Mark McKinnon: Taking Back the Freedom Agenda
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Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. I'm pumped to be back with my partner in crime, Mark McKinnon. He was a media advisor for both Democratic and Republican campaigns, including W, McCain, and Richards. And he's co-creator and executive producer of a little show called The Circus you might have heard of. Hey, MCAT, what's going on, man? Hello, Thelma. Louise here. Good to see you again, my old pal. Yeah, long time no see. The last two months, it's just a crime that we weren't able to be out there.

Oh, my God. I mean, it's just insane. It's just ridiculous that we're not on the air right now. I mean, this is more circusy than anything we ever covered and would be epic, but we can talk about it. Unbelievable. I did my best without the cameras to do circus-type behavior in the spin room the other night. We can always count on you.

I want to talk about the debate. I buzzed you. We had the little hurricane in New Orleans. My schedule got mixed around and I needed a pinch hitter. So thank you for pinch hitting. But I texted you right after I saw this tweet. Bob Shrum, a former Democratic strategist, had sent this. He wrote, I coached a lot of presidential and other candidate debates.

Harris had one of the very best debates ever, JFK 60, Reagan 80 level. You replied, as have I, and worked against Bob, and I 100% agree. Really? That good? Reagan 80 for you? Yeah, really that good for a bunch of reasons. First of all, Bob Shrum is one of the best in the business ever. I watched him and also worked against him. He was a big Kennedy guy and

and prep for Gore. So he's a hall of famer and doesn't say that casually, but you think about the stakes that were at play here. And what's important to remember here is that people are not just, I mean, people are natural born communicators. People are not natural born presidential debaters. It takes a goddamn lot of work and a lot of preparation if you're actually gonna excel at this.

And, you know, you can try and wing it like Trump did and see what happened. But also George W. Bush winged it and his reelect. Obama winged it and his reelect. They didn't take it seriously and they got their asses handed to him. And it's a very particular kind of preparation that it takes. I mean, you have to understand what a split screen means. And she did that.

exceptionally well. I mean, in that debate, she looked like she was on the beach in the sun. Trump looked like he was in a hailstorm freezing his ass. He looked miserable. This debate, there was so much at stake, mostly for her.

You know, Trump was not going to move the dial one way or the other much. People have fixed opinions. But a lot of people don't know her. They were kind of open to whether or not they might consider her. Listen, I mean, there's sort of just the sound test. Turn the sound off. What did it look like? She looked relaxed and control, calm, calm.

presidential. For people who just turned in, they say, yeah, I could see her in the Oval. She checked off the things she needed to do. She introduced herself, told her backstory, did a bunch of policy stuff, checked those boxes. But the thing that was incredible and puts her in the Hall of Fame category with 80 and 60 is that she trolled him

Like I've never seen before, like nobody's ever done. And not only trolled him, but here's an interesting aspect of the trolling. She not only trolled him and just went right to his deepest psyche, which is so smart. You think about the debate, what's the thing he's most proud of? Like, you know, Wharton School, crowd size, and just go right at what he thinks his strengths are. And that'll take him off the chain. And it fucking did. But she also did it.

The times that she trolled, if you go back and look at it, she did it when she was being sort of attacked on her weak points. Like when she got pinned on immigration, she counterpunched on the trolling. So she took it right off her weak spot and went right to his, which was incredible. I was talking with somebody on our team about that. And actually, like they had a planned...

because I also called it a crowd-sized joke yesterday, but it wasn't really. It was even deeper than that. It was like, you're a bad entertainer joke. It's like people leave early. They get bored. People are walking out on you. People are ready to turn the page, which is even kind of a deeper cut. But they had planned that around something later in the debate where she was going to do it. And the immigration question comes up and she gives her answer. And then she's just like, you know, I'm just going to throw the you're boring people thing on the

end of this to kind of get you to change the subject. That was not the plan, according to the debate prep team. And it was like John on the fly by her, really well done. And that shows incredible ability and performance. That's just not a natural thing. And, you know, people say, well, you know, it's a debate. And what does that have to do with being president? Presidents, you know, thrown into a situation where a camera's on, so they have 30 seconds to answer a question. That's true. But what presidents do have to do is prepare

Prepare, prepare for foreign leaders meetings, prepare for crises. And this showed that she has the discipline to prepare and act like a president, which is, I mean, think how much was on her shoulder. I'm talking about tension city as she looks so fucking relaxed.

And then one other thing I just want to do a shout out. This is such inside baseball stuff, Tim, but it's important to give a shout out. You know, I was around the edges of a lot of prep, but I was a shallow media guy. There was always somebody in the room who was actually really organized, really like going through the list. The binder.

And here's an interesting data point that I learned, and I won't out where it came from, but it's a reliable source, that she did all this. At the same time, she's one of the most powerful lawyers at one of the most powerful law firms in the country. And they have, according to my source, they were opening a trial for one of the biggest firms in the country this same week. So she was doing both. So like Ann Richards, backwards and in high heels.

Unbelievable. Karen Dunn. For Vanity Fair, you wrote a piece of advice for Harris going into the debate. I just thought it'd be fun to go back through those. You gave 10 pieces of advice, but here were your top eight. One, confidence is key. Check. Two, tomorrow is better than yesterday. Check. Three, you can be both the incumbent and the change candidate. Yep. Four, pronouncements that separate from Biden are encouraged. She literally said, I'm not Joe Biden, in kind of a funny way at one point. Five, drive home freedom message. Six, backtrack.

Bait Trump and switch. Seven, almost ignore him from time to time. I don't know if she hit that one. Eight, laugh. All of them. I mean, she did everything. Yeah. What I said was it takes extraordinary preparation. And politics is about performance, especially at this level. And to do what she did requires extraordinary preparation. And she just was a pro. She's like a professional athlete, you know. And she just...

She prepared. She had the muscles right. She had the playbook down and she went out and executed. Let's talk about that. So you interviewed her for the circus. You've covered her. I mean, look, during the troubles, as I like to call them, after the Biden debate, you know, the whispered thing in D.C. from Democrats. What?

was, we don't know if she's up for it. Like she's been shaky. I was always a little more bullish on her than kind of what people were saying to me privately. But I was also concerned, you know, like she hadn't had a ton of reps. We'd seen her at times be in her head a little bit in some of these interviews. I mean, did you see this coming like this level of Hall of Fame baseball, whatever you call it? Did you see any of that when you were covering her spending time? Have you been surprised as well?

Well, listen, I think she exceeded everybody's expectations. Nobody expected that level of performance for something that was so critical. I did think that her stock was undervalued. And I interviewed her for the circus. And I always felt that she was a natural. Not only a natural, but that she was a performer.

that she could, when the lights go on, she hits a switch. And like Ann Richards or others, she just, she could turn it on with a flick of a switch.

she was just relaxed. You know, it was fun being around her. She just, she was sort of playful and she had the laugh and just kind of an ease about her. She wasn't uptight, you know, she wasn't like, oh God, I'm in an interview and what should I say? You know, and so Vice President Steve McCain always said, you know, you get kept in the dark and get fed scraps. So there's always a bit of that that, you know, I think is unfair. And I think there was a bit of misogyny always going on as well too. But, but that, she worked that to her advantage. You know, everybody underestimated her and the best thing in the

world to go into a debate is to be underestimated and overperform, which is exactly what she did. Let's talk about the substance of it a little bit. You've spent most of your career talking to the big middle folks. She ran pretty far to the left in 2019 and has been trying hard to pivot to the middle. How do you feel about the efficacy of that pivot and the Republicans' efforts to kind of brand her as on the far left?

Pretty good. I mean, the one thing that I'd say about her and Trump, the one that she shares with Trump, I don't think at her core she's ideological. I think she's practical. Yeah.

You know, I think she's kind of navigated the water. She came up to California. She kind of did what she had to do. But she's never been pinned ideological, despite Bernie Sanders. I think that – thank you, Bernie. Well, I mean, in 2019, it was wrong, but it was the practical conventional wisdom among Democrats. 100%. Like, oh, this is the moment. It's the progressive left, you know, is ascendant. And, you know, the racial justice, like that was like the –

That was the conventional, and it turned out to be wrong, was Biden was the primary, but that's what the smart people thought. I think she was just, she was acting practically. One thing that I'll say that I think is really important is that I, and I know you know this, I learned a lot more from losing campaigns than winning campaigns. And I think she did too. Yeah.

And the thing about her is if you've watched her over time, she's gotten better and better and better and better and better. She's grown. And you can just see it. She's like, you know, she played in the minors. She, you know, she she, you know, she got her batting practice down and now she's fucking she's slamming a man. And it's because she's done this a lot and and and she's gotten really good at it. And so for people who turn on the television and look at it, they go, yeah.

It looks like she knows what she's doing. She's presidential. And by the way, I think it's a big strategic mistake for the Republicans and Trump to call her a flip-flopper because that's basically saying, oh, she's moving to where most Americans are. It would be much better to just say she's still a fucking liberal because that's what people don't want. Yeah, and I think that she maybe still has some work to do on that on the economic side of things. But I don't know. On the foreign policy stuff –

To me, like flying colors. I felt that I said this a couple times, like when I, we had a little briefing with her privately earlier this year. And that was the thing I took away from that was that like she has been doing the homework on foreign policy stuff and taking it very seriously. And she has had a familiarity with it. And the themes that she was sounding are themes that I don't know.

2004-8 MCAT could have written for her and some of the stuff. I mean, she was sounding very, you know, in the bipartisan tradition of the country as far as national security.

Yeah. And it also sounded like it wasn't talking points. It felt like it was sort of coming from a core of experience. And that's the thing that you get from being a vice president. You're behind the scenes a lot, but you're absorbing a lot as well. And by the way, on that front, whatever you think of Joe Biden, that's something he did exceptionally well.

You mentioned that in the airport, you're in the airport. You do. You know, you're kind of like a Thomas Friedman in a cowboy hat, you know, kind of getting information from regular people. So you've got some Ukrainian folks. And she was so strong in Ukraine. I liked how she tied it to Poland. Oh, so smart. Yeah. Talk about the substance of her kind of conversation on the Ukraine policy and then the conversation you had in the airport. Well, I mean, this is something that I didn't even notice until I saw somebody remark on it later. But she...

When she was talking about Ukraine, she talked about sort of the Polish component of that history and the conflict that relates to, I don't know what the number is, like 50,000 Polish people who live in Pennsylvania, that it's going to have a direct impact on and relevance to. And that's, boy, that's talk about a smart game playing where the...

The David Plouffe. You're looking at the demographics. You're looking at the demographics. Don't talk about 5,000 things. Talk about the five that matter that get us elected. Yeah. So that was super smart. And then my Friedman focus group was, I just was in DCA airport and a woman walked up to me who's from Ukraine. You know, it was really sweet, but she said, you know, I just wanted to tell you that, you know, first of all, coming from Ukraine, I really love what Harris had to say. But more importantly, she said, I have a daughter who,

who is in college in Illinois. And she said that she and her sorority sisters, none of whom had voted before, all watched the debate, and every single one of them was now registered and voting for Kamala Harris.

That's a ridiculously fine point anecdote. But I'm hearing more and more and more of that. And I think the thing that's maybe overlooked in this election and undervalued at this point is we talk a lot about undecided voters. I don't think there's a lot of those. There may be a lot of unregistered voters who are registering. And you think about the Taylor Swift impact and stuff like that. Those kind of things could make a difference. She's breaking some brains out there on the Internet.

I have a little montage for you from Dave Rubin, Russian stooge, big influencer, millions of followers on YouTube, apparently was taking Russian money unwittingly. And Megyn Kelly, Rich Lowry, talking about Taylor Swift. Let's listen to that.

Elon Musk, who they hate, he saw that and he wrote this. Fine, Taylor, you win. I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life. So he's mocking, he's exposing the ridiculousness, right? It's like Taylor Swift, you are a young, pretty girl. Do you know what the gang members from Venezuela do to young, pretty girls?

It ain't pretty. I'm allowed to criticize Taylor Swift and I don't give a who gets upset. This is disgusting. She wants to vote Harris-Walls. She can do it all she wants. But to say the reason she's doing it is because of Tim Walls' stance on LGBTQ, FU, Taylor Swift. And Emily, this is unbelievable. The left is losing its mind. She signed it Taylor Swift, childless cat lady.

The anger. Where's all this anger come from? Elon wants to father her children. Dave Rubin's fantasizing about her getting raped by Venezuelan migrants. Megyn Kelly's F-wording her. I've lost the plot a little bit.

Yeah, Tim, there's a Cajun expression that you'll hear from James Carville, hit dogs bark. Those dogs are hit, man. I mean, it's ridiculous. Are you kidding? Megyn Kelly, she's saying, fuck you, because some celebrity endorsed a candidate? Come on. I mean, you didn't say that about Hulk Hogan, for God's sake. And I just think it testifies to it really hit a nerve. And, you know, you talk about the value of celebrity endorsements.

Taylor Swift, here's my idea for Taylor. She goes to the swing states, does concerts that are free for unregistered voters. And if you're unregistered, you get in free and you have to register at the concert. I don't know.

I don't know. Get in for free? I don't know. She has a pretty fancy setup there, Mark. I don't know if we're subsidizing that level of free tickets. I think she can afford it. I think she can afford it. I mean, I think there's no bad ideas in a brainstorm. We're going to start playing with that. But I'm with you. More voter regs. Well, she's already, I think, just in her little link that she put out, she's already registered almost a half a million new voters. Yeah, crazy. You know, you just think about the college.

dynamic North Carolina, and obviously the big state schools up in the Midwest. There's a non-trivial amount of people that can get engaged for something like this. I do agree with that. I think that that's obviously the bigger impact than her convincing people. I want to go back to the foreign policy thing with Ukraine, though. I'm asking everybody this. It's my obsession. So I've got to ask you, because you know this world. The folks that you worked with in the world that are on the NatSac side of things,

What more do these people want from her? You know, the Condys, the Bob Gateses, the W himself. Why haven't more of them spoken out on behalf of Kamala, do you think?

Well, I think it's a remarkable number who have and all those dominoes are falling and there's like a new one every day and there's 50 days left and I'm still holding out hope my boss will come out. I mean, we know how he thinks. He knows what he thinks about this weird shit and know how strongly they feel about

You know what's happened to foreign policy and how you know what Trump has done to the America first notion and standing up strong against Russia and all of that. So, you know, that Condi Rice is just gritting her teeth every day as a, you know, as a Russian expert of all Russian experts watching this.

So, yes, I agree. But like I said, Alberto Gonzalez came out today or yesterday, and there's a new one every day. That's true. You're always more of the glass half full guy than me. This is the Thelma and Louise balance. I'm always like, I want all of them. Like every last one. Until the last dog dies, I'm going to be shouting at the moon. It is the foreign policy thing that is the most striking. Because I just think that it would have been understandable if you're a national security person

that doesn't like Trump, that doesn't really know what her foreign policy is going to be. You don't know who's going to be around her. You're a little worried. She's a California liberal. Who knows, right? You read something on Fox somewhere when you're still watching Bret Baier that her dad was a Marxist. You got some little concerns in your head.

But since she's been out there, like the last seven weeks on foreign policy in particular, I mean, she has just been right down the middle, like not missing a beat on any of that stuff. Yeah, no equivocation, hard as a hammer, tough as steel.

Again, it's not like talking quits. It's something that's coming from her core, and it doesn't feel like something she just sort of recently adopted for the campaign. The only substantive complaint I've heard from anyone on foreign policy is from the left on Israel stuff. The left was hoping that she was going to tamp down some of the

or at least leave the door open maybe more to some more distancing from Israel. And she, she hasn't done it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think she's navigated that one pretty adroitly as well. Were you surprised by Dick Cheney? Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not surprised by Liz, of course, but Dick. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's Cheney's are all in.

Can you get your ad man hat on for me? You had your Taylor Swift idea while we're brainstorming. I like Dick Cheney and AOC in a joint ad sitting in a living room like the one you're in right now. You know, maybe maybe a cultural we disagree cultural exchange. You know, he's given her some elk or some like some meat from Wyoming. And, you know, she's cooking up some beans and rice or something for him.

You know, I don't know. Get them in the kitchen, a little cooking show. Oh, I can't do better than that. Yeah. We're working on it. You know those podcast ads that sound like a robot reading a script? Well, here's me, the robot, reading for The Perfect Gene, including this bit. They sent me their genes, and after wearing them to battle against my child playing as Yoshi in Mario Kart, I can confidently say they're even better than advertised. But is that my true opinion or just more of the script? Only one way to find out.

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That's 15% off for new customers at theperfectgene.nyc with promo code BULWARK15. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Fuck your khakis and get the perfect gene. I want to pivot to the cat stuff. I mean, these fucking guys, they're quadrupling down on...

this totally made up racist conspiracy that Haitian immigrants are abducting animals and eating them. Bill Hagerty was on CNN yesterday saying that he, you know, he's been hearing things on the internet, Senator from Tennessee. Chris Ruffo, who's supposedly from the intellectual wing of MAGA, that Ron DeSantis put him in charge of a university down there. He put out a tweet offering a $5,000 bounty for anybody that can provide evidence of Haitian immigrants

eating cats like how did they get here well laura loomer traveling around in the plane that that's uh that's part of it let's stop that tell people who that is okay laura loomer is like the most outrageous sort of q anon conspiracy theorists out there so far out there that she's getting attacked by marjorie taylor green as being out of the mainstream too crazy from mtg yes exactly and

It's kind of a delicious Twitter fight for the real sickos out there. You want to go and look at the MTG Laura Loomer Twitter fight. It's kind of like the let them fight meme in a big way. A beautiful thing. So, yeah, you know Eric Erickson, who is a well-known journalist on the right who's no Harris fan. And his tweet yesterday was, you know,

OK, you stupid motherfuckers. You know, you realize that by putting out this ridiculous shit, you just threw out the bait and made, you know, the guy who should be the next president look like a complete idiot. And I responded to that to say, yeah. And, you know, stupid motherfucker. Number one is J.D. Vance, because he's the guy that was out there promoting it. And the thing to me that's worse than or the worst thing about all of that is that when asked about it,

They double down and make it worse by saying, when people say, what's your evidence? They say, well, we heard it from a constituent. So just like the steal the vote stuff back in 21. Well, I don't have any evidence, but people are telling me. So therefore, I'm reporting it. And rather than doing what elected leaders do is find the facts and then tell your constituents, they're letting their constituents just feed off conspiracy horse shit. And then they're repeating it and amplifying it.

Just think about the J.D. Vance pick also for a minute. Oh, God. I love that. I mean, just, you know, Trump's body language on Vance now is so good. How do you get in a situation if you are Susie Miles, our friend, friendish, and Chris Lasavita and Trump, and you're going down the list and you're like, we are going to pick a VP that is actually –

putting even more conspiratorial material into the campaign than Trump. It's like, how could you find a person? It's like Trump is the conspiracy monger in chief. And like, here we got one where our VP candidate is actually, instead of kind of reining him in or, you know, being the, being the, you know, bumpers on the bowling lane for him, trying to keep him in the middle, he's accelerating it.

You know who's loving this? Sarah Palin. Oh, my God. Yeah. No longer the worst pick? Yeah. I mean, it's incredible. You think, I mean, the first job of a VP pick is to do no harm, and he's doing harm like every fucking day. Every day. Yeah.

They can't like each other. He can't like... Does Trump want to hang out with him? I mean, as I said, the body language of Trump is like every time he gets asked about J.D. Vance, it's like, I don't talk to J.D. Vance. He doesn't share my... Everything is clear. You know he's on the phone with Junior saying, what in the fuck? Why did you insist on this guy? John Junior's in the doghouse. Trump's going to be sending some Haitian immigrants after him pretty soon. There's a lot to laugh about about this, but I do... There are two serious elements I want to talk about because...

The whole thing is outrageous. I usually am not one to pick on people for not being swift on their feet in interviews and on TV panels. We've all been there. Sometimes you get put into a tight spot, but I'm making an exception in this case. I want to play for you an exchange between Ana Navarro and Scott Jennings, two former colleagues of mine on CNN yesterday.

When he said that, he wasn't being sarcastic. He wasn't being hyperbolic. He was amplifying a conspiracy theory that I think you would agree puts a target on the backs of Haitian immigrants and that it is based on racism. Would you agree on that? Anti-black racism would be more pointed.

Do you think that if there were 20,000 Scandinavians that had been sent to Springfield, people would be saying that they're eating cats and dogs and geese? I'm not going to answer for him, for his memes or anything else. No, no, but I'm asking you, do you think that conspiracy is based on racism? Because I'm not going to answer. I don't know. That was a long question.

Because I don't know the answer. And I'm not going to sit here and answer for somebody. I don't talk to Donald Trump about what the motivations are. And I don't answer to you either. But Scott, what is the answer for you? He's trying to give you a thoughtful answer. But the bottom line is...

Boy, yeah, that was a long pause there. Our podcast listeners thought that that was the Sopranos episode. I just went to black there for a second. Where'd Scott go? The audio speaks for itself with Scott. But like, that is the thing. Anna does hit on the point. Like, this is not just like a crazy QAnon conspiracy like JFK Jr.'s alive. It is a racist conspiracy that targets a specific group of people because they're black.

And that's just it.

And you remember John McCain famously in his debate saying, no, Obama is not an other. He is one of us. And to do anything other is, you know, un-American. And it's just, it's the worst, worst kind of appeal to nativist racism that you can imagine. And the darkest part of this, this one's going to be tough. This is tough for me. I almost cried. I'm on a little bit of sleep at this point. I've only had three hours, I think, the last two nights between the debate and I came down to D.C. and

called a little concert last night. I probably shouldn't have done that. I probably should have got a good night's sleep, but you know, life is for the living, right? We'll sleep more dead as Tim Wall said, but so maybe I'm just a little vulnerable, but here we go. The thing that started all the stupid cat conspiracy for people who have not been following this closely is in this town of Springfield, there has been an influx of Haitian immigrants. It's not clear to me, actually, some of them are immigrants. Some of them are Haitian Americans. Some of them are like migrants who are not yet citizens and some are citizens. And

And there's one incident where there's a bus driver that was Haitian that didn't have a license to drive the bus, shouldn't have been driving the bus. And there's a car accident and a kid died in the car accident, Aiden Clark, 11-year-old kid.

And that is like, what was the impetus for all of this in like the crazy right wing fever swamps, right? And you know, this, this, it goes from, you know, whatever, we shouldn't be having these migrants in this kid died to, you know, and then, you know, it gets expanded, expanded, expanded to eventually have the point where the presidential candidate is talking about how Haitians eat dogs on international debate. But the father of the kid, Aiden Clark's dad, said this to the newspaper yesterday, I now wish that my son Aiden was killed by a 60 year old white man. I

I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.

The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces. But even that's not good enough for them. They take it one step further. They make it seem that our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate and that we should follow their hate. That's, that's incredible. I'm tearing up too. I've had a full night's sleep. Yeah. I mean, what, what, what a presumption of grace on his part too. I mean, to, to, to extend and reflect that, that idea. Yeah.

really powerful. Yeah. And that's what it is. I mean, it's just like, that's what all of this fundamentally is, right? It's like Springfield is an actual community when this is happening. I saw another interview with like a manufacturing job, a manager of a manufacturing plant. And he's like,

I don't know, man, the Haitian immigrants are showing up to work on time. They're like doing, they're doing their job. They're not complaining to me. You know what I mean? Like, you know, when you have a big influx of any group of people, you know, there's going to be challenges and like dealing with disruptions. But like, that's what this fundamentally is like this American story of like people in a community trying to navigate this and it's being perverted into this, like just totally blatant racist bullshit. Yeah.

And it's so un-American. I mean, Steve Ratner did a great thing this morning on Morning Joe on just showing the data on, you know, what's the real story with immigrants and crime statistics. And as it turns out, although it's way under the actual population and they're much more law abiding. And it's just to take advantage of that for political gain. It's just it's so contrary to the ideals of this country.

Y'all, I've just been a longtime reader of the Washington Post. I've told you about this before, but I just think back to my dorm, being a dorky freshman, coming to GW because I like politics and getting so excited because they had that Washington Post for free, sitting there in the lobby of Lafayette Hall. And I've been reading it ever since.

We've been having Washington Post reporters on this podcast, and it continues to be a valuable resource for me. So that's why I'm so excited that this podcast is sponsored by The Washington Post. Right now, you go to washingtonpost.com slash thebullwork, and you can subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year. If you listen to this podcast, you know the great work The Washington Post does on topics from Capitol Hill to Carol Lennon doing Secret Service.

to Isaac Arnsdorf doing politics. In fact, I was just reading Isaac's story this morning, which I really appreciated about Trump beginning to stoke suspicions, quote unquote, about the assassination attempt.

and how it's raising fears among people in law enforcement that it might end up stoking more violence. This was like one random aside of the debate. And, you know, it gets lost sometimes in the coverage when Trump does this kind of stuff. But our man Isaac was right on it. And he had a great story about it this morning. I was just reading right before I got on the podcast. Plus, if you're in a rush...

I need to catch up quickly on the day's most important and interesting stories. The posts, the seven newsletter is a quick commute read sent each weekday morning. And it's also available as a podcast, but don't listen to it before me.

With the election rapidly approaching, now is the time to sign up for The Washington Post. Go to WashingtonPost.com slash TheBullwork to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year. That's 80% off their typical offer. So this is truly a steal. Once again, that's WashingtonPost.com backslash TheBullwork to subscribe for just 50 cents per week for your first year. Speaking about the ideals of this country, you did it. You're a TV man. You know how to transition for me. You don't even know it's coming. I got Chip Roy for you on the house floor yesterday. Let's take a listen to this.

What the hell are we trying to defend? What is left of the United States to defend? What? A school where I can't send my child to pray to God without spending $20,000 a year on top of the taxes I pay? A school that my friend sends her sixth grader to with a trans music teacher asking her kid to do some dance in class? Yes, true story. That's true.

What the hell is left to defend about America? What? A kid was asked to dance in a class? There is a queer arts teacher? This is just happening now. There's never in history before been LGBT drama club teachers before. I would have been more surprised if it was a straight arts teacher asking him to do the Pledge of Allegiance.

I mean, I just don't even know how you get to a place like this, where you're like, what the hell is left to defend about this country? I mean, this is where this total inversion in this race, which is what I actually want to talk to you about. The clip is embarrassing. It's fun to make fun of Chip Roy. But this inversion, where the Republicans are now the ones that are like, this country fucking sucked.

This country sucks. There's nothing to defend about it. We're no better than any other country. We're killers too. And it's now the Democrat. It's Kamala Harris. It's like, no, actually. A hundred percent. And that she is stolen back. The freedom agenda is so brilliant. And George Bush used to say, people don't follow a leader who says...

The future's all fucked up. Follow me. And Reagan knew that. Bushes knew that. And just to have this dystopian, you know, we're a horrible place and it's all fucked up. And, you know, this dystopian vision of America, you know, that's one of the great things about Harris is that she is. I think she understands that and she has made it all about, you know, a bright future looking forward and not a backward dystopian hellscape that people like Chip Roy are trying to paint.

Yeah. And the other thing is that she has done is she's not gone down that also that path that sometimes people in love do. And look, there's reasons to criticize America. I'm not saying that America should never be criticized, but of America.

you know, just focusing overwhelmingly on the historical discrimination in the country, right? Like it's something that, that as a woman, as black woman, as an immigrant, I mean, like there's plenty of material to work with. She could have talked about historical discrimination in her convention speech or the debate or whatever. And it's just, she doesn't like it's the opposite. Well, yeah. I mean, does she ever talk about the discrimination that she's faced? Never, never. I've never heard her talk about that in the debate.

Another moment that really struck me was when the moderator asked Trump about his turn black comment. And she responds by kind of going through his history of racism. And like the next sentence, right after she kind of lists off Central Park Five and birtherism, et cetera, et cetera, you know, you could imagine

Imagine then going from there to being offended, to talking about how offensive that is personally. I'm sure Donald Trump and Republicans talk about their imaginary grievances and offenses all the time, but she didn't. She goes to talk about how that's not what America wants. America doesn't want to be divided. She goes, you've done racist stuff and you're dividing us and people don't want it. People don't deserve it. I thought it's a very deft way to handle that.

Yeah, and I think that really resonated with people and I think will continue to do. And again, I just think that she's it's just an example of somebody who has gotten really good at her craft, has learned over time. And, you know, just we've seen a lot of candidates over time. And it's just, you know, you think about, again, sort of the pressure pit that she's been put in. She's in a microwave turned up to 11 and she's handling it really well.

What's left to defend in this country, Mark? Everything's going to shit. Art teachers asking us to dance. My God. Transgender teachers. Transgender teachers are out there. You know, there's just might as well just throw this whole fucking experiment to shit. You know, Thomas Jefferson's rolling over in his grave. All right, man, before I lose you anything, what next 50, 50 plus days?

What's your sense of the state of play? You occasionally have a little contrarian POV on kind of the handicapping. So where's your head up? I kind of look for data points that aren't the usual data points. And I just have this notion that one thing we do in politics is we look at it through a mirror instead of a periscope. And first of all, how many people do you know that actually pick up a phone to answer a telephone poll? Almost nobody. So you know

you know, who is it that they're actually talking to? So you got to have some level of cynicism about anything you read about the data and polling. And we've seen the problems in recent years. But I think the smart thing is that the Harris campaign is running like they're 10 points behind, running like they're an underdog. Uh,

which is the only way to run. You run scared or unopposed. And they know the historical time set on popular vote and the electoral college and the challenges all there. And so I worry about, despite all the energy and excitement about everything, I think there's a huge challenge, particularly in Pennsylvania. I was a Josh Shapiro guy, and I just thought, you know, it's a very political thing for me. It's like you win Pennsylvania, you win. That guy may give you a 0.1 bump, but that could be it.

But I am encouraged by, again, the anecdotal stuff I hear that I think that in places like North Carolina where they have a horrible Republican nominee for governor who's not exciting any Republican voters. And I'm hearing – Well, except for the –

Except for the guys in the back of the dirty video shop eating pizza, eating their dominoes while they do the glory holes. Yeah, and the people concerned about the trans dancing going on. Yeah, he's exciting a couple folks, right? A couple folks are getting excited. If I had to handicap it now, I think that Harris is going to win. And I think it's because of new unregistered voters that have come out of the scene. Again, sort of anecdotally, you just think about...

This has got the feeling of a movement thing, something exciting, something historic. And if you're a young person or sort of a low information voter, you just kind of see it going on around you to say, wow, something's happened. I kind of want to be part of this. You know, there's just that factor going on. And I think that's where she could make a play and pick up North Carolina and or Arizona and Georgia, which would make up for losing Pennsylvania. Harris wins.

There's your contrary view. You think Harris could lose Pennsylvania and still win? Yes, I do. I think she's going to win North Carolina and or Georgia and Arizona.

There you go. Mark McKinnon. You heard it here. Thank you for pinch hitting today. They can cancel the circus, but there's no race in us. I need to give a special thanks to a bulwark super fans, Russ and Audrey for taking care of me last night. A little serendipitous bonus night in DC. Everything's good. We got power. He's got a text while we're alive. We got power. Some of the plants may be a little worse from the wear at our house in new Orleans, but everybody's safe and sound. I appreciate y'all's concerned. I'll be back tomorrow for a weekend edition of the bulwark podcast. See y'all then. Peace.

I think my teeth are falling out Like in a dream of mine But I haven't slept for days And you're on my mind And then I watch as the masses See your face passes And what I once knew now is just ashes But there's no escape

No escaping, no escaping Like taking, feel like taking, feel like taking drugs When the salvation, elevation, elevation's done There's still no erasing, no erasing us

The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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