Lis Smith: Go After the Weird Angle
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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Tonight, we are live on YouTube during the debate. Come hang, search for the Bulwark on YouTube if you haven't subscribed yet. I want to wish a happy 100th birthday to Jimmy Carter and also rest easy to Dikembe Mutombo, Mount Mutombo. He died of brain cancer, 58 yesterday. And yes, Donald Trump's surrogate and failed actor, Rob Schneider, did accuse him of dying via the COVID vaccine. So that's what we're dealing with out there.

I will discuss all of that and more with Democratic strategist extraordinaire, author of Any Given Tuesday, New York tabloid maven, my friend Liz Smith. Welcome back to the Bullard Podcast. Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me. It's been a while. What's up, girl? Jimmy said he's trying to make it to the Georgia early vote to get his vote in for Kamala. That's wonderful. Do you have any Jimmy Carter stories? And it's a little before your time, but I don't know.

No, I do. I do. You know, I spent the last day that Pete Buttigieg was in the presidential race in Plains, Georgia. And I got to meet Jimmy Carter. He was absolutely lovely. I actually wrote about this in my book. I knew that. I read the book. I knew that. I'd forgotten. That he had sat down with Pete and told Pete, you know, you did a good run, but it's time to drop out.

Then we get to this cafe, sits down, and his staff had been like, absolutely no press for him. And the first thing he does when he sees the press is ask each of them to introduce themselves, say what outlet they're with, and like to ask him any questions. And like, what was I going to do? Tackle the then 96-year-old or 95-year-old former president? No, but...

Truly lovely and like really a model ex presidency and just a very, very virtuous man. So fingers crossed for him that he gets his last wish here. His last vote. Did he give any good quotes? Did he make any news?

You know what he sort of did, but the press didn't really pick up on it. He said to the press, like, well, you know, he's got to figure out what he's going to do now or something like that. And it sort of alluded to the fact that Pete was going to drop out that evening. But we hadn't yet announced it to the press and the press was absolutely shocked when when we actually told them. But he was lovely. Plains is a really lovely town, just small, picturesque and again, just a real model ex-presidency. Yeah.

I love Jimmy Carter. That's sweet. And what, you know, this is why us flacks, well, me, I guess not you, you're still a flacker flip into the media, you know, cause we don't miss things like that. We wouldn't, we don't miss a story like that. Like these, like these journalists did, you know, just letting Jimmy fly right over their head. He gave them the scoop. 95 year old Jimmy Carter gave him the scoop. They didn't get it. All right.

for people who are listening to this after the VP debate, we're going to get to RFK, Kamala's cum strategy, Eric Adams, maybe Joe Burrow's haircut. So you can just fast forward a little bit for the sickos who listen to this as soon as they drop.

We're going to do a little debate preview. Liz has advised Tim Ryan and watched the Vance Senate debates with him last time. Your old boss, Pete Buttigieg, was at Camp North Star, apparently, dressed as Vance in a, according to Politico, a cheap red tie instead of camp casual attire. And so I'm just wondering, what are you expecting here from both Tim Walls and J.D. Vance?

I, the only thing I'll say about the inside of that debate prep, which I wasn't in debate prep, but you know, obviously keep in touch with Pete, people around him who are there is that that tie was very red and very, very cheap. It was horrifying, you know, because Pete has such a distinct visual brand, like the white rolled up shirts, rolled up sleeves, the blue tie, seeing him in this eyesore of a red tie was very, very disorienting. Hold on. I'm sorry. I've got to challenge you there as a host.

Pete had awful outfits before he came out. The pictures of Pete as a closeted Mayor Pete, the offenses against our sartorial eyes are like the equivalent of Donald Trump's offenses against the Constitution and democracy. I mean, that is how awful his outfits were. So he probably had it still in his closet. Wow.

They were pretty bad. But I, unfortunately, I never met in the closet, Pete. I only met out of the closet, Pete, when he was dressing slightly better. I wouldn't say that he's like, you know, the political equivalent of Tom Ford, but he has a good uniform. It works for him. And he does not wear these like eyesore bright red polyester ties. So, okay. The debate.

What I would say is generally vice presidential debates really, really, really don't matter. And I have seen some people saying, and I do think that there could be an argument that this one matters a little bit more than previous ones. And David Axelrod made the point yesterday that with a president as old as Donald Trump, the

The vice president matters more. We clearly saw that with Joe Biden. And so more eyes will be on J.D. Vance. I think eyes will be on J.D. Vance as a possible God help us if Trump gets elected too old to serve, but also eyes on Vance as sort of the natural heir to the MAGA movement if Trump loses.

With Tim Walz, I also think that there could be more eyes on him than usual with a VP candidate, just because the nature of the shortened campaign, which is that a lot of voters still don't have completely formed opinions on Kamala Harris. You know, I think it's a third of voters say they want to hear more about her. So he can help fill in some of those blanks, hopefully fill them in very positively. But

from all indications, as someone who unfortunately watches 2022 Senate debates, Vance is a very good debater. And he's gotten a lot of practice on this during this campaign because he takes a lot of questions from the media. He goes essentially everywhere. He goes on hostile news networks and takes questions and gaggles at his events. And that is really, really good practice. We have seen less of that from Wallace. And so he's probably going to be less sharp than Vance in that regard. And

It warmed my flack heart when one of the first things he said when Kamala picked him was he warned her that he's a bad debater. So he did a very good job early on of setting the expectations very low for his performance.

So I want to get into the fans, but since you're talking about that, let's talk about the wall side of this because I'm kind of torn and I'm wondering what your advice would be if you were in the room there at Camp North Star. Because on the one hand, I could see an argument that Wall's goal is really just to be appealing, be affable, assuage any concerns about the Harris-Walls ticket that they're going to be whatever Marxist far leftists are.

you know, talk a little bit about kind of mainstream policy priorities that they want.

not get into the mud with JD Vance, roll his eyes at him a couple of times and move forward. And then there's another part of me, the attack dog part of me, that's like, JD, just there's so much material. I mean, like everybody goes to America's Hitler, but he's literally flip-flopped on everything. And he was me. He was Tim Miller. He was like a climate change, pro-gay rights, pro-immigration, like Republican, like five years ago. And so like where, how would you try to strike that balance if you were a waltz?

Yeah. So you do need to reassure people about the Harris-Walls agenda, that it's not going to be some, you know, crazy communist leftist thing. And that is, it's not a concern, but people do have questions like, what do they stand for? Where in the Democratic Party spectrum are they? And, you know, the people I know in my life who are undecided, that's sort of the questions that they have. Like, is this going to be a radical ticket or just sort of like a make things better Democratic Party that is more, you know, sort of broad based agenda?

So I think that's important. But I do think it is pretty important to try to draw J.D. off sides, right, to put him on defense. And I don't know specifically how Wallace is going to do that. I don't have any insight into it that they could go at the flip flops. Right. And I think J.D. Vance is someone who does not like having his integrity questioned, who does not like having his motives questioned. And we've seen him get defensive in interviews when that happens. You know, a good one.

recent example was with Dana Bash when she sort of called him out for just lying and about the Haitians eating cats and household pets and all that whole episode. So I think you can go at that, but you can also go at, you know, you can go at the weird angle, right? This is a guy who, I mean, I'm 41 years old. I just had a kid a year ago. So like,

Fertility have been on the brain a lot lately, but this is a guy who talks more about like my fertility, my reproductive choices than I've ever thought about it. And that's, there's something really weird about that.

And I think that they can also go at like the extreme part. Another piece, though, that I think Walls is uniquely suited to do is to do sort of a Midwest mano a mano, right? They're both sort of, you know, from the Midwest, obviously slightly different regions. But J.D. Vance is someone who grew up there, who profited off it with his book, you know, went to sort of Silicon Valley, I think, to be sort of like a Midwest planer and then really went to Washington and sold the Midwest out.

Since going to Washington, he hasn't fought for the people he grew up with. He hasn't worked to combat the addiction crisis, worked to improve public education options for people who are stuck and need more opportunities. He hasn't worked to help working middle class people. He voted for Trump's tax cuts.

And I think that something like that, sort of a face-off where he goes to what a lot of people see as Vance's core strength, I think that can be a smart route too. Curious what you think, the sort of best ways. A lot there. Yeah. Your cat just did like an Olympic jump over your shoulder off the table, which was really cool for the YouTube viewers. So that kind of distracted me for a second. Well, I mean, I'm talking about JD Vance. So he's absolutely...

as anti-cat a politician as you can get. So they're probably going to be a little exercise in the back.

in the background. That's true. On brand. So on the wall side, I would be a little nervous to do the man a man thing. I see what you're saying, you know, and in the speeches, you know, I kind of like that riff about how, oh, he thinks he's, he says he's from Midwest, but he like then went to Yale and then was a hedge fund guy and has a sugar daddy and then sold it, wrote a book selling everybody out. And I've been working in the community. I like it in the sense of like, I'm a regular person that's actually cares about the community and cares about you and,

I worry a little bit about the macho Tim Walls, like despite being a football coach, I don't think that he's going to read macho to like the young men that, you know what I mean? When I said, I didn't mean man, I didn't mean, I meant like mano a mano. Mano a mano. Midwestern versus Midwestern. Not like who's the alpha dog.

No, this is when you can tell you were a Republican. Because you think that this is not what Democrats do. We just really don't do dick measuring contests on debate stages. I know that's all you guys are about. It's all about these masculinity contests. But no, that is not at all what I was talking about. No measuring needed here. I hear you. Okay.

Okay, so the Midwestern thing, I think that's right. To be honest, I think that it's situational. I think that the low expectations Tim Wall set for himself are real. If you watch some of his debates, he is just okay. It's not his strength, right? JD is an oily...

debate team kid, you know? Tim Walls is not. Like, Tim Walls is going to do way better at the tailgate, like being a normal human than J.D. Vance is. But J.D. might be better in this setting, in a studio. And so if the team feels like Walls can, like, nail a couple of punches, what I'd probably just do is prep him on a couple things and have him get really, really right on it and only do those. Because you do not want a freewheeling insult contest tonight. Like, that's a loser for Tim Walls.

Like JD is unappealing in every imaginable way, but he's going to probably come away as the winner in an insult contest.

Yeah, no, I agree with that. And he's very poised and as unlikable as I generally find him, he's good in a debate setting as we saw in 2022. Yeah, talk about that. So for people who didn't watch 2022 debates, I mean, I mean, Tim Ryan is up way overperforming Democrats and Ohio's a red state. He loses still. I did way worse than Mike DeWine, like by 12 points or something. Right. So, you know, there's something to learn there. J.D. was not like did not

like the room on fire in Ohio. But at the debates, Ryan is also kind of like has an everyman vibe in a different way than Tim Walls does. Yeah. And JD would counter punch on these hits, like on abortion and stuff. And like he did so pretty effectively, like objectively, it was pretty effective. Like to me, it was very unappealing because I find him unappealing in every imaginable way. But like, if you're just scoring on points, he was pretty good at like parrying the attacks, I thought.

Yeah. And that's a really good point is the art of the counterpunch, you know, to people who don't sort of do debate prep, don't really follow it is, is,

Where you can really see a skilled debater is not someone who can just attack their opponent. It's not just someone who can sort of respond well to an attack. Someone who can take an attack against them, turn it around, and go on offense and counterpunch. And he did do that very well. You know, I think Times yesterday had something going back to Vance's debates and talked about when Tim Ryan in one of the debates accused Vance of supporting the great replacement theory. And Vance turned it around and called him a...

Ryan a scumbag and that this was, uh,

and imperiling the safety of his family and all of this. And he did it much more elegantly than I just did. But we did see that he was able to counterpunch pretty well. And on abortion, I got to say, I can't remember the exact exchange. The abortion exchange, this is what it was. Because remember, right when Dobbs love returned, it was that story of the young, I was going to call her a young woman. She was a child who had to go across state lines.

to get an abortion because she'd been raped because of the crackdown. And obviously a horrific story and a totally legit hit by Ryan. And Vance is like, well, but the culprit in this case was an undocumented immigrant. Right. Yes. And so then he just totally flipped it into immigration. He did the opposite of what Trump did. When he was asked about immigration and started talking about his crowd sizes, he was asked about abortion and flipped it into immigration. Vance is going to be good at that.

If I recall correctly, I think Biden did that in the debate. Both Biden and Trump did that. Biden did the exact opposite. Took abortion into immigration. Yeah, wrong. That's wrong. That's not what you're going for. If you're a Democrat, you're trying to take immigration into abortion.

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The thing about Vance that is interesting to me tonight, I've heard a lot of people talk about, but I'm interested in your take on it.

It is two women who are the moderators. He likes to attack the media, right? You have Nora O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan. You mentioned his childless cat lady and like this kind of seething resentment for women. I noticed in playbook this morning that he had deadbeat dad, Jason Miller.

as part of his debate prep team. So I do think it's interesting that it's cool for J.D. Vance to hang out with people who have children and then don't take care of them or pay their alimony. But he really loathes women who choose not to have children or can't have children. So I think that's an interesting moral choice by J.D. Vance. But if I was his team tonight, that would be the thing I'd be the most worried about is him like

lashing out at Nora and Margaret in a way that feels misogynistic and just totally reinforces the childless cat lady idea.

Oh, yeah. But I mean, they've telegraphed a fair amount about their debate prep, specifically that they're doing a lot of it. And I would be very, very surprised if he does not come very prepared for that, very prepared for that dynamic and very scripted. I don't think we're going to see him lashing out and having a tone deaf moment on that. But, you know, I could be wrong. This is my final thing on the debate. Looking forward, you're disappointed about how VP debates don't usually matter.

The caveats to that, one of them, which you mentioned, is Donald Trump would be the oldest president of all time if he was president. And so that makes the J.D. question a little more relevant. The other is that it might be the last debate.

Like, it might be the debate that, you know, that's never been the case, right? Where the VP debate was the last debate because there's always, you know, then another one or two presidential debates after it. And if Donald Trump continues to chicken out and refuse to debate Kamala Harris after she just whooped him in the first debate, then it could be kind of the last thing that people are left with. And so maybe it has a little bit more importance because of that. I don't know. Maybe not. What do you think?

Maybe, maybe. I don't know. The last debate sort of faded, I think, fairly quickly, minus the cats and dogs. Eating the cats. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But I don't know. We'll see. I'm skeptical that this moves the needle much, but I'm also the same person that before the Biden-Trump debate went on a podcast with Dan Pfeiffer and said I was optimistic about...

how Biden would perform in my defense, into my defense, my expectations were so low that I did not think it would take much to meet them.

But I'm just saying, take everything I say, all my expectations, bat debates with a grain of salt. This is why we have the yin and yang. That's why I have you on, because I would not say I was optimistic in that case. Or for Kamala, by the way. I was wrong. I was deeply nervous about Kamala in the first debate just because of lack of reps. And she shone. She shined. She was so good. Right. She stepped up to the plate, hoping we see the same for Wall. So I guess one final dick measuring thing that really did debates.

It is crazy that Trump won't debate her again, right? I mean, like, how do you run the macho manhood campaign with Dana White and Hulk Hogan and then refuse to look at Kamala Harris in the first debate, get bitch slapped, and then refuse to debate her again?

Well, I mean, I think it's because he got bitch slapped and he can fall back on the fact that he said he would do a June debate and a September debate and that he met his obligations. And if I were him, if I were his team, I would say absolutely not. Don't go out again. But there's no indication that MAGA world punishes him for being inconsistent, that they punish him from, you know, backing away from the fights he says he's going to take on. So, you know, I don't think he's going to pay a political price.

The weakest alpha in history. It's really unbelievable. Right. That's the one thing. It does give Kamala Harris just an opportunity to continue to dog him on that. And it's going to bother him.

One thing I didn't get to yesterday, kind of on Friday, was down at the border and gave a speech. And I know that this is something you and I were talking about a bunch in during a special election, the Tom Suozzi election up in New York, which we were watching closely, and kind of the approach he took to immigration that was a little bit different. And it seems like that she's taking a bit out of his playbook. I just want to play one segment of what she was saying down at the border. There are consequential issues at stake in this election.

and one is the security of our border. The United States is a sovereign nation, and I believe we have a duty to set rules at our border and to enforce them. And I take that responsibility very seriously. She's down there. It was serious. It was solemn. They have an ad, a very aggressive ad that they're running that was paired with it.

There are two schools of thought on this, which is why I wanted to bring it up. The Swazi school of thought was, let's try to cut against the vulnerability here. Let's talk about it. Let's demonstrate I'm going to take it seriously. Let's punch a little bit at the Republicans for not actually doing anything on this. And then there is the other school of thought that's like, anytime you're talking about immigration, you're losing. Literally talk about anything else. What do you think?

I completely disagree with the second one. If voters are telling you that something is a top issue for them, voters are telling you that they are concerned about crime. If voters are telling you that they are concerned about immigration, the worst thing you can do as a politician, elected official, is to tell them that their concerns aren't valid, that they're imagined, that they're fomented purely by Fox News.

And unfortunately, that has been the approach of some Democrats on these issues in the past. In 2022, in New York, for instance, we got absolutely hosed and, you know, all these congressional races, in part because Democrats did not take voters' concerns on crime seriously. The Swazi special election, which, you know, I was an advisor on, could have been a repeat of that.

that. If Swazi had taken sort of the DC mindset or frankly, like the advice of a lot of people around here, like I got so many calls from these big political brands saying, why is he playing on the, you know, Republicans issues? Why is he just talking about abortion? And you know why he wasn't just talking about abortion? Because if he did, he would not be addressing by far and away the number one issue.

And so what he did was one, you know, and what every Democrat should do on this issue where immigration is a top issue for voters is to one, meet voters where they are, say, yes, we understand it's a concern. Two, talk about the solutions and the solutions start with

One, securing our border. And then two, you know, making sure that we have some compassion, you know, that we allow people who are fleeing violence and persecution to have a good asylum process to make sure that we are providing a pathway to citizenship for our DREAMers.

But three, and this is a really important thing, is you said that we took this on to minimize the vulnerability. We did more than that. Tom could not have had better instincts on this issue. And he said, I don't want to run away from this issue. I don't want to minimize the vulnerability. I want to go on the offense on it. And that's exactly what he did. And I remember one of the first weeks of the campaign, his opponent did an event outside a big migrant facility in Queens.

And we saw it being announced and we decided, you know what? Let's go crash the event. Not literally crash. We basically just waited until she was done. Then he went out and stood in front of all the cameras. Oh, this is like what I used to do outside of the Debbie Wasserman Schultz events that you went to back when I was an RNC rat fucker. Right. Exactly. But his approach was actually successful in this instance. And

And it was one of those things where like it was sort of meta where when we're preparing it in the minutes up to it, I'm like, this could either be a complete disaster or this could be like a turning point. This could then be sort of a model for what Democrats do. And when he did it, he just went and did like a total masterclass and talked about how it was really the Republicans who own the border issue now because they under Donald Trump's direction killed our best shot at a bipartisan border deal in decades. Yeah.

Because they believe that more chaos at the border, you know, more chaos in cities where, you know, tens of thousands of migrants are being sent is better politically for them than a solution. And from then on, you know, New York TV loved it, obviously, but it started to trickle out nationally. And then you saw other people jumping on this. And there's no doubt that it was a really brilliant political move by him.

And it is one that I wish more Democrats were adopting. But I do think sometimes Democrats are a little bit scared of their shadow on this. They're a little bit scared of the activist groups, right? They don't want to be called racist or xenophobic. They're also scared of talking about an issue where Democrats generally have been losing. But the only way we're going to win the issue

is if we go out and try to win it. Like, we're not going to win the issue of immigration. We're not going to mitigate voters' concerns by pretending it doesn't exist, by telling voters, you know, they only care about this because of Fox News. We've got to go take it head on. Not only that, call out the fact that the Republicans are the ones who are torpedoing any solutions just because they think it will help them politically. And I also feel like Kamala has, like, a little bit of...

leeway to do that without worrying about pushback from the left. I mean, partly because it's such a short sprint, partially just because of the credibility that she's gained. You know, I don't know. And it feels like she's been doing that pretty well. I don't know. What do you think? Yeah. No, I agree. I think she has been. But generally when I talk to Democrats, whether they're running for statewide congressional office, I do still sense a hesitance about it. And I just tell them, please, like, I

I will send you the Tom Suozzi talking points. Chris Murphy did a great memo on this after Tom Suozzi won. That was perfect, pitch perfect. I think Chris Murphy and Tom Suozzi are the best messengers in our party on this. And we'd encourage anyone who's curious about the messaging and the best way to do it to go back and read some of their interviews and their memos on it because it is a great way of how we can take something that is a very big weakness for us and actually go on the offense, neutralize it, and maybe even win it.

Well, we have the Liz Strategist hat on. You were maybe the biggest proponent of the go-everywhere strategy that Pete executed. Obviously, Pete was talented enough to execute a go-everywhere strategy and have it be effective. Not everybody can go and do a million podcasts and do a million interviews and

and not have it hurt themselves, as evidenced by JD Vance, who seemed to spend a lot of time going everywhere on podcasts and having to have a detrimental result. So the go everywhere strategy does not always work. But we've been having a lot of conversation here at the Bullwark about this, about how the vice president and Tim Walz have not really been going everywhere. And I don't care about like the DC elite media whining about how they aren't doing interviews with them. But I

But I would like to see them in more in different kinds of environments and different kinds of interviews, getting to different kinds of audiences. We've seen a little bit of that over the last couple of days. Kamala was on All the Smoke, which is a podcast by these two basketball players, Matt Barnes and Steven Jackson. That was on yesterday. I listened to that on the flight up here. I thought she did really well. Walls was on like the We Rate Dogs YouTube podcast.

which I don't know, was, I guess if you're into dogs, maybe you liked that. It was gauzy. It was nice. There's no harm done at minimum. Would you think about those two activations? Should they be doing more? You know, I've been having people message me and say, Tim, you wanted them to do this. And now they did look and I'm like, well, just doing one of these things doesn't really check the box. I'd like to see like 20 or 50. But I don't know. What do you think on that?

Yeah, you're right. I mean, for those things to work, it's got to be sort of part of an all of the above strategy, right? With Mayor Pete, we weren't just like putting him on a podcast about West Wing politics.

rewatches or whatever in a vacuum. You know, he was doing that on top of talking to the New Yorker, going on MSNBC, doing every possible local Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina interview that he could, you know, because those were the early states, Nevada as well. Look, you've got to really have an all of the above strategy in today's fragmented media environment if you want to reach people and you've got to meet people where they are. So I watched some of the clips from the vice president's interview yesterday

in the podcast yesterday. And I thought she was really good. She was very comfortable. She seemed loose, but she was also good talking about pretty thorny issues like attacks on her race, questions about her blended family, questions about childhood trauma, you know, not exactly light topics.

And what it indicated to me is that this is someone who, when 30% of people want to learn more about you, should be going out and doing more interviews. Now, I want to be very clear. I am not second-guessing their strategy. They've got a really great team around them. That's one of the best communications strategists in democratic politics, Stephanie Cutter there. So I'm not here to be an armchair quarterback. But what I can say is that when I wrote about this in my book, Any Given Tuesday, I

this sort of dynamic and what was behind us doing it for Pete. What was behind us doing it for Pete was that the idea of like a 37 year old openly gay mayor of a town of a hundred thousand people was so absurd, right? That he'd be running for president that we needed to get him out there in front of as many audiences as possible because he was very good communicator. And if people could see him, then they could be like, you know what? Actually, I sort of get it. I could see this guy being president. But on the flip side, if you don't go out there,

And like with Kamala Harris, there's 30 percent of voters want to know more about her. If she doesn't go out there and fill that void, someone else is going to. And as I say in my book, either you feed the beast or the beast feeds on you. And so I think it's important to be very conscious of that dynamic. And I think what we're seeing is, you know, baby steps toward doing a more robust interview strategy.

media strategy. And I think it would be very smart. And to your point, it doesn't mean sitting down with Bloomberg. It doesn't mean sitting down with, I don't know. Axios. Sorry, Axios. Right. But it means doing a ton of local media and,

But doing some things that hit some of the elites, there's no harm in doing the daily podcast. So many people listen to that around the country. But then doing some stuff that's lighter, maybe more entertainment, stuff that's more sports related, whatever. It's like a buffet. It's a buffet. You just want to grab, have a little bit of everything, do a little bit of everything. And the more you do, the more people you're going to reach. And it doesn't all need to be super serious in a

You could do, for example, like a very not that serious kind of like breezy, never Trumper kind of gay YouTuber, you know, who, you know, will be will have a pretty friendly interview with you. Like that might be one idea. I don't know. We're just kind of brainstorming. And the thing about the media environment now is you can't like do one interview and expect it to dominate in the way that it has in the past. Right.

like an evening news interview, like a sit down with Katie Couric and you know, when Palin did that and that then dominated the news for days. But one thing we've seen is that you could do an interview with a breezy gay, never Trump Republican, have a really good moment or maybe a really bad moment, but let's say really good moment. And it's then suddenly it's picked up everywhere.

You know, the provenance now of clips doesn't really matter. It's like if you have a really good moment or a really bad moment, it could be on a podcast that two people listen to. But if it is remarkable in one way or another, it can go everywhere and travel everywhere. So I think that there are a number of different ways to, I was going to say, to skin a cat. But, you know, I've got to

I've got this one over here, but there are a number of different... That's not an appropriate metaphor on J.D. Vance debate day. You're not going to be an armchair quarterback. I am. I'm a podcast host now, so I'm going to armchair quarterback with my losing record. So, you know, you can push back. I do think there's just like a little bit of caution that I don't quite understand. Like, she was so good on all this book. There are a couple of things I learned. I've been consuming every Kamala thing. She's...

She talked about her being a child of divorce in a way that I haven't heard her talk about it before. And I thought that was very human and vulnerable. And like, it's an experience a lot of people have. I liked that. She talked about praying every morning. And, you know, she talks about praying, but just like this notion that like she wakes up every morning and prays. I'm sure she's said that before at a religious function, but just kind of casually talking about it, like a couple of guys on a podcast. Yeah.

Like it was sort of showing her in a new light. It's like, oh, no, this is like legit. Like this is something that she legitimately cares about. Right. Yeah. And so I think that there are like 100 places like All the Smoke where the interview is going to be just more revealing than it is challenging. And I could use like...

4x what we're getting you know matt by had a good column about this in the washington post that a lot of the traditional interviews now sort of fail viewers because it's become a game where it's like you're just trying to challenge the candidate and get a viral moment and or to get you on a hypocrisy you used to be for this and now you're for this it's like okay great yeah it's a tim russer we're all doing a fake tim russer imitation you know 30 years later and then

the candidate goes in with a script of like, these are the moments I'm going to have. And like, it's sort of them talking past each other, but you don't really learn more about the person running for office in a way that you could with a longer form interview. Like, you know, we saw with the podcast yesterday that,

To me, it does speak to why you should sort of go outside of just doing CNN, MSNBC, traditional news, and do longer form things because people can learn a lot more about you beyond just the policy bullet points. And given that people still want to know more about Kamala Harris, who she is, what she believes, whether they should be comfortable with her, I feel like doing those sorts of things where people can see, I don't know, a little bit more into politics

I don't want to say like her soul, but like see a little bit more about what she's about. I feel like that would be really helpful because then people could see, okay, she's not like a radical leftist. She's not someone who wants to remake, you know, the fabric of American society. She's just wants to go out, help the middle class, help working middle class Americans get by. And I think it would be very good for her.

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You've been also doing some advising to the DNC on third-party stuff and on RFK. So we have to do a little bit of RFK being so weird content here. This weekend on Saturday, he was at an event called Rescue the Republic. The types of people at this event were really something. You had Rob Schneider, the aforementioned Rob Schneider, the failed SNL actor who...

who said that Dikembe Mutombo died because of the vaccine. He was on the top of the list there. You had Jordan Peterson, the crazy pro-Russia colonel, Douglas McGregor, who's got some cable news stuff. Tulsi Gabbard was there. Russell Brand was there. He's found God, apparently. He was doing the Lord's Prayer. Lara Logan, who has totally gone cuckoo with her conspiracies on various things. Jimmy Dore, your buddy.

far leftist who's now kind of jumped the horseshoe over to the right. My man, Pizzagate Jack Posobiec. Like this is the crowd that RFK is hanging out with. I just want to play one clip from his remarks there. During COVID, we saw the greatest attack on America's liberties and our constitutional right. And at any time in American history,

That's Bobby Kennedy's son who thinks that the greatest attack on America's liberties in American history was COVID? Did he not read anything that his father said during the civil rights struggle in the 60s?

You know, the thing about these guys, I know you'd sent me like a tweet from Dell Big Tree comparing this event to Woodstock, right? And these guys like think that they're like such edgelords, that they're so provocative, that they're truth tellers. And like, I will give them this. They're very weird and off putting. But like, ultimately, the thing about them is they're so predictable.

They're so boring. And like how many times, like you and I could have scripted that in advance or we could have told you exactly what they're going to say. They're going to say mass mandates are bad. The jab is bad. They're going to make some, I don't know, edgy jokes about trans people because, oh, no one has ever done that before. They're going to talk about how their free speech is under attack and like,

I'm so glad that RFK Jr. dropped out of the race because I didn't have to listen to him as much. I'm sort of annoyed that I still have to listen to him. But I mean, this is just, if you are trying to reach people in the middle, persuadable voters, I just don't think that this is their crew that's going to do it. I don't know. I have to disagree with you, Liz. There's one thing that I don't think I could have scripted. Here's RFK at the Trump event in Michigan over the weekend. The average girl in this country...

is now reaching puberty between 10 and 13 years old. That's six years younger than a couple generations ago, and it is the youngest of any nation in the world. We are destroying our children, and that was the major reason. His commitment, Donald Trump's commitment, to make America healthy again.

Couple questions. Why do J.D. Vance and RFK keep talking about women's vaginas and their periods? And and two, is Donald Trump committing to make America healthy again? What is that? OK, thank you. Those are two things I was thinking. What? I don't know. It is so, so creepy. Like, again, these are people who talk about, you know, my lady parts more than I think about them.

And, you know, given RFP Jr.'s history with women, which has certainly been in the news recently, that's probably something I would stay away from. I mean, he might consider himself an expert in some of these matters, but... There is the little black book. There is the little black book.

I mean, and God love him, I guess. I mean, his poor wife, but yeah, I mean, I guess he has seen a lot of vaginas. It seems like then the idea that Donald Trump is the one who's going to make America healthy again. Like give me a fucking break. Okay. Donald Trump is a guy who tried repeatedly to

to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which is expanded healthcare to millions and millions of people. And there's no indication that he wouldn't try to do that again if he were elected. Two, it was under his administration that you saw all these deregulations where corporations could dump more crap into the public waterways, where corporations could put more crap into food. And three,

like, let's be real. The guy is like a walking Big Mac. You know, he's what, even when he caters his White House dinners, it's like almost exclusively with fast food. We know that his diet consists a hundred percent of fast food. Like what? There's nothing about that man that,

That screams healthy. There's nothing about his record that screams healthy. And I think the whole Maha thing, which is like the worst acronym, Make America Healthy Again, is just rooted in, I don't know, trying to paper on a reason for Kennedy to attach himself to Donald Trump and be relevant. And the reality is, why is RFK Jr. attaching himself to Donald Trump? Because he wants to be relevant.

of it. And the Democratic Party rightly is like, you're a fucking freak. Like you are so off putting your positions on so many issues. Your personal conduct is really beyond the pale and like, you know, good riddance, like go over there, have fun with it. But I think that embracing him is a strategic mistake from Donald Trump. And RFK's embrace of Donald Trump is a betrayal of the people who were true believers and who did think that

And RFK really was maybe someone who was going to shake up the system and try to end chronic disease. And it's really, he's selling his soul because he wants to get a few more cable hits and have a little bit more of a platform. This is a great point. He doesn't want to shake up the system. He's not an outsider. He desperately wants to get back in the system. This is his way back in. He wants to be relevant. That's a very important point. I'm glad you mentioned that. He made the ultimate backroom deal, the backroom deal that he...

you know, ran against the entire campaign. And like this one other thing he said over the weekend, it was hilarious. Like he said, the Democrats, you know, they spent tens of millions of dollars against me to make me seem like a crazy person. And it's like, no, we spent zero dollars. Like you just made yourself seem like a crazy person. When I started at this project, we thought maybe we'd have to run ads or do mail. We didn't run a dime in ads.

You know what our operation against him was? We had two press people, two press people the entire time. Very talented press people. Right. Very high quality. Which goes to show that, you know, on these campaigns, you don't need a cast of a thousand. Granted, not everyone gives you as much material as RFK Jr. does, but it was a very traditional rapid response. And that was enough to really take him from being...

fairly positively viewed to being very, very negatively viewed. Congrats to the two VHQPP, very high quality press people that the Democrats paid to just play RFK talking, basically. But very well done. I can't let you go without rapid fire on our three favorite topics. Number one, what is happening in the New York mayor's race? I mean, you know, you...

You, this is your world. It's not my world, not the New York mayor's race, I guess with the New York mayor. And is he going to resign? Is Andrew Cuomo really going to get in or other people going to get in? Like just what is happening? I don't see him resigning. I really don't see a world in which Eric Adams steps down. Is Andrew Cuomo going to get in? Oh, this is the least favorite question I get. You know, I obviously I wrote at length about this in my book. Like it wasn't the most

pleasant thing to write about. Generally, when you're writing a book, you want it to be all about your victories, your successes, all the moments where you're the hero. And I ended up opening and closing with the Cuomo stuff because it was really important. And I learned a really big lesson, which is that sometimes you get in too deep, you end up doing things you are not proud of, and you end up working for some bad people. And I do not think that Andrew Cuomo should be in a position of power again. I don't want to talk about this forever. I don't want to be in every story about it, but like I,

I do feel like people like me have a responsibility to say that, you know, this is a guy who did not conduct himself honorably in office when he was on the way out. I think you can learn a lot about people by how they conduct themselves in the middle of a crisis. You saw someone who was, you know, erratic, who was very vindictive, who was untruthful, you know, and who was willing to throw everyone around him under the bus if he thought it would help him just in the slightest bit. Yeah.

And I don't think if he runs for mayor, I don't think he would be running for mayor to improve the city. He'd be running for mayor to improve his reputation, right?

And probably to get revenge on the people he thinks who wronged him. And it's a very Trumpian thing. It's very sad. I think he did do some good things as governor. But, like, we just need to aim a little bit higher. You know, this is the greatest city in the world. It's the greatest. Does the greatest city in the world have anybody running it right now? It seems like half of the leadership is either indicted or resigned. Yeah. Like, what's the gossip? Are there other people angling? Is there any hope?

Yeah, I mean, there are no names right now in the race that I think would be good. Some of them I think would be better than others. My hope is that there's someone out there who's considering it who...

better than the names that are currently in there. And we've got some time, right? Typically, this doesn't kick off until after the presidential race. And it's like, if South Bend could get a Mayor Pete, can't New York get a Mayor Pete? Or I would take half of a Mayor Pete. But we do deserve better. And it's really disappointing to me when I see smart people, whether they're in the donor class or sort of the

Consulting class or even in the media say, well, maybe we need Andrew Cuomo. Why? Why? Aim higher, do better and say, you know what? We don't need to settle for move from one scandal scarred politician and Eric Adams to another scandal scarred politician and Andrew Cuomo.

I love that. Okay. The election coming up. I don't know. We got 30 something days. I'm a little bit more concerned than other people. I mean, I'd rather be calm than the other guy, but it's a little close for comfort. There's some other takes out there. You might have heard of Professor Alan Lichtman. He has the 13 keys system that he uses.

He says we don't need to be worried. Kamala is definitely going to win. And so I'm wondering kind of where you fall on the scale. Are you satisfied by the 13 keys? Are you concerned about the polling at all? Like what kind of indicators are you looking for? I mean, I would put more faith in my cat's political predictions. And I went, Alan Lichtman. I mean, this is when you realize that social media was maybe a mistake. You get these like guys who,

just going out there and suddenly they're masters of the universe. They do these like creepy videos, put their faces on t-shirts, develop these completely bizarre, you know, keys to win the election that like, I don't know, are sort of nonsensical. So that rant about Alan Lichtman over, um,

It's going to be close. It's going to be close. Sometimes I see people criticizing Kamala Harris and her team for saying that they're the underdogs in the race, but we've got to run like we're the underdogs. There's a lot at stake. You know, there's a very good shot that we lose the Senate. And like, I just, the thought of a Donald Trump winning race,

And losing the Senate and Republicans potentially keeping the House is like real nightmare fuel. And so I do think people should be thinking that Kamala Harris is behind and be doing everything in their power to help her get ahead. And that it's incumbent upon also the campaign to really leave everything on the field. And that's why I hope, you know, I think we will see them going out and doing more interviews, being more aggressive in their communications, because you don't want to look back the day after the election and been like, yeah, maybe I should have been doing a little bit more.

Finally, one additional, we have many cosmic connections, but one of them is Joe Burrell, your Cincinnati Bengals fan. I'm an LSU fan. Right. You know, over the summer, he bleached his hair like a late 20s twink going through an early midlife crisis. And since then, the Bengals haven't done that well. His passing percentage is pretty high. So he's doing pretty well, but his completion percentage, excuse me, is pretty high. But I'm concerned. I'm concerned about bleach blonde Joe and the Bengals. Are you feeling better or worse about him than you are about Kamala Harris?

I am concerned about the Bengals. I am not concerned about Bleached Blonde Joe. You like the look? I'm not going to betray anything about our group text, Tim, but we may or may not have a group text that is devoted to Joe Burrow. And I may or may not have hit it up the second I saw the Bleached Blonde Joe.

because I mean, that photo did some things to me. I was very excited about it. And like, look, I don't think that he's using this power of, you know, you have two power sources and like one of them is your football power source. And one of them is your sexual sexuality power source. And maybe the bleach blonde brought them out of balance into imbalance. Yeah.

You know, I actually did think about that yesterday. Whether if you are doing this stuff too much, does it then take away from it? But like David Beckham did similar things. And I think it's cool for like straight men, for attractive straight men to have some fun with their appearance. And in a sport that is as small C conservative as the football, I think it's sort of refreshing to see. You know, I got a little nervous in the off season when I was seeing a lot of him at Fashion Week.

And like, I want him to be very focused on football. I want him to be doing that. But I think, you know, if he wants to have some fun with his hair, he's got a gorgeous head of hair, then go for it. And, you know, I loved him with his, when he, when it was a little longer last season, I loved it when I was buzzed and bleach blonde. And I love it now when it's the tips and I am pro baseball.

Slim Shady Burrow. There's our one minute Joe Burrow thirst at the end of the podcast. I know you all are waiting for it. Thank you to my friend Liz Smith for coming to the podcast. We'll be back tomorrow with another Democratic bigwig to do a recap of the debate. Hope to see you all then. I also just want to say that as we're coming on, there's a report from Barak Ravid, a senior White House official, telling him that the U.S. has indications that Iran is preparing to imminently launch

a ballistic missile attack on Israel. We had Bill Kristol talking yesterday about how foreign policy is going to be part of this election over the next five weeks. So we will be monitoring everything around that and potentially having guests on to discuss it as necessary. So in the meantime, our thoughts are with folks over in Israel and in the Middle East. And we're looking forward to seeing you all back here tomorrow with another great guest. Hopefully I can get fully walls-pilled tonight. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks to Liz Smith. We'll see y'all soon. Peace. My high school days I packed away Set my sights on a bigger stage Jimmy Carter moved to D.C. A Georgia boy just like me Life seemed easy Nothing much that we needed That was 1976 Didn't know who I was yet A pretty little blonde-haired girl

Stole my heart and changed my world. Two kids and a moonlit sky. Built a fire that just won't quit. That was 1976. The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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If it's got to be clean, it's got to be tied. When you sign up at WorkMoney, you could win $50,000. With the average renter paying around $2,100 per month, that means you can have rent covered for a whole year and more. So you can be more... And when you're more... That means you get more... And more...

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