candidate when you're the VP.

Yeah, but because she knew, as my sources said, that he was strongly considering getting out and more than strongly considering, there was a period of at least a week and maybe more, wherever, amongst a very small circle of people, the default was. He's getting out, and it's just a matter of when and how. You'll recall he got Covid and that kind of delayed things a little bit.

Was that actually Covid?

I don't know of any reason to believe it wasn't. I know there's lots of speculation about it, but I think it was. So, on one track, you have him sort of starting to realize he needs to. And then you have the Pelosi track. And the Pelosi track is part of why I was able to report what I want to report, because she was determined to get him out. And she saw that Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and the donors were not doing enough to get him out. And so she felt she had no choice but to get him out. But again, not reported yet. She didn't want to be Kamala Harris. She wanted Shapiro to run governor of Pennsylvania. So she intended there to be a two step process. And I'm not sure. Cause I don't know this from her, and I would take it only from her. I'm not sure if she knew the outcome, whether she still would have been for it. I think so, but I'm not sure.

What would this do? I remember hearing people told me the exact same thing, that Obama wanted a two step process. What would that have looked like?

Well, lots of people talked about it publicly. Right? There were people like James Carville and trying to think of the other prominent people who talked about it. There's others who wanted basically either in the run up to the convention or at the convention. Like, one proposal was that Obama and Bill Clinton would pick six people and that those six people could run for the nomination by giving speeches and having the delegates vote. And they didn't rule out Kamala Harris. But the clear kind of gestalt of it was, this is a way to stop Kamala Harris.

Yeah.

The delegates were Biden Harris delegates. She's the incumbent vice president. She's a black woman of color, and the campaign money could only transfer to her. So those are pretty big advantages, particularly this question of the delegates. Right. They're Biden Harris delegates. Were they going to vote for somebody else in a competitive contest? So the assumption was, even if you couldn't get her to stand down, and they knew they probably couldn't get her to stand down, who's going to run against that? Who's going to run against somebody with all of those advantages? And so I think, part I think what some people don't take sufficiently into account is the clock was ticking. If they'd had a year to figure this out, maybe things would have gone differently. But they didn't have much time. And the minute she made it clear to people she was going forward, and he asked these other people, will you run against her? None of them wanted to. None of them wanted to. So it wasn't a matter of who didn't.

I thought Gretchen Whitmer wanted to.

Well, first of all my sense of the people who get talked about, the half dozen, none of them are in a John Edwards Barack Obama George W. Bush School of I must be president. And of course, Bush was relatively ambivalent, but he was like, yes, that's something I want. I think if you look at the six of them, not only are they ambivalent about running, let alone running against an incumbent vice president, I'm not sure if you offered them the presidency, any of them would take it like that. And some people think I'm naive about that. There are politicians who are ambitious, who think about the White House, but just from knowing them and the people around them, I don't think you could say about any of them. Automatic. Here are the keys to 1600. I don't know that they would take it. And I say that without hoping. I don't sound naive. They're politicians who, we have aspirations, but they're all relatively young. They've got, some of them have younger kids. They recognize the downsides of how it changes your life forever. And none of them are again in the bill, sort of classic Bill Clinton.

Like, I'm at Georgetown plotting how to get to the White House. They're just not like that.

So I absolutely strongly agree with what you just said.

Okay, good.

You're, and I've seen it happen. I saw Chris Christie. I saw him do that in 2012.

Exactly.

There are plenty of people. It's a big step.

Yeah. It's a life changing step. And if you've got younger kids, it's just like for some of them, it's a non starter. Or if you've got a spouse who's ambivalent. Exactly. You can't do that. And if you look at the politics of the era we're in now, like, a democratic president is going to be attacked every minute on social media. No matter how good a job they do, unless they can revolutionize our political culture, they're just going to have constantly bombarded, none of them have national security experience. It's a big job. So in some ways, in retrospect, there's a fantasy to think anybody would run against her, to say, I'm going to, I'm going to tear away Biden Harris delegates. In addition, how are you going to design a system really, where Bill Clinton and Barack Obama get to pick? They were put a premium on and she did on the nomination wasn't handed to her. And it really, in some ways it wasn't. She, she earned it in the sense that she figured out what the rules of the game were. And she won the game. Yeah.

I mean, if you had Obama and Clinton just make the decision, you'd have to admit publicly that it really is an oligarchy.

Correct? Correct. Would they pick Bernie Sanders? You know, he might win if they picked Bernie Sanders.

Yeah, they faced that problem twice before.

So I was able to figure out that she was underway, and then I was able to figure out that he was working on a withdrawal plan. And then I was able to figure out that he had decided to withdraw as early as that weekend. This is on the Thursday night, the final night of the republican convention. You know, people said, how could you risk, you know, I don't work for a big legacy news organization with lawyers and, you know, pr people. How could you risk reporting it? I had it just completely nailed. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't like a tough call to report it. I reported that he was not going to endorse her, which, when I reported it was true. What happened after I reported that was he, there were people in her camp who didn't want him to endorse her because he didn't have wanted to seem like a coronation. They were confident that she'd be the nominee and they didn't want it to be. The president chose the vice president, but he got a lot of heat from the minute I reported that from women close to her who felt differently about it and some women in Congress who said it would look horrible for you not to endorse her.

So from the time I reported, I think because I reported it till Sunday, he changed his mind and decided, yes, he would endorse her, but others, as you know, did not because they wanted to not create the impression that this was just an elite of selection of the new nominee.

How did he, I still don't fully understand how he dropped out. So the media, which had cheerleaded for him, obviously, but had stopped, not only stopped, they started attacking him. Right. So there's that. I felt that was a big deal, just as an observer. But Biden himself was resolute, at least in public, but also every story you read said in private he was resolute. And then it just seemed to change.

Well, you know, it's a normal thing. It happens gradually and then all of a sudden.

Exactly.

So I'm very frustrated with our business and with kind of our political media culture that for seven years there could be this coverup of all the major.

How many years have you been in this business?

Since 1987. Long time.

We're moving toward 40. Okay. So just for people, I think this.

Is the worst scandal in journalism, american journalism history, because anyone knew what was happening, the public knew what was happening. And yet the coverup continued. And when the COVID up was exploded, the COVID up of Biden declined acuity. He spoke to a dead congresswoman. I mean, what more do we need to know? A congresswoman who had died? You know what im talking about? Yeah. Okay. He speaks to a dead congresswoman and his press secretary says he spoke to her because she was top of mind because he was going to be meeting with her family. That's not forgetting somebody's name. That is a loss of acuity, which would disqualify him from being a museum docent.

Right. Much less having access to the nuclear code.

So that cover up goes because some affection for Biden, the bullying of his staff, but primarily because of the desire to make sure Donald Trump doesn't win. I, and then when there becomes no choice but to say, we got to get rid of him now because hes a threat to the Republic, because Trump could beat him, they turn against him. They never acknowledge their participation as coke. And spirit is in a seven year long coverup. And then the same people get to cover the new candidate and Trump, its staggering to me, like after weapons of mass destruction, there was some soul searching.

Yes.

After the Mueller investigation, there was some, not more than 5%, but some acknowledgement that perhaps the coverage was a little bit off. There's been zero, as I see it, zero soul searching acknowledgement. We wrote story after story about how well Trump misspeaks, too, and well, Biden. There are days when he's good, and there are days still to this day. There are days when he's fine. But we all have seen people in decline. They have good days and bad days. Of course, they shouldn't be president. And that's not a partisan statement. That's just a statement about the rigors of the job. But the press turned on him and then acted like they had not propped him up for seven years in one.

Day, in 1 hour. In watching my former colleagues on CNN pivot like that, it's incredible. My job, I couldn't have, I'll say I was out of the country when that happened, which made it even weirder to watch your country from the other side of the world and wonder what is going on here. And it looked very much like a setup. Very much like a setup.

I think that because they all said.

The same thing at exactly the same moment.

Yeah. I think that they just, I don't think the conspiracy is that discussed. They just all have the exact same orientation and they're bullied in the same way. So I don't know that they have to, and react to the bullying the same way, so I don't know that they had to discuss it. I do know that when I would talk to White House reporters privately for major news organizations, they would acknowledge Biden. The acuity decline was substantial. They saw it. They just were in newsrooms that, where that was, it was impermissible to say it.

How could you not report?

I don't know, but no one did except for, except for people from places like Newsmax and Fox. No one did. I really do. I really, I really do wonder how people look back on that because, again, they've moved on now.

But you know them all very well.

I don't know how they think about this.

By the way, for people who don't follow this stuff, you know, people who are watching this, I mean, I should just say the obvious, which is you are not just part of the news business, but really at the center of the political news business for many decades.

What seems like decades, because I think.

It was, it was there. So you know, every single person personally, I mean, I just know they, well.

I know a lot of them. You know, there's a bunch of new, new ones. All right. But I'm saying a lot of them. I know a lot of them.

Anyone over 30, you know, what do they say? I don't understand how they could explain that, you know, the presidency now, but you don't tell your viewers or readers.

That the ones who offer explanations blame their bosses, that their editors and their executive producers and their anchors didn't want to hear it and that they would say it and it just didn't become part of the coverage. Some of them have said that. But again, to me, the failure to acknowledge it, what they did, I won't say it's worse than the original crime, but it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. And of course, along with lawfare, it helps Trump extraordinarily because people say sometimes in our business, oh, I trust the american people, they're way ahead of us on this one. It's true. It's not just a trope. American people, including Democrats, they saw what was happening. They saw the clips on social media and that period leading up to the debate, like when he was overseas, when the White House said, oh, this is, what was the word they had for it? Cheap, fake. That these clips are selectively edited. I say he talked to a dead congresswoman. We don't need more examples. Sure. Are there some Republicans and some red people online who choose bad examples? There are, but we don't need good or bad examples.

His mental acuity decline is obvious.

And so everybody knew just to bottom line, and everybody who covers politics in Washington, covers the presidency knew, of course.

How could you not? Now, they might have had a different sense of how bad it was. Right. But I'll give you an example of the lack of accountability. Not only have they not acknowledged their own role, what about the role of the people around the president who to this day say he didn't fail, he didn't decide not to run because he had to acknowledge that his loss of mental acuity made it unlikely he could beat Trump. They continued to say he didn't think he could win or he was going to divide the democratic party. The story of how they protected him, there's been some piercing of that with foreign leaders saying anonymously that Biden had this problem or this problem. You had the Wall Street Journal piece, which was actually week t, about, about mostly Republicans saying it was an absurd piece. Yeah, so ridiculous. But I know many examples, most of which I can't describe because of the terms in which they were shared with me. But democratic members of Congress knew full well, of course.

And that Wall Street Journal piece, the editors of the Wall Street Journal, I'll just say I think, are very dishonest. But I know that they are, some of them. But that piece was really the only piece in a big, big publication to make the point that, hey, people are talking about his senility. But that piece was so watered down that it, like, what was the point.

Of even running that I'm surprised they spent so much time on it. And that's what they came up with. But again, it helped Biden because it was, certainly did help Biden peace. Now, it hurt the Democratic Party because if Trump wins, history is going to show. Of course, if they'd replaced him sooner with anybody, including Harris, they'd have had a better chance rather than rushing her into this. But, but how? There could not be. I mean, she's not been asked about it. She wasn't the town hall the other day, but she's not explained her connection to this cover up. Kind of incredible.

What was her connection to the, like, what is the truth?

I don't think she was heavily involved with it because that wasn't her responsibility. Right. She wasn't in charge of making sure the president's okay. Now, you could argue they should have been. But that really not the role of any vice president, let alone this one. Again, he had good days and bad days, and he good hours of the day and bad hours of the day. So my guess is when she saw him, most of the time he was fine. But I'm sure just by the law of averages, I'm sure she saw him when he was not well.

She must have known. Yeah, I remember when I was a kid and going into this business and hearing people speak derisively of the White House press corps during the 1930s, which covered up the fact, supposedly, that FDR was in a wheelchair and thinking, how could that? I mean, that's so north korean. That could never happen again.

I've long been a critic of the press. I think that the degree to which Trump was helped from 15 onward with the press hostility is obvious. But this one really frightens me. It really frightens me that it's beyond just North Korea or communist China. It's beyond that. It's the fact that it's occurring in a society with alternative media and social media and White House briefings. And reporters presumably wanted to make their bones by getting big stories. No one reported it. When it was clear they needed to turn, they just turned against him. No accountability for themselves or for the people in the government who engaged in the COVID up with them. I just find it frightening. Not just, it's fun to say it's a big media scandal and provocative to say it, but I find it frightening that that could happen in this country now. I find it frightening with all the media that we have, different from back when other presidents, Kennedy, Roosevelt, etcetera. Wilson. This is now, this is the age of transparency. And had he not had a bad debate, he'd still be running for president. I find it frightening.

How did he have, how did that debate happen? Well, like, how did.

There are a lot of Republicans who say it was a setup, and there were people who knew he'd do badly and they made him debate to force him out. I just don't believe that. Based on what I know, he was on track to lose. Okay. And there was no precipitate, there was no intervening event that they saw could turn things around.

He was on track to lose before that debate.

Yeah. He had one path to win, which was to win the three great lake states in Nebraska, two CD, and he was behind in Pennsylvania.

I don't remember ever reading that story. Also, there seems like there's a lot of pressure not to report what the data show, which is if a democratic candidate or president is behind. No one wants to report that. Do you think that's true?

Well, it's true if it's a Democrat.

That's what I'm saying.

Oh, yeah. He was on track to lose. He might have lost all seven battleground states. And he was, and he was in trouble in New Mexico and in Virginia and in Minnesota. Not as bad trouble as he was after the debate. But before the debate, things were very grim.

Really?

Oh, yeah. He had one electoral college path and it was not in states.

Again, I just don't remember ever reading that.

It's true.

And not to make it too personal, but I should just say for those who don't remember, I always thought that you were a liberal Democrat. I have no idea what your politics are. I'm not going to ask you.

I'm a journalist. I'm an old fashioned journalist. Okay.

So, but I just never even, I didn't think of you as any kind of right wing activist because you weren't. But I remember in 2016 when you said shortly before the election, I think Trump's got a pretty good shot of winning and you, and that was, I think, just like your analysis, analytical.

I covered Trump rallies in 30 states and talked to voters across the country, clear he could win.

And he did. So you were right. But you were attacked. You were denounced for saying that.

I think covering Trump's really hard. Covering Trump is really hard, even if you want to be fair, because he does say a lot of things that are untrue. He does break a lot of norms that at least cause reasonable people to wonder whether those are good norms or bad. He doesnt play straight with the kind of decorum of interactions with the public and the press and January 6 and some of the things hes said publicly that are hateful and hurtful makes him very hard to cover. But hes also hard to cover because most of the press covers him in a way that is unfair and that the american people, not everyone but anyone who doesnt watch MSNBC primetime, knows is unfair. It's, it's right there with the lawfare. It's unequal treatment that's hostile to him. So covering him is really hard.

But, but you should be allowed to analyze the poll numbers.

Well, of course. But also, to me, it's more, I.

Mean, that's more, that's crazy to me.

It's more, it's more to appreciate that the things that people liked about him, who liked him in 2015 and 2016 are legitimate things that they don't believe. Washington stands up for them, that they don't believe. They believe there's too much government regulation. They believe that there's no plan to deal with China. There were serious things he talked about that the border needs to be secure. There are serious things he talked about that are, he talks about them often, almost always in a cartoonish way. But those are aspirational things and worries of the american people that other politicians in both parties weren't addressing. So you can analyze the poll numbers, but you can also say, as I said in 2011, which is really how I met Trump, he's talking about stuff that people respond to viscerally that aren't being addressed, and they're not incidental things. They're core things for tens of millions of Americans. So it wasn't to me when people say, oh, how did you know it was not, it was not hard.

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Changing minds, changing hearts. And they need your help to do that. Abortion should not be the basis of an entire political party, even if you're pro choice. That's disgusting. So if you want to help, donate securely, visit preborn.com Tucker. Or call hashtag 250 and use the keyword baby. But it's it, right? Well, I agree with you completely. And I also wrote a story in Politico making some of these points, but I wasn't attacked for it because I was already on the outside. You were very, you were the inside. And I just thought it was, the response to you was so interesting in 2016, because really, the demand was not that, you know, you be like a democratic partisan. The demand was you just deny observable reality.

Yes.

And that's a different thing.

So I have great empathy for the people who support Trump and who are angry that the establishment media and universities and all these liberal cultural institutions are hostile to them. I appreciate. And to see their candidate get four indictments that are polypolitical, even though some of the underlying actions were wrong, but wholly political indictments. But I also have sympathy for the people of Trump Derangement syndrome. I get why they think this is the worst thing that could happen to America. And I hear it from Democrats all the time who say, Donald Trump being president is not the worst thing that's ever happened in my life politically. It's the worst thing that's ever happened in my life. I don't want to put myself on a pedestal, but I don't believe there are too many people. Forget just journalists. I don't think there are a lot of people who have empathy and understanding for both those groups. And I think that's the core challenge for the country right now, is for all of us to try to understand both groups.

But why do you, I mean, you're from Washington, DC. Your father worked at high levels of government. You're very much from that. I mean, you're from, literally from that culture. And then you spent most of your life in news.

It was called the high priest of establishment journalism.

Well, and that is, I was, I'm 55, I was there, and that is totally accurate. So how do you wind up with empathy for Trump voters?

Because three things. One is I covered Bill Clinton was the first presidential candidate I covered, and I went to 46 states with him and listened to people unhappy with the status quo. Not just the short term economic pain, but the long term dislocation we've seen since surveys. Are your kids going to have the same economic future? You didn't know. Do you understand your place in the world in terms of the economy? Are you confident that you'll have a career that you like? Are social changes? Is the society changing in ways that are offensive to you or unsettling to you? So I saw the importance of getting out of Washington and New York and watching presidential candidates talk to voters and talking to voters. And I saw some people, like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan, I put those three ahead of the others, saw the mood of the country, and saw that their party was not necessarily addressing everything that needed to be addressed. And they did. So that's, number one, is I just understood the concept of someone speaking against the status quo in the establishment. Number two, I've always seen liberal media bias, even when early in my career, Peter Jennings was my mentor.

He saw it, too. He was ahead of his time in understanding half our potential consumers were conservative. You have to constantly be questioning whether your news product and your analysis is appealing to the entire country and not just the people on the upper west side of Manhattan. Then lastly, I've always been concerned that the. How do I explain this? It's like you have to be honest as a journalist. You can't just go, not just not go with the Upper west side, Washington, DC mentality, but you have to be constantly questioning the assumptions that's core to the job. And so I did that, whether it's politics or not, just, are we thinking about this right away? I covered the gaming industry for a little bit and are fascinated by it. And I think the way we cover the gaming industry in this country is insane. And it needs to be, it needs to be different. If you look at most coverage of it, it's not. So he'd say about sports.

What does that mean? That, I mean, not to get too subject, but I'm interested.

What does that mean? It's a huge business that's completely unscrutinized. That.

Are you, pardon my total ignorance, because I hate all of it. Are you talking about gambling or computer games?

No, no, no. Well, I could say it about both, but I'd say it about, I would say, too, about social media and about kids on iPads. No, we're just talking about casinos, sports betting, gambling.

How is it covered that you think.

Is what's barely covered? And the fact that it's, like, regressive, that it hurts poor people. The fact that these businesses are extremely powerful and they're lobbyists and they rarely have rules that are deleterious to their interests, and the fact that they create economic opportunity, some places that has been successful. But just, it's one of the biggest businesses in the world. And you pick up the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Associated Press, the networks, they're barely covering it. And when they do, they're not covering to me the essence of what it's really like. So when I covered it, I got backlash from the people in the business, both in the journalism business covering and from the gaming industry, because I was coming in and questioning assumptions. How, as a society, are we thinking about this?

I don't think we're thinking about it at all.

Well, we're not, but we should be. Both the positive but also the negative, the lives it destroys the percentage of people's household income that they use on it. I find it insane. I find insane.

I'm embarrassed that I haven't. Again, I don't want to get sidetracked, but since you said that out loud, I'm one of the people who's ignored it.

Think about how much coverage you've ever read in the New York Times about the gaming industry.

I learned the other day that it's really common for young men in their twenties, recent college graduates, who, by definition, have no money, most of them, to spend a lot on sports gambling.

Yes, it's a huge thing. And the recruitment of athletes to raise the brand identity of the individual companies. It's a massive business. And just uncovered. It's massive. I forget how big it is, but it's huge. It's bigger than Hollywood. Something, something combined, really? Oh, yeah. It's huge. It's huge. So, again, I just always, as a journalist, have said, and people say Trump can't win. Well, I saw him speak at CPAC in 2011. That guy could win. And so, just going to question.

They did. Am I misremembering this? You were attacked viciously just for observing that. Correct.

Not in 2011. I was a teenager.

No, in 2016.

Oh, in 2016, yes. Yes, I was attacked. But I'm saying I saw it in 2011, as I started my relationship with Trump. I saw him speak at CPAC, where, you know, Mitch Daniels and a bunch of potential presidential candidates spoke. And I went on tv the next morning and said Trump was the best speaker, not just because of the performance, but he got the best reaction. And you may not take him seriously as a presidential candidate, but you need to take what he's running on and talking about seriously. And I say always. Donald Trump is in some ways, a complicated man, but in some ways, he's simple. If you say nice things about him on television, he likes you. So he called me up and invited me over to Trump Tower. He wasn't like my best friend, but I talked to him about politics then pretty consistently from 2011 to 2015. And part of why I had some access to him was because when people on the networks were interviewing him and talking about him, because he's a good box office, but mocking the notion that he could win, I took him seriously.

Incredible.

And then took heat for it, obviously, when he actually won.

Big heat for. So how just I keep getting sidetracked. My apologies. But how exactly did it happen that Biden went from telling the world, telling people around him that he was going to stay in with the full support, I think, of his wife and son, to announcing that he was not running again?

The data was very grim and inarguable, and he was presented with a lot of it. But Nancy Pelosi, who, as I understand it, has not spoken to him since he got out of the race as we sit here today, really? That's what she said. I believe in an interview I just read, she knew where the pressure points were. She's extremely skillful. Right. She knew what it would take to get him to cry uncle. And I'm not sure exactly what that included, except more and more governors and members of Congress saying he had to step down, donors saying they would not write a single additional check? If you're the incumbent president and your fundraising dries up pretty completely because he wasn't raising small dollars, right? He was reliant on big checks. Could you stay in the race if leading members of your party called for you to resign? Could you stay in the race if you had no money to run a campaign and really had to lay off tons of your staff, not be able to afford advertisement, not be able to fly around and do big rallies, could you stay in? You could. But if Nancy Pelosi is saying to you, you will have no money, you will have almost no one supporting your continuing on donors, celebrities, members of Congress, governors, you will lose and you will be blamed in history for having stayed in and lost to Donald Trump.

Or we can celebrate you at the convention. We can say you're like George Washington and you can salvage your reputation. I think presented with those choices, he didn't have a choice.

What was Obamas role?

To talk to Pelosi and Schumer and others, Clyburn and others, about how you get him out, how you design a process to replace and to maximize the chances of the party winning and to try not to get his backup right. The psychodrama between him and Obama is real. I don't think it is between him and Kamala Harris, but between him and Obama, it's real.

I remember Hunter Biden, who was my neighbor for many years, telling me more than once when Biden was vice president how much they despised Barack Obama. He despised Barack Obama well, what he.

Did to Joe Biden in 2016, a man who'd run for president twice, who thought it was his birthright to then be the nominee in 16, to say, we're going with Hillary Clinton, that and the Biden family. That's as bad as it gets. That's as treacherous as it gets. And then in 2020, he didn't really support him until he had to, when it was just him and Bernie. So Obama had to worry. And this is why Pelosi was singular. If it hadn't been for Nancy Pelosi, I don't think this would have happened. He had to not get Biden's backup. Biden had to see this as inevitable but minimizing the embarrassment. And so Obama was very careful to not be, he doesn't like to be public anyway at this point, but he was careful to not have Biden think that he was engineering it, but he was strategizing about how do we put the pressure on him publicly and privately, and how do we end up with the strongest possible nominee.

This is not a sentimental group, I've noticed. I mean, loyalty, personal affection, long lasting friendship, assuming that even exists in that world. None of them play any role in any of this.

I think there's some affection between Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, I'm sure. So there's some there. I mean, this is high stakes politics. I don't think, I don't think that Nancy Pelosi, I don't know this from her. So I'm speculating based on just observing her and knowing her a little bit. I don't think that she took pleasure in this. I think she felt bad for him. So in that sense, I think there was some humanity to it. There was just a problem that had to be solved. They were trying to switch from zero chance to win to a decent chance to win. And so I don't know that there's room for sentimentality that would stand in the way of that.

So they call on her to bring the dog to the vet to put him down.

Well, they didn't really call on her. She stepped up because she saw in Clyburn and Jeffries and Schumer and Obama and Clinton, both Clintons. She didn't see sufficient effort, and the clock was ticking.

Did you see, I just, I know I'm fixated on this, but I am fixated on it. Did you see prior to June of this year, any story in any major news outlet saying, hey, Joe Biden's going to lose?

Well, in my own work, yeah.

Okay. You've been exiled from that world.

I mean, no, because they, they couldn't. I mean, you saw stories and before, before they agreed to debate, you saw stories that said his fundraising was a real problem. You saw stories that said he was having, you know, problems in, like, New Hampshire and Virginia and New Mexico and Minnesota. You saw stories saying he was having problems with over the Israel war. You even saw the press covering immigration like they'd never covered it before, not the way they would if it were on the other foot. You saw the coverage of inflation. Yeah, you saw the coverage. Part of why he had to agree to the debate was the coverage. They turned on him to say, not to the extent they were trying to drive him out of the race, except for a few calmness, but, yeah, the coverage of Biden from February or so onward was quite negative.

So we just got back from a month on the road, coast to coast, and everywhere in between 16 cities in 30 days. And I've got to say, almost everyone on our team looks suspiciously well rested every morning as we got back on the plane. It turns out most of them are using a product called Sambrosa, which is one of the sponsors of our tour. Sambrosa blends antihistamine with a syrup of herbs and honey and is designed to help you sleep well, waking up feeling refreshed and revitalized. And based on the sunny, cheerful faces of the people I work with, it works. It's inexpensive, it's less than fifty cents a night. And we know the people who own the company, and they are great people. They are faithful people, and they are about the happiest family we've ever run across. The product. Simbro says a ton of five star reviews. You can check it out on their website. Sam ambrosa.com. what's the underlying illness that he suffers from?

No idea.

Why don't. How crazy is that? That a nation on the cusp of nuclear war, which we are to this day, could have a commander in chief suffering from some illness and nobody demands to crazy find out what it is.

And the fact that, I mean, again, this goes to the press course, part of the conspiracy. His doctor was never made available to answer questions. That is stupid.

They had a Parkinson specialist come in.

Yeah, although the facts on that are still a bit murky.

Well, they're totally murky.

But how they could explain to any White House reporter's satisfaction why they weren't given access to the president's doctor. I can't understand. It just should have been an alarm bell and they should have brought the briefing room to a halt. We demand to talk to the president's doctor as we've talked to past president's doctors when this president spoke to a dead congresswoman. We need to access the president's doctor.

Just the way the stiff leg walking and everything, just, you turn the sound off and you could tell that there.

Was a problem and the american people knew it. And that's why I forget the exact numbers. But, like, 70% said he shouldn't be running. It's like there's a reason why the press had to say the emperor looked fantastic in his new clothes. Not, I like the shirt, but I don't like the pants. They had to be all in on the emperor looked fantastic because they couldn't show any weakness.

I like this shirt, but not the pants. Exactly.

They couldn't show any weakness.

Why?

Because they couldn't do anything to be accused of helping Trump win.

It's not my imagination. The press has always, obviously been liberal, always been sympathetic to Democrats. But this posture of, like, total denial of absolute big lie, deception, that's a new thing.

It's a new thing. It's covering Trump's heart. And just as people on the right, I'll say again, are revolted by the slanted press coverage, the law fair, the unequal treatment, I think people on the left have proper grievance about the things Trump has done that are, again, antithetical to a lot of what America stands for. They're right about that. He's hard to cover. But the way that most of the press has chosen to deal with it is to just focus on the negative aspects of Trump and disregard the grievances of the other side.

But honesty just, I mean, even leaving aside the ideology or how you think Trump fits into american history, just like, I don't know if it's raining out, you can't say it's sunny out because that's lying.

I agree. But besides liberal media bias, and besides just the emotional Trump derangement syndrome, they've decided that January 11 and Stormy Daniels and documents at Mar a Lago and his comments about immigrants are more important, are so important that they have to cover those. The exclusion of Americans being killed by people in the country illegally, that's just what they've decided.

Is there any sense from within those big media organizations that they've committed suicide? No.

Their cultural, personal, institutional orientation is towards covering the news for half the country. That's what they do.

But as a business, it's like they've had destroyed themselves. That's my read on it, anyway. I worked for all those things.

I mean, the New York Times has created wordle and recipes, so they haven't destroyed themselves. There's always going to be a demand for news and they all adapted like you and I discussed, they've adapted way too late. But it's an industry and crisis. But some of the legacy players are finding their way towards digital survival. So I don't think they're all going to disappear and I think they'll for.

Sure, but they're the weaker ones. CB's. I think CB's is like almost done. I think NBC, CNN, I don't think they have bright futures. But what I could be wrong, they'll.

Have to, very late in the game, adapt to digital sales and different models. Besides people paying for subscriptions, people paying for advertising or cable systems paying for carriage, they'll have to find different sources of revenue and they'll have to make products that appeal to enough audiences that there's, there's, there's this mass there.

But somebody's got to fill the assigned the intended role of the media which is to inform the public about things, factual things.

Yeah, it's. It's a crisis. And not just a crisis in America. Obviously other countries have this problem but. But there is a market for news. People do want news. Well, you have to have it. So we just need. Whether it's legacy places that find their way or new places like what you're doing, what I'm doing that say we're going to make money off of quality content that some number of people like and we're going to find business models that work and we're not going to be wedded to the old business models which is just not going to support journalism.

How long were you at ABC?

From 87 to 2007.

Long time. How many years is that?

That's about 20 ish years. It's 97. 2007.

Did you ever think that you would be part of independent media?

I never did. I mean, I loved working for a big powerful, one of the most powerful news organizations in the world and I assumed I always would. And I still think there's some value in it. I mean you and I both now do things for ourselves and with our small Mary bands that before 17 people would have been working on, we never would have had to think about it. But it's a small price to pay to not be freed from the downsides of being in an institution where you can't do what you think's right some of the time at least. Or best not necessarily right, but best.

Like what? Looking back, can you give examples of things that you couldn't do that you think you should have been allowed to do?

File more Freedom of Information act requests even if they were going to annoy people we covered. So if somebody said, well, we're trying to book that person as a great guest, so please don't file that Freedom of Information act request. That happened a few times. Yeah. Now, there was another equity involved for the organization. Right. They wanted a booking more than my fishing expedition on a FOIA. But I will say that that's an example I could give a few others, but I was blessed when I worked for ABC, when I worked for Time magazine, when I worked for Bloomberg, I was blessed with a fair amount of autonomy. So I was never told by corporate, the corporate side, what to say. I was rarely told, don't pursue something because of another equity. I gave you one of the examples, but it's more just as, you know, putting on a tv show at a major network, like 200 people are touching the product. It's just a hard bureaucracy to be super creative in, but it also produces, from a production point of view, quality stuff. That's a trade off.

I'm not imagining without getting into it. This is my read. You may disagree. I think in the end you were very severely punished for demanding to think for yourself. That's my view of it. But I don't think you're the only one who was. It did seem like a systematic cleansing of anybody in media. It wasn't even a left right divide. It was like, I felt it was a testosterone divide. But people were like, no, no, I think this is right. I'm going to pursue it. Those people are all gone. I just have noticed.

Well, I mean, it depends on the category. I think people, particularly people who challenge the left, I think are more susceptible to that. I mean, Rachel Maddow says stuff that's out there. She criticizes her own network. Sometimes she pursues stories. She's interesting. She has a lot of power and autonomy. And there are other examples to her credit.

I've always, I disagree with everything Rachel Maddow says, but I have always admired that about her.

Yeah, but she's kind of the exception. There are others, but she's one of the exceptions that proves the rule. Most people don't want to cross the orthodoxy or their corporate bosses. And in that sense, they're not so different than working for JP Morgan Chase or working for Boeing. There's not a lot of stepping out of line. The difference is, of course, to state the obvious, that we're in a journalist or in a business of truth telling and challenging powerful interests and holding powerful interests accountable to the public interest. And sometimes that has to be either your own employer or sometimes it's liberal Democrats.

It's got to be that way, though. It's inherent. That's why we have First Amendment protection. The system is set up with a free press really at the center of the enterprise, in my opinion. Where are we five years, ten years from now?

I thought there was going to be more joking around in this episode.

No, I'm just interested.

The grimmest episode of your program ever. Let's play paper football or something to shake up the mood. I mean, I'm a big believer in finding consumers who want quality, and that can happen independent of ideology. My new platform, we've not started to make a ton of money yet, but it explicitly tries to appeal to people, not just centrist moderates and independents, but people on the left and the right. And I'm hoping that there is a market for that that is different than the conventional wisdom. Which is the only way to make money is to go hard, left or.

Hard, of course, right be the New York Times. But how does it work?

We bring people on who are willing to talk about the country in a way that's not politics of personal destruction. I would say our model is peace, love, and understanding. And then we open it up to citizens from across the country and so far, organically. Democrats, Republicans, Trump supporters, Trump enemies, all come on and they all talk. And they supposed to talk in a way that is respectful. And if somebody's disagreeing with you, I say learn from them, rather than say, this platform is too pro Trump. Well, it's your opportunity to hear from pro Trump people, or this platform's too pro Harris. Listen to them talk, and that it almost doesn't exist in America today.

What's the business model for that?

Well, it's a platform that's not just about politics. It's eventually we're going to expand to sports and music and writers. It's called two way all communication. Almost all communication is one way. Right. It's you talking or writing a substack or writing a book or cable news. We bring people together with the people they want to hear from. And so if you get the best parenting experts in the world or NFL quarterbacks or great musicians, that people are super fans of sponsorships, payments, superfan payments that are higher than what they pay for, a normal access through live video, and then eventually, the ability to be the place that people come for two way conversations. But in politics, it has the additional element of, of all voices under one roof. And I am so heartened when people say, liberals will say, I understand why people are for Trump more than I ever have. The other day we had on, just by coincidence, we didn't book them. Two young black men, both live in Manhattan or live in New York City, both of whom explained extraordinarily well why they're for Trump and why they don't like the Democratic Party.

And they were listened to respectfully, and liberals could ask them questions. That just doesn't exist anymore.

No, it doesn't. So I gotta say, that's consistent with my personal experience of black men, specifically. Not that I'm around black men all the time, but actually fairly regularly. Don't know that many black men who are republicans, but I know zero black men who are liberals. Not one. I can't remember the last time I met one. That seems like a trend.

If the anecdotal is even close to true, Trump will break the record among support from Black Mendez. I mean, he'll smash it. If the anecdotal is close to true, it just, it's all over social media, it's all over my platform, it's all over every story I hear. And part of it, you know, I'll give you a couple of elements of this. I think it's important. Part of it is Trump has always had appeal with kind of a macho, rich, pretty white thing. Yeah, had that. But it's also, you know, this example of biased coverage. The press says when Trump says some young black men identify with him and their parents because he's been persecuted, the press says, that's racist. My experience, it's just true. They get the fact that the legal system comes after people unfairly. And if it can happen to Trump, it can happen to them. And it has happened to them and their family and their communities. And then lastly, the failure of liberals to make life in cities for poor kids better is also a massive scandal. Another scandal is that the republican party hasn't done anything to capitalize on it and create competition to be mayors of these cities.

But when Trump says, I'm for criminal justice reform and I'm for fixing schools and I'm for creating more economic opportunity, he did criminal justice reform. The other stuff, his record is spotty, but he's saying, as he said in 2016, when people mocked him, what do you have to lose? These young black men say, the Democratic Party offers nothing to me. Trump might offer something to me, and he's done criminal justice reform. I think. I think, again, you could be the most partisan Democrat in the world if you can defend the performance of the Democratic Party to helping young black men. Good luck.

But what's, I agree with everything that you've said, but what's interesting is the black voters, including black men, are not just, like part of the democratic coalition. They're the basis of the party's moral authority.

After what? After black women. They're number two in terms of degree of support.

Right. But in terms of the story that Democrats tell themselves about why they're right and why they're better than their opponents, it's all about black people. We've saved black people. And so how do they like, what's it like if you're a democratic party, if you're Ron Klaine and you all of a sudden all the black guys are against you? And for Trump, that must be mind blowing.

Well, of all the sort of canary in the coal mine of those who believe that, some of my sources in both parties do that Harris is about to lose, and maybe somewhat decisively, she's spending three days, maybe four days at the end of the campaign, spending the majority of her time courting black men. That's mind blowing. So what do they say? They say they're a little bit in denial about the causes of it, but they, but they're not in denial about how big a problem is. Again, testament to when have you seen a democratic presidential candidate with 20 days to go spending her time day after day courting black men?

But it's just weird, because the one thing that everyone on planet Earth knew about Donald Trump was that he was a racist. That's the one. I mean, that line, that was the summary of Trump.

So I had a black woman who lives in New York also, who came on my platform the other day. And when she was confronted, I connected her to an older black gentleman who's a Harris supporter. And he said, how can you support the man who led the birther movement? How can you support the man who denied knowing who David Duke was? And she said, how about Joe Biden? He's of that generation, too, hanging around with Strom Thurmond, supporting the crime bill. Her view was, Joe Biden's got a racist past, too. I'm not going to decide who to vote for based on allegations about who's a bigger racist.

It's just interesting of all the candidates in the history of american politics for Donald Trump to increase the share of.

The black vote and the hispanic vote.

Well, big time in that way.

And again, the liberal press would say, how could Hispanics support a guy who's been so racist in his rhetoric about the border and of course, as you know, we're talking about people who've came here illegally and don't like to be lumped in with people who, who support more open border and even people who.

Came here legally and benefit illegally, who benefit from the 86 amnesty, for example.

Correct. And also people who think bacon costs too much.

Yeah. Amazing. So why did you said at the outset that everyone's telling us this is going to be an extraordinarily close election. You don't believe that?

Well, it might be. I just think it's not a foregone conclusion because I think it, seven battleground states, six, or maybe all seven, could go to one candidate. They could. In other words, if one of them wins the seven states or 607 narrowly, by our recent standards, that would be an electoral college landslide. And I think that could happen. I think whatever dynamics exist will be some variation, state to state. But if Trump won all seven, I wouldn't be surprised. If she won all seven, I wouldn't be surprised. And if that happens, it's not going to be close.

I was talking to a member of Congress just a few hours ago who said, I'm totally convinced this election will not be called within a week of election day.

Will not be?

Not be.

Yeah. I mean, if it's close, it won't be. There'll be litigation and there'll be, you know, all the normal second guessing. Our elections are decentralized and really messy. And although there were efforts to fix that after 2000, it's just the american way. And in some of these states, like in Pennsylvania, the state gives incredible deference to the counties to figure out how they want to run things.

It's a commonwealth.

Yeah. And I think there's a real equal protection questions. We saw that in Florida in 2000. Like, is it fair to one county compared to another county or the state of Florida compared to the other states that they count differently? It's a great, it's got political implications that are messy, but it's a great 10th Amendment question.

In what sense do they count differently.

When you can start counting different types of ballots and what the rules are for accepting ballots that have errors in them? Like, if one county says, well, they said 2023, but they meant 2024, we're going to count that because we know, who cares what the outside address is? Like, one county counts it and the other doesn't. Is that fair to the voters, that equal protection? And even if the rules aren't different, just as a matter of course, say, well, in this county, they stopped counting at midnight because the election supervisor said, we have too many votes to count, we're going to go home. And in this county, they kept counting. And so now is there some chain of custody question in the county where the people went home and said they'll come back in at 09:00 we just don't have uniform rules. That's just the way America is. So, I mean, I would say my base case, unlike everybody else's, my base case is we'll know by the next day, because I think more likely than that it won't be close. But if your person's right, a week would be delightful. If it was only a week could be significantly longer.

Because once litigation starts, it never stops. And this time the Democrats are as lawyered up as the Republicans. In 2020, the Bush campaign said, we're only going to do Florida. I'm sorry, in 2000, they said, we're only going to do Florida. We think there's stuff in New Mexico we could do. There's stuff in a few other states. They said, no, we're just, and the Gore people went along with that. That won't happen this time. All seven states will be litigated.

And to recap those states are, to.

Recap the states, there's the three great Lakes states, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and then the four Sunbelt states, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona. And the state where Las Vegas is that I can't pronounce correctly, so I never do.

It's Nevada, like Vlad, and it's Nevada. And in the last, say, 30 years, I grew up going to Nevada.

Yeah.

And we had a house in Nevada and everyone called it that. And now they will yell at you for calling it that. They've renamed it.

I have a mental block about it. I say it wrong every time, even though I think I'm saying that wrong.

They're so judgy about it.

They are very judgy. That's why I don't even risk it. I call it the silver state state, where Las Vegas is Harry Reid's old.

State, home of McCarran Airport, Clark county.

You can say about it. Reno in the north.

So can we just go through those really quick and love to get your view of where the race is? And let's just start with Nevada.

It's the hardest one. The Trump people think they're going to win it and the Democrats think they're going to win it. Abortion, unions, the ghost of Harry Reid, which they still cite. So I would say there's consensus amongst my sources that of the seven states, it's Harris's best. But I wouldn't be surprised if Trump won it. Economy's horrible, inflation's been horrible, housing's horrible. He's got, of course, a presence in Clark County, a lot of rural vote. So it's her best of the seven.

Well, he's taken Elko. We know that.

Yes, elco is his.

But the change in Clark county is very, very heavily hispanic now. And the change in voting patterns of hispanic voters, or at least what we think is the change, that's kind of what they're banking on.

They are. And they're banking on the economy. And she's not, she's a westerner. Right. But people there don't like Californians, typically for good reason. Yeah. So again, I think it's right that it's his least likely of the seven, but there are reasons to think he could win it. And the biggest thing she has going for is probably is the unions. And whether that's a union and a location where the gap between the leadership and the rank and file is smaller, there's reason to believe that she'll do.

Well unite here and the big casino workers unions.

So I would say again, her best state, but a state Trump can still win.

Okay, let's move. New Mexico.

No, Arizona. New Mexico is blue. Arizona is probably Trump's best of the seven. If there's a state she'll give up on, and I don't think she will because she's got so much money and there's only seven and she's got to fly out west.

Just can you summarize where the money stands as of right now, relatives.

So originally, her money advantage, the Democrats money advantage early on when Trump was having trouble raising money, was significant. Then they had a money advantage, but not dispositive. It's now potentially dispositive. Not so much for the ads, although that matters, too. But for organizing, she's raised a billion dollars since she got in the race. That's extraordinary. And that doesn't include, exclude the outside money that's not directly tied.

She's raised a billion dollars since she.

Got in the race. She's raised more for her campaign and for the party committees that she controls than Trump has raised the whole campaign. So typically when you're out raised, as Trump said in 16, they have enough to win. They won't have as much money, but they'll have enough to win it. Maybe he doesn't. I'm not saying for sure, but her financial advantage over the last three weeks is consideration. Where's all that money coming from grassroots and rich people? One of the biggest mysteries in politics for the last 20 years has been Democrats capacity to raise big money online compared to Republicans. Jamie Harrison, who's now chair of the Democratic Party, ran against Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. No chance to win. Not a particularly good candidate. Nice guy, but not somebody people thought I'll give money because I'll be president someday. He raised like $110 million. That's more than Marco Rubio, who should be a good web fundraiser, social media fundraiser, raised when he ran for president. They just are great at raising money from small dollar donors. Part of it was they started earlier with the thing act blue. But it doesn't explain it.

And I talk to people about it all the time. I can't explain it, but that's a big part of why Trump's being outraged. And if they hadn't kept indicting him, he'd be even more disparate. And then there's people writing big checks.

If they hadnt kept indicting him, he wouldnt have raised as much money.

Trump raised a lot of his online money in the wake of all the legal stuff, literally on the days of indictments, the days of bookings, court dates. That was a great equalizer for him to raise more money, but hes badly outraged. But again, I dont think its dispositive. It might be dispositive, but I dont think it will be. I think Trump has just enough.

And the Democratic Party has rich people.

So does the Republican Party. The big disparity is not the rich people. The big disparity is the small dollars. There's some disparity, right? There's three kinds of money. There's small dollars, social media and online, there's bundlers of people writing checks of 3900 or whatever it is now. And then there's people writing super PAC checks for 10 million or less. Trump is. I think being outraged in all three categories is my guess. But I think the biggest discrepancy is the one that's the most valuable, which is the low dollars, because people can continue to give to you.

And for that money, the Harris campaign.

Gets what, more tv ads, more digital ads, more field organizers, more offices, more get at the vote operations, lawn signs, I've noticed more lawn signs and more surrogate travel. Just more of all the stuff you can spend money on. And again, no one's criticizing their operation in terms of how they're going about turning people out, voting early, voting by mail, and then on election day, getting people to polls. Their team led by the woman who's running the campaign, Jenna Malley Dillon, who's an organizer by trade. That's an advantage. In other words, more money spent wisely. It's a big advantage.

So you think Trump probably does have an advantage in Arizona?

Yes. Just as the silver state is her best of the seven, my sources agree that Arizona is his best of the seven.

All right, let's move east.

Georgia, it's a tougher one. Trump is ahead. Trump is favored. I think Georgia would be the fifth or 6th state she won if she's doing really well. In other words, if she wins Georgia, it means she's going to win all the great Lake states and probably the silver state as well. So it's probably Trump's third best of them. Probably. And I'd make him the favorite there. And my democratic sources today would make him the favorite there as well. There is a reality of democratic politics in southern states, which is if you can increase the percentage of the vote that comes from black vote, which is called the contribution to the vote. So what percentage of the number of people who vote are black, and she can get her numbers back up to where Democrats typically are. Two big ifs, she'll win. But Trump is doing well with the young black men there and the normal way he wins states running up in exurbs in rural areas. All of the seven states have a pro choice energy. In the two western states, there's ballot measures that will help there. There aren't in the five others, but Georgia, the Atlanta metro area is very pro choice.

A lot of suburban women. So some combination of her swelling black vote, holding her own with black vote and suburban voters, particularly women, she could win it. But Trump is the favorite there.

Okay, so we've named three so far.

North Carolina. It's funny. The vice president herself, I'm told, and a lot of her aides have been very bullish on North Carolina as the linchpin for replacing Pennsylvania if they lose Pennsylvania. I have one republican source who I trust immensely regarding North Carolina who says no way Trump loses it. So the storm is a variable, no way to know who that helps or hurt. The governor's race is a bit of a variable, but my sources now, I trust the ones who say Trump is likely to win North Carolina, but vice president's put a ton of time in there and I think she'll continue to because they need a hedge against losing Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has more electoral votes. So if it's just a swap, if Trump wins the three Sunbelt states and Pennsylvania and she wins North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan, she loses. So if she wins Michigan and Wisconsin and North Carolina, but loses Pennsylvania, she needs one of the other three Sunbelt states. But North Carolina is the largest, same as Georgia, same number. But that's kind of the linchpin for them. Them. So that's the biggest mystery. They're very, Democrats are very bullish on it.

Republicans believe that it'll be Trump's in the end.

Interesting. What about Wisconsin?

Was considered her best of the seven until she started to slip there in the last couple of weeks. And it's always been a close state. Trump had his convention there. A lot of rural vote there, a lot of the social issues cut for Trump there. Less pro choice state than some of the others. So I would say if you take the combination of my sources, it's a slight favorite to Harris. But if Trump's running the rest of the table, he'll win Wisconsin.

I thought the whole point of Tim walls was to shore up support in a place like Wisconsin.

Running mates really don't make a difference. They just don't. As long as you pick someone who the public says is ready to be president, it's really very marginal.

That leaves Michigan.

Michigan. So it's a little bit of a cross current there because it's kind of the bluest of the seven states. But she's got a problem with labor, she's got problem with black men, she's got problem with union with arab american and muslim american voters. And she's not gone there until recently, just the last couple days, and done the things that the locals there demand. Like the local Democrats say, you have to go to union halls, you have to be doing black barbershops, you have to be figuring out how to make peace with the arab American and Muslim American. So she's done those things the last few days. I would say it's a must win for her. It's not a must win for Trump, but I'd make it at this point her, just like in Wisconsin, a mild favorite.

And finally, Pennsylvania.

So it is said Pence, the winner of Pennsylvania will win.

It's said by everyone all the time.

Yeah, it's almost certainly true. I'm going to do a two hour show called it's all about Pennsylvania because it sort of is. Now, I say Trump can win without Pennsylvania and she can win without Pennsylvania. And it's not far fetched. They both have reasonable paths without it. So people shouldn't say it's all about it. But certainly the winner of Pennsylvania as a matter of demographics and electoral college, mathematic is in the driver's seat. The other person has to circumvent conventional wisdom about where these states are to make up for the loss of Pennsylvania. And Trump is ahead, and he's been ahead for a while now, ahead within the margin of error. But if you're consistently ahead, even if it's in the margin of error, no one thinks these states are going to be won by seven points. She's got demographic problems there. Changing her position on fracking was absolutely essential, whether people believed it or not. She couldn't have won. Being against fracking, it's not as big a deal throughout the state as people think. But in parts of the state, it's a very big deal. So I made Trump the favorite there, as do most of my democratic sources.

But she's spending an unprecedented amount of money. She'll continue to work it. There has a democratic governor. It has two democratic senators. It's more of a blue state in terms of statewide office than a red state. Trump won it once and lost it once, but he's showing strength there with white working class voters, with older voters, with black men, with the Hispanics suburbs around Philly. And that's a place because Biden was born in Pennsylvania and so associated with it. That's a place where trading out Biden for Harris was probably a downgrade for them, that Biden, at least on paper, had a better chance than she does.

Well, he's, of course, the loyal son of Pennsylvania.

Yeah, he had his own problems, though. They've also not been a super big state about electing women to statewide office compared to some other states, for whatever reason. And she's a California liberal. One of the things I don't think we've discussed in our brief talk so far is because shes really liberal, right? Shes really liberal. Shes culturally liberal. Shes economically liberal. And shes not done a sister soldier. Shes not fleshed out a portrait of who she is, except for saying shes a capitalist in a way that has resonated with a lot of these undecided voters. And you see that in Pennsylvania as much as anywhere else. They see her for what she is, and thats not really what Pennsylvania is. Their governor is a pretty moderate Democrat.

And as we did say at the outset, you said she hasn't really, I mean, if I'm Kamala Harris and I'm from San Francisco by way of Montreal, I'm going to make some effort to convince people I'm not as liberal as they think I am. She hasn't done a ton of that.

Well, she's done small things on the margins and not put them in sharp relief so that everybody would hear them, because, again, she's cautious and indecisive, so she really hasn't. And time's short. And of course, anything she does now will be seen by some voters as crazy.

Of course. What's the spread between the publicly available polls and the so called internal polling of the campaigns? How different are those numbers?

It depends on which Apple and which orange you're comparing, but I would say it just back of the envelope, super rough thing. Trump, two points stronger in a lot of the private polls, not in every state, but in some of the states and in the public walls.

What accounts for that?

The public polls are done on the cheap. And of all the ways newsrooms have cut back the polling budgets. Take a big hit. Right. So a poll is only good if likely voters, if you know who a likely voter is. Right. And the simplest explanation is if you say, I want my poll to have 40% Democrats, okay. Because that's what I think the electorate's going to be. So I think a poll that's good, that has likely voters, 40% of my respondents, are going to be Democrats. So which Democrats are going to fill the slots? Because you're under pressure to finish the poll as quickly as possible. You want 400 respondents say the longer it takes, the more money it costs, because you're paying for the call center to continue to make calls. So the Democrats who are most likely to fill the slot are better educated Democrats who are more likely to pick up a phone or answer an online survey and say, I'm a Democrat and I'm participating. Those wealthier Democrats and better educated Democrats, because those are the particularly better educated is the weight is a single trait by which you can most easily tell if they're a Harris voter or a Trump voter, they're going to fill the slots.

So you say, okay, 40% are Democrats. So I'm not over representing Democrats. You are representing Democrats who are more likely to vote for Harris than Democrats who are likely to vote for Trump. And that single variable is, according to my sources, probably the main reason why the private polling, which is more expensively done and needs an accurate poll, so they know how to make decisions about the campaign compared to the public polls, which just want to get the poll done so they can publish it for publicity. They're not looking to be accurate. They're looking to get it done as.

Cheaply as possible its more expensive to do private polls. Kamala Harris, just as you said, raised over a billion dollars. I asked where that money went. I should have pointed out that the consultants I have noticed, just having known consultants for 30 years, are richer than theyve ever been. And im not sure the public understands just how rich some can.

I dont think its true. Theyre richer than theyve ever been.

Oh, really?

Yeah, maybe.

Im just noticing.

Ill tell you one, some of them.

Are not flying commercial anymore.

Yeah. So I think a lot of the change and I don't know, like dollar per dollar, like are they making $0.47 on the dollar compared to before? But I can tell you the Bush campaign really changed the culture in one very fundamental way. The people who make the ads used to get what was called a percentage of the buy. Right? And that was ridiculous.

15%.

15%. So Bush negotiated them down to like 1% or something. He also said salaries are going to be controlled. Then when John Podesta was chair of Hillary's campaign in 2016, he said if you're one of the many people traveling between DC and New York, you're going to take the bus for $12 as opposed to the train or the plane. Again, that was a very big cultural thing of we're just not going to waste the campaign's money on either spending or salaries. So my sense is that consultants don't make what they used to, particularly ad buyers. But my sense is even pollsters don't make what they used to, but they do. They do make a lot. And they spend a lot on polls, which is why they're better. It's not a quantitative difference, a qualitative difference to say we need an accurate poll so we know how to make decisions about this race.

So a billion dollars gets dumped into just one side of one race in the final months and no one's getting rich off that.

They're getting rich. I don't think the consultants themselves are making as much as they used to. That's my impression.

Interesting.

The consultants I covered early in my career were like millionaires who had their own planes and vacation houses. Most of them arent. A few are, but most of them now, they just kind of change the culture of how much consultants get paid.

Preston, what do you make of our age? Is it bewildering to you to see the shuffling of the parties? Dick Cheney and his daughter now campaigning for Harris endorsed Harris. And then you see a bunch of people you thought Bobby Kennedy campaigning for Trump. What do you make of that?

Well, I'll probably anger some viewers here by saying, I don't think you can attribute what the Cheneys did to anything but their belief in the unfitness of Donald Trump to be president growing somewhat from January 6. I don't think the Cheney's are going to get rich off of this.

Oh, no.

I don't think they want jobs. I don't think, I don't. I mean, I think it's possible Liz would take one, but I don't think she's doing it for that at all. I don't think they hate Donald Trump for some past personal grievance. I really do believe that they think what January 6 and related things and challenging the election say about Trump's character or make him unfit for the job, and they're willing to support someone whose position on issues they find to be, you know, socialist or worse. So I think they don't, I mean.

I know them, and my take is that what they care about is not January 6. They care about war and the foreign policy stuff.

I don't, I disagree. I think, I think that matters to them in terms of Ukraine. And we haven't talked about the forever wars. That's something you and I see eye to eye on. And I think another huge blind spot of the dominant media, America, is America's bipartisan, from Bernie Sanders to donald Trump disdain for the forever wars. And I know the Cheneys disagree with that point of view, but I don't think that's what motivating the mayor. I think they, and again, this won't be popular with everyone watching us, but they think that Trump makes the planet less safe by not being supportive of Ukraine and not challenging Putin as aggressively as they'd like.

I definitely think that.

Yeah. But I don't think that's what, I don't think the characterization of them as warmongers or lovers of the military industrial complex. I just think they have a different point of view about how to keep the planet and the country safe.

Well, they certainly, I mean, I think both are true.

Yeah, well, both are true. Meaning they care about January 6 and they care about wars or their war.

Well, I think it's overwhelmingly war. I think that in their minds, they are keeping an international order that's been very effective, intact. And Donald Trump challenges that order and that challenges, in their opinion, a massive threat to the world.

Right.

And I think that's sincere. They think that. Well, but I also think they're warmongers. I think they think they have high motives. They may be high motives, but I also think that the root of their power is planning war. That's what makes them feel godlike.

So I agree with you on the substance of their objection. I disagree with you about that being for Liz, at least. What's the opposite of subordinate over January 6? I think January 6 really matters to her a lot. I just do. In terms of characterizing them as warmongers, I just don't agree if I understand the term. I don't think they love war. I don't think they profit from the military industrial complex. I don't think they're on the boards of defense contractors or, I agree much deeper than that. But they are, they just have a, they have a very different conception than Donald Trump and then a lot of the american people about how to keep us safe. Their view of how to keep us safe is to get us into endless wars.

I completely, no, no, I completely agree with you. And I never thought, I thought all the Halliburton stuff was absurd and also a shallow analysis because I think it's actually much worse than that of. But whatever.

Well, I mean, I think it's worse in the sense that they take their intellect and their worldview and they lock us into the loss of american lives and great costs and hurt our reputation around the world. Exactly the opposite of what they think. But I don't question their entirely Cheney's, I don't question their belief. It's not connected to self interest.

I completely agree. The reason I'm saying it's worse is because it derives not from greed, but from hubris. And I think that's much scarier than greed. And in other words, if you think you have powers that no human possesses, for example, the power to foresee the consequences of a big decision that you make, a rational person. By rational, I mean someone informed by humility, which is a realistic understanding of.

Limits of his power.

You do something big like invade a country, and an honest person says, I have no freaking idea really what happens next. And the Cheneys, because they are like everyone in DC, bipartisan, seized with this crazed hubris. They're like, no, no, I know exactly what's going to happen. This will start a domino effect where democracy takes root in the Middle east. And like, that's insane.

Well, the fact is we do know what's going to happen. If we look at history, it'll end badly.

Exactly.

We do know. The only thing I don't like about when you say warmongers is to me, warmonger means somebody who relishes sending the US to war and maybe profits from it, or does it because they're insufficiently concerned about the welfare of the country?

No, no, no. I'm saying just, I'm saying something slightly different, which is someone who believes that the most important thing he does, and I think 90% of republican senators feel this way, for example, is sort of manage the world and is convinced that he's doing a good job. And this is like a high calling. And he understands, again, and consequences which no human can foresee. So that's deeply offensive to me because I think it's, like, stupid and corrupt on the most basic level. You don't understand the limits of human foresight, and that's a massive problem.

Yeah. And again, history makes it pretty clear. And it infuriates me when people say, Trump hates NATO. Trump wants to destroy NATO. He doesn't. He wants to reform it so that it's fair to american taxpayers and that its mission matches up with our security needs.

I totally agree, by contrast, do hate NATO and like to destroy it. So I am the radical. Trump is totally moderate on this.

I agree with you. I mean, I would only want to keep it if it were really reformed, but I think there's a. I think there is still purpose for it.

There could be, but, man, does it hurt the countries that participate. In my opinion, it eliminates their sovereignty. And foreign troops on your soil, like that's a big thing.

Yeah. The problem is they just don't have. It's the best arrangement for maximizing our safety. Even with all the flaws. If it were reformed, even flawed, it's probably still the best arrangement. But if it were reformed, I think it clearly would be.

Well, Europe is western, Europe is done, its economy is in shambles, but it's.

Not going away to the Martians. It's still going to be filled with Finnish and Belgians, Dutch. They're all going to be there.

As someone who's part finnish, it hurts me even to hear the word Finnish, because I just think that was a country that had sovereignty, that earned it by beating one of the world's great powers in an actual battle, the winter war of 1940. And they just gave it up to NATO, and they're going to just really suffer as a result.

But would the world be better if they all had their own robust armies?

No, I mean, but I. Navies and air force, and you could easily envision, like, regional cooperation between, say, the four nordic countries or eastern.

But why is that better than a continent wide force? To deal with the realities, which is Russia and China are going to threaten us for a long time, but it's.

Not continent wide, actually. It's. There's just an extension of a faraway empire that doesn't have any of their interests at heart. And also it degrades the spirit of a country to have foreigners on soil.

I agree with that.

You look at England and it's like, why is it collapsing so fast? And I think a lot of that is, and I don't think anyone meant to do this, actually. I think a lot of the worst things that happen. To your very wise and true point about the Cheneys, I think they think they're doing the right thing. I think the people who administer the EU think they're doing the right thing. I think your average NATO commander thinks he's doing the right thing. But the effect of having foreign troops on your soil for 80 years is to eliminate any pride in your country.

Yeah, I agree. And I think you see that Japan's probably the country I know best, and America's true presence is just deleterious to their feeling. Like adult country. Totally.

And that's one of the reasons they have such a high suicide rate. Same with South Korea.

Yeah, I agree. But again, there are threats in the world that are serious for sure, that America cannot as easily deal with deterrence and spying and action if necessary. If we don't have North Korea, Australia or South Korea, Australia, Japan and NATO countries with some degree of military cooperation. I just think it's just a reality of, of real estate and how long it takes to get places we cannot defend and deter from the continental United States. Just not going to happen to the same degree that's necessary to deal with Middle east and Russia and China and North Korea. It's just a requirement geographically to be there. But I agree with you in terms of.

But it's hurt. It really is like Munchausens by proxy. We're killing the people we claim to love.

But one of the powers of Trump's ideas, if they paid more for it, if more of it was theirs, I think it would be less infantilizing and they'd be more full partners as opposed to being under the american umbrella. Part of the challenge is also their nuclear weapons. We don't want these other countries to have nuclear weapons.

That's exactly right.

And if we're not partnered with the Japanese and the South Koreans and Europeans, they're going to want nuclear weapons.

Well, and Japan especially, because Japan, I think people, it sounds like you like and go near the area, but the one thing I'm not no expert on Asia, but having spent time there, the one thing I'm always shocked by is how totally freaked out by Japan every other country is, particularly China.

Yeah. And South Korea, too. Their ally for sure.

You don't think of Japan as a Marshall power because it's not 45.

Wasn't that long ago for them.

Exactly right.

And that's, again, there's downsides to our relationship. People in Okinawa hate the United States because of our military presence. But the upside is we have effectively restrained them and allowed them to become part of the community of nations and develop a relationship with South Korea. That's stronger now. It's one of the things biden has done successfully in foreign policy. It's stronger now than it's been since the end of the war, in part because they do not have a military that's threatening to these other countries.

Yeah. The Japanese are so elaborately nice. They're just such wonderful people. It's hard to imagine what they were. Not that long.

It's amazing the turn in one generation. And, I mean, if anything, they could use a little bit more of the fierceness, I agree, than the current generation. But they've been turned into just completely defamed in a way that I think has hurt the society but had to be done to some extent because of the specter of the end of the war. The strong feelings, as you said, in China and South Korea, is, wow, to this day, really, really jaundiced view of the Japanese.

Yeah, it's really noticeable.

Now, you asked me about Bobby Kennedy. Predicting or explaining Bobby Kennedy is like predicting or explaining Kum Jong un. I mean, he's just a, he's a mercurial man, that Bobby Kennedy. So why is he for Trump? I think he's anti establishment and he believes that the current military situation, food safety, foreign wars, all of that requires profound change. And so I think there's some really strong ideological ties to Trump. I think he also is angry at the Democratic Party for keeping him from being able to run for the nomination, fairly attacking him personally. So I think that's part of it, too. And I think Trump offered him the better deal for what it would mean to endorse him. But I think it's a mistake to just say he's a cuckoo who wanted a big role. I think food safety, foreign wars, military industrial complex, all that is, if he were 20 years younger, had a normal voice and stayed on message, I think he would have been a formidable hed be the president of the United States formidable. His announcement speech was one of the best and most important speeches of the last five years by any politician.

But he simply doesnt have the discipline to do this. In that sense, hes a great companion for Donald Trump, who also lacks the discipline to stay focused on the core issues that have immense appeal across party lines, not just, so he told me.

I think a lot of him, I think your analysis is fair. But he told me that the Democratic Party didn't even consider talking to him. And clearly he's got a real constituency. He's an energetic man and he's got a lot going for him despite the deficits. And so why wouldn't you make a good faith effort to bring him over to the party that he grew up in? I don't understand that.

I think that. You mean after he got out of the.

Yeah, or he's considering getting out. Obviously he's considering getting out. We knew that was going to happen. So, like, why would the Kamala people try for him?

They just decided to not elevate him by treating him like a serious person to the decision they made to just brand him as a kook. I'd love to see a parallel universe. If Biden hadn't run and he had run for the democratic nomination, I would have been curious to see how he would have done. But they just decided when he was running for the nomination to destroy him. And he made it easy through his past and his present. But having done that, I think they just felt they couldn't suddenly change and decide he was a good guy.

It does seem like, and Bernie Sanders obviously felt this very personally twice, but it seems like the real sin in the Democratic Party is trying to bring any kind of change. Yeah.

Being anti establishment, being populist. Had Bernie played under fair rules, I think he would have been the nominee at least one of the two times. But that's politics. And whether you've got an incumbent like Joe Biden or a quasi incumbent like Hillary Clinton, the party establishment's going to do what it does. And pre Trump Trump, that would have happened as well in the Republican Party.

So, okay, I've got two more big questions for you. First, I should have asked you earlier, who is running the country right now? Do you know?

Yeah. Joe Biden and the White House chief of staff and senior advisors to the president, and definitely Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. If you manage Joe Biden's time, if you recognize when hes up to it and when hes not, he can still make a lot of decisions, and I believe does. So I dont think theres any Barack Obama or all these other things, but the White House chief of staff has to manage that. And then theres a few very close personal aides, the president, who arent famous people, but they help figure out when to plug him into this and minimize the prospect that a big decision will need to be made at a time when hes not equipped to make it. It's not a great situation, but it is as evidence of the fact that the number of times he's displayed abject inability, it's probably 25 times where it's just abject. Given the circumstances, that's relatively small. And it's testament to not just the fierceness of the conspiracy, but the degree to which it's well managed. Have to understand, under the circumstances, if there's not going to be an invocation of the 25th Amendment, if he's not going to resign, we have to be grateful that it's well managed.

Let's say Trump wins. Three weeks from today, what happens? The Democratic Party, I mean, as you said, a lot of Democrats, maybe the majority, believe that Trump becoming president again is the worst thing that ever could happen. So how do they respond to that?

I say this not flippantly. I think it will be the cause of the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country. I think tens of millions of people will question their connection to the nation, their connection to other human beings, their connection to their vision of what their future for them and their children could be like. And I think that will require an enormous amount of access to mental health professionals. I think it'll lead to trauma in the workplace. I think there'll be some degree of.

Are you being protest?

100% serious. 100% serious. I think there'll be alcoholism, there'll be broken marriages.

What?

Yeah, they think he's the worst person possible to be president. And having won by the hand of Jim Comey and Fluke in 2016 and then performed in office for four years and denied who won the election last time. And January 6, the fact that under a fair election, America chose by the rules, pre agreed to Donald Trump again, I think it will cause the biggest mental health crisis in the history of America. And I don't think it will be kind of a passing thing that by the inauguration will be fine. I think it will be sustained and unprecedented and hideous, and I don't think the country is ready for it. It.

So mental health crises often manifest in violence.

Yeah, I think there'll be some violence. I think there'll be workplace fights. There'll be fights at birthday kids birthday parties. I think there'll be protests that will turn violent. I hope they're not, but I think there will be some. But I think it will be more, it'll be less anger and more a failure to understand how it could happen, like the death of a child or your spouse announcing that, your wife announcing she's a lesbian and she's leaving you for your best friend, something that's so traumatic that it is impossible for even the most mentally healthy person to truly process and incorporate into their daily life. I hope I'm wrong, but I think that's what's going to happen for tens of millions of people because they think that their fellow citizens supporting Trump is a sign of fundamental evil at the heart of their fellow citizens and of the nation. That's how they view it.

Well, that's very heavy.

Yeah. So that's one thing I think will happen, and then I hope that Trump handles it well. I hope that he recognizes both his responsibility and his self interest and that he chooses, in his words and in his cabinet and White House appointments, nominations, and in his initial legislative agenda. I hope he sees a confluence of interest between minimizing that mental health crisis and the success of his presidency. And I think he might, I'm bullish on him seeing the alignment of those two things.

Wow. And if he loses, what happens?

Well, it'll depend on how he loses. It'll depend on if it's close and if he and his supporters see wrongdoing in casting and counting of ballots in the seven states. It's very difficult for me to imagine her winning by enough that that doesn't happen. I've been disappointed in the efforts in the states. There are some in every one of the seven, but they're not mature enough to prepare to explain to people. Elections are messy, but this one wasn't stolen. Our electoral votes were awarded correctly to Kamala Harris. I think if that somehow goes well and if Donald Trump himself doesn't challenge the results, Twitter can do what it wants to do. I think that the negative impact of her winning on the psychology of the losers will not be as great, but I don't think it'll be nothing. And I think there'll be all sorts of things. Lawfare replacing Biden with her after Trump had spent millions trying to beat Biden, the media's completely full body on the scale. I think all those things will lead to mass skepticism that the election was fair. And I think it will be up to luck that the result is clear cut enough that people don't feel reflexively, it was unfair.

I think it would be up to what Trump's attitude is, and I think it'll be up to the governors of the states, whether they're Republicans or Democrats. And most of the battleground state governors are Democrats. To, to be as transparent and clear about any irregularity and its potential impact on the outcome. If all that happens, and Kamala Harris decides to, in the transition and in her inaugural address and in her legislative agenda, to be gracious, I think that we could be in a decent place. I think they'll probably be a Republican Senate, and I think people have failed to game out. If there's a Republican Senate, Democratic House, democratic president, all of MAga, and those unhappy with her winning will put their chips in the Senate and say it's up to the Senate Senate to keep her from turning this into a far left country. And that goes first and foremost in the initial instance to nominations. I think it will be very difficult for her to nominate anyone acceptable to the left who can be confirmed by that Senate.

So they'll just keep people in place.

Well, I mean, you can't be acting forever. It's very limited what you can do as an acting secretary, and she'll want her people. So I worry a lot about that. Now, one of the huge dysfunctions in this country, regardless of party, and every president will tell you this and probably has, is the difficulty of getting your people in place because of the background checks and the confirmation process. You think about her. She started running for president not that long ago. She hasn't had time to start a rigorous transition. I really do worry about her. Even if she emerges from this election with the country in love with her, not at whole country, but enough to have a honeymoon if she rises to the occasion, if world leaders don't seem poised to take advantage of her in some way, even if all that happens, I really do worry about her getting a government in place because I don't think a Republican Senate is going to confirm the kind of people who Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and AOC are going to demand her to nominate.

You hear people mutter darkly about some kind of civil conflict, the possibility of that. Are you worried about that?

Less than most. But I don't dismiss it entirely. Again, I'm a big believer in governors. Right. Civil conflict will take place in the state of some governor, by definition. I hope the governors all have great bipartisan plans for minimizing this and for policing peaceful protests and not allowing them to escalate, but not trampling on the First Amendment. I think we could have violence regardless of who wins. I think both sides are capable of that. I think the chances of it are minimized if the losing presidential candidate, it makes it clear they don't want that to happen. And if the governors are vigilant in devising plans to balance public safety with the First Amendment, if those things happen, I'm not all that concerned about violence. If those things don't happen, I'm deeply concerned about it.

Mark Halpern, I am grateful, I mean it, that you are still a powerful voice in media after all these years.

Well, you're very nice. It's great to be here, your place in the world. As you know, we have lots of mutual friends who say to me and to other people, you know, what's happened to Tucker? What has happened to Tucker? And I say, let me go find out. I'll be back. So I'll go report back. You're right here. Right here. Good natured, iconoclastic, interested in the world, and as we say, unafraid to stand up when you agree and disagree.

My cousins all say that.

What happened to Tucker?

We're worried about him.

Yeah. I, you know, I have dinner all the time with people who've known you for longer than I've known you. And they just all what happened to Tucker?

What happened to him?

What happened to Tucker?

Well, I just, it was too corrupt for me. Had to leave.

Yeah. But. So I'm glad I can go back to New York and maybe I'll do a zoom.

Give the ball my best.

I will. I'll say, here's, here's what happened to Tucker. He's got a nice desk, nice table with some good microphones. Sturdy.

Exactly.

Eats right, exercises when possible. When possible. You're nice to host me. Thank you.

I loved it. Thank you. Good to see you. Thanks for listening to Tucker Carlson show. If you enjoyed it, you can go to tuckercarlson.com to see everything that we have made. The complete library tuckercarlson.com.